The Common in Hardt and Negri:

Substantiating the concept through its urban, digital and political moments

A thesis submitted to the University of Manchester for the degree of Doctor of Politics in the Faculty of Humanities

Doctor of Philosophy in Politics

2017

Kelvin Charles

School of Social Sciences

Politics

2

Blank page

3

Table of Contents

Abstract ................................................................................................................................. 7

Lay abstract .......................................................................................................................... 8

Dedication .......................................................................................................................... 10

Acknowledgements .......................................................................................................... 10

The Author ......................................................................................................................... 10

Thesis Introduction ........................................................................................................... 13

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 13

2. The common(s) in the wider literature ................................................................... 16

3. Body and Affect ......................................................................................................... 23

4. The basis of the common in Hardt and Negri ....................................................... 26

5. Research Questions ................................................................................................... 29

5. Methodology and Method ....................................................................................... 30

7. Contribution of the thesis ......................................................................................... 38

8. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 39

Chapter 1 Towards a Theory of the Common .............................................................. 43

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 43

2.1 Negri and Autonomism .......................................................................................... 44

2.2 Negri in France......................................................................................................... 53

3.1 The conceptual tools of Empire .............................................................................. 60

3.2 From IWC to Empire ............................................................................................... 61

3.3 Immaterial Labour ................................................................................................... 66

3.4 The multitude ........................................................................................................... 69

4.1 The Urban Common................................................................................................ 74

4.2 The Digital Common ............................................................................................... 78

4.3 A Politics of the common ....................................................................................... 81

5. Conclusion .................................................................................................................. 87

4

Chapter 2 The Urban Common: Production and Resistance in the City .................. 92

1. Introduction ................................................................................................................ 92

2.1 Harvey’s Historical-Geographical Materialism .................................................. 95

2.2 Urbanisation and Capital ....................................................................................... 99

3.1 Two Foundations of the Urban Common .......................................................... 103

3.2 Contemporary Production and the Urban Common ....................................... 104

3.3 Contrasting Theoretical Approaches .................................................................. 108

3.4 Distinguishing the Urban Common ................................................................... 113

3.5 The Politics of the Urban Common ..................................................................... 121

4. Occupy and the Urban Common .......................................................................... 126

5. A struggle for the common .................................................................................... 131

6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 137

Chapter 3 The Digital Common: Networks of Resistance ........................................ 141

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 141

2.1 Castells and The Rise of the Network Society ................................................... 144

2.2 The Birth of the Internet ....................................................................................... 148

2.3 Digital (Anti) Globalisation .................................................................................. 152

3.1 The Common and the Limits of Technological Determinism ......................... 157

3.2 Production of the Digital Common .................................................................... 163

3.3 The Paradox of Incommunicability..................................................................... 166

4. From the ‘logic of networking’ to the ‘logic of aggregation’ ............................. 169

5. The Digital Common ............................................................................................... 177

6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 189

Chapter 4 The Politcal Common: Radical Organisation against Capital ................ 194

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 194

2. 1 Dean: Capitalism and the Party .......................................................................... 197

2.2 Communicative Capitalism ................................................................................. 201

2.3 The Party and the ‘gap’ ......................................................................................... 204

3.1 Hardt and Negri and the basis for the Political Common ............................... 211

5

3.2 Democracy of the common .................................................................................. 213

3.3 Representation and ‘the political’ ....................................................................... 216

4. Political Organisation of Encampments ............................................................... 222

5.1 Toward a Substantiation of the Political Common ........................................... 229

5.2 Constitutive Democracy ....................................................................................... 234

6. Conclusion ................................................................................................................ 242

Thesis Conclusion ........................................................................................................... 246

1. Introduction .............................................................................................................. 246

2. Method, Structure and Contribution .................................................................... 247

3. Limitations of the research ..................................................................................... 258

4. Future research ........................................................................................................ 259

Word Count: 79961

Blank page

7

Abstract

The concept of the common, found in Hardt and Negri, provides the possibility of

theorising struggle that avoids the critiques that suggest Empire remains

intangible, ethereal and postmodern. The concept, however, remains

fragmentarily developed by the authors themselves, and is rarely the subject of

sustained analysis in the secondary literature. Therefore, in order to substantiate

the concept, I consider the common through three distinct moments which I

identify as the urban, digital and political moments. This task is achieved through

theoretical interlocutions and reflections on the 2011 Occupy movement.

Throughout this thesis, and through each moment of the common, I argue that the

concept must be understood as distinctly physical. Firstly, struggles over the

urban common revolve around the physical (re)production of ideas, knowledge,

culture and relationships in urban environments. Whilst the digital common often

implies a lack of physicality, I argue that the common offers a means of thinking

social media and perpetual connectivity primarily as a process of transforming the

way humans engage with one another and their environments, and the radical

possibilities therein. I argue that these moments of the common necessitate the

development of an appropriate political moment of the common. Through

centring on the physicality of struggle, Hardt and Negri’s concept of the common

is substantiated whilst contributing to wider debates in the field of radical theory

and social movements.

Lay abstract

Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire trilogy emerged as a blockbuster in

radical political theory. Among its major conceptual developments, the common

appears as a source and site of resistance against global capitalism. Despite the

evident importance of the concept for the political theory as a whole, Hardt admits

that he and Negri have little idea what it actually means.

This thesis then, seeks to confront this lack at the heart of the Empire trilogy and

develops a substantive conceptualisation of the common through three central

moments. Taking inspiration from the Occupy encampment protests of 2011, I

identify the urban moment, the digital moment and the political moment as key

entrance points to the concept at large.

Through a development of an intellectual biography of Negri’s relationship with

Italian autonomist Marxism and continental philosophy I argue that each moment

of the common, in various ways, reveals that the common must be read as a means

of understanding the physicality of contemporary production, exploitation and

resistance.

Declaration No portion of the work referred to in the thesis has been submitted in support of an application for another degree or qualification of this or any other university or other institute of learning

Copyright statement The author of this thesis (including any appendices and/or schedules to this thesis) owns certain copyright or related rights in it (the “Copyright”) and s/he has given The University of Manchester certain rights to use such Copyright, including for administrative purposes. Copies of this thesis, either in full or in extracts and whether in hard or electronic copy, may be made only in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988 (as amended) and regulations issued under it or, where appropriate, in accordance with licensing agreements which the University has from time to time. This page must form part of any such copies made. The ownership of certain Copyright, patents, designs, trademarks and other intellectual property (the “Intellectual Property”) and any reproductions of copyright works in the thesis, for example graphs and tables (“Reproductions”), which may be described in this thesis, may not be owned by the author and may be owned by third parties. Such Intellectual Property and Reproductions cannot and must not be made available for use without the prior written permission of the owner(s) of the relevant Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions. Further information on the conditions under which disclosure, publication and commercialisation of this thesis, the Copyright and any Intellectual Property and/or Reproductions described in it may take place is available in the University IP Policy (see http://documents.manchester.ac.uk/DocuInfo.aspx?DocID=24420), in any relevant Thesis restriction declarations deposited in the University Library, The University Library’s regulations (see http://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/about/regulations/) and in The University’s policy on Presentation of Theses

Dedication This thesis is dedicated to the one person who has made it possible; who has supported me in every possible way. The burden placed upon her was unfair and substantial.

Acknowledgements I would like to acknowledge the help of my supervisors, Dr Greig Charnock and Dr Carl Death, whose support, comments and suggestions have been invaluable. PhD colleagues and all those who have taken time to listen, read and discuss the development of my research. Thanks to my family, who enabled me to follow my studies and supported me throughout. To Dr Matt Hall without whom I would never have studied politics in the first place, and whose revolutionary pedagogy was an inspiration. My friends, who have listened to and supported me throughout. Manu, Moody and Striker, the best co-workers one could wish for. 6 Music for being a constant companion. Sheffield Oaks, Plots 27, 28 and 29 and all at RVAS: the best escapes from thesis-writing.

The Author Kelvin Charles is a PhD researcher at the University of Manchester, whose interests cover radical political and social theory, social movements, feminism and non-orthodox Marxisms. Kelvin received his Bachelor’s Degree (First Class Honours) in Politics from the University of Sheffield in 2011, with a dissertation on Gramsci and a project on ‘Women Against Pit Closures’. During his undergraduate degree programme Kelvin was accepted onto a supplementary Undergraduate Research Programme in which he assisted in research focussed on the representation of Africa in NGO campaign materials.

Kelvin received his Master Degree (Distinction) in Philosophy from the University of Sheffield the following year, with a dissertation on Hardt and Negri and other notable work on Hegel. After being accepted to study for a PhD at the University of Manchester in 2013, in receipt of a School of Social Sciences Studentship award, his research developed his interests in radical political theory and incorporated social movements. Throughout this time, Kelvin taught on a number of undergraduate courses including Political Theory and Global Political Economy.

The Common in Hardt and Negri:

Substantiating the concept through its urban, digital and political moments

We share bodies with two eyes, ten fingers, ten toes; we share life on this earth; we share capitalist regimes of production and exploitation; we share common dreams of a better future. Our communication, collaboration, and cooperation, furthermore, not only are based on the common that exists but also in turn produce the common. We make the

common we share every day

Hardt and Negri, Multitude1

1 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Multitude: War and Democracy in the Age of Empire (Penguin, London, 2005), p. 128.

Blank page

13

Thesis Introduction

‘Class struggle does not disappear; it is transformed into all the moments of everyday life’

Toni Negri, Marx Beyond Marx1

1. Introduction Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Empire trilogy provides a highly influential

picture of production and resistance in contemporary capitalism. Pier Paolo

Frassinelli describes Commonwealth as ‘one of the most influential theoretico-

political interventions of the last decade: it is no exaggeration to say that Hardt

and Negri have reshaped the lexicon of current debates’.2 At the centre of this

reshaped lexicon is their concept of the common which is seen as ‘the primary

characteristic of the new dominant forms of labor today’.3 The common describes,

not only the product of labour, but also the basis upon which struggle over the

ownership of such production is undertaken; revealing the possibility that ‘we can

live and work in common’.4 Forming both the basis and product of social

cooperation in neoliberal capitalism, the common is therefore vital if we are to use

Hardt and Negri to theorise the dominant modes of production and the potential

for the creation of alternatives.5

The Empire trilogy is, however, a frustrating and difficult set of texts; innumerable

interlinked concepts which remain fragmentarily developed, and full of literary

allusions, wide-ranging references and reference points. The work has been

challenged through accusations that it over-expands central categories,

1 A. Negri, Trans., H. Cleaver, M. Ryan, and M. Viano, Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse (Autonomedia/Pluto, NY and London, 1991), p.xvi. 2 P.P Frassinelli, ‘Biopolitial Production, the common, and a happy ending: on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri’s Commonwealth’, Critical Arts 25:2 (2011) pp. 119-120. 3 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 4 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xiv 5 A. Curcio and C. Ozselcuk, ‘On the Common, Universality, and Communism: A Conversation between Etienne Balibar and Antonio Negri’, Rethinking Marxism 22:3 (2010) p. 313.

14

universalising the chasmic differences between, for example, strippers,

programmers and teachers as labouring subjects,6 rendering Hardt and Negri’s

reading of labour and struggle meaningless.7 Alongside this, the lack of empirical

analysis,8 or for David Harvey, any notion of materiality,9 leaves the work feeling

ethereal and meta-theoretical, rather than practical and engaged. It is difficult to

see what the common is, how it is created, and what it means for struggle today.

Silvia Federici agrees that Hardt and Negri’s Empire trilogy acts as the most

advanced theorisation of the concept in autonomist thought, yet recognises that it

is not unproblematic:

‘with its emphasis on knowledge and information, [Hardt and Negri’s]

theory skirts the question of the reproduction of everyday life. This,

however, is true of the discourse on the commons as a whole, which is

mostly concerned with the formal preconditions for the existence of

commons and less with the material requirements for the construction of a

commons-based economy enabling us to resist dependence on wage labor

and subordination to capitalist relations’.10

The ambiguity of Hardt and Negri’s formulation of the common stems from two

sources. Firstly, the concept itself is a difficult and broad category, denoting labour

practices, forms of production, products themselves and struggle. Critics of Hardt

and Negri’s concept of the common, often point to a range of concerns over

precision and conceptual use.11 More fundamentally, however, is that Hardt

6 N. Dyer-Witherford, ‘Cyber-Negri: General Intellect and Immaterial Labor’, in T.S. Murphy and A. K. Mustapha, Eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri: Resistance in Practice (Pluto, London, 2005), p. 152 7 C. Cremin and J. M. Roberts, ‘Postmodern Left Liberalism: Hardt and Negri and the Disavowal of Critique’, Critical Sociology 37:2 (2011) p. 193. 8 P. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Immanence of Empire’, in P. A. Passavant and J. Dean, Empire’s New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri (Routledge, London, 2004) p. 143. 9 D. Harvey and A. Negri, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, artforum (2009). 10 S. Federici, ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, The Commoner (2011) p. 4. 11 G. Balakrishnan, Ed., Debating Empire (Verso, London, 2003); Curcio and Ozselcuk, ‘On the Common’, pp. 312-328; Cremin and Roberts, ‘Postmodern Left Liberalism’, pp. 179-197; J. Dean, Crowds and Party (Verso, London, 2016); D. Harvey, Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (Verso, London,

15

acknowledges that, ‘The common is a difficult concept, one that I don’t think Toni

and I have fully worked out yet’.12 What we are presented with is moments of the

common; fragments of social life construed as, or through, the concept of the

common. For instance, whilst we are informed that the common is not primarily

pre-capitalist common land, but is, instead, ‘constantly created through social

interactions’,13 discovering exactly what constitutes Hardt and Negri’s concept of

the common is a difficult task. This thesis posits a reading of the common that

responds to this lack in Hardt and Negri.

I argue that a concept of the common should be seen as an understanding of

production centred on affect in neoliberalism. In order to do so, the common must

be read through its urban, digital and political moments. The urban environment

has come to be defined by the intensities of the common produced through

cooperation and proximity across the metropolitan environment, enabling the city

as a whole to be read as a site of production and resistance. The digital moment

highlights the complexities of physicality, in particular the need to read digital

technology playing an affective role in physical action. Such an understanding

argues that it is essential that outdated binaries of body-mind and digital-physical

are overcome. Finally, new forms of production necessitate new political models

which are able to account for the complexities of productive life today. I show how

a concept of the common must revolve around the corporeality of struggle which

creates new social relations beyond capital and the state.

2012); J. Holloway, ‘Going in the Wrong Direction; Or, Mephistopheles, not Saint Francis of Assisi’, Historical Materialism 10:1 (2002) pp. 79-91; E. Laclau, ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles? A Review of Empire’, Diacritics 31:4 (2001) pp. 3-10; P. Mudu, ‘Where is Hardt and Negri’s Multitude? Real Networks in Open Spaces’, ACME 8:2 (2009) pp. 211-244; Murphy and Mustapha, Eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri; Frassinelli, ‘Biopolitical Production’, pp. 119-131; Passavant and Dean, Empire’s New Clothes; R. Schlembach, Against Old Europe: Critical Theory and Anti-Globalization Movements (Routledge, London, 2014); J. Ranciere, S. Corcoran, Ed., and Trans., Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (Continuum, London, 2010). 12 C. Hight and M. Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces: Riffing with Michael Hardt on the Multitude and Collective Intelligence’, Architectural Design 76:5 (2006) p. 72. 13 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 72.

16

2. The common(s) in the wider literature Recent theoretical work on the commons tends to be traced to Garrett Hardin’s

‘The Tragedy of the Commons’.14 Hardin seeks to show how rational actors, under

conditions of social stability, create tragedy when there is open access to a

common: the (individual) benefit of rearing an additional animal on the commons

far outweighs the (individual) cost, which is spread across all herders on the

land.15 In this context, the only rational course of action for each individual is to

add more animals to their herd; with the consequent devastation of the natural

environment and the basis upon which the animals, and thus herders subsist.16

Access to the natural world, therefore, had to be heavily controlled and regulated,

Hardin argues.17

Elinor Ostrom takes up the commons in her book, Governing the Commons,18 in

which she confronts the task of designing governance structures appropriate to

the regulation of commons. Ostrom notes how responses to the problem of the

common revolves around the apparent necessity to impose strict coercive powers

over the natural world so as to protect it from the tragedy inherent in free access.19

Environmental protection, we are told in these paradigms, relies upon a

centralised, coercive state power, on one hand and private access rights and the

parcelling up of the commons on the other.20 Ostrom’s concern is not which of

these two ‘contradictory’ solutions represents the singular solution to problems of

this nature, but, instead to understand the work it takes to build the specific

14 G. Hardin, ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (1968) pp. 1243-1248. 15 Hardin, Tragedy, p. 1244. 16 Hardin, Tragedy, p. 1244. 17 Hardin, Tragedy, p. 1246. 18 E. Ostrom, Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015). 19 Ostrom, Governing, pp. 8-9. 20 Ostrom, Governing, p. 13.

17

institutions suited to each situation.21 Such a process of institution building must

be founded on the experiences of the individuals involved in successful and

unsuccessful commons projects.22

The history of the common is a long and complex one, however UK-based

discussions cannot but reference the struggles surrounding common land and

enclosures. One of the most recognised struggles was 1549’s Kett rebellion in

which a wealthy yeoman was confronted by peasants and decided to assist in their

destruction of fences and ditches; returning land to the commons.23 During the

English Civil war many of the radical elements of the New Model Army were

Levellers and Diggers, of which Gerrard Winstanley was one of the most eloquent

and well known. In a pamphlet published in 1648 he writes that ‘every one shall

put their hands to till the earth and bring up cattle, and the blessing of the earth

shall be common to all’.24 Between 1750 and 1850, ‘5 millions acres were enclosed

by private parliamentary acts. Whole villages were swept away, along with the

community life of centuries’.25 The onset of the agricultural revolution and the

industrialisation of countryside life led to peasant revolts against machinery such

as the Swing Riots of 1830 in which threshing machines were destroyed and

church tithe barns set ablaze.26

The wave of leftist movements and political victories in Latin America, often

referred to as the pink tide, has often been thought in terms of a new commons-

politics. Taking inspiration from the work of Ostrom, much research has

considered the ways in which commons resources play a significant role in the

21 Ostrom, Governing, p. 14. 22 Ostrom, Governing, p. 14. 23 C. Foley, Of Cabbages and Kings: The History of Allotments (Frances Lincoln Publishing, London, 2014) p. 67. 24 Foley, Of Cabbages and Kings, p. 73. 25 Foley, Of Cabbages and Kings, p. 11. 26 Foley, Of Cabbages and Kings, pp. 105-109.

18

livelihoods of millions of people in Latin America, enabling marginalised groups

to avoid hunger and poverty.27 The emergence of landless peasant’s movements

seeking local and indigenous rights to land and natural resources has resulted not

only in occupations and alternative community building,28 but also fed upward

into wider agrarian reform.29 Such movements can be read as an overt response to

the social fragmentation and impoverishment of the implementation of neoliberal

policies, and contain challenges to the role of politics, the state and political

parties.30

Since the 1990s, there has been an emergence of new conceptualisations of

commons in light of technological developments and economic transformations, in

particular the advent of the Internet. Notable contributions such as those of Lessig

and Benkler set the precedent for such narratives which seek to understand the

impact of new technologies. For Lessig, the Internet brings into focus the

contradiction of creativity and ‘free culture’, on the one hand, and commercial and

legal regulation on the other. 31 Similarly, for Benkler, the ‘new information

environment’ opens the possibility of widespread participation and nonmarket

production which challenges industrial incumbents and disrupts the institutional

ecology.32 Importantly, however, both of these responses refuse to reject liberalism,

individualism and the market. For Lessig, this ‘free culture’ is not a culture

without property,33 but a demand that we engage with the shaping of the legal

27 J.P. Robson and G. Lichtenstein, ‘Special Issue on Latin American Commons: An Introduction’, Journal of Latin American Geography 12:1 (2013) p. 1. 28 L. Vergara-Camus, ‘The Politics of the MST: Autonomous Rural Communities, the State, and Electoral Politics’, Latin American Perspectives 36:4 (2009) p. 178. 29 J.P. Robson and G. Lichtenstein, ‘Current Trends in Latin American Commons Research’, Journal of Latin American Geography 12:1 (2013) p. 9. 30 Vergara-Camus, ‘The Politics of the MST’, p. 179. 31 L. Lessig, Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (Penguin, New York, 2004) p. 9. 32 Y. Benkler, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Porduction Tranforms Markets and Freedoms (Yale University Press, 2006) p. 2. 33 Lessig, Free Culture, p. xvi.

19

framework to better ensure property rights in this new environment are upheld.34

Equally Benkler retains an individualist methodology,35 with the insistence that

the new informational environment poses new possibilities for individuals in

networks.

Developing such technological understandings of the new economic and social

relations inherent in the expansion of the Internet is taken up by Mayo Fuster

Morrell who highlights the problematic nature of the infrastructure of online

communities being increasingly owned and controlled by corporate interests.36

The centrality of the digital transformations has been evidenced by the influence

of such shifts on social movement organisation and action, and in particular the re-

emergence of the concept of the commons which presents the possibility of non-

individual, non-collective property and the necessary institutional arrangements

constructed around such relations.37

Linking such technological transformations with the autonomist-inspired ‘social

factory’ thesis, Terranova argues that culture is ‘increasingly grasped and

conceived in terms of their informational dynamics’.38 The Internet is, therefore, ‘a

space that is common, without being homogenous or even equal’.39 This autonomist

inspired reading of the common is the one that runs through this thesis. Federici

notes how the autonomist Marxist perspective prefers to term their iteration of the

concept ‘the common’ rather than ‘the commons’.40 The linguistic shift reveals a

34 Lessig, Free Culture, p. 3. 35 Benkler, Wealth of Networks, p. 18. 36 M. Fuster Morrell, ‘The Unethics of Sharing: Wikiwashing’, International Review of Information Ethics 15 (2011), p. 10. 37 H. Wainwright, O. Reyes, M. Berlinguer, F. Dove, M. Foster Morrell and J. Subirats, Networked Politics: Rethinking Political Organisation in an age of movements and networks (XL Edizioni, Rome, 2007) p. 70. 38 T. Terranova, Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age (Pluto Press, London, 2004) p. 7. 39 Terranova, Network Culture, p. 154. 40 S. Federici, ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, The Commoner 14 (2010) p. 2.

20

change in the nature and content of the concept that becomes much more directed

at the process of production in the post-Fordist era.41

Federici highlights the ways in which global institutions have sought to co-opt

language of the commons in order to accommodate market interests:42 expelling

native communities and opening up access to those who can afford to pay. In

recent contributions to commons theory in an autonomist vein is Massimo de

Angelis, whose recent work situates the commons as a ‘Plan C’ of non-state, non-

market shared resources which are governed horizontally.43 The commons then

requires social revolution, including the seizure of latent alternative modes of

production and the creation of new alternative modes of production, and thus

requires not only shared land, but social systems also.44 In other recent work,

Stavros Stavrides draws on a reading of the common which, whilst insisting on

the need to combine spatial transformation with new political subjectivity,45 sees

the commons as a threshold space, neither fully part of contemporary capitalism

nor entirely built up against its influence.46

Autonomist Marxists use the concept of the common widely and in various

ways.47 For autonomous Marxism, the concept of the common often specifically

applies to new forms of production and exploitation in late capitalism. In

particular, the feminist oriented work of those such as Dalla Costa and James

41 Federici, p. 2. 42 Federici, p. 2. 43 M. de Angelis, Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to post-capitalism (Zed Books, London, 2017) p. 10 44 de Angelis, On the Commons, p. 11. 45 S. Stavrides, Common Space: The City as Commons (Zed Books, London, 2017) p. 6. 46 Stavrides, Common Space, p. 7. 47 Such uses of the common(s) can be found in the pages of The Commoner and Midnight Notes. In particular; G. Caffentzis, ‘Autonomous Universities and the Making of the Knowledge Commons’, The Commoner (November 18 2008); G. Caffentzis, ‘The Future of ‘the Commons’: Neoliberalism’s ‘Plan B’ or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?, New Formations 69 (2009); pp, 23-41; Federici, ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, The Commoner, p. 4; Midnight Notes Collective and Friends, Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons.

21

shifts focus to domestic labour. The expansion of the concept of labour to include

social (re)production comes from a recognition of the relative decline of Fordist

production, in which work is undertaken across society in particular through a

recognition of the labour done in the home; mainly by women.48 As such,

autonomism, takes up the concern that women have been ostracised from

orthodox Marxist understandings of exploitation. The recognition of the labour of

the household is recognised as ‘the other half of capitalist organization the other

area of hidden capitalist exploitation the other hidden source of surplus labor’.49

The recognition of the labour of the household, and its incorporation into the

revolutionary perspective, enables the struggle of women to be interpreted ‘as

producing labor power as a commodity, and her struggle not to’.50 Here, then, we

can come to understand the concept of the common as a means of drawing

together the understanding of the direct process of production for capital that is

undertaken not only in the factory, but in the home and across the social sphere.

John Holloway, who shares many analytical concerns with the autonomist school,

sees the commons as one of the ‘cracks’ in contemporary capitalism. Alongside

spatial cracks and temporal cracks, the common is seen as an ‘activity- or resource-

related crack’ which also acts as an embryonic form of society beyond capital.51

Whilst Holloway often falls back on a more traditional conception of the commons

as a pre-capitalist space subsequently enclosed, he does point to the need to

account for the physical and bodily implications of such an enclosure. Holloway

argues that very often the ‘enclosure of land was also an enclosure of bodies in

48 M. Dalla Costa, ‘The Door to the Garden: feminism and operaismo’, Paper Presented at the Operaismo a Convegno Conference, Rome (1-2 June 2002). http://libcom.org/library/the-door-to-the-gardenfeminism-and-operaismo-mariarosa-dalla-costa. Accessed 25/8/17. 49 M. Dalla Costa and S. James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (1975) p. 6. https://libcom.org/library/power-women-subversion-community-della-costa-selma-james. Accessed 25/8/17. 50 Dalla Costa and James, The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community, p. 7. 51 J. Holloway, Crack Capitalism (Pluto, London, 2010) pp. 29-30.

22

factories’.52 Whilst Holloway is keen to emphasise the bodily implications of the

production and enclosure of the commons, autonomists such as Federici and Dalla

Costa seek to highlight the role of everyday, domestic (re)production.

Whilst autonomists have sought to refocus the concept on to social and

collaborative production in late capitalism as productive of the common, this has

left the concept open to challenges about its content. As Federici, above, has noted

few works have sought to systematically draw together commons-projects, and

indeed, the same can be said of attempts to provide coherent theoretical

understandings. Very often the concept is taken as uncontroversial and

descriptive, referring to everything from neighbourhoods, to parks and public

space.53 To their staunchest critics, Hardt and Negri’s use of the common in the

Empire trilogy substitutes hope for politics,54 or indeed, for material research and

concrete proposals.55

The reluctance of theorists to define and elucidate the concept of the common may

well be related to the disparate nature of commons projects in the real world. As

Federici notes, examples of reproductive commoning remain untransportable

across cultural contexts,56 tend to be small-scale and remain un-joined-up.

However, what is clear is that the autonomist impulse and drive toward a

conceptualisation of the common is bound up in the necessity to recognise and

account for the labour undertaken outside the traditional work-place. This has

implications for our awareness of the ways in which bodily practices are at the

centre of changing production processes. As such, the common is an attempt to

pinpoint the site of production and reproduction of society as a whole; the 52 Holloway, Crack Capitalism, p. 102. 53 S. Stein, ‘How the Trumps got Rich’, Jacobin (4/8/2016). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes/. Accessed 2/11/2016. 54 J. Dean ‘The Networked Empire: Communicative Capitalism and the Hope for Politics’, in Passavant and Dean, Empire’s New Clothes, p. 266. 55 D. Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 256 and p. 257. 56 Federici, ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’.

23

collaborative work undertaken, and then exploited and enclosed under capital.

This is the starting point for the investigation of the concept of the common in this

thesis.

3. Body and Affect My argument concerning the role of the body in the concept of the common stems

from the recent corporeal turn in a range of areas of autonomist and feminist

inspired research. Such a corporeal turn is conceived as a redress to the apparent

distance between IPE and the ‘mess and matter’ of everyday life.57 This redress is

more than merely an insistence that we recognise that IPE concerns itself with the

material needs of real, embodied lives,58 and instead, must be recognised as an

ontological understanding of the manner in which global capitalist hierarchies are

inscribed on bodies.59

In parallel work in the field of Marxian economics, Fracchia insists that Marxism

enables a consideration of the immiseration of workers’ bodies through the

recognition that the wage-labour contract reduces humans to mere physical

bodies.60 Despite the insistence that the wage relation reduces the human to a mere

body, Fracchia also points to the potential limitations of such a conceptualisation

in that computers appear to be a disembodiment of labour.61 Attempting to move

beyond the potential limitations of Marxian materialism, neo-materialism builds

on the contributions of Deleuze and Foucault rather than Marx.62 Neo-materialism

stresses ‘the concrete yet complex materiality of bodies immersed in social

57 N. Smith and D. Lee, ‘Corporeal Capitalism: The Body in International Political Economy’, Global Society 29:1 (2015) p. 65. 58 Smith and Lee, ‘Corporeal Capitalism’, p. 66. 59 Smith and Lee, ‘Corporeal Capitalism’, p. 66. 60 J. Fracchia, ‘The Capitalist Labour-Process and the Body in Pain: The Corporeal Depths of Marx’s Concept of Immiseration’, Historical Materialism 16:4 (2008) p. 45. 61 Fracchia, ‘The Capital Labour-Process’, p. 63 62 R. Dolphijn and I. van der Tuin, New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (Open Humanities Press, University of Michigan, 2012), p. 20.

24

relations of power’.63 As such, neo-materialism enables a ‘rethinking the bodily

roots of subjectivity’,64 and thus sees the body and a threshold of transformations.65

In response to the corporeal turn, alongside the need to comprehend the

transformations of labour under digital late-capitalism, I contend that affect theory

expands and develops such a concern beyond mere focus on physical bodies and,

as such, facilitate a consideration of the body under late capitalism. Affect theory

is an attempt to build on and develop immaterial labour beyond its purely

cognitive aspects to describe how it is that primarily informational capital acts on

and exploits the whole range of human life. I argue affect theory enables a reading

of the ‘affective fabrics of digital cultures’.66

The technical-affective link, as Dowling and Nunes term this process is not always

a conscious processes of affective labour generating emotion and feelings.67

Affective labour is therefore understood as the ‘economization of affect and

emotion through teletechnologies’.68 As such affect theory posits the body as a site

of assembly of physical, cognitive, non-conscious and digital elements that refuses

to be reduced to Cartesian dualism.69 Affect theory seeks to consider practices

which do not reify bodies or alternatively rely on cognitivist or disembodied

understandings.70 Thus, when this thesis talks of bodies and physicality, it do so

in order to highlight the process of embodiment, in order to highlight the assemblage

of bodily practice thought as affect.71

63 Dolphijn and van der Tuin, New Materialism, p. 21. 64 Dolphijn and van der Tuin, New Materialism, p. 33. 65 Dolphijn and van der Tuin, New Materialism, p. 34. 66 A. Karatzogianni and A. Kuntsman, Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change (Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2012) p. 3. 67 E. Dowling, R. Nunes and R. Trott, ‘Immaterial and Affective Labour: Explored’, ephemera 7:1 (2007) p. 6. 68 L. Blackman and C. Venn, ‘Affect’, Body and Society 16:1 (2010) p. 7. 69 Blackman and Venn, ‘Affect’, p. 20. 70 Blackman and Venn, ‘Affect’, p. 9. 71 M. DeLanda, Assemblage Theory (Speculative Realism) (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2016) p. 1.

25

The concept of affect and bodies developed in Hardt and Negri is one develop

through an inheritance and engagement with Spinoza and Deleuze, in particular.

Hardt and Negri’s reading of affect is built on the Spinozist rejection on separation

between affect and action; the understanding that affect leads to and shapes future

action.72 Affect is, therefore, a critique of Catesian dualism and theories of

subjective unity.73 For Deleuze, the body is inseparable from its relational nature

and capacity for being affected.74 As such, Deleuze’s reading of Spinoza reveals

that the body is inherently social in that we cannot come to know ourselves or

external bodies except through the affectations that external bodies produce on

our own.75 The consideration of affect, therefore takes affect as a process of

becoming rather than mere being, and is thus a social act.76

Negri’s primary concern is very much on the role of affect in capitalist

production.77 In the Empire trilogy, affect is discussed as a form of immaterial

labour, primarily focussed on the social aspects of contemporary capitalist

production.78 The authors claim that their deployment of affect centres on

‘biopolitical production in that it directly produces social relationship and forms

of life’.79 Ruddick critique’s this position through arguing that whilst considering

affect at the social level, Negri generally fails to focus on the level of the body

itself.80 Instead, Ruddick claims, we must retain the centrality of Spinoza’s

argument that power and potential rest entirely internal to the body as affect; thus

affect is ‘necessary to the collaborative production of knowledge and immanent

72 E. Dowling, ‘Valorised but not valued? Affective remuneration, social reproduction and feminist politics beyond the crisis’, British Politics 11:4 (2016) p. 459. 73 L. Blackman and C. Venn, ‘Affect’, Body and Society 16:1 (2010) p. 20, and S. Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect: Spinoza in the work of Negri and Deleuze’, Theory, Culture and Society 27:4 (2010) p. 27. 74 G. Deleuze, Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (Zone Books, New York, 1992) p. 218. 75 Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect’, p. p. 28. 76 Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect’, p. 30. 77 Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect’, p. 32. 78 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 108. 79 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 110. 80 Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect’, p. 41.

26

production of new subjectivity’.81 In so doing, affect can be seen as a ‘process of

collaborative emancipation’.82 Through addressing the lack of theorising of the

body as affect in Hardt and Negri, I therefore seek to demonstrate the centrality of

the body as the site of social struggle in constant and productive subjective

relation to society at large, including the processes of capitalist accumulation and

the construction of the common.

4. The basis of the common in Hardt and Negri Sharing considerations of the expansion of labour beyond traditional

understandings, and going beyond the conceptualisation of the commons as land

and natural resources, Hardt and Negri’s common is founded on two central

distinguishing features. Firstly, the acknowledgement that the vast majority of our

world is not, or should not, be designated as private property.83 The

transformation of ideas, cultural products and genetic codes of animals and plants

into private property highlights the technological advances in late capitalism,

alongside the powers of privatisation. Hardt and Negri seek to highlight the

nature of the common as an alternative to both private and public ownership, and

that whilst privatisations should be resisted, the alternative must not be confined

to public ownership and protection of the state.84

As well as that which cannot be designated property, for Hardt and Negri, the

common also refers to the product of contemporary production; ‘The common we

share, in fact, is not so much discovered as it is produced’.85 This form of

production is a social form of production.86 New forms of information,

81 Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect’, p. 28. 82 Ruddick, ‘The Politics of Affect’, p. 27. 83 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 188. 84 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Commonwealth (The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, London, 2011) p. viii. 85 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 86 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. vii.

27

communication and knowledge production have shown the need to reassess our

analyses of production under capital. Building on the autonomist impulse to

uncover labour and production across social life, Hardt and Negri highlight how

life itself has been put to work. Areas of life that have previously been seen as

unproductive can be shown to be productive not only for the interests of capital,

but also of the common.

Hardt and Negri argue that neoliberal capitalism paradoxically requires

‘expansions of the common’.87 Technological production today requires access to

vast amounts of knowledge, information and networks.88 Importantly, Hardt and

Negri see these forms of the common as antithetical to both market forces and

private property on one hand, and state centralisation and capture on the other.89

They state that radical projects of the common should not seek a ‘return to the

public, with state control of industries, services, and goods’.90 For Holloway,

Negri’s work appears attractive to such a wide audience because it responds to a

desperate need; people are finally realising the ‘old state-centred model of

revolution has failed catastrophically’.91 In response, it has been suggested that the

common provides the best opportunity to theorise organisation outside of the

state.92

This understanding of the common is therefore built on a claim that the

contemporary world, and in particular the forms and products of human labour,

has drastically changed in neoliberal capitalism. Hardt and Negri claim that the

87 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. ix. 88 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. x. 89 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 303. 90 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 303. 91 Holloway, ‘Going in the wrong direction’, p. 79. 92 E. D. Thorburn, ‘A Common Assembly: Multitude Assemblies and a New Politics of the Common’, Interface 4:2 (2012) p. 258.

28

‘very subject of labor and revolt has changed profoundly’.93 Hardt and Negri

argue that,

‘Living beings as fixed capital are at the center of this transformation, and

the production of forms of life is becoming the basis of added value. This is

a process in which putting to work human faculties, competences, and

knowledges – those acquired on the job but, more importantly, those

accumulated outside work interacting with automated and computerized

productive systems – is directly productive of growth’.94

In this context, Hardt and Negri highlight the role of biopolitics, defined as ‘the

normalising apparatus of disciplinarity that animates out daily practices’ as a

means of understanding the contemporary productive process and potential

alternative organisational forms of production.95

If the state no longer holds its central position as the target of revolutionary

organising, and hopes of an egalitarian future, what principle comes to take its

place? Frassinelli asks whether ‘biopolitical production [can] provide a new

answer to the thorny issue of political organisation?’.96 Therefore, if, ‘In biopolitical

capitalism, we produce the common’,97 the common is clearly a key terrain upon

which contemporary thought on political organisation must play out. Whilst

Hardt and Negri’s biopolitics has very often been read as focussing on the

intellectual labour of subjects, Hardt and Negri argue that ‘the productivity of

bodies’ is absolutely central in this context.98 By interpreting the politics of Hardt

and Negri as a means of thinking the relation between bodies and the common I

93 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Empire (Harvard University Press, London, 2000) p. 52. 94 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth pp. 132-133. 95 T. Campbell and A. Sitze, ‘Introduction’ in T. Campbell and A. Sitze, Eds., Biopolitics: A Reader (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013), p. 27. 96 Frassinelli, ‘Biopolitical Production’, p. 124. 97 Frassinelli, ’Biopolitical Production’, p. 121. 98 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 30.

29

argue we can see the common as a more tangible concept. In this way, I take

seriously and develop Hardt and Negri’s claim that communism is the production

of the common coupled with democratic subjectification.99 Therefore creating

democratic forms appropriate to the management of the common is a key task in

order to construct alternatives.

This thesis, therefore argues that post-Fordist production implies new

constellations of bodily and affective practice through novel forms of production

and communication which can be thought through with the concept of the

common. I argue we must read Hardt and Negri’s common as comprising of three

key moments of antagonism: moments that enable us to substantiate the concept

in specific ways. These moments are recognisable concerns throughout Hardt and

Negri’s work, yet remain frustratingly underdeveloped. I term these three

moments the urban common, the digital common and the political common. I use these

three moments as a means to develop a more substantive concept of the common

in these three specific regards, each of which turn on the novel developments of

bodies and affect under capital. Such a process of substantiation enables the

concept of the common to be rendered robust in the face of the numerous

criticisms of the thought of Hardt and Negri as being ‘a carefully nebulous

beast’.100

5. Research Questions Therefore, this thesis seeks to answer the following Research Questions:

Primary Research Question:

How can the common in Hardt and Negri be substantiated?

99 A. Negri, Trans., A. Bove, ‘A Marxist Experience of Foucault’, Paper presented at Collogue – Marx-Foucault, Nanterre (18-19 December 2014) 100 Thorburn, ‘A Common Assembly’, p. 263.

30

Sub-questions:

1. How does an engagement with Hardt and Negri’s theoretical

development enable a substantiation of the common?

2. In what ways does the concept of the common necessitate an

investigation of urban production?

3. In what ways does the concept of the common necessitate an

investigation of digital communication?

4. In what ways does the concept of the common require an investigation of

alternative political forms?

5. Methodology and Method Underpinning and inspiring this project were the 2011 occupations of parks and

squares with their often explicit reference to new anarchism, autonomism and

Hardt and Negri in particular.101 More specifically, Thorburn argues that

encampment assemblies have shown the concept of the common to be of more

relevance to today’s struggles than the concept of the multitude.102 Reading the

Empire trilogy, I found key sections spoke to the issues and ideas evident in these

movements. In particular, claims regarding the centrality of the issue of the urban

can be found when the authors claim that ‘the metropolis is to the multitude what

the factory was to the industrial working class’.103 The focus of the Empire trilogy

turns on the emerging role of digital communication which ‘centers on a

qualitative leap in the technological organisation of capital’.104 Finally, in response

to the Occupy movement, Hardt and Negri offered an understanding of the

relationship between emerging horizontalist organisational tendencies and the

101 L. Cooper, ‘The problem of autonomism’, Workers Power http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2011/04/the-problem-of-autonomism/. Accessed 12/1/2017; A. Robinson, ‘Autonomism: The Future of Activism?’, Ceasefire (8/10/2010) https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-5-autonomism/. Accessed 12/1/2017. 102 Thorburn, ‘A Common Assembly’, pp. 254-279. 103 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 250 104 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 272.

31

common.105 However, dedicated, focussed discussion of the common is infrequent

in the Empire trilogy; rarely consistently and coherently developed. It is clear that

the end result of Empire is far from the ‘manual of political theory’ it was originally

designed to be.106

Yet, the concept of the common is one that plays a central, organisational role in

the work of Hardt and Negri. To the extent that their work can be seen as

communist, it is the common on which such a communism is to be built.107 Yet, as

Hardt admits, the common is a concept that he and Negri have not fully

developed, or understood.108 In consequence, the concept of the common reveals

itself to be problematic when used to reflect on, or analyse the events of 2011 in

any revealing way. Confronting this short-coming, the underlying theoretical task

of substantiating a commensurate concept of the common must come before its

application.

For the large part existing engagements with Hardt and Negri focus on the

concepts of Empire or of multitude.109 Few have sought to establish exactly what

the common comprises of. A number of reasons can be posited for this. Firstly, the

corresponding books of each of these concepts were the first to appear, with

105 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Declaration (Argo Navis, New York, 2012) p. 5. 106 M. Hardt, ‘How to Write with Four Hands’, Genre 46:2 (2013) p. 176. 107 M. Hardt, ‘Reclaim the Common in Communism’, The Guardian (3/2/11) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/communism-capitalism-socialism-property. Accessed 25/8/17. 108 C. Hight and M. Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces: Riffing with Michael Hardt on the Multitude and Collective Intelligence’, Architectural Design 76:5 (2006) p. 72. 109 Balakrishnan, Ed., Debating Empire (Verso, London, 2003); Cremin and Roberts, ‘Postmodern Left Liberalism’, pp. 179-197; Dean, Crowds and Party; Harvey, Rebel Cities; Holloway, ‘Going in the Wrong Direction’; Laclau, ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?’; Mudu, ‘Where is Hardt and Negri’s Multitude? Real Networks in Open Spaces’; Murphy and Mustapha, The Philosophy of Antonio Negri; P. A. Passavant and J. Dean, Empire’s New Clothes: Reading Hardt and Negri (Routledge, London, 2004); Ranciere, Dissensus; R. Schlembach, Against Old Europe: Critical Theory and Anti-Globalization Movements (Routledge, London, 2014).

32

Commonwealth being the final instalment in the trilogy. Whilst much commentary

and analysis was levelled at Empire and Multitude, comparatively little concerned

itself directly with Commonwealth. Secondly, the literature in many ways reflects

the lack of a substantive concept of the common in the work itself. If Thorburn is

correct in his claims that the concept of the common is the vital concept to

understand in the work of Hardt and Negri, and we can see the centrality of the

concept to the work of Hardt and Negri themselves, then the lack of depth is of

evident importance.

If my project of substantiating the concept is to succeed, this lack must be tackled

in order to construct a concept that provides the requisite content, whilst

remaining commensurate with Hardt and Negri’s overarching project. In order to

achieve this aim, I first tackle the necessity of a grounding of Hardt and Negri’s

work in an understanding of their theoretical development and inheritance.

Negri’s rich political history is a vital starting point for understanding his

contemporary contribution; a history that Hardt describes as ‘a way of doing

politics that had more to do with our U.S. experience than other ones I had been

involved in’.110 This task enables not only the outlines of Hardt and Negri’s project

to be set out in adequate depth, but also a utilisation of insights and arguments to

be extended in order to contribute toward answering the central research question.

The discussion of the intellectual heritage focusses primarily on the period before

Negri met Hardt in 1986, from which their collaborative research emerged.111

This focus revolves around the need to unearth Negri’s development in Italian

workerism and autonomism. I therefore look primarily at Negri’s earlier political

writing, before turning to Empire, which is the first major collaboration between 110 M. Hardt, C. Smith and E. Minardi, ‘The Collaborator and the Multitude’: An Interview with Michael Hardt’, Minnesota Review 61-62 (2004) p. 65. 111 Hardt, ‘How to Write with Four Hands’, p. 175.

33

Hardt and Negri. My approach in this respect was to trace Negri’s relationship to

Italian workerism and autonomism throughout his formative period. The first of

these centres on the formation of the extra-parliamentary left during the 1960s and

the second notes the development of autonomism throughout the 1970s. Of central

importance to this thesis is the period of Negri’s exile in Paris, from which the

influence of continental philosophy can be traced. This enables a reading of Negri

that foregrounds corporeality as the constructed site of struggle.

From this I identify three vital moments in which such a corporeal construction of

struggle can be seen to elucidate. Yet Hardt and Negri fail to develop the common

far beyond the broad sentiments attributable to the concept in their work. I argue

that through a close textual reading through the specific intellectual histories set

out in Chapter 1 of this thesis, that each moment of the common develops my

central claim regarding the role of affect in understanding the common. Firstly the

urban common highlights the physical, geographical social relations of encounter

and proximity at work in urban spaces. Secondly, the digital common is not a

distinct sphere of cyber-space, but a space through which production and social

relations are spread and shaped. Finally, the implications of these new forms of

production and relations mean that organising politically against privatisation and

enclosure, as well as for an expansion of the common, requires new creative

methods of resistance.

In order to achieve my stated aims, each of the consequent chapters undertakes a

process of intellectual engagement between the work of Hardt and Negri and a

leading scholar whose work offers the potential to aid the substantiation of Hardt

and Negri’s concept of the common. Chapter 2 begins the process of developing

the moments of the common through tackling the question of the urban common.

The choice of David Harvey as the intellectual interlocutor in this chapter is

34

justified on two grounds. Firstly, Harvey is one of the leading Marxian

geographers of the past forty years, and thus a vital reference point for any project

that seeks to tackle questions of urban production, accumulation and the question

of the urban common. Secondly, Harvey has engaged directly with the work of

Hardt and Negri, praising their focus on the urban common, yet questioning some

of their approaches and claims. In order to use Harvey to challenge the thought of

Hardt and Negri in this area, I firstly undertake a systematic reading of Harvey’s

work on the urban question, from the 1970s to today. I then return to the Occupy

movement as a potential catalyst for responding to and developing an

understanding of the urban common. I am then able to distinguish more clearly

between the two understandings of the urban common, and in doing so highlight

the creative social relations that underpin Hardt and Negri’s picture of the

common which must remain outside of state power.

Chapter 3 brings the work of Manuel Castells into relation with Hardt and Negri’s

Empire. Castells is a touchstone reference point for any theoretical discussion of the

role of technology and digital culture. Firstly, Chapter 3 sets out the contributions

to thinking about digital politics provided by Castells. In particular, it addresses

Castells’ tracing of the development of the Internet and the potential liberatory

implications of mass self-communication. I claim that such a perspective places

too much faith in the power of communication to fundamentally transform the

structures of society; a claim that pivots on the problems of technological-

optimism. The central concern with technological-optimism is raised due to the

parallel concerns with Hardt and Negri’s work. In response to this, I argue that

whilst claims of technological-optimism have grounds in the work of Hardt and

Negri, there is also the potential to rescue their focus on struggle across social life

from such claims. The use of digital communications technologies within the

Occupy movement acts a means of reflection upon concrete political action that

35

enables a reading of the digital common as going beyond purely digital relations.

Such a defence of the potential reading of Hardt and Negri’s common develops

my central argument that corporeality of struggle, whilst being influenced and

shaped by digital communications, is not reduced to it. I therefore argue that the

networked forms of the digital common fundamentally shape corporeal relations;

indeed the appearance of bodies in the streets and squares is vital for a political

moment to be created.

Finally, Chapter 4 draws into relation the work of Jodi Dean. Dean’s selection as a

challenge to Hardt and Negri again turns on two central justifications. Firstly, the

two sets of authors tackle similar sets of questions relating to contemporary

capitalism, digitisation and resistance yet draw highly distinct conclusions.

Secondly to this, Dean has extensively engaged with Hardt and Negri’s work,

through co-editing a book on their work, as well as engaging directly with Hardt

and Negri in a number of her authored works. Chapter 4 begins by setting out

Dean’s contribution to and perspective on the challenges facing political

organisation and resistance in the context of transforming realities as a means to

demonstrate the distinctive conclusions drawn by Dean and Hardt and Negri.

Dean’s picture of the vanguard party is critiqued as not only an empty

redeployment of orthodox Leninist forms, but also in its failure to recognise the

creative impetus of networked non-hierarchical organisational forms. As with

previous chapters, the Occupy movement is referred to in order to strengthen the

claims about Hardt and Negri’s focus. Here, I argue that Occupy is able to suggest

means through which horizontal struggles can create structures and means of

organising space, without recourse to the creation of power centres. On the basis

of this discussion, I am able to argue that the common as corporeal construction of

political struggle offers the possibility of creative, constitutive political structures

beyond capital and the state.

36

Each of these structured debates, around central concerns of the nature of the

common in precise moments, enables a process of substantiating the common in

Hardt and Negri, and thus answering the research questions set out above.

Through undertaking this research, I show that the concept of the common, found

in Hardt and Negri, can, in specific moments, be substantiated and developed in

order to formulate a version of the common that goes beyond the limited concept

found in the Empire trilogy. I also utilise the secondary literature on the Occupy

encampment protests as a means of grounding and elucidating central debates

within the theoretical work of developing the concept of the common. Therefore,

through undertaking an in-depth reading and analysis of the common in Hardt

and Negri, firstly through embedding in the rich history of Negri’s autonomism

and engagement with continental philosophy and the various moments of the

common identified, I show how a concept of the common must revolve around

the corporeality of struggle which creates new social relations outside of capital

and the state. Therefore, my chapter outline is outlined below.

6. Chapter Outline

Chapter 1 Toward a Theory of the Common

1. Introduction

2.1 Negri and Autonomism

2.2 Negri in France

3.1 The conceptual tools of Empire

3.2 From IWC to Empire

3.3 Immaterial Labour

3.4 The multitude

4.1 The Urban Common

4.2 The Digital Common

4.3 A Politics of the common

37

5. Conclusion

Chapter 2 The Urban Common: Production and Resistance in the City

1. Introduction

2.1 Harvey’s Historical-Geographical Materialism

2.2 Urbanisation and Capital

3.1 Two Foundations of the Urban Common

3.2 Contemporary Production and the Urban Common

3.3 Contrasting Theoretical Approaches

3.4 Distinguishing the Urban Common

3.5 The Politics of the Urban Common

4. Occupy and the Urban Common

5. A struggle for the common

6. Conclusion

Chapter 3 The Digital Common: Networks of Resistance

1. Introduction

2.1 Castells and The Rise of the Network Society

2.2 The Birth of the Internet

2.3 Digital (Anti) Globalisation

3.1 The Common and the Limits of Technological Determinism

3.2 Production of the Digital Common

3.3 The Paradox of Incommunicability

4. From the ‘logic of networking’ to the ‘logic of aggregation’

5. The Digital Common

6. Conclusion

Chapter 4 The Political Common: Radical Organisation against Capital

1. Introduction

2. 1 Dean: Capitalism and the Party

2.2 Communicative Capitalism

2.3 The Party and the ‘gap’

3.1 Hardt and Negri and the basis for the Political Common

38

3.2 Democracy of the common

3.3 Representation and ‘the political’

4. Political Organisation of Encampments

5.1 Toward a Substantiation of the Political Common

5.2 Constitutive Democracy

6. Conclusion

Thesis Conclusion

1. Introduction

2. Method, Structure and Contribution

3. Limitations of the research

4. Future research

7. Contribution of the thesis In response to the research questions set out above, this thesis contributes to the

current knowledge and literature on the concept of the common in general and

scholarship on Hardt and Negri in particular. I point to the unique interplay of

Italian autonomist Marxism and Foucauldian philosophy, from which I argue that,

in order to construct a concept of the common, commensurate with the work of

Hardt and Negri, the common should be seen as an understanding of production

centred on bodies and affect. I do so in three key ways: through its urban, digital

and the political moments. If we are, then, to substantiate the concept of the

common in the work of Hardt and Negri, the interaction of bodies and their

productive capacity under neoliberal capitalism must serve as the starting point.

Once this is established in Chapter 1, I proceed on the basis of this reading to

develop and substantiate the common through the three moments outlined. This,

then, will enable a means through which the Empire trilogy itself can be rethought

39

and refocused, with the concept of the common at the centre of this reconstruction.

The thesis claims four points of original contribution:

1. I demonstrate that the concept of the common is a central category of

contemporary radical theory and that the version found in the work of

Hardt and Negri operates as a unique and distinct theoretical position in

radical theoretical debates.

2. Further, I argue that this concept adequately frames not only theoretical

debates, but also contemporary social struggles, in particular those of the

encampment struggles of 2011.

3. I identify and develop the concept of the common, taken from Hardt and

Negri, in three key moments. These moments have not been independently

developed in detail elsewhere, and certainly no current work undertakes

the project of substantiating each of these moments in order to develop the

concept of the common as a whole.

4. Each of these moments of the common develop and substantiate the

concept found in Hardt and Negri through arguing that such a perspective

must centre on the corporeality of the common.

8. Conclusion This thesis addresses the lack at the heart of Hardt and Negri’s political project

which fails to adequately theorise the concept of the common. The lack of

conceptual development in Hardt and Negri is reflected in the limited engagement

with their concept in the wider literature. However, such a concept is vital if we

are to theorise new forms of labour which incorporate varying degrees of

cooperation and collaboration in the production of cultural affects. Such forms of

the common arise in contrast with the property-based market relations of

neoliberal capital, which stands in a contradictory relation to the creation and

40

expansion of the common. Whilst the common is often seen as a productive, even

efficient, externality of the contemporary market, the need to enclose and privatise

collaborative production drives toward a destruction of the vary basis of this

relation.

Whilst the common is inimical to the market, it also refuses to retreat to the

protection of the state, and the enclosure of the common into a public good.

Instead, the common offers an immanent site of resistance to all forms of enclosure

and the possibility of future, less exploitative, social relations. Through refusing to

orientate struggle toward the state, the struggle for the common entails a

reorientation of struggle toward the production of the common, resituating

struggle as one of bodily and affective practices. Reading Hardt and Negri’s

theory as predicated on struggles across social life, drawing together insights from

autonomist Marxism and continental philosophy, we are able to go beyond

formalistic conceptions of the common. Whilst new forms of production often

appear to be digital and purely intellectual forms of commons and their enclosure

imply tangible, physical results derived from the actions of humans in the real

world.

The emergence of a concern with the urban scale in radical political theory and

activism can be understood through a conception of the intensities of the common

found at the urban level.112 A renewed focus on the urban scale in contemporary

radical political thought identifies the need to rethink the relationship of the body

and the city in its productive and communicative relationships; bringing with it a

need to comprehend the ways in which urban life creates the common, and the

ways in which that common is enclosed. The digital common; the means of

112 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251.

41

communicating, acquiring and producing knowledge does not merely impact the

minds of people enmeshed in the network, but effects the ways in which they live,

and the ways in which they resist. Finally, the process of creating new forms of

political organisation appropriate to the management and expansion of the

common leads us to consider how it is that a liberatory common may well be

organised. This urgent political concern must, necessarily, be constructed in light

of the relationship between bodies and urban space, and affective bodies

immersed in digital networks.

Taken separately each moment can enable a substantiation of the common in

Hardt and Negri’s work. Taken together, they hold out the potential for the

construction of a new theoretical perspective.113 Each moment of the common

shows resistance that is immanent to capital, but that presents the potential for

rupture with the capitalist mode of production, reproduction, communication and

political control. The moments of the common pose the potential to foster anti-

capitalist struggle: to expand the common. However, each form of the common

requires a political moment in which the common is struggled over and

reconstructed in order to ensure it remains antagonistic to capital. Without the

moment of political struggle, the production of the common may well be

reintegrated, reabsorbed and enclosed by an ever more adaptable capitalism. I

argue throughout this thesis that central to the ability to think the common in

political struggle must be the awareness of the physical and affective nature of the

common. I therefore set out to focus on the role of the common in Hardt and

Negri, and to show how the concept must centre on the corporeality of struggle

and the construction of alternatives.

113 Autonomists might refer to this process as a workers inquiry ‘from above’; a process of engaged, political, theory building, which would later be coupled to workers inquiries ‘from below’ (J. Woodcock, ‘The Workers’ Inquiry from Trotskyism to Operaismo: a political methodology for investigating the workplace’, ephemera 14:3 (2014) p. 510).

42

Chapter 1

Toward a Theory of the Common

‘…the analysis of work and its transformations, which had begun several years earlier, starting with the collective research in Potere Operaio’

Toni Negri, ‘Communism as a Continuing Constituent Process’1

1. Introduction This thesis centres on the concept of the common as used in Hardt and Negri’s

Empire trilogy. Throughout, I argue that the common emerges as a central concept

in the work of Hardt and Negri which can be understood as a means of

understanding the shifting forms of production and exploitation in late-capitalism

that initiates new forms of bodily and affective practice and resistance. The Empire

trilogy functions as a culmination of Hardt and Negri’s work on new forms of

capitalist exploitation, based on a capturing of the productive potentials of

increased information flows, increased global movement of people, products and

ideas and a concomitant flexibilisation of the labour force and fragmentation of

production. This trend, seen by Hardt and Negri as occurring since the 1960s and

1970s, would suggest a marked watershed in the transformation of the Fordist-

Keynesian politico-economic order to one marked by increasingly diffuse,2

disparate and social production; in which we see the decline of the traditional

male industrial proletariat along with the associated unions and socialist political

parties. In short, Hardt and Negri’s project in Empire is to ‘redefine the class

antagonism in advanced capitalism’.3 Despite this, the concept of the common is

1 A. Negri, Trans., D. Messing, ‘Communism as Continuing Constituent Process’, Viewpoint Magazine (18/1/17). https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/18/communism-as-a-continuing-constituent-process/. Accessed 25/8/17. 2 A. Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project: The Mass Worker and the Social Worker’, in A. Negri ‘Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects 1967-83’ (Red Notes, London, 1988) p. 205. 3 Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project’, p. 199.

44

left open, with the authors’ themselves admitting that the common has not been

fully worked out.

In response to this problem, I argue that the common can be substantiated through

three moments. This chapter begins the process of substantiation of the common,

through the setting out and development of the theoretical foundations upon

which the thesis will proceed. As such, this chapter begins the process of

answering the central research question; How can the common in Hardt and Negri be

substantiated? In order to answer this research question, I firstly set out the

intellectual development and historical context of the work of Hardt and Negri by

summarising the development of Italian autonomism and Negri’s role within this.

I then turn to lay out the conceptual framework of Hardt and Negri’s

contemporary work, including a discussion of Empire, the multitude and

immaterial labour, before turning to the concept of the common itself. My specific

reading of the common turns on the inter-relationship of autonomous Marxism

and continental political philosophy; a relationship which will be discussed in this

chapter. I highlight the ways in which this directly influences Hardt and Negri’s

work in the Empire trilogy. The thesis then turns to the question of how the

common can be substantiated through the urban, technological and political

moments, and the ways in which affect and corporeality enable such an

understanding.

2.1 Negri and Autonomism The first task is to provide a contextualisation of the contemporary arguments and

concepts used by Hardt and Negri. I focus on two key periods that I argue to be

the most important in understanding the contemporary thought of Hardt and

Negri. As outlined in the Introduction to this thesis, this section focusses primarily

on the intellectual history of Negri, due to his rich political history in Italy and

France. The first period ranges from the early 1960s to the late 1970s, where the

45

extra-parliamentary far-left in Italy initially arose around Mario Tronti and

Raniero Panzieri. Following this, we can observe a shift from workerism to

autonomism, before various issues beset the movement, in particular the

incarceration of many of its leading members, including Negri himself.4 Secondly,

I discuss the consequent period of Negri’s imprisonment and exile in France in

which he became immersed in French radical philosophy and the re-evaluation of

the philosophy of Spinoza.

Whilst I cannot provide a full biographical and intellectual history of workerism

and autonomism here, excellent histories are in existence.5 It is important to note,

here, the distinction between workerism and autonomism.6 Mario Tronti suggests

that roughly, workerism begins with the creation of the journal Quaderni Rossi

(Red Notebooks) and ends with the demise of another journal, Classe operaia (The

Working Class), although, in reality there is a much more organic process of

transformation and change throughout the period.7 The emergence of autonomism

can be identified in 1973,8 extending until the police repression which effectively

ended the organised extra-parliamentary left in 1979.9 What both tendencies share

is a commitment to putting work and class back at the heart of Marxist

perspectives, something workerists felt had been lost with the emphasis on

4 Wright, Storming Heaven: class composition and struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (Pluto Press, London, 2002) p. 2. 5 The most complete history is: Wright, Storming Heaven. See also; S. Bologna, ‘Workerism beyond Fordism: On the Lineages of Italian Workerism, https://viewpointmag.com/2014/12/15/workerism-beyond-fordism-on-the-lineage-of-italian-workerism/ (Accessed 10/2/2017); I. Ness, Ed., New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class-Struggle Unionism (PM Press, Oakland, 2014); M. Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’, New Left Review 73 (2012); a collection of Negri’s pamphlets and letters from the period in which the developments in his thought can be found here: A. Negri, Books for Burning: Between Civil War and Democracy in 1970s Italy (Verso, London, 2005); a film documenting the life and work of Antonio Negri can be found here: ‘Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioQbWtXlPTk (Accessed 10/2/2017). 6 Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’. 7 Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’ 8 S. Bohm, A. C. Dinerstein and A. Spicer, ‘(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements in and beyond Capital, the State and Development’, Social Movement Studies 9:1 (2010) p. 20. 9 M. Ryan, ‘Introduction’ to Negri, Marx beyond Marx, pp. xxix-xxx.

46

cultural and political struggle influenced by Gramscianism.10 Wright argues that

the rise of workerism came as a response to the perceived failures of the Italian left

of the 1950s and 1960s.11 In particular, whilst the Italian Communist Party (PCI)

remained relatively critical of the bureaucratic socialism of the USSR, under the

leadership of Togliatti the ‘56 Poznan and Budapest uprisings were denounced.12

Many on the left saw this moment as an awakening that led to the disavowal of

Communism.13 Whilst the Italian Socialist Party (PSI) was more troubled by the

suppression and denunciation of the uprisings of that year, even in this guise,

struggle was seen as predominantly a contest undertaken by parties and unions at

the level of the state, as opposed to in the streets and the factories.14 Workerist

understandings and struggles within factories took the factory not as an empirical

concept, but rather as an actuality;15 a set of relations that revealed much about the

forms of capital accumulation and the potentiality of struggle.

Raniero Panzieri proposed new forms of political organisation and struggle,

outside of the two dominant parties, in which struggle was to be undertaken at the

grass-roots; ‘from below and in forms of total democracy’.16 Wright suggests that

Panzieri’s critique of institutionalised representative bodies of the working class

entailed an impulse to see Marxism as a permanent critique in which struggle

should aim at building authentically Marxist cultures, which must be realised in

concrete terms through worker control.17 In order to follow this path, new forms of

organisation must be created as unions and parties were perceived as feculent;

with an increasing distance between the unions, parties and the real working class

10 M. Vanzulli, ‘Labour, civil society, classes’, Paper delivered at Wars of Position: Marxism and Civil Society (9th June 2017) 11 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 6. 12 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 11. 13 Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’ 14 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 8. 15 M. Vanzulli, ‘Labour, civil society, classes’. 16 Panzieri quoted in Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 18. 17 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 15-19.

47

being perceived as a ‘crisis of organisations’.18 As opposed to the politics of the

formal workers bodies, the activists that were to form a broadly workerist faction

were intent on ‘saying a little less, and doing a little more’.19

When, in 1960, a neo-fascist conference held in Genoa was opposed by a new

generation of activists, too young to remember the Mussolini era, the distance

between the established parties and the new activists seemed to be made clear.

The ‘July Days’ as they became known, were seen as a key turning point in the

organisation of the Italian left. A response to the ‘July Days’ was Panzieri’s new

journal Quderni Rossi founded in 1961, which sought to build an extra-

parliamentary, workerist organisation. However, after a series of crises and

defections and finally Panzieri’s death in 1964, the journal closed.20 The impulse

was taken on by figures such as Mario Tronti, focussed around a new journal

called Classe Operaia, and later Antonio Negri who was a foundational member of

the group Potere Operaio (Worker Power).21 Both groups similarly went about

abandoning the Gramscianism of the PCI and PSI, and through turning to the

work of Lukacs, and the new radical sociology of Touraine,22 began to more

closely associate the life and exploitation of the worker with that of society at

large.23

The early history of Negri and workerism reveals that, with respect to the focus of

this thesis, three main trends from this period are of specific intellectual and

political importance. Firstly, the emerging idea of the concept of the ‘social factory’

can be traced to Tronti’s understanding of the ways in which large-scale industry

18 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 20-21. 19 Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’ 20 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 32. 21 S. Manicastri, ‘Operaismo Revisited: Italy’s State-Capitalist Assault on Workers and the Rise of COBAs’, in Ness, Ed., New Forms of Worker Organization, p. 25. 22 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 22. 23 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 38.

48

had absorbed society.24 This led to forms of resistance that were not confined to

the work place, but instead included rent strikes and squats.25 Secondly, following

the recentring of analysis on the working class,26 there emerged an insistence that

it was the resistive workers who created the opportunities for development and

transformation, for instance through struggles for a shorter working day.27 Tronti

here argues that; ‘Workers struggles determine the course of capitalist

development: but capitalist development will use those struggles for its own ends

if no organised revolutionary process opens up’.28

Finally, Negri, in particular, began to see these transformations in production and

bound up with issues of the intertwining of class domination and technology, in

which technology was seen not only as a means of rationalising production, but

also as a means of controlling workers.29 Such an interest in technology was

initiated with Panzieri’s reading of Marx’s so-called ‘Fragment on Machines’

found in the Grundrisse.30 These three elements of the workerist perspective

combined to make a theory which claims that the ‘only valid starting point…[lies]

in the analysis of working-class behaviour in the most advanced sectors of the

economy’.31 What will later become core tenets underlying the concept of the

common are developed in embryonic form in this early period of the workerist

tradition.

24 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 38. 25 Manicastri, ‘Operaismo Revisited’, p.27. For detailed overviews of a major rent strike and wave of home occupations in Italy, see, Lotta Continua, Trans. E. Dowson, ‘Take over the city: community struggle in Italy’, Radical America 7:2 (March-April 1973). 26 Importantly the working class and not the proletariat; see Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’. 27 Wright, Storming Heaven, pp. 36-37, also see M. Tronti, ‘Lenin in England’, Classe Operaia 1 (1964), Accessible here: https://www.marxists.org/reference/subject/philosophy/works/it/tronti.htm. Accessed 30/9/2016. 28 Tronti, ‘Our Operaismo’. 29 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 41-43. 30 Bologna, ‘Workerism beyond Work’; see K. Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Penguin, London, 1973) pp. 690-712. 31 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 4.

49

The 1960s therefore saw the formation of an organised extra-parliamentary, anti-

hierarchical left in Italy, through the birth of the workerist movement. From its

formation in the wake of the ‘July Days’ in 1960, the high point of this period was

the ‘Hot Autumn’ of 1969, which saw a programme of direct action and strikes in

the industrial North.32 However, with the failure of these events to lead to any

permanent change, and the closing of Classe operaia, the era of workerism began to

subside.33 A period of reformulation and a shift to what is now known as

autonomism took place throughout the 1970s, with Negri emerging as the most

distinguished figure.34 Autonomism began to reflect on the failures of workerism,

and respond to a more existential issue of the transformation of labour and

production from one centred on the Fordist factory, to a period we can now

defined as post-Fordist. If workerism had centred on the worker in Fordist

production, how was autonomism to grapple with the apparent disappearance of

this archetypal worker and the production process tied up with it?35

Taking a lead from readings of Marx’s ‘Fragment on Machines’ autonomists

including Negri developed a particular take on the role of technology in

contemporary capitalism. Since Amadeo Bordiga’s early discussions, and Renato

Solmi’s original translation (in 1964’s Issue 4 of Quaderni Rossi), ‘Fragment’ has

preoccupied the Italian workerist-autonomist tradition.36 Indeed, workerist-

autonomist Marxists are often accused of reducing Marx to that found in the

‘Fragment’.37 Such a use of Marx is seen by Thoburn as a means of seeking to

understand the transformations underway in the Italian, and global situations, as

32 Ness, New Form of Worker Organisation, p. 8 33 Negri, Books for Burning, p. x-xi. 34 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 2. 35 Bologna, ‘Workerism beyond Work’. 36 M. Tomba and R. Bellofiore, ‘The ‘Fragment on Machines’ and the Grundrisse: The Workerist Reading in Question’ in M. van der Linden, K. H. Roth, Eds., Beyond Marx: Theorising the Global Labour Relations of the Twenty-First Century (Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2014) p. 346. 37 N. Thoburn, ‘Autonomous Production? On Negri’s ‘New Synthesis’’, Theory, Culture and Society 18:5 (2001) p. 79; Tomba and Bellofiore, ‘The ‘Fragment on Machines’ and the Grundrisse’, p. 346.

50

‘a need to put his work to use, to rework it in particular circumstances’.38 The

central concern of the autonomist tradition in their approach to this text is to

engage with, and reflect on it politically; considering how it affects workers and

how it might influence political organising in struggles with capital.39

In the ‘Fragment’, Marx argues that the introduction of machines into the

production process constitutes more than merely a development of tools of

production, and instead, moves the labourer to the side of the production process.

Under a system of automatic machinery; ‘Labour no longer appears so much to be

included within the production process; rather, the human being comes to relate

more as watchman and regulator to the production process itself’.40 As such,

rather than an individual worker’s labour-power being exploited through the

production process, the advent of large scale machinery in production leads to a

situation in which it is general, social, scientific knowledge, distilled into the

technology of the machines that becomes the mode of transferring value to the

commodity.41

Marx argues that such a transformation of the production process means that ‘it is

neither the direct human labour he himself performs, nor the time during which

he works, but rather the appropriation of his own general productive power, his

understanding of nature and his mastery over it by virtue of his presence as a

social body – it is, in a word, the development of the social individual which appears as

the great foundation-stone of production and of wealth’.42 Labour power, and its

complete technical, scientific horizon, is therefore not merely inherited by capital

and utilised in the capitalist mode of production, but rather the labour process

38 Thoburn, ‘Autonomous Production?’, p. 79. 39 Tomba and Bellofiore, ‘The ‘Fragment on Machines’ and the Grundrisse’, 345. 40 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 705 41 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 692. 42 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 705. My italics.

51

itself becomes ‘absorbed into capital’;43 ‘general social knowledge has become a

direct force of production…the conditions of the process of social life itself have

come under the control of the general intellect and been transformed in

accordance with it’.44

For the autonomist Harry Cleaver, the proliferation of machines, ‘is for Marx a

fundamental change in the work process, one which had already begun in

manufacturing but which is completed in modern industry’.45 This transformation

not only alters the working life of the proletariat, but also impacts the social, rather

than purely economic lives of producers: ‘the ways in which the development of

machinery allow the capitalist to draw women and children into production leads

[Marx] to a recognition of the interrelatedness of waged and unwaged work;

production and reproduction’.46 Cleaver argues that; ‘Just as Marx studied the

implications of this transformation for our understandings of the dynamics of

exploitation and class struggle in the factory, so can we study the implications for

this wider proliferation for our struggles and our desires’.47

The most interesting and, from an autonomist perspective, important aspect to

note in the ‘Fragment’ is that Marx appears to be projecting an informational

capitalism from the developments observable in a specifically manufacturing

capitalism.48 For autonomists, the reason for the attention paid to the ‘Fragment’ is

that it appears to allow an interpretation of the contest at play in the shift to post-

Fordism with the possibilities of a post-work future through the shifting of the

content of labour. The explosion in automated machinery, and the consequent

43 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 694. 44 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 706. 45 H. Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’, https://libcom.org/chapter-15-machinery-and-modern-industry (Accessed 10/2/2017). 46 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 47 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 48 Thoburn, ‘Autonomous Production?’, pp. 80-81.

52

implications on the role of the worker enables the possibility of greatly enhanced

free time for workers, yet, evidently, this has not come to fruition. For Thoburn,

we can appreciate the necessary political conflict at the heart of this dilemma in

that ‘work has not been emptied of content, but filled with different content’.49

Autonomism confronted the apparent paradox of the focus on the worker in a

time where the worker seemed to be disappearing through considering how it was

that struggle could be constructed and win on the basis of new forms of

production that had begun to replace the previous forms of labour on which

workerism had been predicated. Autonomists envisaged work in the Fordist

factory as very different from the emergent forms of work associated with

information technology and flexibilisation. They observed that work on computers

tended to be solitary, with no defined space, its own working rhythms and access

to almost infinite amounts of information.50 If struggles in the Fordist factory were

defined by struggles over working hours, conditions and wages, what would be

the forms of struggle for computer workers?

The growth of theory and activism on the part of this movement, hostile as it was

to the institutionalised unions and leftist parties, led to Negri and others’ writings

on these topics through the 1970s being utilised to tie members of the autonomist

movement to the kidnap and murder of Christian Democrat politician and former

Prime Minister, Aldo Morro in 1978.51 The murder, carried out by the armed group

Brigade Rosse, was argued by the state and the PCI to have been undertaken on

Negri’s command.52 Negri, and others were held under the same laws used to

imprison Gramsci years before under which Negri faced lengthy imprisonment 49 Thoburn, ‘Autonomous Production?’, p. 83. 50 Thoburn, ‘Autonomous Production?’, p. 83. 51 Negri, Books for Burning, p. xiv; and Manicastri, ‘Operaismo Revisited’, p. 28. 52 For Negri’s account of the imprisonment and trial, see A. Negri, Trans. V Buonocere, ‘J’Accuse’, pp. 292-296 in S. Lotringer and C. Marazzi, Eds., Autonomia: Post-Political Politics (Semiotext(e), New York)

53

without trial. In response to this Negri ran for election, knowing that election

would mean immunity, won, and later fled to France. He would not return to Italy

until 1997, after negotiating a reduced sentence, which kept him incarcerated until

2003.

What we learn from an understanding of Negri’s history within the workerist and

autonomist traditions in 1960s and 1970s Italy informs my reading of Hardt and

Negri’s later work and the concept of the common. As noted, the common in the

Empire trilogy often appears somewhat empty of content, despite it being a central

category of Hardt and Negri’s theoretical position. However, what we can

establish is that struggle for Negri, then is one of a social relation that is the central

motor of economic development. Each new struggle reveals new possibilities, yet

often becomes constitutive of capitalist social relations. As capitalism has moved

beyond the factory, engulfing social life, struggles across the social realm

immediately become both economic and political. Therefore, the places in which

people live; communities, neighbourhoods and cities come to the fore as an

essential sites of investigation. Additionally, the growth of technology, linked by

the autonomists to the shift toward a post-Fordist production model is precisely

one such terrain of struggle that requires the development and substantiation of

concepts such as the common.

2.2 Negri in France France had been the natural refuge for Negri during his time in exile, with

members of its sizable radical academic community having come to his defence

during the period of incarceration and trial,53 alongside the Mitterand doctrine,

which protected Italian political prisoners from extradition. During this period in

which Negri taught alongside Deleuze, Foucault and Derrida, he came to engage 53 G. Deleuze, ‘Open Letter to Negri’s Judges’, pp. 182-184, in Lottringer and Marazzi, Autonomia, and M. Foucault and G. Deleuze, ‘Intellectuals and Power’, https://libcom.org/library/intellectuals-power-a-conversation-between-michel-foucault-and-gilles-deleuze. Accessed 25/8/17.

54

with continental philosophy, and to reconsider the work of Spinoza.

Unsurprisingly, during exile in France Negri began thinking his project through in

new terms. The French philosophical tradition, and in particular the more radical

elements within this, were undertaking a comparable project of formulating a

response to the protests of 1968, and the inability of the traditional left to fully

comprehend this moment. Of particular importance during this time was the work

of Foucault as well as Deleuze and Guattari.

Negri began to extend his arguments surrounding the issues of the breakdown of

Fordism and the rise of neoliberalism, and how it was that exploitation,

production and resistance could take place in an era no longer defined by the mass

worker, but rather defined by the social worker.54 With the demise of the factory

form as the most advanced form of capitalist production, the left had lost its

foundation in the organised mass working class, but had also led to the collapse of

the weaponry of factory control, along with an increasing blurring of working

time as distinct from leisure time and the predominance of the male wage

worker.55

Developing the autonomist initiative toward the consideration of the social

factory, Negri came to see contemporary labour as a new form of capitalist

accumulation. Negri argued, in a text written alongside Guattari, that instead of

‘an eight hour wage slave, the worker now produced and consumed continuously

for capital. Capital in the process became more socialized, advancing social

cooperation, integrating the collective forces of labor even as it turned society into

a giant factory’.56 Such a development of the capitalist process was driven by the

resistive practices of labour in the late-60s. Negri argues that the restructuring of

54 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty; or Communists like Us (Minor Compositions, London, 1990) p. 209. 55 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 211. 56 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 34.

55

power in the 1970s was driven by the events of 1968.57 In particular, the central

role played by students made the issue of knowledge production, and immaterial

labour more generally a core issue of resistance.58 Equally, the trivial and everyday

were also key sites of contestation in the protests and uprisings of that year.59

During his time in France, Negri began to develop create new concepts seen as

essential in theorising a dramatically changing world. Negri writes of this; ‘I want

to thank those blockheads who, forcing me to emigrate, have also forced me to

gather together my ideas better than I had the chance to do before’.60 The

conception of the social worker, found in embryonic form in the workerist thought

of Tronti amongst others, was taken by Negri to mean ‘social labour-power

representing the potentiality of a new working class now extended throughout the

entire span of production and reproduction’.61 Such a claim was coupled with the

conception of a ‘real subsumption’ of factory labour by capital, which, due to

production extending throughout life, now functioned as a broader subsumption

of social labour-power to capital.62

As for Negri’s intellectual relationship with Foucault, Negri describes his attitude

in a recent lecture in which he argues that Foucault outlines a similar process of

the real subsumption of labour, and thus society, to capital.63 Hardt, writing about

Foucault, similarly holds the move from a disciplinary society to a society of

control in Foucault, as comparable with the move from a formal to real

57 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 48 58 Negri and Guattari, New lines of Alliance, p. 45. 59 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 50. 60 Negri, Marx beyond Marx, p. xiv. 61 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 209. 62 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 210. 63 A. Negri, Trans., A. Bove, ‘A Marxist Experience of Foucault’, Presented at Colloque – Marx-Foucault (Nanterre, December 2014)

56

subsumption of labour-power in Marx.64 In a situation of real subsumption, power

becomes focussed on the technologies of the self and the production of

subjectivity. Whilst Negri sees Deleuze and Guattari as approaching similar

conclusions, he argues their approach lacks the ‘antagonistic element of

subjectification’ in which we can imagine the ‘transformation of productive bodies

and forms of life’.65 In particular, Negri picks up the concept of biopolitics, first

outlined by Foucault in his lectures of 1975-1976. Negri claims that biopolitical

production is defined by the idea that ‘society is not merely subsumed by

capitalist command; it is absorbed entirely by the integrated mode of

production’.66 This reading of biopolitics as relating to not only political, but also

productive processes enables Hardt and Negri to suggest that biopolitics is not a

continuation of totalitarianism, but rather opens toward a new, utopian world.67

The other great influence on the work of Negri during this period comes from his

rediscovery of the work of Spinoza; a rediscovery for which he credits the

reinterpretations of Spinoza by the likes of Deleuze and Matheron.68 Negri reads

Spinoza as a philosopher of subversion; a ‘savage anomaly’,69 against the

philosophies of Power that have defined the post-Enlightenment period.70 The

‘return to Spinoza’ that Negri sees as defining much of the philosophical context in

Europe since the 1970s, ‘shows itself to be an event linked to the crisis of

Marxism’.71 In the face of the dialectical, formulistic Marxism that defined so much

64 G. Deleuze, featuring M. Hardt, ‘Postscript on the Societies of Control’, http://news.rapgenius.com/Gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control-annotated (Accessed 10/2/17). 65 Negri, ‘A Marxist Experience of Foucault’. 66 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance. 67 Campbell and Sitze, ‘Introduction’, in Campbell and Sitze, Biopolitics, p. 28. 68 A. Negri, Subversive Spinoza: (un)contemporary variations (Manchester university Press, Manchester, 2004) p. 113. 69 A. Negri, The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003) p. 96. 70 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 115 71 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 94.

57

of the twentieth century, Spinozan philosophy is taken to assert the radical and

revolutionary nature of being.72 Negri takes Spinoza’s key contributions to be,

firstly, that the continuous production of collective being unites communication

and liberation, and secondly that being is defined by ‘superabundance and an

extraordinary overflowing of being’.73 Such claims enable us to see that today,

with ‘the desolated territories of being subsumed by capital in the latest and most

terrible phase of its destructive development are opened anew to the ethical hope

and adventure of intelligence’.74 Such a reality opens out to new possibilities of

‘progressive democracy and mass freedom’, which exposes the ‘hypocrisy of

capitalist democracy’,75 along with all other forms of organisation of power that

reduce humanity to ‘the hypostasis of a totality’.76

This insistence on continual antagonism, transformation and renewal, taken from

Spinoza leads Negri to claim that ‘Spinoza’s innovation is actually a philosophy of

communism’.77 Existence is thus a,

‘mass and breadth of being, which has been transformed into its essential

antagonisms, and there is the constitution of the world that, by means of

these antagonisms, has been dissolved and reconstructed. The project of

constitution, therefore, has become a true and real project of transition.

Liberation is essential to the construction of freedom, and freedom is

expressed as liberation. No dialectical relationship is possible on this

horizon; anything that is reconstituted is regarded only as barrier to cross

and break down’.78

72 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 95. 73 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 96. 74 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 96. 75 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 98. 76 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 99. 77 Negri, Subversive Spinoza, p. 100. 78 Negri, The Savage Anomaly, p. 159.

58

Therefore each act of liberation leads to a new terrain of human freedom, which is

itself defined by certain limits, in response to which ‘we must reconstruct the

process of liberation, verifying and eventually going beyond the limit, knowing it,

possessing it’.79

Taking these philosophical developments to reflect on the transformations in the

material world, Negri begins to argue that the intensification of late capitalism

was coupled with an increased extensivity, in which an ‘Integrated World

Capitalism’ (IWC) could be traced.80 IWC required fundamental polarities around

which dependent subsystems moved; essentially core sites of extraction and

production around which various other forms of consequent extraction,

production and circulation revolved.81 In this context of an increasingly global

capitalism, the organised, centralised working class, based in large scale factories

could no longer be seen as a basis of resistance and revolution. The industrial

reserve army, always utilised to place downward pressure on working conditions

and pay had now been transformed into a global reserve army of labour.82 In this

situation, ‘the revolutionary subjectivities are learning to recognise the ruptures

imposed by the enemy, to measure their consistency and their effects’.83

New working conditions, structures of production and the increasingly global

span of capitalism was also being combined with new technological

developments.84 Technological transformation and its relation to the changing

working practices of capitalism had been a concern of Negri’s since the 1970s, as

noted above, but the increasing complexity and distribution of these technologies

79 Negri, The Savage Anomaly, p. 159. 80 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 52. 81 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 53. 82 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 54. 83 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 63. 84 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 31.

59

lead Negri to see new technology as ‘the new terrain of struggle’.85 In response,

power was, Negri and Guattari argue, coming to be seen ‘as a foreign enemy in

society, to be defended against, but which it was no use “conquering” or “taking

over”. Rather it was now a question of its reduction, of keeping it at a distance’.86

This emerging consciousness of the transformations of global capitalist production

and control in which the modern proletariat ‘deterritorialized and fluctuating –

which will permit envisaging the rupture of capitalist segmentation’ and the

creation of communism.87

Building on what we have learned about the theoretical and political

developments of workerist and autonomist thought in Italy, in which Negri was

heavily involved, we are now able to couple this emphasis on the struggles of the

working class with the continental philosophy Negri was immersed in during his

time in France. From this period, we can witness an attempted synthesis of

autonomist-inspired Marxism and Foucauldian philosophy which contributes to

my thesis in two central ways. Firstly, the autonomist emphasis on the actuality of

struggle as the site of contestation and creation of potentiality insists on the

physicality of conflict in factories, streets and communities as opposed to the

disembodied cultural and political struggles of the Gramscian-inspired PCI is

coupled with a distinctly continental reading of social power-relations, which

pervade society through shaping bodily practices and affective subjectification.

Negri sees Spinoza’s contribution as asserting that subjective production can never

be total, but leaves a remainder in which radical possibility and the construction of

new worlds is possible.

85 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 31. 86 A. Negri, ‘Do you remember revolution?’, in Negri, Revolution Retrieved, p. 236 87 Negri and Guattari, New Lines of Alliance, p. 66

60

On his return to Italy, and his re-incarceration between 1997 and 2003, Negri,

along with Hardt published the first of what was to become a trilogy of books,

entitled Empire. In these books, the authors attempt to develop and extend the

analysis, begun by Negri and the wider autonomist movement during the period

outlined above. Negri’s intellectual development led to an ongoing drive to

redefine class struggle in late capitalism.88 On the basis of this period of rethinking

the Marxian perspective, confronted with what appeared to be changing realities,

Hardt and Negri set out how, in this transforming reality, struggle is possible. In

the following section, I set out the work of Hardt and Negri in the Empire trilogy

and the manner in which it extends and continues the ideas derived from

continental philosophy. The basis of this struggle comes to be summarised in the

concept of the common.

3.1 The conceptual tools of Empire From the Empire trilogy, I engage with a number of key concepts and issues that

need to be expanded and explained in order to undertake my research into the

concept of the common. Throughout each of these key concepts, I demonstrate

how the common needs to be read as the immanence of labour and capital,

resistance and control. Ideas for changing the world do not emerge from outside,

but alternatives must be discovered, developed and built in the day to day lives of

people. This situates the common at the centre of this political perspective,

bringing with it a need to rethink struggle.

The common is an immanent site of struggle which is both at the heart of

contemporary capitalist production and exploitation yet the potential site of

postmodern anti-capitalist struggle. Firstly, I argue that a central claim for Hardt

and Negri is that ‘the metropolis is to the multitude what the factory was to the

88 A. Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project’, in Negri, Revolution Retrieved, p. 199.

61

industrial working class’.89 In doing so, a radical multitude ‘reformulates social

space…destroying hierarchies, opening new paths of movement, and creating new

territorial relations’.90 Secondly, the common can be seen in the use of digital

communication and production, so important to contemporary struggle. I consider

the ways in which such a focus can be understood through engagement with the

various discussions of technology today. In particular, I consider the

problematisation of the notion of the ‘incommunicability of struggle’, in which the

authors claim that struggles have become particular and incommunicable.91 In

order to go beyond the limitation of incommunicability, technological

development must not be seen as a distinct field of struggle, but instead must be

linked to the processes of affective resistance which can transcend such

limitations. Read in this way, struggles are able to communicate and expand

beyond the specific geographical locales in which they find themselves.

Finally, with transformations in social and productive life across urban life and

digital communication, new political forms must be developed that are responsive

to such shifts. Struggle today creates novel geographical and digital relations

which explode traditional means of producing, interacting and organising. In the

context of fragmentation, technological possibility and production of the common,

the real political work of building alternatives and constructing new ways of

living are of urgent necessity. How might the common be seen as a new basis

upon which political projects are undertaken, and what are the most appropriate

political forms for this task?

3.2 From IWC to Empire In order to develop a conception of the common, commensurate with the work of

Hardt and Negri, it is necessary to set out the conceptual field in which the 89 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 250. 90 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 246. 91 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54.

62

common emerges. Alongside the concepts of Empire and multitude, the common

is one of the central contributions of the Empire trilogy, but one that is

underdeveloped and has tended to feature less in secondary literatures. To Hardt

and Negri, the world today operates as ‘Empire’, which differs from national

imperialism as power has become more diffuse, fluctuating and less centralised.92

Empire builds on the impulse behind IWC, noted above and sees a ‘new order that

envelopes the entire space of what it considers civilization, [it is] a boundless,

universal space’.93 In this sense borders, nation-states, and militaries play an ever

diminishing role in the regulations and operation of the world-system. Politics

operates merely as a means of shaping the general imperative of Empire. Military

action is no longer undertaken to expand the territory of a specific nation, but is

reduced to police action to keep national policies within the determined bounds of

Empire.

For Hardt and Negri, power is decentred, but this is not to suggest that centres as

such no longer exist, indeed the central (vertical) organisation of power merely

finds a new way of organising and communicating, meaning that centralised

production of norms become ‘articulated horizontally’.94 To Hardt and Negri, like

Deleuze and Guattari, the economic and political system forms ‘a global whole,

unified and unifying, but is so because it implies a constellation of juxtaposed,

imbricated, ordered subsystems; the analysis of decision making brings to light all

kinds of compartmentalizations and partial processes that interconnect, but not

without gaps and displacements’.95

92 A. Negri, with contributions from M. Hardt and D. Zolo, Trans., E. Emery, Reflections on Empire (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003) p. 3-5. 93 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 11. 94 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 13. 95 G. Deleuze and F. Guattari, Trans., B. Massumi, A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Continuum Press, London, 2012) p. 231

63

The immanence of power under Empire has implications for the ways in which

society is changed and Empire resisted; Hardt and Negri say that ‘we should be

done once and for all with the search for an outside, a standpoint that imagines a

purity for our politics’.96 The authors therefore offer us a vision of politics wherein

the inside-outside dialectic has been disposed of and capital comes to dominate

the entire terrain of the globe. The insistence of the immanence of resistance and

control, labour and capital, in Hardt and Negri’s work has been the point of

contention for many commentators and critics. Fitzpatrick argues that the focus on

immanence is the central problem with Empire.97 This critique is shared by both

Ranciere and Laclau, who variously question how it is that immanence can explain

social struggle.98 By immanence, Hardt and Negri mean that ‘any postmodern

liberation must be achieved within this world, on the plane of immanence, with no

possibility of any utopian outside’,99 which manifests itself as ‘the continuous

constituent project to create and re-create ourselves and our world’.100 Therefore,

Hardt and Negri sit in contrast to many strands of Marxism in that they openly

reject rigid dialectics as a mean of understanding the world, and as a means

through which change can be created.101

96 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 46. 97 P. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Immanence of Empire’, in Passavant and Dean, Empire’s new clothes, p. 31. 98 J. Ranciere, Interview with T. Lie, ‘On Police Order – What can be said, seen and done’, le Monde diplomatique 8 (2008). http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-08-11-lieranciere-en.html. Accessed 28/9/2016. Laclau, ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggle’, pp. 3-10; Ranciere, Dissensus, pp. 86-87. 99 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 65. 100 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 92. 101 Eden suggests that autonomist Marxism is ‘refreshing and strange’, in this regard (D. Eden, Autonomy: Capitalism, Class and Politics (Routledge, London, 2012) p. 7).

64

In Empire, we are informed that Marxism must be liberated from dialectical

logic.102 Situating the struggles over the common at the heart of this immanence,

Hardt and Negri argue that,

‘There is nothing dialectical or teleological about this anticipation and

prefiguration of capitalist development by the mass struggle. On the

contrary, the struggles for the common are demonstrations of the creativity

of desire, utopias of lived experience, the workings of historicity as

potentiality’.103

Negri sees working class struggle as central to the development of capitalism;

capitalism is reactive to the struggles of the working class, who force capital into

ever more passive forms of control.104 Here we can come to see that the common

presents the possibility of ‘communism without purgatory’.105 In this

conceptualisation, we can see how capitalism is considered as a parasitic force,

capturing and enclosing the creativity of the working class and their production of

the common.106 The standpoint of immanence underpins the common, which is

produced under conditions of capitalist exploitation, but which stands in conflict

with the need for private property and production.

Hardt and Negri claim that ‘Empire does away with cruel regimes of power and

increases the potential for liberation’.107 Such a sentiment has been seen as a sign of

102 K. Weeks, ‘The Refusal of Work as Demand and Perspective, in Murphy and Mustapha, Eds.,The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, p. 129. The idea that the working class comes before capital finds its earliest enunciation (the so-called ‘Copernican inversion’) in M. Tronti, ‘Lenin in England’, Classe Operaia 1 (1964) pp. 86-93. 103 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 51-52. 104 Schlembach, Against Old Europe, p. 42. 105 J. Rabasa, ‘Negri by Zapata: Constituent Power and the Limits of Autonomy’, in Murphy and Mustapha, Eds., The Philosophy of Negri, p. 174. 106 P. Fitzpatrick, ‘The Immanence of Empire’, in Passavant and Dean, Empire’s new clothes, p. 38. 107 Fitzpatrick, ‘The Immanence of Empire’, in Passavant and Dean, Empire’s new clothes, p.44.

65

their potentially ambiguous perspectives on Empire,108 traces of which can be

witnessed in the work of Deleuze and Foucault. In some senses both Hardt and

Negri and Deleuze see a world where political and economic power is extending

its reaches both extensively and intensively posing problems for the ways in

which change can be brought about, whilst at the same time seeing such a process

as essential in constructing new radical subjectivities and new potentials for a

better world. For Deleuze we cannot talk of good or bad,109 and indeed argues that

‘it is very difficult to say who is the thief and who the victim, or even where the

violence resides’.110 Such a criticism of ambivalence or aversion to politics is a

critique also levelled against Foucault.111

Foucault’s analysis of power is often read as suggesting limited possibility for

change.112 Like Deleuze and Foucault, Hardt and Negri have been criticised for

talking of object of their critique in glowing terms as if it is something to applaud

rather than attack.113 Wood argues that if such immanence were indeed an

accurate picture of capitalist governance today then all possibilities of anti-

capitalist revolt would be over.114 Not only can the assertion of immanence be

contested on empirical terms,115 but also in philosophical terms. It is suggested that

if Empire is a constant process of inclusion then the possibility for conflict and

opposition appears to be diminished. Much radical political theory maintains that

exclusion and the negative are central to adversarial political activity; politics is

108 E. M. Wood, ‘A Manifesto for Global Capital?’, in G. Balakrishnan, Ed., Debating Empire (Verso, London, 2003) p. 61. 109 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 250 110 Deleuze and Guattari, A Thousand Plateaus, p. 494 111 S. Zizek, Organs without Bodies (Verso, London, 2012) p. 18. 112 N. Fraser, ‘M. Foucault: A “Young Conservative”?’, Ethics (96:1) p. 165. See also; C. Death, ‘Counter-Conducts: A Foucauldian Analytics of Protest’, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest (2010) pp. 237-238. 113 Wood, ‘A Manifesto for Global Capital?’. 114 Wood, ‘A Manifesto for Global Capital?’, p. 63. 115 G. Arrighi, ‘Lineages of Empire’, in Balakrishnan, Debating Empire, pp.29-42.

66

something other than the police.116 If we come to see resistance as immanent to the

forms of control and order, then politics becomes unthinkable.117 In short, the

debate is between those that seek to emphasise the role of the negative in

conflictual politics, and those, like Hardt and Negri, that seek to reject the

negative.118

Despite such criticisms, it is clear that antagonism pervades the philosophy of

Hardt and Negri. For the authors, Empire has divided the masses into ‘a myriad of

conflicting parties’, destroyed the possibility of international organising and

reduced resistance to localised acts of reactionary defence of fixed identities. This

division, exclusion and marginalisation is a political project that displays the

contradictory tendencies of Empire; on one hand it is a smoothing of space, of

globalisation, information and population flows and collaborative production, on

the other it is war, borders, racial segregation and exploitation.119 The authors

insist that an outside to control is created through resistive acts against Empire.

Negri insists that ‘our methodological variant is first and foremost conflictual: it

implies an alternative’.120 Therefore whilst Hardt and Negri are keen to assert that

Empire and the multitude operate on the same plane; are immanent, they are in

constant conflict. We see such tension played out in regards to the new form of

hegemonic production that Hardt and Negri associate with Empire and the

multitude; that of immaterial labour.

3.3 Immaterial Labour Immaterial labour is based, according to Hardt and Negri on the production of the

creative common. They describe the transition thus; ‘In the final decades of the

116 Dean, The Communist Horizon, and Crowds and Party; Ranciere, ‘Ten Theses on Politics’. Similarly, see Laclau, ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?’; and Ranciere, Dissensus. 117 Laclau, ‘Can Immanence Explain Social Struggles?’, p. 4. 118 Ranciere, Dissensus, p. 86. 119 A. Negri, Trans., E. Emery, Reflections on Empire (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2008) p. 26. 120 Negri, Reflections on Empire, p. 9.

67

twentieth century, industrial labor lost its hegemony and in its stead emerged

“immaterial labor”, that is, labor that creates immaterial products, such as

knowledge, information, communication, a relationship, or an emotional

response’.121 This immaterial labour can be seen in two separate but interlinked

forms. Firstly it can take the form of intellectual labour producing ideas, symbols,

codes, and images.122 Secondly it may take the form of affective labour, through

creating or manipulating relationships and emotions.123 In reality, such forms of

production tend to combine with one another as well as with material labour.124

Indeed, to the extent that immaterial labour produces communications, relations

and emotions, it can be said that this form of labour produces ‘social life itself’.125

Hardt and Negri develop their concern with Foucault’s concept of biopolitics in

the Empire trilogy, in which biopolitics comes to be defined as the transformation

of control to shape and create servile bodies, shifting the Foucauldian focus on

governmentality to one of production. Hardt and Negri argue that production has

changed in a parallel way, meaning that the working class are ever more engaged

in producing and reproducing life itself; through knowledge, ideas, culture and

social relations. As workers in mass factories utilised their power to resist their

exploitation and improve their condition, the weaponry of factory control

disintegrated and began to be replaced by less overt, but more pervasive forms of

control and exploitation. I have outlined above, in Section 2.1, the ways in which

the autonomists see production as overflowing the factory walls and coming to

pervade society at large, but here Hardt and Negri claim something more is

occurring: they argue that capitalism has achieved a real subsumption of labour to

capital, and due to labour’s social basis, capital has thus achieved a real

121 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 108. 122 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 108 123 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 108 124 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 109. 125 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 109.

68

subsumption of society to capital.126 This new form of production, based on the

entirety of the productive capabilities of humans necessitates a unique form of

expropriation, which the authors see as enacted through the predominance of

finance which ‘does not intervene directly in the productive networks but spreads

over, expropriating and privatizing the common wealth embedded in the

accumulated knowledges, codes, images, affective practices, and biopolitical

relationships that they produce’.127

Such a form of production is inherently collaborative and reliant upon

communication, therefore we find Hardt and Negri emphasising that immaterial

labour is founded in and productive of the creative common.128 Hardt and Negri’s

analysis of contemporary capitalism reveals the development of the common

alongside the compulsion to privatise and enclose the common in order to subject

it to market forces.129 The very nature of immaterial labour means that ownership,

property and control of such production is ever more difficult to designate.130

Recent problems surrounding the intellectual property of music and film, as well

as open source computer systems shows how difficult property is to enforce in a

digital common. Whilst such open access goods threaten the ownership of

property, capital also relies on the very same processes in advancing its

production and profitability.

We have also seen the growth of information gathering by both corporations and

states on citizens emphasising the centrality of all aspects of life to contemporary

capitalist accumulation. Equally, the extension of patents over organic forms of life

from micro-organisms, to plant life and crops and even knowledges displays the

126 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 272, and Commonwealth, p. 142. 127 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 145. 128 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 148. 129 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 148. 130 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p 179.

69

attempt to reinforce the concept of private property over forms of life.131 This

tendency of capitalism to enforce property relations on the creative commons

represents a contradiction at the heart of contemporary capitalism; that we have

seen that capitalism more than ever relies upon the common, yet at the same time

the emphasis on ownership creates ‘a barrier to further innovation’.132 It is in this

sense that the emphasis of Hardt and Negri’s Marxism shifts the locus of

contention in modern capitalism away from (merely) the exploitation of the labour

force and toward the exploitation of the commons; the privatisation and division

of that which is produced in common by all of us.

3.4 The multitude Following the discussion of the immanence of Empire and immaterial production,

it is necessary to undertake an overview of the social basis of production and the

subjectivities that present the possibility of resistance and revolution today that

underlie the concept of the common. The multitude, for Hardt and Negri, are all

those who labour and produce under capitalism, which importantly is not

restricted to those associated with the traditional industrial working class but

includes those with reproductive roles, the poor and the un(der)employed.133 With

the shift from industrial to immaterial forms of production, production itself has

moved beyond confinement to the factory, and now, it is suggested, is evident in

every aspect of life, and every crevice of the city.134

The term multitude describes the individual singularities of society, who, through

communication, come to recognise what they have in common.135 Whilst the

necessity is to recognise what they hold in common, they are not to lose sight of

131 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 185. 132 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 185. 133 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, pp. 106-107. 134 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251. The metropolis, according to Hardt and Negri, is defined by the intensities of the common (Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 250-251). 135 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 30.

70

their own individuality; remaining on a level of singularities. It is the process of

communication which escapes the control of capitalist society, linking people in

innumerable and constantly shifting ways. We can see the links between Deleuze’s

‘lines of flight’ and the interactions of the multitude that escape the controls of the

biopolitical society.

Hardt and Negri stress that such a concept of the multitude is differentiated from

other concepts of producers and potential revolutionaries such as the masses, the

working class, or the people. They suggest that each of these concepts is deficient

and fails to adequately describe the multitude as they see it: ‘the people’, they see

as imposing unity and homogeneity, ‘the masses’ loses sight of individuality and

singularity in the mass, and the working class is overly exclusive a term having

generally referred to the industrial working class, excluding women,

reproduction, domestic work as well as those who do not work.136 For Hardt and

Negri, the multitude is both produced by contemporary forms of capital

accumulation, but also influences and shapes the organisation and forms of

production that we see operating in the contemporary economy. Capitalism has

become ever more intensive since conquering the extensive boundaries of the

globe.137 This intensification of capitalism has seen it come to dominate and

penetrate all aspects of our lives, including shaping life itself.138

This emphasis on biopolitical power underlies Hardt and Negri’s renewed focus

on life, and thus the body and social interaction. Power and control had shifted

from one of a disciplinary society, in which centres of power operated on

individuals in locatable places; factories, prisons, schools, hospitals and so on to a

136 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xiv. 137 Hard and Negri, Empire, p. 272. 138 Hard and Negri, Empire, p. 24.

71

society of control, in which power operates throughout society.139 Such a shift

noted in Foucault is taken up by Hardt and Negri who argue that command has

become democratised, and ‘ever more immanent to the social field, distributed

through the brains and bodies of the citizen’.140 Therefore, with capitalism

operating in the biopolitical sphere, all resistance must take place on the plane of

capital: ‘[t]here is no outside to capital’.141

Each act of resistance, no matter how particular or localisable it may seem attacks

the very notion of biopower operated by global capitalism. Each act of resistance is

subversive in itself.142 Resistance, then, is ‘within Empire and against Empire’,143 or

again; ‘the multitude [is] the living alternative that grows within Empire’.144

Therefore, despite the fact that the left no longer has recourse to an outside – a

space in which to construct alternatives and build hegemony – resistance gains a

new found power due to the fact that ‘resistances are no longer marginal but

active in the center of a society that opens up networks, the individual points are

singularized in a thousand plateaus’.145 Acts of resistance against contemporary

capitalism opens up possibilities that were otherwise obscured through the

biopolitical power operating on a global level. Society is ‘opened up’ with

indeterminate possibilities arising from this. This opening up has the potential for

the multitude to realise and recognise that they all create and construct the

common.146

If reclaiming and socialising the means of production was the aim of historical

labour movements since the rise of industrialisation, Hardt and Negri’s project for 139 Deleuze, featuring Hardt, Postscript on Societies of Control. 140 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 23. 141 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 102. 142 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 54-59. 143 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 61. 144 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xiii. 145 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 25. 146 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv.

72

the multitude is to discover the common that they all produce, yet which is

exploited by private ownership, dividing that which is common to all humanity.

The contemporary capitalist economy already relies on and develops the common,

in particular the creative commons of immaterial labour: the means of

communication, creativity, affect, but at the same time threatens its very existence

by dividing, licensing and regulating its use and ownership through intellectual

property, controlling the means of communication and shaping the lives of people.

In order to reformulate the power relations in modern capitalism, the multitude’s

ability to communicate and build relationships escape the domination of Empire,

thereby situating ‘desertion, exodus, and nomadism’ as essential tools in the

armoury of revolutionaries.147 Through network forms, the multitude can adapt

and avoid control, whilst building a horizontalist, democratic and anti-centralist

network of singularities.148

The preceding sections, outlining Hardt and Negri’s intellectual heritage, in

Section 2, and the development of this in their Empire trilogy allows us to highlight

a number of central underlying tenets of the concept of the common that require

further development through the moments of the common I identify. Firstly I have

shown throughout Section 3 that the development of the common has occurred

within the particular context of Empire. In the context of the near total realisation

of the world market under late capitalism, Hardt and Negri argue that struggle

must be transformed. No longer do hostile outside elements present enough of a

threat to destabilise the hegemonic neoliberal project. Struggle must now be

observed and fostered inside the workings of capitalism in its most developed

forms. On a theoretical level, this conviction leads to an embracing of immanence,

understood as the possibilities of those entirely bound up in the production and

circulation of capital to resist and transform such processes. Reaching back to the

147 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 212. 148 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xvi.

73

intellectual heritage outlined in Section 2, such a perspective couples Spinozan

immanence with an expansion of the Foucauldian consideration of disciplinarity

to encompass productive processes across social life.

The forms of production and control that define the era of late capitalism are

described by Hardt and Negri as immaterial labour. Through drawing into the

processes of production and circulation of capital the very substance of being;

language, ideas, communication and culture, capital has not only extended its

reach across the globe, but also throughout human life in all its intensities. Whilst

the concept of Empire suggests there is no longer and outside from which to resist,

immaterial labour posits that the traditional bases of production and resistance no

longer play the same privileged role in potential struggle. What remains is a

multitude of singularities which operate a myriad of contentions with disciplinary

and exploitative practices of capital accumulation. Drawing on Foucault as well as

Deleuze and Guattari, Hardt and Negri here suggest that with forms of

exploitation and control operating at the level of life itself, rather than the power

of producers being disarmed by late capitalism, instead they gain a new found

power to contest these practices in innumerable ways which strike at the very

heart of Empire. As I argued in the Introduction, the common steps into this

framework of contention through its central role in identifying exploitation,

naming resistance and opening the possibilities of an alternative future. In the

following section, then, I develop each of the moments of the common that I have

identified as potentially revealing sites of discussion.

In order to begin to substantiate Hardt and Negris’s common it is first necessary to

appreciate that underlying this concept is an emphasis on starting with the actual

struggles of producers, which reveal much about the nature of production and

exploitation today, and that secondly that such moments of struggle extend

throughout social life. These tenets of Hardt and Negri’s common can be

74

deciphered from a reading not only of Empire, but also with reference to the

intellectual development of the authors, both in terms of philosophical and

theoretical influences and evolution, and through an appreciation of the real

political struggles in which they were embroiled. This fuller understanding

highlights the central position of the concept of the common in the thought of

Hardt and Negri which necessitates a substantiation through the three specific

moments of struggle identified in this thesis.

4.1 The Urban Common On the basis of the understanding of the overarching project of Hardt and Negri,

set out in the previous section, I now move to elucidate the centrality of the three

moments of the common I have identified. Each moment is both a synecdoche for,

and constituent part of, the wider commons project. However, each moment is

only briefly developed in the discussions of Hardt and Negri’s work, even by

Hardt and Negri themselves. I therefore argue that a more detailed and

considered engagement with these moments can reveal far more about the nature

of the common, and Hardt and Negri’s work as a whole. This process enables me

to answer, in turn, the secondary research questions of this thesis.

To Hardt and Negri ‘[w]orkers produce throughout the metropolis, in its every

crack and crevice. In fact, production of the common is becoming nothing but the

life of the city itself’.149 The creation of the common here shows how it is that the

authors insist that even those who traditionally have been thought to be

unproductive (the long-term unemployed, the homeless, those undertaking

domestic work, etc.) contribute to the creation of the common in the city as much

as those who work in call centres, in factories, or in banks. Indeed, it is the

qualitative intensity of the common that is the sole definition of the city, the

149 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 251.

75

authors claim.150 In other words ‘the metropolis is to the multitude what the

factory was to the industrial working class’.151 In much the same way that Marx

suggested that the factory was the site of production, and that this form of

production had important impacts upon the ways in which workers produce and

are organised, Hardt and Negri suggest that the overflow of production outside of

the factory to encompass the entire city, and thus the entire population of the city,

is the new hegemonic form of production with unique and unprecedented

consequences on the city itself and the lives of those who live in it.

Hardt and Negri insist that the city is the ‘the skeleton and spinal cord of the

multitude...the built environment that supports its activity’.152 It is in cities, with

their aleatory encounters between different peoples, the intensities of the

informational economy and the creative common in which subversive action can

be undertaken. Hardt and Negri also suggest that the city is best suited to the

activism of the multitude as the landscape lends itself to momentary comings-

together of peoples and the ability to quickly disappear back into the daily life of

the city.153 Whilst the city is the space of the multitude; the space through which it

moves, produces and resists, it is far from the smooth space that the multitude

seek to create. The city is a site of separation – of walls, gates and enclaves in

which people live as atomised individuals.154 It appears that only the radical

activism of the multitude is able to draw these two contradictory elements

together and create a new image of the city. We see this sentiment when Hardt

and Negri say that the multitude wants both to appropriate and to destroy the

city.155 The appropriation of the city by the multitude will, at the same time,

150 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 253. 151 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 250. 152 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 249. 153 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 81 154 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 255. 155 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth p. 247.

76

destroy the divisions, barriers and control that we currently associate with the

urban domain.

This centrality of the city to production in contemporary capitalism and the

potentials of the becoming common of the multitude offers an important

perspective of the analysis, tactics and potentials of contemporary political protest

which seeks to reappropriate and redesignate space and its use. If we follow Hardt

and Negri’s claim that the city, as a site of the production of the commons, has

become to the contemporary working class what the factory was to the industrial

proletariat, then we come to appreciate the potentials for resistance that such

theories present to the occupation, reclamation and contestation of space within

the city itself. The dual nature of the city as site of production and resistance

becomes clear.

I argue that, with regards to the urban common, the developments of Empire, of

boundless universal capitalism and the permeation of capitalist forms of control

throughout our lives, seems to offer a shift in the possibilities of resistance in

another, associated way. If traditional working class conflict was associated with

the issues of time; of working hours, weekends and holidays and pay more

generally, as well as increasing the quality of life outside of the factory walls,

today we might perceive an end to the potentials of such struggles and toward

new possibilities. If it is the case that production takes place throughout the city

and throughout our lives then the potentials for time-based politics seems to be on

the wane; such resistance would be reactive, an attempt to push back against

Empire is not only impossible, but also undesirable. Instead we see new

possibilities in confrontation and resistance through various spatial and bodily

practices that seek to create a new way of living. In short, a shift from issues of

time to those of space.

77

In respect to Hardt and Negri’s emphasis on deterritorialisation and the smooth

space of global capital, the radical nature of movement and the nomad, and their

postmodernist leanings toward the downplaying of the difference between urban

and rural, we might be lead to wonder what exactly such a theory can say about

issues of space and place. A preliminary reading might suggest that a theory of

immaterial labour, borderless global space and the emphasis on the role of the

digital might not leave room for spatial considerations, revealing ‘perplexing’,156 or

‘rather problematic’ geographical implications and assumptions of Empire.157

In response to this problem, which frames Chapter 2, I argue that we must

recognise that production and resistance occur in locatable, identifiable places, and

indeed the relevance of the changing nature of capitalist accumulation and control

could be said to be most keenly felt in urban spaces. The production of the

common, throughout the city, and the concomitant forms of biopolitical control

operate in and through urban space. Anchoring the notion of the common in the

urban provides an ability to approach the issues of Empire in a more tangible way,

enabling a substantiation of the concept in this regard. Whilst shifting the

definition of the urban to a relative definition of intensities of the common, we can

highlight the importance of the city and the possibility of resistance today through

reading the city as the factory of all productive classes.

Such a rethinking of political activism through the lense of cities has also born

witness to another important development that plays an influential role in this

thesis. New forms of power and control have emerged from the shifting global

and economic contours, and as such have given rise to a new focus in radical

political theory associated with the emerging study of biopolitics. Hardt and Negri

156 P. Mudu, ‘Where is Hardt and Negri’s Multitude? Real Networks in Open Space’, ACME 8:2 (2009) pp. 211-244. 157 C. Minca, ‘Empire Goes to War, or, The Ontological Shift in the Transatlantic Divide’, ACME 2:2 (2003) pp. 227-235.

78

recognise the bodily implications of biopolitical control, and indeed the position of

the body as a site of resistance. They note that a truly revolutionary movement

must create ‘a body that is incapable of adapting to family life, to factory

discipline, to the regulations of a traditional sex life…’,158 and that such a focus on

the role of the body can open the possibility of ‘corporeal and ontological

migrations’.159 Therefore, I argue that in the urban common we reinvent, reimagine

and reappropriate the city in a way that poses problems for capitalist forms of

control and profit, at once posing a critique and a solution, in particular through

physical and affective appropriations of space. It is the substantiation of the

common through engaging with the production and resistance of the urban that

forms the basis of Chapter 2 of this thesis.

4.2 The Digital Common Chapter 3 highlights the ways in which the technological common must be seen as

a specific moment of the common. This moment is perhaps the most widely

discussed and problematized site of the common found in responses to the Empire

trilogy and features most evidently in the work of Hardt and Negri themselves. In

Section 2.1 of this chapter, I have begun to demonstrate the importance of Marx’s

‘Fragment on Machines’ for Negri’s autonomism, which demonstrates the

centrality of new modes of production and technological transformations in

Negri’s work. Here, I begin to outline how it is that Hardt and Negri develop this

to consider the technological common. In response to those literatures which

suggest Hardt and Negri’s project is too concerned with technology to the extent

that they are technological-determinists, I develop an argument which claims that

through an appreciation of the role of autonomist worker centred analysis and

continental philosophy, we are able to better appreciate the need to consider the

role of the affective struggle over the common. Rather than the technological

158 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 216. 159 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 217.

79

common being concerned exclusively with networks and communication, I insist

on the need to consider the physicality of production, interaction and resistance in

this moment.

This changing content of work underlines the reason for the return to the

‘Fragment’ witnessed in autonomist thought. In particular, the Italian tradition

sought to answer the question of how does this influence our response to the rise

of computers?160 Autonomists, and in particular Negri, took this emphasis on the

‘whole ensemble of sciences, languages, knowledges, activities, skills’ to be

symptomatic of the move toward digital networks.161 The rise of immaterial labour

is definitively linked to the decline of Fordism and rise of Toyotism, and in

particular the ‘increasingly extensive use of computers’.162 The rise of computer

networks has reshaped industrial production toward information based systems

and communication, reliant on the speedy transfers of information regarding

demand from consumer to producer.163 Not only does immaterial production

transform the traditional industrial production process, but also opens up new

forms of production; of information and knowledge itself, which should be

recognised as social in just the same way that the production of commodities is

social.164 Hardt and Negri argue that ‘[t]he increasingly extensive use of computers

has tended progressively to redefine labouring practices and relations, along with,

indeed, all social practices and relations’.165 The computer has enabled a further

homogenisation of labour practices; reducing almost all labour to a process of the

use of computer technology,166 whilst the digital network has transformed the

160 Tomba and Bellofiore, ‘The ‘Fragment on Machines’ and the Grundrisse’, p. 345. 161 Thoburn, ‘Autonomous Production?’, p. 81. 162 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 291. 163 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 290. 164 C. Fuchs, Social Media: a critical introduction (Sage, London, 2014) p. 4. 165 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 291. 166 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 292.

80

forms of organisation, communication and centralisation of production.167 In

essence, ‘We are data laborers’, who produce digital information that is captured

by tech giants.168 It is these forms of immaterial labour that ‘drive the

postmodernization of the global economy’, Hardt and Negri claim.169

It is therefore vital to conceive of the common as the site of production and

exploitation in this moment; as the key to the organisation of the working class in

order to seek the transformation of the ownership of production. Whilst

networked, immaterial production has been utilised to deskill workers, destroy

the organisational forms of the mass worker and extend the horizon of production,

the network also contains the possibilities of transformation. As Cleaver notes in

his commentary on Marx, the results of the introduction of technology are

politically determined.170 The potential for technology to alleviate labour can be

witnessed by the fact that whilst the ‘threat to employment often led workers to

resist and attack machines, whereas houseworkers, usually housewives more

commonly fought for machines’.171 The rise of machines in the production process

creates the possibility of ‘two major kinds of working class response to the

pressures and injuries caused by the ever increasing subordination of life to

machinery: one is objective, the exhaustion and using up of people's lives, the

other is subjective: revolt’.172

This potential subjective revolt based on the possibilities of massively decreased

socially necessary labour time associated with the mechanisation of production

and the rise of mobile integrated network communications systems and

167 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 294-295. 168 J. Todd, ‘Socialize the Internet!’, ROAR Magazine 2 https://roarmag.org/magazine/socialize-the-internet/. Accessed 28/9/2016. 169 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 293. 170 Cleaver, ‘Study Guide to Capital’. 171 Cleaver, ‘Study Guide to Capital’. 172 Cleaver, ‘Study Guide to Capital’.

81

immaterial labour grounded in knowledge production, language and sociability as

its product therefore provide the founding of the common as the site of resisting

late capitalism. Hardt and Negri say that ‘It seems to us, in fact, that today we

participate in a more radical and profound commonality than has ever been

experienced in the history of capitalism’.173 This commonality, encapsulated in the

conception of new forms and means of production leads the authors to declare:

‘The commons is the incarnation, the production and the liberation of the

multitude’; this is found in its clearest formulation in the technological production

of late capitalism.

In Chapter 3, I argue that Negri’s focus on technological development in post-

Fordist capitalism enables an understanding of production as engaged in complex

assemblages of immaterial and material labour; affective and bodily interaction.

Whilst much post-autonomist thought has tended toward presenting production

almost exclusively on the horizon of language and communication, instead, I take

the insights of Hardt and Negri to enable a more complex understanding that

necessitates an awareness of the ways in which digital, communicative and

linguistic production impacts on bodily and affective practices. Building on Hardt

and Negri’s discussion, I argue that if we are to transform the use of technology

and contest its political and economic content, recognition of physical production,

communication and resistance are vital to understand. Such a perspective raises

possibilities for the ways in which the common can be conceived of, contested and

expanded.

4.3 A Politics of the common As outlined in the above sections, Hardt and Negri conceive of the world as

rapidly changing, where the role and forms of capitalist production are being

reconfigured in an attempt to maintain and expand the exploitation of labour and 173 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 302.

82

the production of profit. This new world finds renewed importance in the urban

setting, where production of the common is most profound, and where the

potential of resistance is most prominent. Whilst the emphasis on place is key, the

role of expanded networks of communication have also shown to provide

potentials for liberation from work. In this new context, new forms of organisation

must be developed. Hardt and Negri insist that new forms of organisation

appropriate to the protection and production of the common must be constructed;

a means of undertaking the constituent process of revolution. In this section, and

Chapter 4 which it frames, I posit these developments as necessitating a

transformation in the means of political organisation, through outlining Hardt and

Negri’s discussion of the developments in political organisational practices which

are able to broach the complex interrelationships of physical and digital life; the

full range of the common outlined in the two previous sections.

I have highlighted the lack of sustained discussion of the concept of the common

in the Empire trilogy, and here, it must also be noted that Hardt and Negri rarely

undertake an extended analysis of political resistance movements. Instead, what

the tendency is to mention seemingly disparate events, drawing out links and

problematising specific aspects with the overarching aim of demonstrating the

ways in which specific movements relate to their framework of resistance. Clearly

the Zapatista movement in Chiapas, Mexico can be seen as one of the touchstone

events of recent decades and certainly in the development of Hardt and Negri’s

thought in this area. However, in none of their books is this uprising given more

than a few pages of analysis.174 Similarly, the development of the alter-

globalisation movements beginning in 1999 Seattle WTO protests and following

on into other world summit protests including Genoa and the birth of the World

Social Forum are equally dealt with briefly. What we get from most of the

174 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 85-93 and Commonwealth, p. 106.

83

references to real world events are reflections on the ways in which contemporary

movements are firstly pushing beyond traditional forms of undertaking resistance

and secondly the ways in which the authors see these movements developing new

methods and means of creating change.

In a typically brief section that discusses events such as Tiananmen Square 1989,

the Los Angeles revolt of 1992, the Zapatista uprising beginning in 1994, the

French strikes of 1995 and the South Korean Strikes of 1996, Hardt and Negri

reaffirm the idea that each of these events failed to translate or communicate

beyond the local specific situation. Indeed they even suggest that each failed to

communicate locally.175 This leads the authors to suggest that what these struggles

lost in extension and duration they made up for in intensity.176 Despite the fact that

they failed to communicate horizontally across space, they all posed problems that

were felt at and directed at the global level, namely the post-Fordist decline of the

economic prospects of the people involved.177

It is not until Multitude that we get a more wide-ranging and to an extent more in-

depth look at resistance and revolution, here over a longer historical period. In

Multitude, we find a wider sweep of revolutionary activity stretching back to the

Paris Commune. The most interesting and relevant section regarding analysis of

real world events here is the consideration of the development of guerrilla warfare

tactics employed in the Cuban and Chinese revolutions and the ways in which

such tactics fed into later, urban struggles.178 Hardt and Negri here describe a

situation in which they see guerrilla movements based on the foco as attempts to

escape the unifying and hierarchical structures of traditional socialist parties in

struggle, instead pluralising the centres of power in separately organising, self-

175 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54. 176 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54. 177 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 55. 178 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, pp. 79-91.

84

reliant groups taking independent action whilst remaining part of a larger

struggle.179 Hardt and Negri do admit, however, that whilst this shift away from a

unitary party to some extent achieved a step toward less centralised and more

inclusive forms of resistance, that guerrillas tended merely to substitute the

unitary power of the party for that of military organisation; something that the

authors see as inevitable due to the foundation of the guerrilla concept on the idea

of replacing the current sovereignty of government with that of another sovereign

body.180

In the 1960s and 1970s, Hardt and Negri suggest that the guerrilla tactics were

brought out of the hills and countryside and into the cities of the developed world.

With the Black Panther Party, the Red Army Faction and the Red Brigades, we see

the transposition of military forms of organisation and tactics deployed within the

cities of the United States and Europe.181 The cities are for these groups are the hills

and jungles of the guerrillas; a place in which they can move without detection,

strike and disappear.182 Whilst political parties and insurrectionary groups tend to

be set up in order to contest state power, to win or seize the organs of the state,

more diffuse and spontaneous movements favoured by Hardt and Negri tend to

aim not at contesting power at the state level, but to reclaim and transform life.

Such a transition is one noted by Hardt and Negri who note the shift in emphasis

from opposing the government to one of transforming the life of the city.183 The

autonomist movement in Italy, of which Negri was an integral part, were at times

successful in liberating whole areas of cities where new forms of life were

created.184 The role and position of cities within struggles is a theme that

constantly remerges from Hardt and Negri’s analysis including the Paris 179 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, pp. 74-78. 180 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 77-78. 181 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 81. 182 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 81. 183 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 81. 184 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 82.

85

Commune, the Berlin revolt, the Black Panthers, RAF and Red Brigades, through

to summit protests across the globe and the Argentinean factory takeovers of 2011.

Whilst Hardt and Negri’s analysis of specific events is often brief and vague, the

sense of bringing struggles into the cities; the site of the creative commons and the

links between the commons and democracy, in order for people to recognise that

which they hold in common (both within and across cities) is vital for

understanding the thrust of Hardt and Negri’s analysis.

The polycentric nature of the guerrilla organisation adapts with the influence of

the post-Fordist economic tendencies observable in western societies, becoming

even more decentred to the extent that we see an emergence of network forms of

organisation and resistance.185 Hardt and Negri claim that rather than the iron

discipline of the party or the military, the emphasis instead becomes one of self-

organisation, creativity and singularity in struggle.186 Various movements of the

1990s are here posed as clear transitional organisations by Hardt and Negri,

mixing the inertia of vertical, hierarchical organisational principles with those of

more horizontal methods. For instance, Hardt and Negri claim that the Palestinian

Intifada made use of militant young men on the ground but also relied on the

funding and influence of older exiles.187 Equally it is suggested that the South

African anti-Apartheid struggles also blended the horizontal organising of angry

young men at ground level and the older hierarchies of the African National

Congress. This can again be seen in the Zapatista uprising in which military rank

and symbolism is intertwined with radical horizontalist tendencies.188

The growth of alter-globalisation movements in the US and Europe pushed radical

organising even further down the path of decentralisation and the refusal of

185 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 83 186 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 83. 187 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, pp. 83-84. 188 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 85.

86

leadership, according to Hardt and Negri.189 The progression that we can

retrospectively read back into such a history finds its end in the post-Seattle

summit protests and the World Social Forums of the late-1990s and early-2000s. In

such cases, we are told, varied and disparate groups including but not exclusive to

unions, gay and lesbian feminist, ecological, socialist, anarchist, liberal and church

groups were able to act simultaneously and cooperatively without the need or

desire for central leadership.190 Around the same time as many of these summit

protests, the Argentinean factory takeovers also occurred in December 2001. The

historical corruption of political and economic institutions coupled with a

financial crisis caused by IMF-imposed policies meant that the middle-classes lost

savings and jobs whilst industries and services shut down.191 Importantly, during

the Argentinean factory takeovers and protests neighbourhood and city-wide

assemblies were formed in order to organise communities and production.192

Hardt and Negri see the protestors’ slogan of “Que vayan todos” as being linked

to a wider disaffection with political representation felt in the summit protests.193

On the basis of the rather fragmentary discussions of political resistance

movements in Hardt and Negri’s work, we must begin to ask what a politics of the

common might look like, and how the apparent politicisation of everyday life

associated with the development of urban and technological commons impacts on

the abilities and practices of resistance itself. In Chapter 4 this problematique is

drawn out through a discussion with the work of Jodi Dean, and her diagnosis of

recent political struggles and the competing visions of how to proceed. In so

189 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 86 190 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 86. 191 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 216. 192 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 216. 193 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 216. “Que vayan todos” literally means “out with them all”, referring to political representatives. Hardt and Negri also describe the Seattle style summit protests and the Argentinian protests as a ‘cycle of struggles’ (Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 215).

87

doing, this thesis excavates and develops a substantive version of the concept of

the common, which turns on the insights provided by Hardt and Negri’s work in

the Empire trilogy.

5. Conclusion This chapter has answered the secondary research question of; How does an

engagement with Hardt and Negri’s theoretical development enable a substantiation of the

common? I have answered this question through analysing the intellectual and

political development of Negri’s work, through engagement with his rich

autonomist past, combining the insights of worker-centred analysis and an

emphasis on the immanence of struggle across social life, with the continental

theory approach of the need to recognise the affective production of social subjects

and their ability to resist. Through doing so, I have contributed to the wider aim of

answering my overarching research question of; How can the common in Hardt and

Negri be substantiated? This theoretical substantiation lays the foundations of the

common found in Hardt and Negri which leads to a need to deal, in turn, with the

moments of the common identified and developed in following chapters.

Through drawing into relation the autonomist impulse to identify the

contestations over work and life in the capitalist economy with Foucault’s

conception of biopolitics,194 we are provided with a theoretical framework that can

lend much to the study of transformations of contemporary life. If production is a

site of constant contestation, primarily through the innovation and capture of

working class subjectivity, power comes to apply to ‘bodies and what they do’.195

The ways in which power operates is intimately tied up with the ways in which

time and labour, and thus profit, are extracted from bodies.196 Parmett emphasises

194 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 22-23. 195 M., Foucault, Eds., M., Bertani, and A., Fontana, Trans., D., Macey, “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France 1975-1976 (Picador, New York, 2003) p. 35. 196 Foucault, Society must be defended, p. 35.

88

the interlinked relationship between power, as operated through bodies and the

reproduction and entrenchment of poverty and exploitation; ‘The poor’s

production is corporeal, as the location of poverty is in the body. Through

biopolitical production, the body is subjected to capital through its exclusion’.197

Biopolitics becomes activated through neoliberal capitalism as a means of

extending and intensifying, whilst decentring and shrouding direct forms of

domination through a deployment of governance structures and the production of

subjectivities. As Therborn argues, contemporary capitalism ‘is bent on invading

all spheres of social life’.198

This chapter has demonstrated how Negri’s thought acts as a ‘dispotif of Marx

around Foucault’, by which his work seeks to undertake a Marxian structuring of

Foucault’s thought through the perspective of class struggle.199 Such a reading of

Foucault through Marx enables Negri to reconsider class struggle as a process of

the ‘transformation of productive bodies and forms of life’.200 Foucault’s criticisms

of twentieth century state-communism chime with Negri’s own scepticism of

state-centred attempts to create a revolutionary utopia. Statist socialism, Foucault

claims, has repeatedly failed to construct a critique of biopower,201 instead creating

new forms of disciplinarity, whereas the truly radical task is to create a new anti-

disciplinary, emancipatory principle.202 The state, then, must not be the central

goal or organisational principle of contemporary struggle which considers the

production of life.

197 H. M. Parmett, ‘Community/Common: Jean-Luc Nancy and Antonio Negri on Collective Potentialities’, Communication, Culture and Critique 5 (2012) p. 179. 198 G. Therborn, ‘New Masses? Social Bases of Resistance’, New Left Review 85 (2014) p. 14. 199 Negri, ‘A Marxist Experience of Foucault’. 200 Negri, ‘A Marxist Experience of Foucault’. 201 Foucault, Society must be defended, p. 261. 202 Foucault, Society must be defended, pp. 39-40.

89

If the state must no longer be the focus of revolutionary activity, the common

enters the stage as a potential alternative site of production, organisation and

resistance. New forms of production have brought with them new forms of social

relations and political possibilities. The common, then, is specifically a non-state,

non-market site of social relations. Unlike other iterations of the commons, the

common is not a pre-capitalist social space which is enclosed during the early

stages of capitalist development, but is constantly produced under capitalism.

Capitalism finds itself in a conflictual relation to the common, with the necessity of

it to continue to produce that which cannot be produced under private capital, but

in a constant process of trying to enclose and capture. Therefore we can see the

common as not only the site of production, but also as the site of contestation and

struggle; the possibility of reclaiming what we produce in common, and

overcoming the process of exploitation and enclosure of the common under

capitalism. If the common is constructed through new forms of labour and

production under neoliberalism, it also presents itself as an immanent site of

resistance; created and developed under capitalism, but providing the possibility

for non-capitalist social relations. The moments of the common that I identify and

analyse unpack a complex political problematic; of understanding the changing

nature of production, control and resistance that is recentred on the relationships

between bodies, affect and the common.

The first of these moments, corresponding to the following chapter, sets out to

map the emerging relations born through changing productive relationships

between bodies and urban environments. In this, I build on Hardt and Negri’s

insight that the production of the common is intimately related to the life of the

city, and seek to demonstrate the ways in which the common, in its urban

moment, can be seen as a contested site of production. The second moment, again

demonstrated in this chapter to be founded upon the consideration of

technological advance in autonomism and Negri in particular, seeks to

90

demonstrate the ways in which individuals produce and communicate to others

beyond their immediate physical proximity, raising new concerns for

understanding affective production, communication and resistance. Whilst

Chapter 2 sets out how we can think the relations of bodies and urban

environments in terms of the changing site of production, potential resistance and

the consequent political questions that arise from this, Chapter 3 seeks to

undertake a comparable task for the digital sphere. In particular, Chapter 3 seeks

to push our understandings of production and political action beyond physical

encounter, and, developed from affect theory, remains sceptical of attempts to

render such questions purely technological.

Both Chapters 2 and 3 investigate the changing forms of production and the

insights of considering these as forms of the common, in particular being read as

site of political struggle and construction. Chapter 4 turns to consider directly the

political-organisational implications of a focus on the common. New forms of

production and communication imply new geographical and bodily relations that

necessitate novel forms of political organisation. How might the contemporary

worker organise a radical constituent process predicated on the geographically

fragmented and digitally mediated workplace? I argue that such political

processes must entail flexible, high speed relations and interactions, but that such

political projects need not be temporally limited, or lose any of the political or

economic weight of previous eras of worker organisation.

This chapter has sought to set up such questions and concerns through a process

of contextualisation and theoretical orientation in the autonomist tradition as

embodied by Hardt and Negri. Each section has sought to situate, firstly the

concept of the common in general, and then the precise moments of the common

identified therein, as central to the consideration of Hardt and Negri’s political

theory. If this chapter has sought to demonstrate where we find each moment of

91

the common, and where it has come from, I now undertake the task of

considering, through engagement with other eminent thinkers in each domain,

where exactly each moment might take us.

Chapter 2

The Urban Common:

Production and Resistance in the City

‘…not only the cities, but above all the ways of the world have changed’

Toni Negri, Pipeline: Letters from Prison1

1. Introduction This thesis sets out to substantiate the concept of the common as found in Hardt

and Negri’s Empire trilogy, through three moments identified in Chapter 1. The

problem of the content of the common in Hardt and Negri’s work was sketched

out in the Introduction, which highlighted that the authors themselves and critical

literatures on Empire, had dealt in relatively little detail with the concept of the

common. In Chapter 1, I argued that the development of autonomism and Negri’s

unique political biography underpinned his collaborations with Hardt. It was

shown that the autonomist inheritance of Negri sought to shift analysis away from

orthodox Marxist concerns of production in factories and the political organisation

of workplaces in order to contest state power. In place of this principle, the

common comes to feature as the site of production, contestation and potential

liberation under late capitalism. In response to the problem of the lack of

intellectual development of the common, I argue three moments of the common

provide unique entrance points to the substantiation of the concept. This chapter

directs itself toward the first of these three moments, and one that, aside from a

few disparate pages in Commonwealth has been under-substantiated.2 In this

Chapter, then, I tackle the secondary research question posed in the Introduction

of: In what ways does the concept of the common necessitate an investigation of urban

1 A. Negri, Trans., E. Emery, Pipeline: Letters from Prison (Cambridge, UK, 2014) p. 13. 2 The clearest discussions of the metropolis in the work of Hardt and Negri are to be found in Commonwealth, pp. 249-252.

93

production? This, in turn, contributes my answer to the overall research question

of: How can the common in Hardt and Negri be substantiated?

Hardt and Negri claim that the urban common should be considered to comprise

of the productive relations of workers; a new scale in which to approach relations

of production in an ever more globalised world. In particular, whilst labour is

undertaken throughout the city, beyond strictly workplace production, production

in the city revolves around the production of the common. In this chapter I

investigate the concept of the urban common through a discussion of David

Harvey and Hardt and Negri, in order to substantiate and develop a compatible

concept with the broader project of Hardt and Negri. In considering the work of

Harvey this thesis is engaging with one of the foremost Marxist thinkers and

geographers in the world, who has spent much of his academic career considering

the role of urban development.

This interlocution comes about through a recognition that the work of Hardt and

Negri and that of Harvey have many common reference points and comparable

concerns. Evidence of their recent interactions can be found not only in the pages

of Harvey’s Rebel Cities book,3 and an exchange in artforum magazine,4 but also in

that Harvey was invited to an autonomist conference in 2014.5 Hardt and Negri

suggest that ‘many aspects of our book are consistent with vital work [Harvey] has

done – on utopian thought, the increasingly immaterial nature of capitalist

production, and the politics of the metropolis’.6 This point is emphasised by Negri

when he reaffirms the ‘very clear and explicit convergence between Harvey’s

3 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 36, p. 67, p. 72, p. 78, pp. 146-147, and p. 152. 4 Harvey and Hardt and Negri, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, artforum. 5 A. Negri, J. Roos, ‘From the refusal of labor to the seizure of power’, ROAR (18/1/15). https://roarmag.org/essays/negri-interview-multitude-metropolis/. Accessed 20/2/2016. 6 Hardt and Negri, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 21.

94

positions and those of my own current of thought, most clearly on the

contemporary transformation of productive labor’.7 For Harvey’s part, in the

Exchange, he suggests that such a convergence is evidenced by Hardt and Negri’s

‘view of the metropolis as a factory for the production of the common’,8 a

consideration he applauds.

Through this discussion, I aim to use this engagement to clarify and substantiate

the concept of the common in response to the questions posed of it by Harvey.

Through the interaction of the two theoretical positions, two central issues can be

highlighted. Firstly, Hardt and Negri claim that the metropolis is to the multitude

what the factory was to the industrial working class, and that this factory is a

factory of production of the common.9 Whilst seeing such a focus as a positive turn

in their theory, Harvey asks what does this actually mean?10 This challenge is

addressed through distinguishing the theoretical approaches, and emphasising the

autonomist tradition of Hardt and Negri’s intellectual heritage set out in the

previous chapter. On this basis, I argue that the corporeality of the common is the

central distinguishing feature between Harvey and Hardt and Negri. The

corporeality of the urban common necessitates we consider new forms of

productive practice as the material basis for new forms of struggle.

There is, therefore, a need to respond to Harvey’s question of whether or not, the

fragmented and displaced work force so celebrated by postmodernism has the

potential to challenge neoliberalism?11 In response to this, I argue that Hardt and

Negri’s theoretical perspective of resistance and the necessity of constructing a

7 Negri and Roos, ‘From the refusal of labor to the seizure of power’. 8 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 260. 9 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 250. 10 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 67. 11 Harvey, Postmodernism, p. 42.

95

‘unionism of the metropolis’,12 can highlight how contemporary struggle for the

urban common might proceed. The transformations in labour that Hardt and

Negri outline means that producers have different relations with one another,

their products and capital, and radical attempts to challenge and transform these

processes must take place on a new basis. These struggles find themselves

grounded in the urban common, which enables us to view the contestation of the

common more broadly. Through a discussion of how secondary literature has

considered the Occupy movement, I highlight the necessity to seeing the urban

common as a central category of contemporary struggle which refuses state or

public control, and thus enables a further substantiation of the urban common in

this regard.

2.1 Harvey’s Historical-Geographical Materialism Harvey comes to the issue of the urban through a consideration of the work of

Marx, in particular Marx’s Capital, in which he sees a richness in the dialectical

method. For Harvey, Marx’s dialectical method prioritises movement and fluidity;

that capital is always in motion.13 It is via the dialectical method that Harvey seeks

to expand the Marxian framework of analysis, noting that Marx and subsequently

Marxists of many stripes have tended to fail to develop an adequate concept of the

spatial processes tied to production and circulation. Marxists, Harvey argues, tend

to prioritise time over space;14 an approach that can be traced to Marx’s assertion

that capitalist development was causing the annihilation of space by time.15 As

such, Marxists have tended to focus almost exclusively on the site of production;

primarily the factory, as the site of exploitation, contradiction and class struggle.

12 A. Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism (Seven Stories Press, NY, 2006) p. 211. 13 D. Harvey, The Limits to Capital (Verso, London, 2006) p. x; see also D. Harvey, Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Blackwell, Oxford, 1996) p. 49. 14 D. Harvey, Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2000) p. 24. 15 D. Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the origins of cultural change (Blackwell, Oxford, 1989) p. 205.

96

Marx’s analysis centred on the exploitation of labour-power and the appropriation

of surplus labour time which is converted into profit.16 Historically, Harvey claims

‘[t]he spatial dimension to Marx’s theory of accumulation under the capitalist

mode of production has for too long been ignored’.17 A limitation that Harvey’s

own work has sought to overcome.

Harvey argues that to focus solely on the site of production misses key insights

made by Marx, and fails to comprehend the complexities of capitalism. He

outlines his basic argument as follows:

‘The simple general argument that Marx makes is that surplus value, profit,

is produced in the act of production. Of course Volume One of Capital,

which is the one that everyone reads, is all about production. But even in

Volume One, Marx makes it clear that there can be no value in what has

been produced until that value is realized in the market. Therefore, as he

says in the Grundrisse, it is contradictory unity between production and

realization that actually defines what capital is about’.18

To Harvey, then, Marxists in focussing on Volume 1 of Capital, have failed to grasp

the dialectical tension between production and circulation of commodities.

Harvey, as a geographer,19 finds the lack of spatiality in Marxian theory to be

frustrating, and therefore much of his work focussing on the urban scale in the

1970s and 1980s was an attempt to respond to this lack, by drawing out Marx’s

underemphasised contributions to spatial issues and to develop and expand upon

16 D. Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (Routledge, New York, 2001) p. 327. 17 Harvey, Spaces of Capital, p. 237. 18 H. Bou Akar and N. Mountaz, ‘On why struggles over urban space matter: A. interview with David Harvey, http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15156/on-why-struggles-over-urban-space-matter_an-interv. Accessed 03/04/2016. 19 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. xi.

97

these.20 Harvey’s project, then, is to ‘integrate spatialities into Marxist theory and

practice without necessarily disrupting central propositions’,21 or more

specifically; to ‘progress to a more definitive Marxian interpretation of the history

and theory of urbanisation under capitalism’.22 He does so in order to highlight

how ‘[t]he accumulation of capital has always been a profoundly geographical

affair’.23 The rise of capitalism has gone hand in hand with a very particular form

of urbanisation, Harvey suggests, in which ‘[u]rbanization concentrates

productive forces as well as labor power in space’.24

The Marxian emphasis of time over space arises from the recognition that capital

is under impulsion to accelerate turnover time, speed up circulation and

revolutionise the time horizons of capital. This is achieved, at least partly, by the

attempt to overcome spatial barriers to capital flow and trade; and the compulsion

to ‘go global’. However, Harvey highlights the fact that such impulses are

inherently contradictory in that the attempt to speed up capital turnover can only

be achieved through long term investment in the improvement of productive

forces, which slows the turnover of capital. On the other hand, the attempts to

eradicate spatial limits to the flow of capital and commodities can only be

achieved by producing spatial systems such as communications networks, trade

routes and the fixed space of roads, ports, railways and so on.25

20 Harvey, The Limits to Capital (The John Hopkins University Press, Oxford, 1985) p. x. 21 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, p. 58. 22 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. x, and Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanisation (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985) p. xi. 23 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, p. 23. 24 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, p. 25. 25 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, pp. 58-59.

98

Capitalism, then, ‘creates a world market which is directly given in the concept of

capital itself’.26 The drive to accumulate is at the centre of Marx’s theory of

capitalism, which is often expressed in the production process through relative

and absolute surplus value, but the ability to realise the value created through

production requires a market through which commodities are circulated. The

market therefore must constantly expand.27 Simply put, labour produces things in

a particular place, and the market is required to bring these things into relation

with each other.28 In order to develop a Marxian account of this more complex and

expanded picture of the processes of capital accumulation, Harvey insists we must

take seriously the project which Marx outlines in Volume 3 of Capital; completing

the project of developing a synthetic understanding of production and

circulation.29 Harvey proposes an enhanced version of Marx’s historical-materialist

approach which brings together a focus on production and circulation to create a

‘fuller picture of the structure of a move of production and its inner

contradictions’;30 an approach Harvey calls historical-geographical materialism.31

Therefore, we can see that Harvey’s utilisation of the dialectical method and his

historical-geographical materialism leads him to argue that the same rigour must

be applied to the spatial and urban implications of capitalist production if we are

to construct a useful Marxist perspective. It is through the application of this

method that the limits to its original scope have been challenged, with Harvey

insisting on a more complete analysis of the capitalist system, and its relation to

the production process as a means to develop an adequate critique of

contemporary capitalism. I now move to outline the ways in which such an

26 Harvey, Spaces of Capital, p. 264. 27 Harvey, Spaces of Capital, p. 265. 28 Harvey, The Limits of Capital, p. 375. 29 Harvey, Spaces of Capital, p. 266. 30 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. xiii. 31 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. xii

99

approach influences the perspective and claims made by Harvey regarding the

process of urbanisation and the impacts on the built environment. This enables the

distinctions between Harvey and Hardt and Negri’s approaches to urban politics

to be made explicit, and in so doing, better frame the position of the common

within such theories.

2.2 Urbanisation and Capital As noted, capitalism produces a specific geographical and urban dimension. It

appears relatively uncontroversial to suggest, as Harvey does, that ‘capitalism

builds a physical and social landscape in its own image, appropriate to its own

condition at a particular moment in time’.32 From the advent of industrial

production, the effect on physical and social landscapes has been acute and often

underemphasised.33 The development of the industrial city, as Harvey terms early

urban landscapes constructed around factory production, emerges from a

transformation of the accumulation process from that of appropriation of surplus

through empire, trade and dispossession to accumulation through production via

a command of labour power.34 Initially, the freeing up of peasantry to provide the

basis for capitalist production as wage-labourers had to be achieved by separating

them from the land through primitive accumulation and enclosure.35 This

transition meant that established, imperial cities had to adapt to new forms of

accumulation, changing their social and physical landscapes in the process, whilst

other cities had to be built almost from nothing in order to expand factory

production, growing exponentially over short periods of time.36 The reach of

industrial cities extended far beyond the physical edges of major cities, and links

32 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 162. 33 D. Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanisation (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985) p. 49. 34 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 196. 35 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 194. 36 Harvey, The Urbanization of Capital, p. 197.

100

to the mass exploitation of the rural peasantry through demand for raw

materials.37

The urban domain plays a split role of constructing urban landscapes in order to

develop productivity and capital accumulation, but it also utilises the built

environment as a means of reinvesting surplus capital.38 The metropolis not only

functions as a built environment for the production and reinvestment of surplus

value, but also as a vibrant site of the circulation and consumption of

commodities, with the physical proximity of vast numbers of people acting as a

‘transaction maximising system’.39 This tension begins to get to one of the many

contradictions of capitalist urbanisation in that the urban landscape acts as both

the key site of production, but also as a site of consumption for the working class.40

Harvey highlights the many contradictions embedded in the process of

urbanisation under capital when he summarises a city as ‘an agglomeration of

productive forces built by labor employed within a temporal process of the

circulation of capital…populated by those who reproduce themselves using

money earned from the circulation of capital’.41

Harvey consistently claims that space and place have to be reconsidered through a

focus on the specific nature of the capitalist mode of accumulation.42 As noted,

Harvey’s use of the dialectic method centres on the mobility and fluidity of

capital. As such, capitalism requires surpluses of both capital and labour to ensure

movement, growth in production and investment. Without such surpluses

37 Harvey, Limits of Capital, p. 345. 38 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 36. 39 D. Harvey, Social Justice and the City (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988) p. 264. 40 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 36 and 250. 41 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 250. 42 Harvey, Limits to Capital, pp. 234-235.

101

capitalism could not expand, whilst too much surplus can lead to

overaccumulation. Highlighting the role that space, and in particular the urban

environment plays in capitalism, Harvey describes location as an ‘active moment’;

‘within the overall circulation and accumulation of capital, that we will later call

‘uneven geographical development’ together with radical restructurings of the

space economy of capital can play a vital role in the processes of crisis formation

and resolution, and that there may even be a ‘spatial fix’ (as we call it) to the

internal contradictions of capitalism’.43

Harvey describes the circuit of capital through extraction of surplus and

reinvestment in production as the primary circuit of capital, and notes that it

remains the principle focus of most Marxist analyses. However, Harvey is keen to

point toward other ways in which capital can be reinvested, other than merely

directly back into the production process. He calls these circuits the secondary and

tertiary circuits of capital.44 The secondary circuit is here the most important to

highlight, with Harvey seeing this as the means of reinvestment of surplus capital

into the built environment and the consequent transformations in urban landscape

implicit in this.45 The ‘physical and social landscapes are produced through a

search for solutions to overaccumulation through temporal and geographical

displacement of surplus capital’.46 For Harvey, the built environment is a

fundamental site for absorbing surpluses of capital in large scale building projects

such as housing and infrastructure.47

43 Harvey, Limits to Capital, p. 390. 44 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 6 and pp. 7-8. 45 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 12. 46 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 196. 47 Harvey, Rebel Cities, pp. 5-7.

102

With capitalism prone to crises, urbanisation plays the role of a ‘spatial fix’,48

which reimagines the urban environment and changes the dynamics of life

therein. This spatial fix contradicts capital’s drive toward ever increased turnover

time, due to the fact that such forms of investment tend to be large scale and long

term; but is a necessity for capital if it is to attempt to avoid crises. This investment

of surplus capital into the secondary and tertiary circuits, has the additional

benefit for the process of capital accumulation in that it tends to create

improvements and developments in infrastructure, transportation,

communication, and, in terms of the tertiary circuit, education, health and the

general reproduction of the working class. As such, capitalism can be seen to be

attempting to overcome spatial and temporal barriers to the flows of capital;

seeking to annihilate space through time. In essence, Harvey argues, capitalism,

through the spatial fix, reshapes both space and time by purchasing for itself time,

through the space it produces.49 Such a movement itself has a contradictory basis

in that through attempting to rid itself of spatial constraints, the spatial fix merely

creates new fixed capital; new spatial forms that come to act as a constraint on

future modes of production and exchange. For Harvey, though, such a spatial fix

can only be a temporary fix for the crisis prone mode of accumulation, and that by

merely moving crises around, the bourgeoisie makes use of the only solution it has

available, which is to ‘continually reproduce the question anew’.50

As we have seen, the urban plays a central role in the processes of capital

accumulation and circulation in the work of Harvey. Whilst it is interesting in and

of itself due to the ‘universal flood of massive urbanisation’ that has taken place

48 D. Harvey, A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003) p. 183; Spaces of Capital, pp. 300-301; and Limits to Capital, p. xviii. 49 Harvey, Spaces of Capital, p.338; and D. Harvey, The Enigma of Capital and the crises of capitalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) p. 16. 50 Harvey, Social Justice and the City, p. 143.

103

across the globe particularly in the past 40 years,51 more importantly, the urban is

a necessary site of study due to the manner in which the urban is created and

recreated as a means of shaping, absorbing and pushing forward the needs of

capital. As noted, Harvey utilises Marx’s dialectical method in order to highlight

the complexities of contemporary capitalism and the need to recognise the spatial

implications of this form of accumulation. This process leads Harvey to argue that

a historical-geographical materialism must analyse the manner in which forms of

production shape and impact the forms of life that the working class lead. As such,

an adequate account of capitalism necessitates not just a picture of production, but

an understanding of circulation and consumption. If we are to appreciate the

position of the commons in Harvey’s work, we have to comprehend the relation of

the concept to his broader urban theory. Now this broad framework has been

established in some detail, we can move to the urban common, and begin to

appreciate the distinctiveness of Harvey’s and Hardt and Negri’s understandings,

in order to contribute towards the substantiation of the concept of the common.

3.1 Two Foundations of the Urban Common The previous section enabled an understanding of the role of urbanisation in

capitalist development in the work of Harvey. Here, in order to begin to

substantiate and develop Hardt and Negri’s own understanding of urban

production, I utilise Harvey to pose questions to the work of Hardt and Negri in

this area. The consequent discussion reveals important clarifications and

developments in the contribution to the common. Hardt and Negri are driven by

two central theses on the nature of the urban common and its relation to the

metropolis. The first is that ‘the metropolis is to the multitude what the factory

was to the industrial working class’.52 The second key thesis to be taken from

Hardt and Negri’s work is that if production takes place throughout the 51 Harvey, Justice, Nature and the Geography of Difference, p. 403. 52 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 250.

104

metropolis, then resistance is never far away, in which case urban producers must

construct a ‘unionism of the metropolis’.53 If we are to construct a substantive

conception of the urban common, it is necessary to reconstruct and elucidate the

limited writing of Hardt and Negri on the urban common in these two areas. Here

I begin by developing the first of these, before outlining the distance between the

thought of Harvey and Hardt and Negri in this regard. I argue that at the centre of

this discussion lies the conception of the Marxian notion of the formal and real

subsumption or labour. Distinctive readings of this reveal important differences in

theoretical approach, differences that are certainly underplayed by Negri in his

attempt to synthesise the approaches as intellectually compatible. I consequently

turn to the implications of such a distinction in approaches on the issue of

resistance.

3.2 Contemporary Production and the Urban Common Harvey, along with Hardt and Negri, take the transformation of the global

political economy toward neoliberalism to be a key turning point.54 Harvey and

Hardt and Negri agree that such a project was essentially one of reasserting class

power,55 but which in itself meant the redefinition and recomposition of social

class; it is not always the same people doing the same things as it once was.56 The

bases of class power have shifted; from one of large-scale industrial production in

the 1960s to one of a fragmented, precarious labour force in Western Europe and

the US, and a shift of industry toward markets that have been opened up through

a dramatic reconfiguration of the geography of production,57 especially through

off-shoring, and the opening up of the formerly ‘closed’ markets of the Global

53 Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism, p. 211. 54 Harvey, Neoliberalism, p. 1. 55 Harvey, Neoliberalism, pp. 16-17. 56 Harvey, Neoliberalism, p. 31. 57 Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, p. 31.

105

South.58 This has resulted in a situation in which only relatively small areas of the

globe remain outside of capitalist relations.59 Such transformations have dramatic

impacts on the composition of the urban environment.

I argue that both approaches offer comparable analyses of recent transformations

in the late capitalist economy which have been accompanied by dramatic shifts in

the lives of the working class. Both theoretical approaches conceive of this

transformation as an intensification of capitalist accumulation, which has hit its

geographical limits and turned inward on itself in order to recreate life and

deepen production and circulation therein. Such a turn is noted by both Harvey

and Hardt and Negri, who perceive late capitalism to be undergoing a process of

transition from the formal to the real subsumption to capital. However,

developing Hardt and Negri’s perspective on this, we find that this transition

necessitates a shift away from the separation of work and life in the city, and

instead resistive groups must transform the life of the city itself. In this light, the

urban common comes to play a unique role in the diagnosis of contemporary

urban production and the role of corporeality and biopolitics in the potentialities

of the multitude to resist and transform these practices.

Both Harvey and Hardt and Negri trace a broad lineage of urbanisation, which

they see tends to move from a mediaeval, or commercial city, in which the

commercial centre acts as a site of exchange and circulation of goods produced

elsewhere; agricultural goods and raw materials.60 In this form, there is a clear

geographical separation of production and exchange with the urban area acting as

the point of exchange for that produced in the rural hinterlands. With the advent

58 Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, pp. 16-17. 59 Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, p. 30. 60 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251.

106

of industrial production, we find a great shift in the nature of the city, with

production brought into the city, whilst still being geographically separated

within the factory walls. Within this model, the working class produce within the

factory and then live life in the surrounding urban areas.61 Today, however, there

is again another shift apparent. For Hardt and Negri, this form of urban process of

capital extraction can be seen as a biopolitical city; a city in which life itself has

been put to work.62 In this situation, ‘the space of economic production and the

space of the city tend to overlap’, with little or no distinction between the sites of

production and the living space.63 Production, then, is not separated from life;

capitalism has undertaken a radical subsumption of life to capital. ‘Workers

produce throughout the metropolis, in its every crack and crevice. In fact,

production of the common is becoming nothing but the life of the city itself’.64

Whilst Harvey presents a similar picture of the emergence of fragmented labour

practices and production methods, his conception of the metropolis differs in

interesting and important ways. Firstly, Harvey sees this process as much less

total and transformative, with production remaining a distinctive and locatable

practice and consequently it does not imply that we need new forms of worker

organisation and contestation. Secondly, whilst the emergence of renterism and

financialisation have come to pervade many aspects of urban life, this in no way

means that production proper takes place throughout the city. In fact Harvey

questions the analogy that Hardt and Negri arrive at when they see the metropolis

as the factory of the multitude,65 and the consequent implication that production

becomes much more broadly construed. Labour in factories (although such

factories are now distributed across the globe and located in different areas then 61 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251. 62 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251. 63 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251. 64 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251. 65 Negri and Roos, ‘From the refusal of labor’.

107

they once were), is still the site of production of commodities from which capital

can be extracted. The processes of socio-cultural and, importantly, urban, change

are processes of the secondary or tertiary circuits of capital that seek to shape and

reshape social relations around these processes.

For Hardt and Negri, whilst it is true that neoliberal capitalism is associated with

the fragmentation of large scale industry what has resulted is a very different, very

new form of production and appropriation of wealth. We now produce very

differently, and this production is exploited in distinct ways when compared to

the forms of industrial production associated with the rise of industrial capitalism.

For Hardt and Negri, this has resulted in new forms of social relations; new

understandings of society and community and the urban, which necessitate novel

ways of comprehending and theorising them.

Such a distinction in analysis, despite shared concerns and compatible

perspectives, belies a difference in methodology and theoretical starting points

that consequently underlie key areas of discussion in this chapter of the

production of the urban common and resistance in this context. I have

demonstrated that Harvey is more reluctant to accept that labour has undergone

the profound transformation that Hardt and Negri would claim. In particular, the

distinct perspectives on the position of the state, and the role that the state can

play in the emancipation of humanity not only evidences the divergent

methodologies but also brings with it different implications and applications for

radical insurgency and struggles over the urban common. In the following section,

I bring the theorists into discussion on the exact nature of the urban common; its

origins, possibilities and limitations. This, again, exposes the distinctions to be

made between the methodological approaches as well and the potentials that each

108

perspective attributes to radical resistance today. Taking their discussion in

artforum as an entry point, I briefly turn to outline the distinct approaches before

turning to the concepts of the urban common and resistance.

3.3 Contrasting Theoretical Approaches

As discussed in Section 3.2, the two theoretical approaches endeavour to analyse

the transformations in the political economy and working practices of

contemporary capitalism, which can broadly be conceptualised as a shift to a

process of neoliberal globalisation. Harvey perceives this transformation as an

ideological pursuit which claims ‘human beings are best advanced by liberating

individual entrepreneurial freedoms and skills within an institutional framework

of strong private property rights, free markets and free trade’.66 Such a process has

led to a ‘dramatic reconfiguration of the geography of production and the location

of politico-economic power’,67 linked to the pursuit of ‘flexible accumulation’.68

Harvey recognises the comparability of his project with that of Hardt and Negri,

who he identifies as undertaking an investigation of how, in this context, the

multitude confronts dispersed and decentred powers of the neoliberal order.69

Whilst there is a comparable project which unites the two theoretical works, there

remains a broader distance in approach which is played out in other areas of

discussion. In a generally complimentary engagement with Hardt and Negri’s

work, Harvey notes how a saturated capitalism switches to immaterial

production; but argues that ‘there are some startling absences’ in their analysis,

which Harvey pinpoints as the lack of materiality. He says at different points that,

66 Harvey, Neoliberalism, p. 2. 67 Harvey, The Enigma of Capital, p. 30. 68 Harvey, The Condition of Postmodernity, p. 147. 69 Harvey, Neoliberalism, p. 201.

109

‘we cannot afford to ignore the material side’,70 and that ‘[Hardt and Negri] don’t

probe far into the political economy or materiality of it all’.71 Such a lack of

materiality, Harvey argues, means that the ‘progressive and illuminating move’

toward the consideration of immaterial production, is limited in its utility. Harvey

suggests that the position of Spinozan philosophy, discussed in Chapter 1, Section

2.2, in Hardt and Negri’s work permits the authors ‘to bypass consideration of the

material basis of revolutionary endeavours in favour of abstract and, at the end of

the day, somewhat idealist formulations’.72

In their response, Hardt and Negri are keen to clarify this: ‘Our method, though,

rather than projecting what people should do and what they should want, is to

start where people revolt, to start from people’s political passions, and, from there,

develop political projects’.73 Such a perspective is representative of the wider

impulses of autonomism as a whole in which it is argued that, ‘[w]e too have

worked with a concept that puts capitalist development first, and workers second.

This is a mistake. And now we have to turn the problem on its head, reverse the

polarity and start again from the beginning: and the beginning is the class struggle

of the working class’.74 A working class politics comes, rather, not from reading

Capital, but instead focuses on real workers and real factories.75

Therefore, when Harvey criticises Hardt and Negri’s project as ‘far too partial to

bear the burden of a satisfactory framework for understanding the current crisis

70 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 256. 71 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 257 72 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 213. 73 Hardt and Negri, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 214. 74 M. Tronti, quoted in Holloway, ‘Going in the Wrong Direction’. 75 Wright, Storming Heaven, p. 3.

110

and its underlying political dilemmas’,76 he aims at Hardt and Negri a charge that

they never seek to tackle. Their project is not to understand the current (economic)

crisis and its underlying political dilemmas in any objective or analytical manner,

but instead to understand the emerging logics of resistance and working class

activism that have arisen in this context and the possibilities they therefore hold.

They do not set out a theoretical framework from which they can set out ‘concrete

proposals, actual political organisation, and real actions’,77 but instead base

theoretical discussions on the events they see unfolding and the actions they are

involved in.

The differencing approaches, priorities and histories are evidenced further when

Harvey ‘welcome[s] Hardt and Negri to the club of we leftists who view the urban

as one of the critical sites for contemporary struggle’.78 On one level, such a remark

appears as a warm acknowledgement of similar concerns and perspectives, but it

does belie the distance between the two theoretical approaches. Firstly, the

tradition of autonomism has based itself on the principle that the traditional,

organised, intellectual left is no longer the gate-keeper of radical knowledge in the

contemporary world.79 Secondly, Harvey appears dismissive of the substantial

autonomist history of taking over and running cities.80 The impulse here appears

to be that because Negri has not talked overtly and theoretically about ‘the urban’,

he should not be recognised as an urban radical.

Exemplifying this distance is Harvey’s suggestion that a potential model for

providing answers to the question of ‘how do we organise cities?’ could be that of

76 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 215. 77 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 263. 78 Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 261. 79 Wright, Storming Heaven, pp. 20-21. 80 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 82.

111

Red Bologna of the 1970s.81 Such an example is controversial when embedded in a

discussion over urban politics with autonomists. Red Bologna is often held up as

an example of humane and alternative forms of running an urban environment

through municipal socialism.82 Run by the Italian Communist Party during this

period, issues such as free public transportation were introduced in response to

the problems of public space being privatised through the rise of cars. However,

during this time, tensions between the Italian Communist Party and the extra-

parliamentary left came to a head, in what would be a key moment in the

formulation of autonomism. When the Communist Party attempted to co-opt the

radical student movements through trying to convince the youth to join the

Stalinist unions and support the party, officials were chased from the campus,

protected from harm only by security and police that they had brought with them.

The tensions erupted when the Communist-run municipal government shot dead

a student activist and wheeled in the army equipped with tanks to put down the

unrest.83 Such an account appears to validate Day’s claim that ‘Marxists…have

also been very adept at ruthlessly crushing autonomous forces’.84 With many of

those involved in social movements inherently sceptical of the centralising powers

of the state, such a picture of a radically run city is hardly likely to appeal to or

inspire todays extra-parliamentary left.

81 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 135. 82 C. Clemoes and J. Soule, ‘Experiments in Socialist Urbanism: From Red Vienna to Red Bologna’, City Metric (17/8/15). http://www.citymetric.com/skylines/experiments-socialist-urbanism-red-vienna-red-bologna-1319. Accessed 25/2/2016; Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 135; M. Jaggi, R. Muller, and S. Schmid, Red Bologna (Littlehampton Books, Lincoln, 1977). 83 Anarchist Federation, ‘1977: The Bologna Uprising’. https://libcom.org/history/1977-the-bologna-uprising, Accessed 25/2/2016; see also Class against Class, ‘Italy 1977-8: Living with an earthquake’ (Red Notes, London). https://libcom.org/library/italy-1977-8-living-earthquake-red-notes. Accessed 5/2/2016. 84 R.J.F. Day, Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Pluto Press, London, 2005), p. 54.

112

Whilst Harvey comes to his focus on the urban environment and the

reconstruction of space through his studies of the cycles of capitalist crises, Hardt

and Negri come to this focus via a consideration of the lineage of radical struggles

in the past 50 years. The conclusion of this reading of struggle is that ‘[t]he most

obvious change was that guerrilla movements began to shift from the countryside

to the city, from open spaces to closed ones’.85 These urban guerrillas became

focussed, the authors claim, not on ‘attacking the ruling powers but rather on

transforming the life of the city itself’.86 Such a project is one that the autonomist

movements of Italy have long been involved in, where such movements

‘succeeded in redesigning the landscapes of major cities, liberating entire zones

where new cultures and new forms of life were created’.87 Negri highlights how, in

capitalist production, there has been a ‘shift away from the factory and towards

the wider metropolis’.88

From this shared concern for the role of the urban in the contemporary neoliberal

world, both Hardt and Negri hold that ‘both the question of surplus extraction

and the question of the transformation of profit into rent have become central in

the critical analyses of contemporary capitalism that Harvey and I have

developed’.89 Negri argues that differences in approach are purely ‘a question of

genealogy, of the theoretical trajectory that has brought us to this shared

analysis’,90 and that from the autonomist-Marxist ‘analysis of the internal

transformation of labor, we arrived at the same conclusions at which Harvey

arrived — and on which he developed a more thorough empirical analysis’.91

85 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, pp. 80-81. 86 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 81. 87 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 82. 88 Negri and Roos, ‘From Refusal of labor’. 89 Negri and Roos, ‘From Refusal of labor’. 90 Negri and Roos, ‘From Refusal of labor’. 91 Negri and Roos, ‘From Refusal of labor’.

113

Despite the apparent similarity of conclusions, I have so far distinguished between

the two theoretical bodies of work in terms of approach, and historical inheritance,

from which we find that Hardt and Negri are far more ready to see production as

having undergone a dramatic transformation which engenders the city as a whole

as the site of production. In the following section, I advance this distinction

through highlighting the analytical implications on the precise nature of the urban

common in the two theoretical works.

3.4 Distinguishing the Urban Common Distinguishing the urban common from broader conception of the commons,

including the natural world as in the Hardin-Ostrom sense as well as found in

Hardt and Negri and Harvey is an important task. Whilst the focus here is on the

urban common, a brief reflection on natural-geographical commons enables the

role of production and the state in the theoretical work of Hardt and Negri and

Harvey to be delineated. We have thus far established that both Harvey and Hardt

and Negri, despite differing theoretical perspectives arrive at the conclusion that

the urban scale is a key level of analysis in approaching issues of contemporary

capitalist production and struggle. Here, I demonstrate how the differing

theoretical approaches underpin the competing conceptions of the common(s) and

the understandings of resistance in this context. Thinking about the common is

inherently tied to the forms of political organisation; with the debate often

polarized between private property and state solutions.92 Here, I argue that a

Hardt and Negrian concept of the common must be built on an understanding

that the creative common, of which the urban is one iteration, is defined by

distinct characteristics from that of the natural commons. For Harvey, however,

the same logic applies to all moments of the commons; whether natural or urban.

Through reflecting on potential role for the state in protecting the common,

92 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 68.

114

discussions of the natural common can inform our understandings of this relation

in regard to the urban common.

Harvey sees the left’s ‘anathema’ to hierarchical organisation as a stumbling block

for the commons;93 the utilisation of political power, or state centralisation is

necessary if we are to create, extend and regulate the commons in line with

egalitarian principles. Harvey argues that often ‘some form of enclosure is often

the best way to preserve certain kinds of valued commons’.94 In fact the

involvement of the state in regulating and protecting the commons is not only

unavoidable, but often to be welcomed.95 The state, Harvey suggests can play a

role in the preservation of biodiversity and indigenous cultures, but establishing a

non-commodified space outside of the ruthlessly commodifying world market.96

Harvey does not see these distinctions between the commons and enclosure as

necessarily simple, or clearly opposed; ‘It will take a draconian act of enclosure in

Amazonia, for example, to protect both biodiversity and the cultures of

indigenous populations as part of our global natural and cultural commons. It will

almost certainly require state authority to do so against the philistine democracy

of short-term moneyed interests’.97 Harvey therefore holds that natural commons

are not necessarily open access, but, rather can take the form of exclusive sites of

commons for certain groups. Whilst the natural commons, such as rainforests,

may require state regulation and intervention, or limitations to the openness of

such commons in order to preserve them, other natural commons such as the air

we breathe continues to be open access. Alongside the natural commons of

93 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 69. 94 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 70. 95 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 79. 96 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 70. 97 D. Harvey, ‘The Future of the Commons’, Radical History Review 109 (2011) p. 102.

115

rainforests and air, Harvey notes that the ‘[c]ultural and intellectual commons’

constitutes one of the hottest topics of our time.98

Whilst the continuation of the natural commons may rely on the regulation by

state forces, other forms of the commons, ‘like the streets of our cities, are open in

principle but regulated, policed, and even privately managed in the form of

business-improvement districts’.99 On the other hand, gated communities are

forms of exclusionary commons; commons for those that have access, but not

commons for those shut out.100 Merely because something is held in common does

not, therefore imply it is a necessarily progressive process. Instead the question of

the progressive role of the common often comes down to a political preference for

uses of common space.101 Radical social groups can make use of the protections

afforded by private property rights, by procuring spaces (such as community

centres) from which broader socio-political projects are developed, Harvey

suggests.

Therefore, for Harvey, we need to think carefully about what we mean by open

access and common property, and how this may well differ between natural and

urban commons. The commons of the natural world is seen to pre-exist human

action, a form of inherited common land and resource that may necessitate the

expulsion of those who have long lived there in order to preserve. Here there

appears to be a political calculation of cost and benefit which rules in the favour of

humanity at large rather than those who will directly be affected by the expulsion.

Therefore, for Harvey, there is often a clear role for state power in the creation,

98 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 72. 99 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p.71. 100 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 71. 101 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 71.

116

regulation and maintenance of the commons. The commons becomes highly

subjective; preserved by some, for some, at the expense of others. Harvey

summarises the deeply political, and thus highly contentious, nature of the

commons when he argues that ‘[a]t the end of it all, the analyst is often left with a

simple decision: whose side are you on, and which and whose interests do you

seek to protect?’.102

Therefore, Harvey argues that if we are to protect the natural commons and

develop and expand the urban commons recognition of the central role that the

state plays here is necessary. It must be the aim of the left to reclaim and recreate

‘public health, housing, education, and the governance of common property

resources. In our own society, these branches of government often become

corrupted by capital, to be sure, but it is not beyond the power of political

movements of the left at the local, national, even international levels to discipline

these aspects of the state apparatus to emancipatory public purposes’.103 For

Harvey, then, organised, political movements directed at displacing or claiming

power can therefore transform and protect the commons, whereas decentralised

autonomous communes can do nothing about the vested interests of capital and

can often increase inequality. Instead, the left should aim at ‘[t]he direct

reorganisation of the urban landscape to redistribute access to social power and

life chances so as to rebuild a more equitable basis for an adequate social wage is

essential’.104 The advent of neoliberalism has turned ‘the provision of much of this

terrain of state action over to NGOs, has opened a potential path to socialize these

aspects of the state to the will of the people if the limitations of the NGO form

102 Harvey, ‘The Future of the Commons’, p. 103. 103 C. Carlsson, ‘David Harvey on Rebel Cities’, http://www.shareable.net/blog/interviewed-david-harvey-on-rebel-cities. Accessed 20/03/2016. 104 Harvey, Consciousness and the Urban Experience, p. 275.

117

could be overcome’.105 However, we must recognise that such a project

necessitates a ‘frontal attack from the left against state power’.106

Hardt and Negri display their differing position on the role of the state in relation

to the natural common when they discuss the attempted privatisation of water in

Cochabamba, Bolivia in 2000 and in Italy in 2011.107 Here they see the possibilities

and limitations of focus on the common when they say that ‘[d]eclaring a resource

to be common is not enough’.108 They argue that social movements prevented a

privatisation of water through grass roots organisation in the face of state policy.

At least in these situations, the state appears as a force against the common which

needs to be resisted through social movement activism. The state is not, therefore,

a neutral force that can be recast as a guarantor of the common, but as a class

project aimed against the expansion and maintenance of private property. The

state is here conceived as neither the central oppressive force, nor the vital target

of revolutionary activity, but a node in a complex network of forces of liberation

and control. Whilst these social movements were able to prevent the privatisation

of water, rather than making water a common resource, it merely reinforced the

public, and thus state, control of the resources.109 In short, it will take a new form

of common and the democratic control of such resources for them to become

common. In a situation of natural resource scarcity, parallel to the situation

Harvey outlines in his Amazon rainforest situation, the use of these scarce

resources must be ‘decided democratically by an informed population’.110 Even in

instances of natural commons, creative solutions to the management and

organisation of the common must be at the centre of radical responses. For the

105 Carlsson, ‘David Harvey on Rebel Cities’. 106 Carlsson, ‘David Harvey on Rebel Cities’. 107 M. Hardt and A. Negri, Declaration, (Argo Navis Author Services, New York, 2012) p. 69. 108 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 69. 109 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 69. 110 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 70.

118

common to be reclaimed, new forms of political organisation and regulation will

need to be constructed.

Hardt and Negri emphasise the organisational and creative basis on which the

common is produced, even when the resource that is being contested is one of a

natural resource; ‘the common we share is not so much discovered as produced’.111

This distinction between a natural commons that can be preserved or protected via

state institutions as Harvey would claim, and the socially produced basis on

which the common today is founded is reflected in the language used to describe

it: ‘We are reluctant to call the commons because the term refers to pre-capitalist-

shared spaces that were destroyed by the advent of private property. Although

more awkward, “the common” highlights the philosophical content of the term

and emphasizes that his is not a return to the past but a new development’.112 As

such, the common itself is a concept that exploded the notion of the dialectic.113

The common becomes the site of and form of struggle appropriate to late

capitalism, in which truth must be created from below; ‘forged through resistance

and practise of the common’.114 Even when contesting a natural, and thus pre-

capitalist resource, social movements emphasise the common as a social

product;115 as an organisational form of self-government.116

The differences over the construction and nature of the commons between the

work of Hardt and Negri, and that of Harvey is founded on the differences

outlined between their two differing theoretical methodologies and consequent

111 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 112 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 113 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 120-121. 114 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 121. 115 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p.111. 116 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 112

119

political positions. Harvey, as a staunch dialectician, sees the commons as a site in

which the various struggles around both work and life can come to be linked into

a coherent unity, or commonality and through doing so reclaim and recreate the

city in its own image. He argues that through doing so, the working class can

come to ‘fulfil its own historical potentialities’.117 In order to realise this historic

potential, the organised left must aim at a direct confrontation with, and seizure

of, state power, with the autonomist impulse toward communes and small scale

communing being seen as incoherent and reproductive of inequality.

Contrastingly, for Hardt and Negri, the common is a creatively and socially

produced relation predicated on non-state forms of self-government.

Despite the differences in approach, both Harvey and Hardt and Negri can be seen

as arguing that the interplay of global neoliberal capitalism and social movement

struggles against both local and global implications of this mean that ‘today it is

certain that the metropolis is the crucial locus of this struggle’.118 Both theoretical

perspectives perceive the role of the urban commons as relatively unique and

novel formulation of capitalist processes, which is important due to the forms of

production and appropriation of the common they address. As I have shown, for

Harvey, the commons can be natural (forests, air, water), man-made-geographical

(urban landscapes) and cultural and intellectual (digital and biological), and can

include varying degrees of state intervention in their creation and maintenance.

We can divide Hardt and Negri’s common into two, distinctive categories. The

first form of the common is that of the ‘the common wealth of the material world –

the air, the water, the fruits of the soil, and all nature’s bounty’.119 This form of the

common as preceding capitalism, but is brought into the processes of capitalism

117 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, p. 39. 118 Negri and Roos, ‘From refusal of labor’; and Harvey, ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, p. 261. 119 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. viii.

120

through primitive accumulation.120 Primitive accumulation should not, then, be

thought to be an outdated or outmoded form, overcome with the move to

industrial capitalism, but instead the move between production and primitive

accumulation should be seen as geographically variable and able to change over

time.121

However, in general, it is not this form of the common that the authors see as

central to contemporary capitalism, or resistance to it, or indeed, the primary focus

of this thesis.122 It is ‘the common that we continually produce and the common

that serves as the basis for our actions’,123 therefore highlighting the centrality of

production in their analysis. Such a formulation implies new processes of wealth

creation, new means of expropriation and enclosure, and thus new projects of

resistance.124 The creative and immaterial common is defined by the ‘results of

social production’.125 In this way we can distinguish such a conception from the

natural commons and can be called the creative or immaterial common.126 This

creative common is, therefore, not merely discovered, as with the natural

common, but instead is constantly produced through cooperation, interaction and

knowledge production.127 Due to the continual reproduction of the creative

common, it is not subject to the same logic of scarcity;128 whose ownership is

harder to designate and police and thus implies a form of expropriation not via

profit, but via rent.129 It is through a focus on such a form of the common that

Hardt and Negri come to see the metropolis as a vital site in resistance, with the

120 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 138. 121 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 138. 122 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 72. 123 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 197. 124 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 197. 125 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. viii. 126 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 186. 127 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 128 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 139. 129 M. Hardt, ‘The Common in Communism’, Rethinking Marxism 22:3 (2010) pp. 349-350.

121

metropolis appearing as a site of increased intensity of the common. We can

therefore see that the metropolis is the site in which both material and immaterial

production are undertaken, and the site in which this labour is appropriated via

private ownership and enclosure. The metropolis is, therefore, the site in which

the multitude must come to contest and reclaim their expropriated labour, in all its

forms.

In summary, through a discussion between Hardt and Negri and Harvey I have

demonstrated that corporeality is the central difference between Harvey and

Hardt and Negri in relation to the understanding of the urban common. The

corporeality of Hardt and Negri’s common emphasises the novelty of the urban

common as produced and productive under late capitalism which is organised in

certain ways. Contestation of the common is therefore over the means of

organising of people, places and immaterial products. For Hardt and Negri, this

defines the urban common, yet remains under explained in the Empire trilogy. The

following section expands on this understanding of the urban common through

tackling the question of what a unionism of the metropolis might well look like?

3.5 The Politics of the Urban Common I have thus far established that the urban domain is a vital site of investigating the

common, which must be defined through its corporeality in both the

understandings of transformation and potential resistance through specific

organisational forms. I can now begin to project an understanding of the urban

common and in particular the immediately political nature of the urban common

from the limited intellectual development of this concept in the work of Hardt and

Negri. As we saw in Section 2.2, Harvey’s dialectical approach insists on a

contradictory unity between the processes of production and circulation that

typify the urban arena. Continuing his problematisation of the distinction made in

122

social and political life, as well as in Marxian theory, between the sites of

production and circulation; work and life, Harvey sees that resistance to the

dominant forms of capitalist urbanisation and the creation of radical alternatives

today face a problem in that resistance remains fragmented between the generally

time-oriented workplace struggles and more spatially focussed community

struggles.130 The two forms of struggle become divorced under the process of

urbanisation,131 and in particular through contemporary forms of flexible

accumulation. Harvey asks of contemporary political theory founded on the

acceptance of such fragmentation and separation, such as Hardt and Negri’s work,

how it is that such subjectivities construed through postmodernism can challenge

neoliberalism?132 Here I develop Hardt and Negri’s perspective on resistance in

this context in order to demonstrate how a ‘unionism of the metropolis’ might be

constructed and how it might contest neoliberalism in the urban realm.

As Harvey argues, capitalism not only reproduces the built environment adequate

to the reproduction of capital, but also reproduces the social life required for the

accumulation process. The advent of factory production consigned to distinct

spheres the real productive process of production for accumulation, whilst

situating the reproductive labour to the social, private sphere.133 This means that

the split between community and workplace struggles is reproduced, despite the

apparent relations between these two spheres. Harvey argues that the relationship

between the sites of production and reproduction are evidently clear in that labour

needs a living place.134 The urban is defined by the recognition that humanity is

comprised of great complexity of roles, from worker to consumer, to resident, to

130 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 83. 131 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 83. 132 Harvey, Postmodern Condition, p. 42. 133 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 37. 134 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 38.

123

activist and consumer.135 The lack of coherence we are faced with renders the

urban process under capitalism ‘a peculiarly open affair’ in which confusion,

conflict and struggle are the normal conditions.136 In his engagements with the

concept of postmodernism, Harvey is critical of the tendency in contemporary

political theory ‘the most startling fact about postmodernism: its total acceptance

of the ephemerality, fragmentation, discontinuity, and the chaotic’.137

In place of the acceptance of chaos, fragmentation and incoherence, radical

political and social projects must be built that emphasise the unity across

situations that humans experience qua humans. Therefore, whilst the urban is,

indeed, a site of fragmentation, it is also, or can also be, a site of recognition of

universality.138 This suggests that we must recognise the interlinking nature of the

powers over money, time and space and in response construct social movements

of ‘breadth and scope’.139 Harvey argues that, ‘the only way to resist capitalism

and transform society toward socialism is through a global struggle in which a

global working class formation…acquires sufficient power and presence to fulfil

its own historical potentialities’, especially through the construction of

commonality across situations.140 Urban struggles such as those over housing,

education, healthcare amongst other issues surrounding the politics of daily life,

are forms of ‘displaced class struggle’,141 which should be seen as such; ‘if it looks

like class struggle and acts like class war then we have to name it unashamedly for

what it is’.142

135 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 222. 136 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 1. 137 Harvey, Postmodern Condition, p. 44. 138 Harvey, Consciousness, pp. 14-15. 139 Harvey, Consciousness, p. 2. 140 Harvey, Spaces of Hope, p. 39. 141 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 26. 142 Harvey, Neoliberalism, p. 202

124

Therefore, from this we can see that where there are high levels of concentrations

of the working class, the potential for revolution and resistance is dramatically

increased.143 In such situations, the abilities of the working class to recognise the

commonality of their situation is improved; with radical community struggle

communicating a working class resistance to capitalist urban practice.144 Such

forms of working class community resistance can be witnessed, Harvey claims, in

the practices of the Black Panthers and the Basque region amongst others.145

Recognising the insurgent potentialities of working class concentration in urban

space, a common capitalist tactic of control of urban resistance is to fragment and

move the working class, or combat the radical community culture with a

conservative, cross-class sense of belonging.146

This understanding of the potentialities of urban struggle acts as a challenge to the

work of Hardt and Negri. For Hardt and Negri, today’s city is shifting toward a

new, emerging mode of production label as biopolitical production; ‘in the

biopolitical economy there is an increasingly intense and direct relationship

between the production process and the common that constitutes the city’.147

Therefore, in response to Harvey’s understanding of the fragmentation of labour

and the consequent political struggle that holds the possibility of constructing

unity, the common in Hardt and Negri offers up the possibility of a degree of

unity already existing. Whilst capitalism has always required some element of the

common in order to exist and expand, today’s shift toward the exploitation of

ideas, relationships and cultural practices has made the exploitation and

appropriation of the common more explicit.

143 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 29. 144 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 30. 145 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 30. 146 Harvey, The Urbanisation of Capital, p. 29. 147 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 154.

125

One of the key means through which this process becomes visible is through

analysis of the metropolis in which finance and private real estate come to realise

the value produced throughout neighbourhoods, districts and entire cities. Here,

value is not just a result of the size or quality of the building or space at question,

but comes through ‘externalities’ such as noise, pollution and crime on one hand

and transport links, school places and cultural facilities on the other.148 As such

urban value and externalities are consistently traded upon in the metropolitian

environment. The common that pervaded the urban environment is not one that

emerges from traditional forms of production in the workplace, but often

predominantly from the daily lives of the inhabitants of the city. Hardt and Negri

summarise the dilemma arguing that the ‘wealth produced in common is

abstracted, captured, and privatized, in part, by real estate speculators and

financiers’.149

This understanding of the common that is produced throughout the city, and is

then traded upon and enclosed by private capital interest highlights a central

contention of contemporary urban life and defines the site of contestation over

production and expropriation. Whilst the so called externalities traded upon in the

pursuit of profit in contemporary real estate markets is external to the industrial

production process, it is completely internal to the forms of biopolitical production

that Hardt and Negri see as emerging. The externalities, or the common as they

can come to be seen, are nothing but that produced through the life of the city;

cutting across traditional spheres of work and pleasure, public and private, and

productive and reproductive. Struggles over the common are not limited to

struggles over increased pay, improved conditions or increased leisure time, nor

148 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 154-155. 149 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 156

126

to better quality housing, schooling, transport or healthcare. Instead struggles over

the common centre on the liberation of daily urban life from the appropriation and

enclosure of private capital. Negri argues that in this situation of fragmented and

immersive working practices, in which the life of the city is nothing but the

production of the common,150 ‘the struggles of the precariat can make a bigger

impact on the metropolitan level…From the moment when it is difficult to define

a single wage demand, perhaps it is easier to begin to think of a series of rights

linked to ones own reproduction, health, culture, housing, education’.151

4. Occupy and the Urban Common To this point, the focus of this chapter has been exclusively on the theoretical

debates centred on the differing diagnoses of contemporary urban political

struggle and commons as found in the works of Hardt and Negri and of Harvey.

Here, in order to substantiate the concept of the urban common, I turn to the most

pressing urban struggles of recent years, the Occupy movement. I argue that the

emergence of protest and discontent on the streets of cities across the world can be

read as a testament to the contradictions inherent within the process of capitalist

accumulation, which is continually expanding its reach and coming to pervade all

aspects of human life including the daily lives of people through housing crises,

financial crises and programmes of austerity. Occupy highlights the creativity and

constituent process of the contemporary urban common which is organised along

different political lines. Such an understanding of the common necessitates a

corporeal approach that recognises the interactions between spaces, landscapes,

people and political struggles and structures which enables us to distinguish the

common as found in Hardt and Negri from that found in Harvey.

150 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 251. 151 Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism, p. 211.

127

Paralleling the theoretical turn foregrounded in this chapter, much recent

resistance has taken on a particularly urban character.152 Whilst many of the key

moments of the alter-globalisation movement are synonymous with the cities in

which they took place (Seattle, Genoa, Gothenburg) they also sought to disrupt

and challenge the neoliberal ordering and policing of daily urban life; making

visible the discontent.153 The Occupy movement, which set up tents, schools,

medical facilities, libraries and places of political discussion in parks and squares

in 950 cities in 2011 takes this focus on urban politics even further.154 Whereas the

alter-globalisation movement travelled to and contested the travelling circus of

global summits, disrupting and contesting for a day, or a week, Occupy set up

camps where they were, and refused to move for weeks or months.

As Pickerill and Krinsky argue, Occupy put the issue of space at the core of its

agenda through spatial strategies of disruption, symbolic significance of certain

spaces and challenging the privatisation of our cities.155 It became apparent that

Occupy drew attention to the problem they saw in that ‘the “commons” are being

turned into private malls; genes and seeds are being altered and patented; water is

being dammed, bought and sold as an increasingly scarce and valuable

commodity; politicians and whole governments are routinely bribed and bent to

capital’s will; children are targeted and tracked at birth, fed advertisements and

slogans in place of needed nourishment’.156 As well as the very physical and

visible privatisation of space in cities, we can also trace a distinct, yet interrelated

152 G. Charnock, ‘Lost in Space? Lefebvre, Harvey and the Spatiality of Negation’, South Atlantic Quarterly 113:2 (2014) p. 313. 153 J. S. Juris, ‘Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space, and emerging logics of aggregation’, American Ethnologist 39:2 (2012) p. 267. 154 D. Bulley, ‘Occupy Differently: Space, Community and Urban Counter-Conduct’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) p. 238. 155 J. Pickerill and J. Krinsky, ‘Why does Occupy matter?’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012), p. 280. 156 B. Shepard, ‘Occupy against Inequality’, Socialism and Democracy 26:2 (2012) p. 27.

128

form of neoliberal transformation of urban life in the ever-more invasive policing

and distribution of bodies in space.157 In essence, many of the spaces which were

occupied were nominally public spaces; the public moved through these spaces on

a daily basis; to and from work, eating lunch and drinking coffee, making phone

calls and so on.

However, occupation reminds us that only a certain kind of public is permitted in

these spaces. Whilst many protesters initially argues that they did ‘not need a

permit to occupy…on public sidewalks’,158 they soon found that nominally public

sites such as Wall Street and Paternoster Square were barricaded off to them.

Instead, encampments took advantage of private space and the grey areas of the

demarcations between public and private space in the two most prominent

Occupy encampments. For Occupy Wall Street, whose initial target was Wall

Street itself, found itself camping in Zuccotti Park, the privately owned park

which remained ‘non developed in return for developing adjacent buildings

higher’.159 As for Occupy London Stock Exchange, after finding themselves shut

out of Paternoster Square; the public square in front of the Stock Exchange, the

protesters moved to the semi-public space of St Paul’s Cathedral.

Such a perspective clearly depicts Occupy as a contestation of the forms of

circulation, of both people and capital, at work within contemporary global cities

and centres of finance capital. Bulley puts forward a comparable argument when

he suggests that ‘[i]f conduct is conducted within global cities through the

promotion of good (and the diminishment of bad) circulation and mobility within

157 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 268. 158 A. Taylor, K. Gessen, n+1, Dissent, Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry, Eds., Occupy: Scenes from Occupied America (Verso, London, 2011) p. 2. 159 C. Calhoun, ‘Occupy Wall Street in perspective’, The British Journal of Sociology 64:1 (2013) p. 29.

129

gentrified and commercialised areas, Occupy…targets those areas in order to do

the opposite. Occupy dwells in and seizes space in order to halt, or simply “be”,

and thereby not circulate, not consume’.160 Whilst insightful and useful to a spatial

analysis of Occupy, this perspective continues to depict Occupy as a process of

negation of neoliberal capital and its governmental implications. With a focus on

circulation, comes a focus on resistance rather than production and creation. It is

here that Hardt and Negri’s conception of immaterial production and the common

comes to depict Occupy as more than purely a resistive force, but instead one that

is developing and creating complex forms of spatial organisation, political

interaction and digital communication. Importantly, as both Hardt and Negri, and

Bulley highlight, such a creative impulse cannot be separated out from the

processes at work in contemporary neoliberalism;161 that the common they are

creating is merely an expansion of the common they develop on a daily basis in

the context of capital accumulation.

As such, for Hardt and Negri, Occupy is a process of reclaiming and recreating the

common in which we all find ourselves everyday.162 It is therefore a contestation

and recreation of the world in which we live, and the world which must be

reclaimed by those who create it. The common is productive, not only of social

relations but also of concrete economic processes of capital accumulation. When

see in this light, Occupy no longer appears as merely a hindrance to the circulation

of capital, but instead as a creative process of discovering and expanding the

common basis on which we all live, interact and produce; a common which is

continually exploited and enclosed by capital. As such, Occupy was able to not

only highlight the common at the heart of contemporary urban life, but to reclaim

it and reorganise it along different lines for a significant period of time. 160 Bulley, ‘Space, Community and Urban Counter-Conduct’, p. 246. 161 Bulley, ‘Space, Community, and Urban Counter-Conduct’, p. 248. 162 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 4.

130

Harvey’s consideration of communities coming to recognise their collective

interests through physical proximity and the implications of this on political action

that would apparently centre around a formal, organised political structure that

conveys these commonalities seems ill-fitting for the complexities and novelties of

the Occupy movement. Activists of Occupy resisted attempts to formalise,

demarcate and regulate the common space of the encampment by any institutional

body. Whilst the image of the state looms large the background of Harvey’s

commons; regulating and restricting the use of and access to both natural and built

commons, the Occupy encampments constructed a common in spite of the state

and attempted to remain despite legal attempts to turn to notion of the common

on themselves through appeals to public access and health and safety.

Hardt and Negri’s concern with the ability of fixed political structures, in

particular with the state, to enable a development of and continued creation of the

common is here particularly pertinent. Hardt and Negri’s aversion to state-

centricity of radical activism can be seen to be symptomatic of their specific

concept of the common. As such, whilst they themselves admit that some attempt

to contest state power may well be necessary, the regulation of the common

through the state (in their view a form of public rather than common ownership)

is only ever able to regulate and restrict the common that exists and is captured by

the state. Whilst this may well be beneficial to that specific site or form of the

common, state regulation is never able to develop and create new commons. For

Hardt and Negri, the common is built by the creative and constantly productive

nature of humans that constantly overflows the abilities of capital and the state to

capture in its entirety. Whilst specific commons may be captured by the state or by

capital, the production of the common will always expand far beyond its reach.

The task of the multitude in struggle is to develop and construct means of

131

organising and continually reproducing the common in a way that is resistant to

the capture by other means.

As such, Occupy makes real the idea that the common pervades contemporary

capitalist practice and accumulation through the putting to work of everyday

life,163 and the expropriation thereof through rent, and that such a common also

exists through the wide ranging interactions and communications across

geographical space; as such the common is seen as a virtual location that is

constantly being actualised in physical space.164 If the metropolis today appears as

the most vital and ready means of accessing the common that surrounds us and is

created by us every day, the reclamation and recreation of the common through

means such as occupation appears as a unionism of the multitude; the means of

contesting and reorganising the ways we engage each other and manage the urban

common. As such, whilst Harvey’s use of the common insists on the commons

acting as a negation of capitalist accumulation; an alternative that is constructed

when the working class recognise the exploitation and appropriation that

capitalism subjects them to, Hardt and Negri insist that the common is created

through capitalist necessity to embed itself in the everyday. Therefore, in order to

further substantiate the ways in which the urban common can be constructed as a

radical alternative we need to investigate how recent struggles can be read as

urban commons-projects, which I do in the following section.

5. A struggle for the common In order to construct a substantive conception of the urban common,

commensurate with the thought of Hardt and Negri, this chapter so far has set out

the comparable attention paid to the urban scale for both Harvey and Hardt and

163 Hardt, ‘The Common in Communism’, p. 353. 164 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 72.

132

Negri, drawing on the development of Italian autonomism and French post-

structuralism to suggest that the common comes to play a specific role in the

Empire trilogy. In this way, we can come to appreciate the analytical implications

of the distinctive theoretical approaches on the contrasting notions of the urban

common. Stemming from Negri’s transformation of the Marxian perspective to

encompass the entirety of social life within the directly productive relationship

with capital, with the obvious implications for many of the Marxian orthodoxies,

Negri’s autonomism necessitates a new conception of exploitation, struggle and

production. For Hardt and Negri, the urban is of central concern due to the

creativity and intensity of the common they see created therein. This separation of

Hardt and Negri from the Marxian orthodoxies, including the dialectical process,

reveals a new relation of their theoretical work to on-going working class

struggles, most evidently the Occupy movement. The consequence of such a

theoretical approach to the concept of the common means that the common comes

to encompass the entirety of productive, communicative and resistive relations; a

moment of which can be observed through the urban common. As this chapter has

shown, a conception of the common, commensurate with Hardt and Negri must

approach the urban common not only as constantly produced, but also bound up

with new political forms of constituting and organising the common. The

following section develops the distinguishing features of Harvey and Hardt and

Negri’s understandings through an engagement with the Occupy movement as a

way in which urban common may well be constructed.

For Harvey, it is through physical proximity that political communities are built:

the working class are at certain times more or less confined to certain areas of the

capitalist metropolis and through such physical proximity and comparable

labouring practices are able to come to recognise the commons that they all create.

Such a recognition is not merely one of understanding the exploitation they face in

133

the workplace, but instead is also able to begin to tie this exploitation to social

problems in their living space; their communities, neighbourhoods and social

circles. As such, through the processes of capitalist reconstruction of the city

diverse peoples recognise their common social interests and begin to work out

ways to do something about it. Political organisation and contestation must

enable the working class to appreciate the ways in which social life is constructed

through the needs of capitalism and thus come to recognise the contradictions

inherent within the system. As such, Harvey views the emergence of protest and

discontent on the streets of cities across the world is testament to the

contradictions inherent within the process of capitalist accumulation, which is

continually expanding its reach and coming to pervade all aspects of human life

including the daily lives of people through housing crises, financial crises and

programmes of austerity. Such protests therefore focus on the circulation of

capital, through what Harvey calls the secondary and tertiary circuits of

capitalism. If such a process of resistance is to be successful, the institutional

arrangements that underpin capitalism must be targeted as well as potentially the

sites of production themselves.

However, my reading of the potential of Hardt and Negri’s urban common

highlights the distance between Harvey’s reading of struggle as displaced class

struggle; as contesting merely the circulation and externalities of capital

accumulation in which activism is reduced to simply resistance of the imposition

of new forms of labour and exploitation. However, with a concept of the common

developed from Hardt and Negri at the centre of our perspectives, the contestation

of the urban environment is transformed into one of discovering and creating the

common. Importantly, a struggle for the common must be founded upon the

forms of production and reproduction of life itself, the contestation and control

over the communities we live in and the expansion of the common across the city.

134

The common, therefore, pinpoints the processes of collaborative production as the

site of struggle. Such a process is ever more concentrated in the urban domain

with the contestation between production and control taking place across urban

environment. In particular, through contesting the urban processes of production

and organising political struggle, resistance, such as the 2011 Occupy movement is

able to reclaim and recreate the forms of life in the city and thus take on a

constituent, constructive role in producing and reproducing what it means to

dwell in the metropolis. With a focus on circulation, comes a focus on resistance

rather than production and creation. It is here that immaterial production of the

common comes to endeavour to depict struggle as developing and creating

complex forms of spatial organisation, political interaction and digital

communication. Importantly, as both Hardt and Negri, and Bulley highlight, such

a creative impulse cannot be separated out from the processes at work in

contemporary neoliberalism;165 that the common they are creating is merely an

expansion of the common they develop on a daily basis in the context of capital

accumulation.

The creation of autonomous spaces within cities, whether squats, communes,

community centres or protest camps pursues a strategy of politically constructing

communities of resistance. Commons projects reimagine and challenge the

existing body-city nexus, the relations between and experience of the city, through

inserting bodies in alternative relations to the urban environment. Such projects,

built on the frustrations and limitations with neoliberal capitalism’s enclosure and

privatisation of urban space functions not only as direct resistance, but, more

interestingly, as a means of constructing new subjectivities through such struggle.

165 Bulley, ‘Space, Community, and Urban Counter-Conduct’, p. 248.

135

The process of organising and running such spaces, along lines antagonistic to

those of capital, reveals the process of constituent power of these emerging

subjectivities.

Despite the construction of constituent processes in encampments, contemporary

activists often appear to perceive any attempt to formalise, demarcate and regulate

the common space of the encampment by any institutional body as a destruction

of the common. Hardt and Negri’s concern with the ability of fixed political

structures, in particular with the state, to enable a development of and continued

creation of the common is here particularly relevant. Hardt and Negri’s aversion

to state-centricity of radical activism can be seen to be symptomatic of their

specific concept of the common. As such, whilst they themselves admit that some

attempt to contest power may well be necessary,166 the regulation of the common

(in their view a form of public rather than common ownership) is only ever able to

regulate and restrict the common, subjecting it to capture by the state. Whilst this

may well be beneficial to that specific site or form of the common, state regulation

is never able to develop and create new commons. The common is built by the

creative and constantly productive nature of humans that constantly overflows the

abilities of capital and the state to capture in its entirety. Whilst specific commons

may be captured by the state or by capital, the production of the common will

always expand far beyond its reach. The task of the multitude in struggle is to

develop and construct means of organising and continually reproducing the

common in a way that is resistant to the capture by other means.

If the metropolis today appears as the most vital and ready means of accessing the

common that surrounds us; revealing relations of power and exploitation

166 Negri and Roos, ‘From refusal of labor’.

136

rendered into physical form, the reclamation and recreation of the common

appears to be the new unionism of the multitude; the means of contesting and

reorganising the ways we engage each other, and our environments, and manage

the common. As such, whilst Harvey’s use of the common insists on the commons

acting as a negation of capitalist accumulation; an alternative that is constructed

when the working class recognise the exploitation and appropriation that

capitalism subjects them to, Hardt and Negri insist that the common is created

through capitalist necessity to embed itself in the everyday.

Therefore, we come to see one of the central distinction between the two uses of

the concept of the common. For Harvey, the working class are exploited by

capitalism. This can occur within the traditional productive environment of

factories and workplaces, but is increasingly coming to exploit cultural,

communicative and intellectual production through a process of flexible

accumulation. Resistance to this is based on the recognition by working class

communities of the common forms of exploitation and impoverishment that they

suffer, both within the workplace and throughout their communities. In response

such communities seek to establish and contest through a claiming of commons,

and seek to change the conditions of the exploitative situation.

On the other hand, a Hardt and Negrian common dominates the accumulation

process of late capitalism. The multitude is continually productive of the

immaterial common, which is constantly exploited and appropriated by an ever

more distant capitalist class. The multitude is seen as constantly creative and thus

the common that is produced forever overflows the current bounds of capitalism;

its modes of production, circulation and appropriation. The common then at the

centre of novel technological developments and cultural practices. Capitalism is in

137

a constant struggle to accommodate and enclose this common. However the logic

of the common is inherently contrary to the foundations of private property.

Therefore, whilst capitalism must continuously push forward and enable the

development of the common, doing so opens up the possibility of its own demise.

Resistance occurs in this scenario when those who are engaged in the production

of the common recognise the manner in which capital is dividing up and profiting

from their collective labour, and that this need not be the case.

6. Conclusion This thesis sets out to answer the overarching research question of; How can the

common in Hardt and Negri be substantiated? In order to substantiate the concept of

the common, and in particular, here, the concept of the urban common, this

chapter have focussed on the secondary research question of; In what ways does the

concept of the common necessitate an investigation of urban production? In answering

this question I have argued that the urban common should be considered to

comprise of the productive relations of workers; a new scale in which to approach

relations of production in an ever more globalised world whereby urban

production centres on the production of the common. In order to develop and

substantiate this concept, I utilised the work of Harvey as a central interlocutor of

the urban under capitalism. Whilst the thinkers have acknowledged a growing

affinity between their works, especially in regard to the urban domain, I have

consistently argued that their work actually displays distinctive traits which

underpin divergent diagnoses of the urban condition.

Through the interaction of the two theoretical positions, two central issues can be

highlighted. Firstly, Hardt and Negri claim that the metropolis is to the multitude

what the factory was to the industrial working class, and that this factory is a

138

factory for the production of the common.167 Whilst seeing such a focus as a

positive turn in their theory, Harvey asks what does this actually mean?168 In order

to substantiate this claim, in response to Harvey’s challenges, I argue that the

corporeality of the urban common necessitates we consider new forms of

productive practice as the material basis for new forms of struggle.

The consequent sections of this chapter built on this claim in order to reflect on

and highlight the implications of such a conceptualisation for the potentiality of

struggle and resistance on this basis. In short, I developed Hardt and Negri’s call

for a construction of a ‘unionism of the metropolis’.169 These struggles find

themselves grounded in the urban common, which enables us to view the

contestation of the common more broadly. Through a brief discussion of how

secondary literature has considered the Occupy movement, I highlight the

necessity to seeing the urban common as a central category of contemporary

struggle which refuses state or public control, and thus enables a further

substantiation of the urban common in this regard. It is here that a conception of

immaterial production and the common comes to endeavour to depict struggle as

developing and creating complex forms of spatial organisation, such a creative

impulse cannot be separated out from the processes at work in contemporary

neoliberalism.170

I argue that resistance is able to reclaim and recreate the forms of life in the city

and thus take on a constituent, constructive role in producing and reproducing

what it means to dwell in the metropolis. It develop a conception of immaterial

167 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 250. 168 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 67. 169 Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism, p. 211. 170 Bulley, ‘Space, Community, and Urban Counter-Conduct’, p. 248.

139

production and the common which endeavours to depict struggle as creating

complex forms of spatial organisation, such a creative impulse cannot be

separated out from the processes at work in contemporary neoliberalism;171 that

the common they are creating is merely an expansion of the common they develop

on a daily basis in the context of capital accumulation.

Building on this, I argue that Occupy makes real the idea that the common

pervades contemporary capitalist practice and accumulation through the putting

to work of everyday life,172 and that such a common exists through the wide

ranging interactions and communications across geographical space; as such the

common is seen as a virtual location that is constantly being actualised in physical

space.173 If the metropolis today appears as the most vital and ready means of

accessing the common that surrounds us and is created by us every day, the

reclamation and recreation of the common through means such as occupation

appears as a unionism of the multitude; the means of contesting and reorganising

the ways we engage each other and manage the urban common.

In order to establish a unionism of the metropolis, I claim resistive practices must

be capable of responding to and bringing into relation the differentially

fragmented urban labour force; a labour force undertaking drastically different

working practices, but through comparable biopolitical, physical and intellectual

means. These forms may well take the form of expanded unionisation, or,

alternatively, struggles which have sought to increasingly constitute political

struggles of diverse groups and individuals through novel bodily practices and

spatial politics, through which otherwise intangible, immaterial labour appears to

171 Bulley, ‘Space, Community, and Urban Counter-Conduct’, p. 248. 172 Hardt, ‘The Common in Communism’, p. 353. 173 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 72.

140

be embodied in space and organised through constantly changing political

structures that remain adaptive to shifting impulses and demands. Such

constituent political processes can be seen, with the common fixed firmly at the

centre of their politics, to be more than resistive practices that seek to limit the

intrusion of capital, but instead, to build new forms of life beyond capitalism. The

abilities of such struggles to communicate with one another, across geographical

space, form the basis for argument in the next chapter.

141

Chapter 3

The Digital Common:

Networks of Resistance

‘…in being together a collective intelligence and a new kind of communication are

constructed’

Hardt and Negri, Declaration174

1. Introduction This thesis confronts the gap identified in the lack of substantive development of

Hardt and Negri’s concept of the common. Despite the centrality of the concept in

the Empire trilogy, the authors themselves remain uncertain of its precise content.

In this thesis, I argue that, alongside the urban common as discussed in Chapter 2,

the sphere of digital communications presents a means of substantiating the

concept of the common. In this chapter, I argue that whilst the role of technology

in Hardt and Negri’s work often appears as a technological-utopian perspective, I

argue that to focus on the purely technological discussions misses the rooting of

such processes in physical interaction, communication and production. I argue,

therefore, the technological moment of the common allows us to understand the

interactions of physical and digital communication and production.

In order to achieve this aim, this chapter takes a comparable structure to the

previous chapter, in which I outline the contribution of a leading critical scholar in

the field, before using this dialogue to challenge and question the theoretical work

of Hardt and Negri. In this chapter, I turn to the work of Manuel Castells, in order

to enable a substantiation and development of the thought of Hardt and Negri.

174 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 39.

142

Castells’ research on the development of technologies and their relation to social,

economic and political transformations of the previous fifty years has been

unparalleled. Castells’ theory of the network society has been depicted as a ‘lone

contender for the grand narrative of the present’.175 The work of Castells can be

seen, in terms of the conceptual apparatus deployed and the analytical focus, to

share many motivations and perspectives with the work of Hardt and Negri in

their Empire trilogy. In a comparable manner to Hardt and Negri, Castells readily

accepts that the changes in economic, political and social life today represent a

radical break with the capitalism of the industrial age. Whilst transformations in

the political, economic and social make up of society is constant and nothing new,

the role of and centrality of technology within today’s transformations is truly

novel, Castells claims.176

Through this exchange I argue that the limitations of Castells’ work enable a

substantiation and development of an adequate conceptualisation of the common,

commensurate with the work of Hardt and Negri. This allows the thesis to

contribute to Hardt and Negri’s conception of the common, specifically through

highlighting the central interplay of digital and physical life. I claim that Castells’

theoretical work faces two fundamental limitations, which curb its ability to

account for radical political change, and point to ways in which an adequate

theory of digital communication should be constructed. Firstly, Castells appears to

depict the digital, online world as deterministic, not only in its impact on the

transformations in the capitalist economy, but also in its role in the possibility of

socio-political change. Secondly, and most importantly in regards to the focus of

this thesis, is that struggle is reduced to a technological fix; a switching of

networks, rather than a concerted political struggle centred around the physical 175 F. Stalder, Manuel Castells: The Theory of the Network Society (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006), p. 1. 176 M. Castells, ‘High Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process in the United States’, in M. Castells, Ed., High Technology, Space and Society (SAGE, London, 1985) p. 11.

143

presence of bodies. Therefore, whilst the digital realm is often presented as the

central site of social struggle, when struggle does emerge into the physical

environment, it does so as a smooth transition from the digital to the physical

world; envisaged as an overflowing of insurgent energies from the Internet onto

the streets.

Throughout this chapter, whilst focussing on the technological aspects of theories

of contemporary struggle, I develop a reading of Hardt and Negri’s digital

moment of the common that avoids falling into technological-utopianism, which I

see as failing to account for the complex relationships between economic

production, political control, social struggle and communication; specifically how

digital communications relate to the physical encounter and struggle. I argue that

Hardt and Negri’s theoretical perspective can be rescued from this potential

limitation through the insistence of observing the importance of digital

communication beyond the digital-physical divide. In order to do so, I take Jeffrey

S. Juris’ work of social movements as an entrance point into assessing the role of

digital technology operating across both ‘logics of networking’ and ‘logics of

aggregation’.177 Technological-utopian narratives fall short of explaining the

emergence of huge numbers of people into the streets for extended periods of time

across many political, cultural and economic contexts, for which the Occupy

movement enables a reflection on this process and a substantiation of the digital

common in this regard through its relation with physical proximity and

biopolitical struggle.

This chapter therefore progresses through four main stages. Firstly, I draw out the

key implications of Castells’ analysis on the ways in which we approach digital

177 Juris, ‘Reflections‘, p. 260.

144

communication in relation to social struggle. Secondly, I use this to begin to clarify

and develop the concept of the digital common as found in Hardt and Negri.

Thirdly, in order to substantiate and develop this concept further, these insights

are utilised to reflect on and analyse the secondary literature on the use of digital

communications in the Occupy movement. Finally, on the basis of the arguments

made above, I begin to develop a concept of the common founded on a corporeal

understanding of the digital-physical relations of production, communication and

resistance. Here, then, I seek to develop a substantive theory of the digital

common from that found in Hardt and Negri. This chapter therefore contributes to

the overall aims of the thesis through answering the central research question, set

out in the Introduction, of: How can the common in Hardt and Negri be substantiated?

This chapter specifically confronts the sub-question relating to the digital common

of: In what ways does the concept of the common necessitate an investigation of digital

communication?

2.1 Castells and The Rise of the Network Society Whilst Negri was grappling with the apparent transformations in Italian economy,

labour markets and left-wing organising, bound up in the concerns with post-

Fordism, Castells was confronting similar intellectual considerations. For Castells,

it was the apparent socio-economic turn to post-Industrialism,178 and the apparent

short comings of structural Marxism in this regard.179 For Castells, Marxism is

limiting and outdated; in its place, a new theory of social reproduction and change

needs to be created.180 As with Negri, the spectre of fascism loomed large in

Castells own upbringing; growing up under fascist dictatorship to conservative

178 M. Castells, ‘The Service Economy and Postindustrial Society: A Sociological Critique’, International Journal of Health Services 6:4 (1974). 179 Stalder, Castells, p. 5. 180 M. Castells, The City and the Grassroots: A cross-cultural theory of urban social movements (Edward Arnold, London, 1983), p. xvii.

145

parents in his native Spain.181 After fleeing potential arrest and imprisonment

under the regime, Castells found himself, like Negri would a generation later, a

political exile in Paris. During this time Castells worked at the Sorbonne, alongside

many hugely influential intellectuals at the time, including Touraine, Lefebvre,

Baudrillard and, later, Foucault.182 Whilst 1968 would feature as a highly

influential series of events in Negri’s own political and intellectual work, Castells

was deeply involved, so much so that he was exiled from his adopted Paris

because of it.183 His long-standing post at Berkley led Castells to bear close witness

to the explosion of technological innovation in Silicon Valley throughout the 1980s

and 1990s, which would inform and shape his work from this point on.184 Unlike

Negri, the tumultuous events, both personal and political, throughout this period

would lead Castells to abandon his ‘empirically oriented Althusserianism’,185 and

Marxism more generally as an adequate theoretical and empirical approach.186

In its place, Castells’ work began to become more holistic in approach; stressing

the interaction of various aspects of society, none of which held a privileged

vantage point.187 Castells’ new meta-narrative would be founded on an

understanding of the information age and the network society. In the

informational age, production has undergone transformations which parallel

those outlined by Hardt and Negri in that production has moved toward a form of

informational capitalism,188 in which ‘innovation is the main source of

productivity, knowledge and information are essential materials of new

181 Stalder, Castells, p. 11. 182 Stalder, Castells, pp. 11-12. 183 Stalder, Castells, p. 12. 184 Stalder, Castells, p. 12. 185 Stalder, Castells, p. 33. 186 Stalder, Castells, p. 19. 187 Stalder, Castells, p. 2. 188 M. Castells, Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume III: End of Millennium (Blackwell, Oxford, 2010) p. 377.

146

production processes’.189 As a consequence, the extraction of profit shifts from an

individual factory level, to global financial markets.190 The transformations in

production have led to a situation in which power is immaterial.191 For Castells,

the rise of informationalism has transformed the ways in which power operates in

the contemporary era. In particular, Castells’ most recent works have sought to

analyse the changes in the nature of power in the contemporary era. In this context

of informational capitalism and a network society, both power and resistance

operate on the same terrain; utilising and reconstructing the networks that

penetrate and define our lives for different ends.

Castells argues that because power relationships are ‘largely constructed in

people’s minds’ through communication processes, the ways in which the shaping

of minds is undertaken is far more important than the domination of bodies.192 The

era of mass communication, via mass print newspapers, TV and radio, with

information emanating from large corporations and state broadcasters has given

way,193 and been reformulated through the inception of ‘mass self-

communication’.194 In mass self-communication networks, users are both senders

and receivers of messages.195 Whilst such forms of information distribution

operates through ‘decentralized communication networks’, such networks are

sites of struggle between autonomous subjects who seek to utilise the network for

certain ends, whilst corporations and governments seek to dominate the networks

for other ends.196 With society organised as a network, Castells’ work insists we

189 Castells, End of Millennium, p. 381. 190 Castells, End of Millennium, p. 382. 191 Castells, End of Millennium, p. 384. 192 M. Castells, Communication Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) p. xix. 193 Castells, Communication Power, p. xx. 194 Castells, Communication Power, p. xix. 195 Castells, Communication Power, p. 4. 196 Castells, Communication Power, p. xx.

147

consider how it is that power operates in a distributed way and utilises the ability

to include and exclude from the network.

For Castells, the role of technology today is unprecedented and should not be

downplayed. ‘The Internet is the fabric of our lives’,197 Castells argues in a typical

display of conviction. We are, Castells claims, seeing a transformation of our

world at the end of the twentieth century, and the period from 2000 witnessed and

accentuation of these trends.198 ‘In the last quarter of a century, a technological

revolution, centred around information, transformed the way we think, we

produce, we consume, we trade, we manage, we communicate, we live, we die,

we make war, we make love’.199 Whilst the principle of network organisations and

the existence of networks within society are very old, originating long before the

widespread utilisation of networked technology, the network form often struggled

to accomplish tasks. However, technology has enabled networks to become more

powerful, effective and total than hierarchies, Castells claims.200 In this context, the

network is antithetical to the alternative form of human organisation that revolves

around hierarchical bureaucracies.201 Therefore, Castells argues, the emergence of

networks since the advent of digital communications have been able to compete

with, and outperform hierarchies due to increased flexibility, scalability and

survivability.202

197 M. Castells, The Internet Galaxy: Reflections on the Internet, Business, and Society (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) p. 1. 198 Castells, End of Millennium, p. xiv. 199 Castells, End of Millennium, p. 1. 200 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 2. 201 Castells, Communication Power, p. 21. 202 Castells, Communication Power, p. 23.

148

The development of technology has enabled a construction of a dynamic global

economy.203 Castells argues that three key tendencies have come together to

produce a unique constellation of economic, political and social realities, which

has occurred since the 1960s. These tendencies include the flexibilisation and

globalisation of capital, the increasingly individual and open society and the

dramatic advances in computing and telecommunications made possible by the

micro-electronics revolution.204 Such processes are intertwined and mutually

effecting; people, companies and governments create, appropriate and transform

technology, adapting it to the situations in which they find themselves.205 The

result of such transformations has been to re-centre global politics and economics

on the processing and production of information as the primary goal.206 Such an

emphasis therefore means the focus of economic production is process rather than

product oriented.207 In this context, with the rise of information technology, public

and private life is being structured and restructured around technology, and in

particular the Internet.208

2.2 The Birth of the Internet For Castells, the differentiating factor of the contemporary era, as opposed to

previous epochs, is that technology has shifted beyond merely completing tasks

that were previously undertaken by humans, but has moved to a world in which

knowledge acts upon knowledge as the central productive process.209 At this

juncture, with the technological development of the Internet emerging as a central

problematique, it is necessary to unpack the precise history of the emergence of the

203 Castells, End of Millennium, p. 1. 204 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 2. 205 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 4. 206 Castells, ‘High Technology’, p. 11. 207 Castells, ‘High Technology’, p. 11. 208 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 3. 209 Castells, Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I: Rise of Network Society (Blackwell, Oxford, 1996), p. 17.

149

Internet briefly. Such a task is something that Hardt and Negri fail to do

throughout their work, with ideas of networks and singularities deployed with

few reference points to ground their analysis. Castells does a relatively

comprehensive job of outlining the precise technological developments that are

central to the expansion of a network society and informational age. This enables a

refining of the understanding of the technological basis of digital communication

that underpins the digital common, and consequently the ability to go beyond a

social construction of technology approach.

Beginning with the development of ARPANET in the late 1960s, which functioned

as a networking of university research in the military arena,210 this network was

later linked with other, similar networks, to create a ‘network of networks’.211 As

the Internet expanded beyond simply the military-research arenas, it soon became

privatised.212 In response, the scientific community and the utopian technologists

so involved in its inception gravitated to the open-source movement, which

sought to keep access to information open; developing technologies such as

‘copyleft’, Linux and the World Wide Web,213 which was developed and released

over the Internet in 1991.214 However, it wasn’t until the creation, distribution and

growing accessibility of complete browsers that enabled the average person to

begin to make use of the Internet, outside of research led communities and hacker

culture. Complete browsers began to emerge in 1994, and Internet Explorer

emerged in 1995; the importance of which Castells stresses when he suggests that

‘for most people the Internet was born in 1995’.215

210 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 9. 211 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 11. 212 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 12. 213 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 14. 214 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 15. 215 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 17.

150

The Internet, therefore emerged as a collaborative effort from military research,

government departments, university researchers, private corporations and

libertarian, hacker culture. Castells therefore seeks to highlight the serendipitous

origins of the emergence of the Internet, which relied on various tendencies and

projects converging and overlapping at a single moment in time.216 Primary

amongst these were the military intention that the network be survivable and

resistant to attack; enabling continued communication and instruction even while

nodes in the network were being attacked.217 Alongside the military aspect, the

scientific dream of free and open access to information and continued

collaborative research played a central part in the construction of the architecture

of the network.218 All the while, Castells argues the network was taken up and

developed by those enthused by the spirit of individual freedom that flourished in

the 1960s and 1970s.219 Such a technological development highlighted the

limitations of the Soviet model, in which unprecedented industrialisation had

occurred, alongside an unrivalled proportion of scientists to population, however

the suppression of information meant the technological possibilities of the

information revolution could never be realised.220 In particular, Castells notes how

the PC revolution completely bypassed Soviet technology.221

Therefore, we can begin to understand the complex history of the Internet, which

defies simplification or reduction to a few basic functions. Despite the

complexities, Castells argues that we must see that the rise of the communicative

power of the Internet has enabled us to imagine a life of free and total information,

216 Stalder, Castells, p. 3. 217 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 17. 218 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 19. 219 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 23. 220 Castells, End of Millennium, pp. 35-36. 221 Castells, End of Millennium, p. 27.

151

freedom of expression, interaction and participation in public life.222 However,

Castells distances himself from the technological-optimists (or, what he terms

‘futurologists’) by conceding that technology does not automatically lead to an

informational utopia, but rather that such developments can lead to a plurality of

outcomes.223

Here, perhaps Castells work offers little more than a social construction of

technology perspective; one that insists that technology is utilised and shaped

dependent on the pre-determined social needs, with various groups using

technology in different ways. Such a perspective seems to depoliticise technology,

in a manner that highlights emerging distinctions between the work of Castells

and the autonomist position of Hardt and Negri, who I have shown, in Chapter 1,

seek to highlight the myriad of political conflicts that operate across social life. The

use of technology, therefore, can be seen as one such contested terrain. I argue,

therefore, that we should distinguish between this potential social construction

thesis and a political construction of technology perspective that places struggle

over the development and use of technology at the heart of analysing its impact.

Indeed, whilst Castells’ work observes the ways in which social movements

respond to changes in the technological make up of society, it has been argued

that his work is, in contrast, rather slow in noting how technology shapes and

influences political action.224 We therefore have to look at the political struggles of

this emergent digital common, which is the focus of the consequent sections.

222 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 5. 223 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 5. 224 Stalder, Castells, p. 26.

152

2.3 Digital (Anti) Globalisation From an understanding of the central role of technology in Castells’ work, we

come to the question of the role played by resistance in this framing. The

following section draws out and develops Castells’ approach to global resistance

through digital networks in the contemporary era. I therefore seek to demonstrate

the limitations of a social construction of technology approach with regards to the

possibilities of political change. In response, I argue that an adequate

conceptualisation of the common must go beyond such limitations; limitations

which I argue can be overcome through a development of the common that goes

beyond the digital-physical divide and recognises the central role played by

bodily aggregation in radical political struggle.

Castells argues that; ‘movements are faced with the need to match the global reach

of the powers that be’.225 He argues that while power and counter-power are

distinct, they operate on the same logic of networks in which the network is

continually reprogrammed.226 Both domination and resistance rely on the network

as a form of attack and defence; resistance takes place through and by the

network.227 With the network form, and the diffusion of digital communication,

being strongly linked with the rise of globalised, neoliberal capitalism, there is

unsurprisingly local resistance to the forces of global integration in which local

cultures ‘fight to preserve the meaning of locality’.228 This process of asserting

meaning of locality against the space of flows is termed the ‘grassrooting’ of

globalisation.229 As Bell notes, ‘there are possibilities to appropriate the network

society, to make its logic work for other ends, in a process Castells calls

225 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 142. 226 Castells, Communication Power, p. 47. 227 Castells, Communication Power, p. 48. 228 Castells, Communication Power, p. 35. 229 Castells, Communication Power, p. 36.

153

‘grassrooting the space of flows’’.230 The question such a perspective must face, is

whether or not the alternatives have been switched off?231 Castells argues that far

more interesting and important than social movements against globalisation is the

globalisation of social movements.232 Whether contesting global culture, or

asserting local identity, communication networks are utilised by citizens to defend

and assert their interests.233

For Castells, whilst the contestation of globalisation and informationalism often

takes place off the Internet, even whilst utilising the increased communicative

power of digital communications, struggle also takes place on the Internet, over

the kinds of activities that are allowed, regulated and restricted and the ways in

which digital social, public space becomes privatised or enclosed.234 He argues that

whilst the diffusion of digital communications has expanded the social spaces in

the web through blogs, social media and sites such as YouTube, there has been a

concentration of ownership in the hands of large media corporations.235 Such social

spaces are therefore, very often heavily commercialised social spaces, dominated

by advertising.236 Despite the transformations in the media environment, it has

been the large corporations that dominated the mass media age that have been

best placed to dominate the networked interactive communication environment.

Whilst the initial impulse behind the development of the Internet was one of open

and total communication and transference of information, Castells claims, the web

has increasingly become a site of ‘walled gardens’ of technological infrastructure

230 D. Bell, Cyberculture Theorists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway (Routledge, London, 2007) p. 67. 231 Bell, Cyberculture Theorists, p. 67. 232 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 142. 233 Castells, Communication Power, p. 57. 234 Castells, Communication Power, p. 68 and 107. 235 Castells, Communication Power, p. 74. 236 Castells, Communication Power, p. 96.

154

that structures the communicative power of people.237 Despite this enclosure of

digital space, there is also a reaction against commercialisation of social space,238

with such spaces being ‘heavily contested’.239

Building on this, Castells discusses the impact of increased communication of the

Internet on the actions and practices of social movements today. Principally, for

Castells the practical benefits of Internet communications to social movement

activism on a global scale is the low cost of communication and the ease of

access.240 Such a movement emerged in response to the process of corporate

globalisation around the turn of the century, including the anti-1999 WTO protests

in Seattle and beyond, which Castells notes followed a ‘global symbolic

geography, mirroring the time and space of the gathering of global power-

holders’.241 For the alter-globalisation movements, the network was not only a

practical tool through which their struggle could be communicated, but an

organisational principle and a normative commitment to resist structured

authority.242 With the increasing political and social utilisation of technology, and

the consequent shaping of the technology itself via these utilisations, power comes

to function as a network, which is able to outperform hierarchy in its ability to

organise, coordinate and extract value. As noted, this formulation of power as a

network is itself political and contains struggle and contradiction. Those who seek

to resist and transform the way power operates are themselves drawn into a

struggle in and over the use of networks.

237 Castells, Communication Power, p. 107. 238 Castells, Communication Power, p. 68. 239 Castells, Communication Power, p. 96. 240 Castells, The Internet Galaxy, p. 142, and Castells, Communication Power, p. 343. 241 Castells, Communication Power, p. 339. 242 Castells, Communication Power, 343.

155

Occupy was, for Castells, able to develop the principles of the alter-globalisation

movement through global digital communications, to ‘transform indignation in

insurgent politics by seizing the versatility and networking capabilities of mobile

phones’, in particular.243 Beyond this, the re-emergence of anarchist thought in

social movements has pushed the network as a model for the organisation, not

only of resistive practice, but of society at large.244 In the Occupy project, the

communication of anger has been central, enabling a level of solidarity distinct

from political, social and cultural affiliations.245 The dispersal of anger through

geographical space and across cyberspace means the resistance is less likely to be,

and certainly less easily, suppressed.246 Such a relation based on indignation and

the organisation of resistance around such emotive issues enables a relationship

based on strong ties during the movement, but that tend to continue after the

event has come to an end; the movements are often ‘ephemeral but intense’.247 As

such, social movements are constituted as a means of creating, expanding and

reclaiming the networks that dominate society; seizing technologies whilst not

submitting to the structures of domination.248

For Castells, power, in the contemporary world operates through a regulation and

management of information that the subject is exposed to. Castells argues that

‘power relationships, the foundation of the institutions that organise society, are

largely constructed in people’s minds through the communication process. The

shaping of minds is a more decisive and lasting form of domination than the

submission of bodies by intimidation’.249 It is due to this that the shift from mass

243 Castells, Communication Power, 303. 244 Castells, Communication Power, p. 345. 245 Castells, Communication Power, pp. 346-347. 246 Castells, Communication Power, p. 347. 247 Castells, Communication Power, p. 363. 248 Castells, Communication Power, p. 346. 249 Castells, Communication Power, p. xix

156

communication (TV, newspapers, radio) to mass self-communication (interactive,

self-generated, self-directed and self-selected information) is potentially

liberating.250 He claims that ‘the public mind is constructed by networking

individual minds, such as yours. Thus, if you think differently, the network will

operate differently’.251 This focus on the relationship between digital networks and

the mind highlights that the terrain being analysed is one of post-industrialism

and the consequent rise of intellectual and emotive labour practices over physical

work. For instance, Castells suggests that ‘automation, which received its full

meaning only with the deployment of information technology, increases

dramatically the importance of the human brain into the work process’.252

Therefore, my discussion thus far of Castells’ work has highlighted the complex

historical development of the Internet, which has impacted the technological

transformation of society, through the development of a form of production of

knowledge operating on knowledge. Such a process has led to what Castells terms

the network society, in which social interaction takes place on and through

technological networks, which are adaptable to diverse social motivations. Whilst

technological capitalism is the predominant form of digital interaction, technology

itself is politically neutral, and often leads to social and political tensions and

utilisations. The ability to resist and transform the network society centres on the

ability to engage in and develop informational and knowledge forms; using

technology more efficiently than alternatives. This therefore centres operations of

power and resistance on the brains of individuals and social groups that seek to

switch the purposes of networks.

250 Castells, Communication Power, p. xx. 251 Castells, Communication Power, p. 432. 252 Castells, The Rise of the Network Society, p. 241.

157

In the following section, I will outline the limitations of this reduction of human

experience, and political contestation, to cognitive processes and technological

switches. I argue specifically that such an issue can be approached through Hardt

and Negri’s concept of the digital common; a focus which rescues Hardt and

Negri from their own technological-determinism. In response to analyses that read

technological development as purely interesting due to the implications on

knowledge and the mind, that digital networks shape and reshape physical

interaction, experience, production and resistance. I highlight how considering

digital technology as a purely psychological process misses the importance of

physical interaction and bodily aggregation in political struggle. Therefore, the

technological-determinist perspective fails to account for the complex social

interactions necessary for political struggle; the means of communication of

struggle, as well as avoiding the central question of production of and within such

technologies. I argue that a thorough reading of Hardt and Negri enables a

development of a concept of the common that goes beyond technological-

determinist perspectives. This substantiation and development of the digital

common is the focus of the consequent section.

3.1 The Common and the Limits of Technological Determinism Hardt and Negri’s political project in the Empire trilogy has been widely associated

with the developing discourse on technological innovation, and has certainly not

been immune to criticisms of technological-determinism and utopianism.253 Such

critiques are unsurprising considering the use of technological terminology and

conceptualisations to interpret contemporary social relations; referring to the

smooth space of contemporary global capitalism and the predominance of

networks. Such critiques essentially argue that such a vision repositions and

reimagines radical politics as something that easily dovetails with postmodern 253 Dyer-Witherford, ‘Cyber-Negri’, in Murphy and Mustapha, The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, pp. 141-149.

158

capitalism and neoliberal discourses of liberty and freedom in the exchange of

information, goods and peoples. For instance; Hardt and Negri assert that ‘the

Internet is a good initial image or model for the multitude because, first, the

various nodes remain different but are all connected in the Web, and, second, the

external boundaries of the network are open such that new nodes and new

relationships can always be added’.254 The network, therefore, appears as both the

model for and the means of construction of the multitude.255

Whilst Hardt and Negri’s work often appears to coincide with the claims of the

technological-optimists, and shares many reference points with the work of

Castells, I argue there are clear and important distinctions to be drawn which

enable us to read the common as a particularly unique site of social struggle.

Whilst both Castells and Hardt and Negri see the transformatory process of

globalisation as changing the relationships of production and power, with the rise

of finance capital, and most importantly, for this chapter, the role of technology

within this transformation, the common enters the discussion as a potential site of

alternative organisation and production in Hardt and Negri. This common I argue,

despite its technological basis, must be founded upon the physical, bodily

resistance in tangible social struggles.

The work of Hardt and Negri has often been associated with a tendency toward

technological utopianism that has emerged since the 1990s, with the insistence on

digital communication technologies and networked individuals, summarised

neatly through the notion that ‘technology has created a new route out’ of

254 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 255 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 82.

159

capitalism.256 This is generally claimed to be due to an inherent ‘mismatch between

market systems and an economy based on information’;257 for which the market

requires and prices based on scarcity, whereas information is abundant.258 I divide

this broad tendency into two distinct areas of techno-determinism. The first is that

which presents digital communications and peer-to-peer networks as some form

of inherently anti-capitalist, socialised form of production that exists within the

contemporary capitalist economy. The second tendency highlighted is that which

seeks to portray technological development as one in which, whilst not being

inherently antagonistic to the private interests of capital accumulation, is the key

site of contestation for radical activists today. Whilst avoiding some of the

essentialising assertions of the former group, I argue it confuses technological

cooperation and social production for social production and ownership itself.

Therefore, rather than seeing the digital as a domain in which the contradictions of

capitalism become apparent, and thus a domain on which to fight, as in Hardt and

Negri’s common, it portrays the digital as the exclusive domain of struggle.

For Hardt and Negri, and the wider autonomist tradition, the role of technology in

contemporary society is read through a consideration of Marx’s ‘Fragment on

Machines’. As highlighted in Chapter 1, in ‘Fragment’, Marx turns to the potential

of technology to take on the central role in the production of goods, meaning that

the direct exploitation of labour power may become secondary to the exploitation

of the general intellect, or the general scientific knowledge base of society.259

Technological development means that ‘man steps to the side of the production

256 P. Mason, ‘The End of Capitalism has begun’, The Guardian (17/7/15). https://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun. Accessed 29/4/17. 257 P. Mason, Postcapitalism: A Guide to Our Future (Allen Lane, London, 2015) p. xi 258 Mason, Postcapitalism, p. xix; the paradigmatic example is set out in J. Rifkin, The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism (Palgrave Macmillan, New York, 2014) 259 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 700.

160

process’.260 Hardt and Negri’s argue that the network has replaced the assembly

line as the preeminent form of production in late capitalism,261 meaning old forms

of organisation, founded on the centralisation and hierarchisation of labour in

factories, are no longer adequate to the new situation.

Hardt and Negri’s second reference point, again, an influence sketched out in

Chapter 1, for the interpretation of the role and implication of networked power

and production is the influence of Deleuze and Guattari’s conceptualisation of the

rhizome. It has been suggested that the rhizome provides a conceptualisation of

cyberspace, in which there is no beginning or end to the network; no centres, but

only lines and intersections.262 The implication for the development and growth of

the network across society is that interaction and production becomes increasingly

horizontal, smooth, open and nomadic.263 For Hardt and Negri, Deleuze and

Guattari’s rhizome provides the image of the Internet as a ‘nonhierarchical and

noncentred network structure’.264

The combination of the insights of Marx’s ‘Fragments’ and Deleuze and Guattari’s

conception of the rhizome enables Hardt and Negri to see the process of the

technological reorganisation of capital to be a qualitative leap that anchors a shift

from the formal to the real subsumption of labour to the interests of capital.265 The

real subsumption brings all production under the guise of capital, in which the

network replaces the assembly line.266 The reorganisation of production has led to

260 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 705. 261 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 295. 262 J. Pickerill, Cyberprotest: Environmental activism online (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003) p. 24. 263 Pickerill, Cyberprotest, p. 24. 264 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 299. 265 Hardt and Negri, Empire, 272. 266 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 295.

161

implications for the process of control in which power has become decentralised

and networked.267 This decentralised power and production process appear as

smooth space, or friction free capitalism, yet whilst it has done away with simple

binaries of inside/outside, there remains a multiplicity of tensions and fault

lines.268

Hardt and Negri claim rather than the retreat of work as the central relationship of

exploitation, the technological transformations result in the expansion of labour

into social life. Such an insistence enables Hardt and Negri to continue to situate

exploitation at the heart of capitalism and challenges to it.269 We have to recognise

that labour still plays a central role in capitalist production, recognising that it is

often hidden and disguised behind seemingly immaterial products. Rather than

this apparent retreat of labour, and thus exploitation, from contemporary late-

capitalism and radical responses to it, Hardt and Negri see labour being

incorporated into new modes of production that are constituted through networks

which not only alters the nature and the organisation of production, but also alters

the qualities of what is produced. In contemporary communicative, digitised

production creates externalities which increasingly constitute a socially produced

value, through abstract cooperative labour practices.270 Such a form of production

can be seen to constitute the commons, in which labour becomes disparate nodes

in networks which absorb and process information thereby increasing the

importance of the network as new nodes are added.271 It is this recognition that

enables us to see contemporary social movement struggles as an adequate

response to the process of contemporary global capitalism and the utilisation of

digital technology. 267 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 294. 268 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 190. 269 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 149. 270 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 296. 271 Castells, Communication Power, pp. 19-20.

162

Such a shift in production ‘centers on a qualitative leap in the technological

organisation of capital’,272 which constitutes what Hardt and Negri perceive as

shift from the formal to the real subsumption of labour under capital.273 In this

situation, with the retreat of capital from labouring processes, we can see

capitalism attempting a ‘construction of properly capitalist society’,274 with

subjects ‘proper to capitalism’.275 Contemporary forms of extraction become more

generalised and focus on the enclosure, capture and exploitation of the common.276

This produces a situation in which finance capital hovers over social production,

and capital itself becomes ever more external to the production process.277 Whilst

capitalism seeks to construct new forms of extraction from networked, social

production, this situation offers resistive subjects new areas of potential

contestation. In the realm of social production, with capital ever-further from the

direct production process, there is a degree of autonomy afforded to producers,278

which becomes space in which potential alternatives can be constructed.

Therefore, whilst we can see that Hardt and Negri are not immune to appearing to

stray into the territory of technological-determinism, especially in their Empire

trilogy, I argue that a qualitatively different impulse can be garnered from

emphasising the role of the common as the site of struggle. The digital common

cannot be taken as either (as the technological-utopians would claim) necessarily

progressive, nor the primary site of contestation with contemporary global capital,

as those such as Castells would suggest.

272 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 272. 273 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 272, and Commonwealth, p. 365. 274 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 365. 275 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 142. 276 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 150, and Commonwealth, p. 141. 277 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 145 and p. 141. 278 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 140.

163

Instead, I argue that the digital common plays an antagonistic role within

contemporary capitalism; operating both as a site of extreme capital accumulation

and extraction, yet also presenting new possibilities of communication between

potentially resistive singularities. In short, the digital common, like the political

and urban common, functions as both basis for and the object of political activism

today. This struggle plays out in two ways. Firstly, through struggles over

production and, secondly, over communication. In what follows I outline and

develop the contribution of Hardt and Negri in these two regards in order to

develop my substantiation of the digital common. I firstly highlight how the

digital moment is one of productive relations, not only communicative capacities.

3.2 Production of the Digital Common In Chapter 1, I showed how the autonomist rediscovery of Marx’s ‘Fragment on

Machines’ had led to Negri, amongst others, coming to consider the role of

technology in the development of capitalism as a vital topic. The rediscovery of

the ‘Fragment’ by autonomists targeted the claim that; ‘Labour no longer appears

so much to be included within the production process; rather, the human being

comes to relate more as watchman and regulator to the production process

itself’.279 As such, rather than an individual worker’s labour power being exploited

through the production process, the advent of large scale machinery in production

leads to a situation in which it is general, social, scientific knowledge, distilled into

the technology of the machines that becomes the mode of transferring value to the

commodity.280

279 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 705 280 Marx, Grundrisse, p. 692.

164

This development in the productive capacity of capitalist production raised the

possibility of the site of exploitation no longer residing in the labour power of

workers specifically, but in social knowledge and the general intellect. It was

noted that autonomists, including Cleaver sought to recentre political struggle at

the core of technological development, rendering sociality as a struggle between

capital and labour. Cleaver argues that; ‘Just as Marx studied the implications of

this transformation for our understandings of the dynamics of exploitation and

class struggle in the factory, so can we study the implications for this wider

proliferation for our struggles and our desires’.281

This emphasis on the role of scientific labour in the capitalist mode of production

leads some autonomists, including Negri, to the claim that it is not so much the

individual worker that is exploited in production, but rather the total social labour

power. The individual worker, then, sees little point in struggling against a

specific boss for specific tangible improvements in conditions and pay, but rather

must seek to reclaim the entirety of social production from the parasitical capture

of the common by capital. This claim dovetails neatly with the general autonomist

concern over the transformation of labour from one of mass industrial production

to the predominance of technological, intellectual and precarious working

patterns. In such cases, it is often difficult to see the relation of exploitation, when

the worker produces nothing tangible or quantifiable through decentralised

networks.

The rise of immaterial labour is definitively linked to the decline of Fordism and

rise of Toyotism, and in particular the ‘increasingly extensive use of computers’.282

The rise of computer networks has reshaped industrial production toward 281 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 282 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 291.

165

information based systems and communication, reliant on the speedy transfers of

information regarding demand from consumer to producer.283 Not only does

immaterial production transform the traditional industrial production process, but

also opens up new forms of production; of information and knowledge itself,

which should be recognised as social in just the same way that the production of

commodities is social.284 Hardt and Negri argue that ‘[t]he increasingly extensive

use of computers has tended progressively to redefine labouring practices and

relations, along with, indeed, all social practices and relations’.285 The computer

has enabled a further homogenisation of labour practices; reducing almost all

labour to a process of the use of computer technology,286 whilst the digital network

has transformed the forms of organisation, communication and centralisation of

production.287 In essence, ‘We are data laborers’, who produce, reproduce and

recreate digital information that is captured by giant technology conglomerates.288

It is these forms of immaterial labour that ‘drive the postmodernization of the

global economy’, Hardt and Negri claim.289

It is therefore necessary, I argue, to conceive of the common, including the digital

common, as a site of production and exploitation; as the key to the organisation of

the working class in order to seek the transformation of the ownership of

production. Whilst networked, immaterial production has been utilised to deskill

workers, destroy the organisational forms of the mass worker and extend the

horizon of production, the network also contains the possibilities of

transformation. As Cleaver notes in his commentary on Marx, the results of the

283 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 290. 284 Fuchs, Social Media, p. 4. 285 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 291. 286 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 292. 287 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 294-295. 288 J. Todd, ‘Socialize the Internet!’, ROAR Magazine 2 https://roarmag.org/magazine/socialize-the-internet/. Accessed 28/9/2016. 289 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 293.

166

introduction of technology are politically determined.290 Marx argues in Capital

that under ‘capitalism machinery is not introduced to lighten toil but to increase

relative surplus value’.291 However, the role of technology is politically and

socially defined, and thus the potential for technology to alleviate labour can be

witnessed by the fact that whilst the ‘threat to employment often led workers to

resist and attack machines, whereas houseworkers…more commonly fought for

machines’.292 The rise of machines in the production process creates the possibility

of ‘two major kinds of working class response to the pressures and injuries caused

by the ever increasing subordination of life to machinery: one is objective, the

exhaustion and using up of people's lives, the other is subjective: revolt’.293

Therefore, in substantiating and developing a conceptualisation of the digital

moment of the common, we must read the digital common as a site of production

and potential resistance, but one that face particular challenges and opportunities

as highlighted in the following section.

3.3 The Paradox of Incommunicability This potential subjective revolt based on the possibilities of massively decreased

socially necessary labour time associated with the mechanisation of production

and the rise of mobile integrated network communications systems and

immaterial labour grounded in knowledge production, language and sociability as

its product therefore provides the founding of the common as the site of resisting

late capitalism. Hardt and Negri say that ‘It seems to us, in fact, that today we

participate in a more radical and profound commonality than has ever been

experienced in the history of capitalism’.294 This commonality, encapsulated in the

conception of new forms and means of production leads the authors to declare:

290 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 291 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 292 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 293 Cleaver, ‘A Study Guide for Capital’. 294 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 302.

167

‘The commons is the incarnation, the production and the liberation of the

multitude’;295 this incarnation, production and liberation finds its clearest

formulation in the technological production of late capitalism.

Despite the emphasis on the ‘profound commonality’ identified by Hardt and

Negri, the authors do not use this suggestion to claim that increased

communication itself leads to a new utopian possibility. The role of

communication in Hardt and Negri’s work, here, enables further distinctions

between their work and that of Castells’. Indeed, we find in Empire, what appears

to be a somewhat contradictory position on the role and impact of such

technological change on the abilities of contemporary struggles to develop and

communicate; the ability to create a cycle of struggles. In Empire, they argue that

‘in our much celebrated age of communication, struggles have become all but

incommunicable’.296 Again, two pages later, they reemphasise this point, arguing

that ‘the struggles do not communicate despite their being hypermediatized, on

television, the Internet, and every other imaginable medium. Once again we are

confronted with the paradox of incommunicability’.297 In a section focussing on the

struggles of the mid-90s, such a sentiment appears to be written directly with the

alter-globalisation movement in mind; with the emphasis being on disparate

movements able to demonstrate their abilities to interrupt the daily process of elite

decision making. As such rather than movements needing to communicate and

create broader counter-movements, each singular struggle attacks directly the

heart of global capitalism.298

295 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 301-302. 296 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54. 297 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 56 298 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 55.

168

The problem that such an analysis presents is that rather than constructing

durability and sustained movements for change, struggle is reduced to ‘a very

brief duration where they are born, burning out in a flash’.299 Despite this apparent

problem, the authors claim that rather than a weakness, such a tendency has

resulted in a new found power; ‘what the struggles have lost in extension,

duration, and communicability they have gained in intensity’.300 The authors go

on, and it is worth quoting at length to highlight the problem of such an account to

fit with the more recent struggles that we have seen in and since 2011.

We ought to be able to recognize that this is not the appearance of a new

cycle of internationalist struggles, but rather the emergence of a new quality

of social movements. We ought to be able to recognize, in other words, the

fundamentally new characteristics these struggles all present, despite their

radical diversity. First, each struggle, though firmly rooted in local

conditions, leaps immediately to the global level and attacks the imperial

constitution in its generality. Secondly, all the struggles destroy the

traditional distinction between economic and political struggles. The

struggles are at once economic, political, and cultural – and hence they are

biopolitical struggles, struggles over the form of life. They are constituent

struggles, creating new spaces and new forms of community.301

A number of aspects of this section appear as particularly pertinent to discussions

over the role of digital technologies in struggles over the common. Whilst clearly

directed at the contemporaneous social movements at the time of writing, the

suggestion is that such tendencies are a recognisable new trend in social

movement activism that has implications beyond the narrow time scale to which it

is directed. Encampment struggles of 2011 and beyond have communicated

struggles; not only to those interested or concerned by the events, but across 299 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54. 300 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54. 301 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 56.

169

various cultural, political and economic contexts to talk to other struggles that

were united through shared repertoires of action. Secondly, whilst the

communicability aspect of this set of claims appears to be limited, in light of

encampment protests in the past few years, the rest of the section could be argued

to hold. In particular, the emphasis on new spaces and new forms of community

to challenge and transform ways of living.

I argue that herein lies a potential solution to the paradox of incommunicability;

that networked communications, rooted in radical, physical communities has the

ability to create a digital common that is able to communicate and construct a

cycle of struggles. In response to the technological-determinists, such as Castells,

the focus on the role and relation of bodies in physical space as a means of

grounding digital communication can enable a solution to this apparent paradox.

4. From the ‘logic of networking’ to the ‘logic of aggregation’ I have begun to highlight the limitations of a theoretical response, such as that

found in Castells’ work, to struggles over the digital common that depicts

technology as a potential solution for socio-political struggle. If we are to move

away from the potential to slip into technological-determinism, I have argued that

a potential route out is to highlight the interplay of digital and physical struggle,

thought as affect. In so doing, we unmask digital communications and knowledge

production through linking to the physicality of workers. New technological

advances shape productive processes, which in turn affect the role of the body in

production and communication. The emphasis on physicality enables a critical

theoretical perspective to envisage the potentialities for new technological

developments whilst not depicting such advances as determinant or inherently

liberatory. I support these theoretical claims about the nature of the digital

common through a reflection on the secondary literature on the Occupy

170

movement, which I argue can be used to support such claims through an

understanding of the ‘logic of networking’ and the ‘logic of aggregation’.302

The events of 2011 offer a useful point at which to assess how exactly digital and

physical struggles interact and influence one another. Secondary literature, both

journalistic and academic has tended to focus on the use, and influence of

technology within these struggles. Not only have organisational forms been read

in relation to the networked digital world, but popular understandings of the

events of 2011 have often presented the protests as an extension of digital activism

and communication. Journalistic representations have tended to see the role of

social networks as determinative of public unrest in urban centres across the

world. Such accounts of contemporary struggle follow a parallel pattern of

technological determinism – seeing the relations of online and offline as a smooth

process of digital to physical. For instance, the New York Times attributes much of

the early impetus of the Egyptian uprising to one online activist; ‘Wael Ghonim, a

29-year-old Google marketing executive, was browsing Facebook in his home in

Dubai and found a startling image’ of the corpse of Khaled Saeed, beaten to death

by Egyptian police. Ghomin then goes onto set up a Facebook page highlighting

public anger at the conditions of political life in the country. The New York Times

concludes that ‘[w]hat bubbled up online inevitably spilled onto the streets’.303 The

tendency to refer to Occupy as ‘#Occupy’ certainly foregrounds the idea of social

media in our understandings of these events.304

302 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 260. 303 J.A. Vargas, ‘Spring Awakening: How and Egyptian Revolution began on Facebook’, New York Times (17/2/2012). http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/books/review/how-an-egyptian-revolution-began-on-facebook.html?_r=0. Accessed 26/1/2016. 304 R.K. Nielsen, ‘Mundane Internet Tools, Mobilizing Practices, and the Coproduction of Citizenship in Political Campaigns’, New Media and Society, p. 173.

171

Technological narratives relating to social movements essentially fall under two

categories: firstly, those that see contemporary protests as a playing out of digital

networking in physical space, and secondly those that focus on the abilities of the

digital to draw people to physical protests. The first of these can be witnessed in

Klein’s claim that the internet is more than an organisational tool, but has become

a model of decentralised cooperative decision making that can be deployed

through social movements.305 It is often noted how the precise forms of

organisational practices deployed within encampment communities often derived

from, or are linked to, forms of online organisation and conceptualisation. For

example, Morell emphasises that the Spanish struggles grew out of digital

advocacy groups who were able to mobilise large amounts of, often first time,

activists.306 Throughout the experiences of Occupy, in both Occupy’s output and

media attention, the role of digital communications and social media technology

has been highlighted. Such an approach has certainly influenced not only the

activism of Occupy itself, but also the understandings of Occupy that have

emerged.

However, to describe contemporary struggle as a ‘Facebook Revolution’,307 is

clearly reductive and problematic. Juris notes how ‘[w]hen a new mass wave of

global activism breaks out, casual observers and reporters often wax eloquent

305 N. Klein, No Logo (Flamingo, London, 2000) p. 396. 306 M.F. Morell, ‘The Free Culture Movement and the 15M Movement’, p. 388 and p. 391. 307 LSE, ‘A Facebook Revolution?’, http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/researchHighlights/societyMediaAndScience/A-Facebook-revolution.aspx. Accessed 4/4/17; M. Shearlaw, ‘Egypt Five Years on: Was it ever a social media revolution?’, The Guardian (25/1/2015)https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/egypt-5-years-on-was-it-ever-a-social-media-revolution. Accessed 4/4/17; N. Kossow and I. Saliba, Trans., J. Taylor, ‘The Myth of the Facebook Revolution’, https://en.qantara.de/content/social-media-and-the-arabellion-the-myth-of-the-facebook-revolution. Accessed 4/4/17; C. Taylor, ‘Why not call it a Facebook Revolution?’, CNN (24/2/11) http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/24/facebook.revolution/. Accessed 4/4/17.

172

about the ways new media technologies are transforming protest’.308 The

importance of the digital and networks has perhaps been exaggerated, not only in

traditional media responses to activism today, but also in the social movement

studies field.309 Such narratives often appear to suggest that decisions over action

are taken on the Internet, through forums, email and social media, and then put

into action on the streets, making the appearance of bodies in space of secondary

importance to the processes of organising in the digital realm.

In contrast, I argue that this distinction between online and offline spheres of

action is less clear, and the transition between, or rather the ongoing interrelations

between, is far less smooth or unproblematic. We must firstly recognise that the

online world can be as much a site of confrontation as the offline world (this relies

on distinguishing the digital world as consisting of labour), secondly that struggle

is not simply the overflowing of digital communication on to the streets, and

finally that the interactions between the digital and the physical world are the

most interesting aspect, when thinking the common. The experience of Occupy

shows that it was the people on the streets and in the squares, taking and

occupying space that decided on the course of action and methods of

organisation.310 This offline activity was complimented and supported through

online activity. For example, Gaby and Caren note how ‘Occupy Wall Street is

primarily an off-line activity, but active on social media’.311 What is more

interesting and potentially rewarding is an investigation of the ways in which

digital technologies and communicative networks played a part in the diverse set

of repertoires deployed by encampment protests of 2011. Both technology and

308 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 260. 309 F. Frenzel, ‘Exit the System? Anarchist Organising in the British Climate Camps’, ephemera 14:4 (2014) p. 905. 310 S. Gaby and N. Caren, ‘Occupy Online: How Cute Old Men ad Malcolm X recruited 400000 US users to Occupy Wall Street on Facebook’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) p. 381. 311 Gaby and Caren, ‘Occupy Online’, p. 371.

173

bodies play a role, and thus: ‘The important questions, then, are precisely how

new media matter; how particular new media tools affect emerging forms,

patterns, and structures of organisation, and how virtual and physical forms of

protest and communication are mutually constitutive’.312

Essentially we can see technology playing two, divergent roles in the Occupy

protest, which Juris conceptualises as the ‘logic of networking’ and the ‘logic of

aggregation’.313 The first of these describes the ways in which digital technologies

are employed in distributing messages, and communicating across space;

constructing a conscious community linked through digital networks. For

instance, Juris notes how, ‘I was able to simultaneously participate in and follow

events in dozens of cities around the world from my handheld phone’.314 Such an

ability imbues social movements to collaborate on shared actions, follow each

other’s successes and failures in real time and hold discussions between

movement epicentres.

The second ‘logic’ Juris outlines is that of ‘aggregation’ refering to the means

through which digital technology can be optimised in creating, organising and

publicising off-line action. 315 Such a use of digital networks is also apparent in

Occupy, where Occupy Wall Street is generally seen to be a response to a call to

action by the digital magazine collective Adbusters in the ‘Is America Ready for a

Tahrir Moment?’ blog post.316 A call to action which said; ‘On September 17, 20,000

312 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 260. 313 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 260. 314 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 261. 315 Pickerill, Cyberprotest, p. 99 and p. 101. 316 Adbusters, Is America Ripe for a Tahrir Moment?, https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/america-ripe-tahrir-moment.html. Accessed 4/1/2014.

174

people will swarm into lower Manhattan and occupy Wall Street’.317 Alongside the

Adbusters blog, the hacker collective Anonymous soon after released a video

proclaiming support for the Occupy movement.318 Such logics of networking and

aggregation are rarely neatly differentiated, however, and the Occupy

encampments are important contexts in which we can see such distinctions

breaking down. One way in which we can see digital communications being

utilised as part of the diverse protest repertoire is through the attempt to ‘expand

the room’.319 Juris notes how he intuitively logged in to his Twitter account when

he arrived at the designated site of the initial demonstration, and followed events

through digital networks even whilst there.320

Clearly, then, Occupy is connected with a vast array of digital network activism as

well as communicative-inspired reflection and analysis. In place of the

technological-deterministic accounts of Occupy, and contemporary struggle in

general, I attempt to utilise the contribution of Juris’ ‘logics’ in breaking down the

distinction between the ways in which technology is used to communicate across

space and between sites of struggle, and the ways it is used as a means of

organising, informing and disseminating information to those participating in the

encampment itself. I argue that to do so is to read the technological contribution to

contemporary political struggle as a form of digital common that is contributed to

and constructed through the diverse ways in which protesters engage with

communication technologies.

317 P. B., Farrell, ‘America’s Tahrir Moment – Does the American Left have the guts to pull this off?’, Adbusters. http://www.adbusters.org/action/occupywallstreet/does-the-american-left-have-the-guts-to-pull-this-off/. Accessed 22/9/17. 318 Anonymous, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jdkpQjueo. Accessed 21/1/2016. 319 P. Mason, Why It’s Still Kicking off Everywhere: The new global revolutions (Verso, London, 2013) p. 45. 320 Juris, ‘Reflections’, p. 249.

175

Such a common moves beyond seeing technology as determinant of social

struggle, but enables a richer reading of the ways in which protest repertoires are

shaped through the utilisation of digital networks. So understood, and in response

to Castells, the communicative common becomes not only a purely digital (and

thus a body-less) form, but rather comes to be understood as integrating the form

of communication into the actions and practices of people in general, and

protesters in particular. Technologies are fast becoming so broadly diffused and

intensively used, that the distinction between the physical and the digital is

rapidly breaking down. The forms of communication are at once central to post-

Fordist forms of appropriation and potential resistive practices. As such, a focus

on the common enables us to see Occupy as a struggle immanent to and

appropriate for a struggle against contemporary forms of capitalism.

Castells’ response to the events of 2011 is found in his book Networks of Outrage

and Hope, which continues the project of theory-building found in Communication

Power.321 As such, the conceptualisation of power found therein is based on the

understanding that power is a creation of meaning.322 Castells, writing about the

Occupy movement, and the wider eruption of encampment protests in 2011,

understands social media as a space of autonomy beyond the control of

governments and corporations.323 In this book, Castells begins to address some of

the concerns I have raised in respect to the role of power in the digital age and the

ways in which the digital domain is considered a common through which struggle

must constitute itself. Corporations hold a conflictual relationship with the

Internet; both extracting profit and seeking to limit freedom.324

321 M. Castells, Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013) p. 4. 322 Castells, Networks, p. 5. 323 Castells, Networks, p. 2. 324 Castells, Networks, 7.

176

In response to the recent experiences of Occupy, Castells recognises the move

from cyberspace to urban space of the movements,325 arguing that social

movements begin by constructing themselves on social media before constructing

public space of free communities in urban space.326 As such, he notes that the

unique contribution of the encampments was to act as a ‘hybrid movement’,

through the duel utilisation of the digital and urban common.327 Castells notes a

comparable understanding of the struggles as mapped out by my utilisation of the

logic of networking and the logic of aggregation as illuminating factors for the

substantiation of the digital common. Despite the important role of technology,

Castells notes that the ‘fundamental social form of the movement was the

occupation of public space. All other processes of network formation were ways to

converge on the liberation of a given territory’.328

Recognising the central role that technology played in the 2011 encampments,

Castells describes the shared free Internet access backgrounds of many of the

activists, especially those involved in the Real Democracia Ya! movement in

Spain.329 Equally, Castells points to the role of a video, posted to YouTube by

Asmaa Mayhouz played in the inspiration of the Tahrir occupation which moved

from video, to call to action, to running street battles within 10 days or so.330 The

problem with such a position is that it holds the digital area as the definitive

domain, from which the urban protests spring. As such the organisation and

enacting of protests appears as a smooth transition from digital communication

onto the streets without regard for the complexities of the origins of the 325 Castells, Networks, p. 2. 326 Castells, Networks, p. 10. 327 Castells, Networks, pp. 23-24. 328 Castells, Networks, p. 59. 329 Castells, Networks, pp. 110-111. 330 Castells, Networks, pp. 54-55.

177

movements; the dissimilarities between events; those that came to the streets not

through digital inspiration, or those that continued to interact online without ever

setting foot in a camp. Perhaps more importantly than the practical, descriptive

issues found here, such a perspective struggles to account for the complex

interrelations of the camps and the forms of communications utilised.

5. The Digital Common At this juncture, it is necessary to return to the question of the digital common, in

light of what we have learned from the secondary literature on the Occupy

movement. I argue that the Occupy movement, read through the interactions

between digital networks and physical encampments embodies the theoretical

claims made in this chapter; that the digital moment of the common is able to

develop radical political potential when utilised alongside physical interaction.

Such a claim enables a reading of the digital common in Hardt and Negri as

providing a framework for struggle that moves beyond the limitations of

technological-utopian discourse of Castells which centres on the transfer of

information and knowledge itself as potentially liberatory.

It is clear that the Occupy movement utilised the development of digital

communications devices in an unprecedented manner, in which communications

through hand held mobile smart phones provided constant updates, news feeds,

video links and methods of communication with not only those within the camp,

but also with those in other camps, non-resident supporters and the general

population. As such, the digital network provided a practical tool for organising,

informing and discussing events, often in real time. However, the concept of the

network has been seen by some to inform the very organisational structures and

means of acting in the real world. Therefore, we can see the network as a potential

model of the ways in which the camps organised, communicated and remained. I

178

argue that the utilisation of digital technologies is a struggle over the digital

common; resistance that takes the world we live in today and refigures it for its

own ends. Through doing so, we recognise the collaborative and communal forms

of production, organisation and interaction that underlie the enclosure by private

interests.

The impact of the move toward digitisation and informatisation of production and

communication has been a highly complex and conflicting one. Whilst many tout

the growth of digital communication technologies as shepherding in a new era of

sharing economy and peer-to-peer coordination, this has been inherently tied to a

precariatisation, flexibilisation and atomisation of the workforce; implementing an

emergence of new forms of working life. Whilst it is evident that the growth of

communicative technologies has been tied up with the expansion of global

capitalism, I argue that we must be careful to distinguish between neoliberal

techno-utopian discourse which asserts that the world is more interlinked and

liberated than ever before, and the claims that digital communication offers radical

new potentialities for productive subjects of global capitalism. It is evident that

many of the accounts, whilst pertaining to be critical, often offer discourses that

fall in with the neoliberal project. Whilst the digital economy is often seen as a site

of creative, autonomous production we can also trace a standardisation and inter-

changeability of the workforce through online freelance and direct employment

methods, the expectation of work beyond the contracted working week and the

extension of free labour through crowd sourcing.331 What is important to recognise

is that such developments create highly differentiated and uneven impacts,

offering complex and variable possibilities.

331 U. Huws, ‘Logged In’, Jacobin (16/1/16). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/huws-sharing-economy-crowdsource-precarity-uber-workers/. Accessed 24/8/17.

179

Clearly the expansion of digital technologies does not in and of itself offer up a

technological utopia of communicating, liberated individuals. Instead the digital

common; digital communication and production of and through such

technologies, is inherently tied to practices of hyper-exploitation in the Global

South; those that build computers, but cannot use them.332 Secondly, the

distribution of digital technologies is highly uneven and focussing on digital

forms of revolt can often appear Euro-centric. To some extent this narrative is

beginning to break down with expansion of such technologies. For instance,

Mason highlights the accessibility of personal digital technology for the emerging

Chinese labour force.333

Despite such reservations about the determinant role, and potential utopia of

technology, we must recognise this domain as an emerging site of struggle that is

interlinked with and co-constitutive of other planes of contestation of the

common. Digital technologies and communicative networks are situated at the

forefront of contemporary capitalism, in which we find the most advanced

systems of production. It is here that new means of appropriation and control are

imagined and enacted. As such, information technology offers social struggle new

potential forms of organising and communicating; potentials demonstrated, in

complex forms, through the emergence of the Occupy movement.

In contrast to the technological-utopianism that sees the digital as a potential pure

site outside of capitalism, Occupy utilised ‘corporate’ forms of digital

communication. For Castells, such a process may well highlight the ability of

various social groups to undertake a switching of somewhat socially ambivalent

332 Klein, No Logo, p. xvii. 333 P. Mason, Live Working or Die Fighting: How the working class went global (Vintage Books, London, 2008) p. 6.

180

networks toward new and varied socio-political ends. Platforms such as Facebook,

Twitter and YouTube were all central to the ways in which Occupy communicated

with one another and with the general public. Mason describes how ‘Facebook is

used to form groups, covert and overt…Twitter is used for real-time organization

and news dissemination…YouTube and Twitter-linked photographic sites – Yfrog,

Flickr and Twitpic – are used to provide instant evidence of the claims being

made’.334 As such, mainstream, capitalist platforms were repurposed for radical

activism in different ways and at different times.

Alongside the reappropriation of corporate forms of digital, social media

platforms, various encampment protest movements attempted to create new

forms of digital, public space. Activists involved in the creation of such social

media platforms perceived the existing, corporate social media as ‘increasingly

restrictive’, in response to which, a new platform that enables radically democratic

decision making was seen to be needed, and began to be created with the

development of ‘The Global Square’,335 global-square.net, InterOccupy.net,336

GlobalMay and GlobalNoise.337 Such developments highlight the ability of

struggle over the digital common to become constitutive of future organisational

forms.

As I have demonstrated, many of those involved in the encampment protests of

2011 had links to various digital common groups, the forms of organising in 334 P. Mason, Why it’s still kicking off everywhere: The new global revolutions (Verso, London, 2013) p. 75. 335 ROAR Collective, ‘The Global Square: an online platform for our movement’, ROAR (2/11/11). https://roarmag.org/essays/the-global-square-an-online-platform-for-our-movement/. Accessed 25/8/17. 336 InterOccupy.net. This site is still running, and seeks to ‘foster communication between individuals, Working Groups and local General Assemblies, across the movement’. 337 Global-square.net. Again, this site is operational, and contains news and organisational information focussed on a range on on-going global struggles.

181

camps often echoed the tendencies toward horizontal networks and such

movements utilised digital communications, both in order to extend the ‘logic of

networking’ as well as encourage people to participate physically in protests

through a ‘logic of aggregation’. These emerging forms of organisation and

communication have played an important role in Occupy’s ability to create what

could be seen as a cycle of struggles across different contexts. We can see that the

techno-optimist narratives fail to adequately account for the multi-faceted ways in

which people resist: Occupy was not a digital protest, but incorporated and

utilised what it could from such a struggle and deployed it in new circumstances.

As such, Occupy utilised digital technology as a means to access and reconstruct

the common.

Recent radical struggles, then have sought to overcome the paradox of

incommunicability identified by Hardt and Negri. This has been achieved through

complex interrelations of digital and physical commoning. What such a process

shows, however, is that this development is not a smooth or digitally determined

process, but, rather that activists have become adept at utilising varied repertoires

to shape and extend their actions. Whilst Castells’ recognition of the limitations of

his own analysis and the attempt to broach the concerns raised regarding the

relationship of the mind and the body, and the operations of power on them is

admirable, and entirely necessary in light of the events of 2011, I argue that such

an attempt ultimately fails. In essence, whilst taking in the physical and urban

aspects of contemporary struggle, the relationship depicted shows a smooth

transition from the abilities of the internet and access to information and the

consequent liberation of the mind in informational capitalism and the consequent

enacting of resistance on the streets. In reality the biopolitical, or overtly bodily

workings of power and resistance, is just as central to the inspiration of Occupy

and the encampment protests in general. It is telling that Castells points to Asmaa

182

Mayhouz’ video, rather than Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation, as the catalyst

for protest. As such, I argue that whilst taking a different perspective and

focussing on different aspects of contemporary life, Castells conceives of struggle

as being undertaken by pre-formulated, pre-constructed communities, in this case

digital communities that emerge onto the street at key moments to affect change.

The concept of the common, and in particular, the digital moment of the common

as developed through this chapter reveals that real question is not simply how the

network communicates, but how the network of digital organisation makes itself

felt in the physical organisation of people in the streets. Without this, the

explanation of contemporary struggle through the understanding of digital

communication fails to explain why it was that Occupy, amongst other events,

took on such a physical, urban dimension, as opposed to remaining in cyberspace.

How is it that the network moves out of the digital domain and affects the actions

of protesters and their organisational forms? This is the focus of what Juris’s terms

the ‘logic of networking’ and the ‘logic of aggregation’; how dispersal and

cooperation of information and people interact with each other. I utilise this

contribution to argue that it is inadequate to simply inquire into the nature of

digital networks and their role in the transformations and implications for power

and production.

For Castells, the answer to the interrelations of the digital and the physical world,

or the online and offline worlds revolves around his understanding of ‘real

virtuality’.338 In this inversion of the notion of virtual reality, Castells suggests that

the impact of the Internet does extend beyond the bounds of the digital sphere,

and comes to impact culture as a ‘global hypertext’; a set of interconnected images

338 Bell, Cyberculture Theorists, p. 77.

183

and ideas. In this context, access to power, or influence on the workings of power,

comes from the possibilities of actors to negotiate and organise networked

relations. As such abilities to influence, shape and transform power-relations is

reliant on access to, and the role of knowledge, and thus brains of individuals.339

As noted, Hardt and Negri’s understanding of, and contribution to the notion of

the communicability of struggle today is a somewhat unclear. Writing specifically

about the alter-globalisation movement of the late 1990s and early 2000s, they

suggested that struggles had become, even in our age of communication, all but

incommunicable.340 What they call the paradox of incommunicability, means that

we have to reassess our understandings of the power and transformatory

potentials of contemporary social movements, who no longer grow in strength

and challenge the status quo by coming to absorb more and more of the surface of

the globe, but instead have gained an intensity and internal power of transforming

and reshaping the lives of those involved.341

As I have suggested, whilst this conception may well have applied to the alter-

globalisation movement, such an understanding appears to be unable to grasp the

nature of the communication and inspiration of the events of 2011. In Empire they

say that ‘what the struggles have lost in extension, duration, and communicability

they have gained in intensity’.342 However, when discussing the developments of

the period of encampment protests in 2011, the authors note how ‘The first thing

to notice, though, is that they did, in fact, speak to one another’.343 Therefore,

whilst the authors are keen to recognise the continuities between the alter-

339 Webster, Theories of the Information Society, p. 116. 340 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 54. 341 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 56. 342 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 56. 343 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 3.

184

globalisation movement and the activism of the encampments, they also are keen

to highlight how struggle and the nature of communication has changed.

Revolutions and acts of resistance have always used both bodies and media, and

therefore the most interesting aspect is to understand how medias transform

environments.344 Instead of struggles being nomadic, in fact, the encampments

refused to move; regaining a level of extension and permanence whilst and

communicability, whilst retaining the intensity of the clashes of the alter-

globalisation period.

The process of political encampment and construction of communities of

resistance have enabled the expansion of network organisation to incorporate

physical proximity. Technology such as livestreaming and Twitter updates were

utilised to ‘expand the room’, or the square; enabling the engagement of those not

present, as well as reproducing and reporting the events that occurred in space of

occupation.345 As with the proletariat of the industrial era, the corporeal proximity

and communication not only of ideas and information but of real human emotion

and solidarity has moved beyond, but continued to utilise, the communication of

digital methods. Whilst communication through the Internet and various social

media platforms is essential to struggle, ‘nothing can replace the being together of

bodies and the corporeal communication on the basis of collective political

intelligence’.346 Whilst political change and informational communication can take

place in the digital arena, what distinguishes radical politics from neoliberal

technological determinist narratives is the corporeality of resistive communities.347

The act of encampment, or the explosion of physical protest can be seen to be a

344 K. M. DeLuca, S. Lawson, and Y. Sun, ‘Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screens of Social Media: The Many Framings of the Birth of a Protest Movement’, Communication, Culture and Critique 5 (2012) p. 485 345 Mason, Why it’s still kicking off everywhere, p. 45. 346 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 18. 347 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 18.

185

form of rupture with the smooth space of the digital world that moves resistance

beyond the reprogramming and switching of networks. Whilst information

technology is incredibly effective at connecting geographically dispersed sets of

individuals into a united aggrieved population, it tends to be relatively ineffective

at overcoming established social problems.348

What I therefore argue is that real communication in networks, in order to disrupt

and transform the digital common, requires aggregation of bodies in space – the

ability to collaboratively produce and reproduce information and knowledge, or

affect. In this sense, it is not that activists internalised the network form of digital

communications and consequently replicated these tactics of organisation on the

streets, but rather, something far more striking; the combining of network digital

forms and physical activism in a way that reproduces the means of

communication as a real part of the physical environment in which they move

around. As such, the experience of Occupy enables us to rebalance the analysis of

the digital common in order to appreciate the role played by physicality and

corporeality, not in order to claim one or the other as dominant, but in order to

recognise the profound transformations that have occurred in the interacton

between digital and physical experience. Such a recognition therefore enables us

to read Hardt and Negri in this light. The common, in this sense is defined by its

complex interrelations between biopolitics and immateriality of communication

and production.

It is not hard to see how the smart phone is enabling the transformation of our

relationships with the urban environment, and should not be seen as a separate

sphere of human interaction, but one which interacts with and alters our

348 Pickerill, Cyberprotest, p. 29.

186

experiences of the material world. Smart phones act as maps, payment devices,

means of recording and reproducing the physical world, all whilst delivering live

news and immediate communication with the outside world. Portable digital

technologies have reached a point at which they become part of the

environment.349 It therefore seems inadequate to discuss the role of digital

communications as merely a means of immaterial and communicative power over

individuals and their minds. Information is itself physical, being transmitted

between concrete sites and real human beings, whose actions are informed and

transformed through interaction with such information.350 If the exchange of

information affects the ways in which humans interact with one another and their

environment not only through cyber space, but also in urban space, then the

physicality of the technology must be recognised as a central tenet of the digital

common. Understood as such, the digital moment of the common can be read as

beyond merely a digital relation, but a combining of digital and physical relations

that enable the reimagination of struggle and possibility. Whilst digital

communications offer the opportunity to instantaneously communicate struggle

across cultural contexts and geographical limits, as well as possible organisational

structures, in physical aggregation, these processes are able to gain political

impact and the potential to overcome established social problems.

To reduce the communication and common production of the digital network to

one of a free flow and accessibility of ideas, a critique levelled at Hardt and Negri

as well as against Castells, is to play into the neoliberal discourse of the open and

free nature of the contemporary economic and political situation. The focus on the

free flow of information situates public choice as the determinant factor in the

349 Deluca, Lawson and Sun, ‘Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screens’, p. 486. 350 J. Skinner, ‘Social Media and Revolution: The Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement as seen through three information studies paradigms’, Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems 169 (2011) p. 6.

187

spread of networks, but it is unclear exactly how the accessibility of information

leads to potential radical social change.351 The battle over our future is reduced to

the logic of competition and the open market. If resistance and opposition are

reduced to the recoding and switching of networks to differing objectives, the

moment of political contestation and confrontation are lost. If networks are truly

as open and accessible as Castells suggests, then it is hard to see how networks can

exclude, and even more importantly, how it is that those excluded from the

network are able, without political contestation, to become included in the

network. If political struggle is construed merely as the competition between

alternative forms of network command and struggle; a conflict based simply on

the competitiveness and efficiency of such structures, neoliberal capitalism will

continue to enclose and privatise the advances created in the common.

The tendency toward technological-optimism has emerged since the 1990s, with

the insistence on digital communication technologies and networked individuals,

we find the various ways in which ‘technology has created a new route out’ of

capitalism.352 The conception of radical political activism as a technological race

between networks and hierarchies appears problematic and seems to ignore the

incredible ability of capitalism to exploit, enclose and capture the productive

capacities of the new networked individuals. This narrative describes the struggles

over the future of our economic lives as one of a struggle between network

production and the attempts of capitalism to co-opt and privatise such processes.

The struggle for a postcapitalist future is therefore reduced to a technological race

between corporate and public interests, one cannot help but feel that such a race

would be one which takes place on the terrain of capitalism: a struggle over forms

351 M. Wheeler, ‘Democracy and the information superhighway’, Democratization 5:2 (1998)p. 218. 352 Mason, ‘The End of Capitalism has begun’.

188

of production, underestimating the capacity of capitalism to take advantage of any

developments made in the collaborative realm.

The history of capitalism has highlighted its ability to integrate and co-opt social

forms of production. Indeed, in the digital era, the innumerable examples of

capitalist practices monopolising, hyper-exploiting and monetising informational

technologies, is clear. As noted, the transformations in working life have been far

from singularly utopian. It is difficult to see how networks can out-produce and

out-innovate the hierarchies without being drawn into capitalist practices and

profit making activities. Examples such as Microsoft and Apple merely highlight

the abilities of capitalist companies to internalise, monopolise and extract rent

from apparently inherently value-less products. For instance Microsoft

constructed a monopoly of computing hardware in order to monetise the software

innovations developed by Bill Gates.353 Apple on the other hand has shown itself

to be highly profitable by establishing a small charge for a digital song which has a

reproduction cost of near-zero. Technological theorists, then, display a great deal

of faith in the notion that ‘a network can usually defeat a hierarchy’.354

Against this conceptualisation of the possibilities of technological change, I posit

the concept of the digital common as developed throughout this chapter, building

on the loose formulations offered by Hardt and Negri’s work. I have shown that

utopian claims for the possibilities inherent within technology are evidently

limited, and that progressive hopes for the potentials of digital communication

must be read through an understanding of the common combining the biopolitical

struggles across life alongside the emerging processes of production that sets the

subject at the very heart of material social struggles. 353 Mason, Postcapitalism: A guide to our future (Allen Lane (Penguin), London, 2015) p. 121. 354 Mason, Why it’s still kicking off everywhere, p. 77.

189

My substantiation and development of the digital moment of the common reveals

that to read digital resistance as a pure site of contestation, as a potential site of

transforming social relations, ignores the physicality of struggle, and indeed the

truly novel developments of the digital common and contemporary social

struggle. As such, the true power of digital communications technology revolves

around its potential to influence and shape struggles not only online, but also

offline, in the streets and the squares.

6. Conclusion This chapter has sought to answer the secondary research question of; In what

ways does the concept of the common necessitate an investigation of digital

communication? In answering this, I highlight the ways in which the digital

common has come to play a central role in recent theoretical debates on the role of

new technologies in neoliberal capitalism and the possibilities of constructing

resistive practices to this. The concept of the common, developed from Hardt and

Negri, has been shown to frame radical theoretical debates surrounding issues of

transformations in production and struggle. I have argued that the digital

common, as it frames political contest, must be rescued from the limitations of

technological-determinist discourse. I have demonstrated how Castells’ work

develops a particular position on technological change in which networks become

the means through which society can be switched between alternatives, yet such a

perspective reduces political contestation to a technological fix.

Whilst Hardt and Negri often appear to stray dangerously close to the disavowal

of political contestation in this regard, and have been challenged on their use of

technological language and metaphors in their social and political discussion, I

190

have shown how by coupling the autonomist impulse to observe struggle across

social life along with the necessity of political struggle recognising the central role

played by bodies in space means Hardt and Negri’s digital common can be shown

to frame an intricate and complex linking of digital and physical struggle. Such a

linking is vital if real transformatory events are to be created and sustained.

This chapter, through its engagement with important research into the role of

digital technologies in political struggle, has highlighted the necessity of reading

digital production and communication as a biopolitical struggle for the common. I

have shown how Manuel Castells’ work provides key insights into the manner in

which the rapid expansion of digital technology and network communications

have transformed political and economic organisation, and raised the possibility

of such developments offering liberatory potentials. However, it was argued that

the conception of the pre-eminence of digital communications over other, physical

forms of organisation, relation and resistance missed the true resistive potentials

of struggles for the common. I argue that discussions of a pure space of digital

communication limits the analysis of such perspectives and frames struggle as a

technological fix undertaken by diverse social groups in ambivalent social

relations.

Hardt and Negri, like Castells, see the emerging forms of communication and

production as epoch-defining in that they reshape systems of production and

working patterns. Whilst digital technologies emerge at the very forefront of

neoliberal globalisation, and are regularly bound up with hyper-exploitative

working methods, they also offer the potential for spaces for alternative social

relation and productive processes. Importantly, in this regard, we must not allow

discussions of digital communication and production to obscure the physical

191

implications and interactions of workers and products. I have argued that we

must acknowledge and go beyond the limitations of this reduction of human

experience, and political contestation, to cognitive processes and technological

switches.

I argue specifically that through such a perspective, Hardt and Negri’s concept of

the digital common can rescue Hardt and Negri from their own technological-

determinism. I highlight how considering technological development, and digital

technology more specifically, as purely psychological process misses the

importance of the affective relations of political struggle. Therefore, the

technological-determinist perspective fails to account for the complex social

interactions necessary for political struggle; the means of communication of

struggle, as well as avoiding the central question of production of and within such

technologies. In so doing, the paradox of incommunicability of the digital

common, set out by Hardt and Negri, is overcome.

Through engaging with the secondary literature on the Occupy movement, these

interactions between digital and physical struggle have been exposed. Whilst

technology was clearly vital in the inspiration, distribution and organisation of

protest camps, the really interesting issue is not how digital technology was used

to get people to the squares, but how these technologies combined with the

physical proximity and act of encampment that so typified protest in 2011. In this

sense, I have demonstrated how Juris’ conception of the digital communications as

playing out across both ’logics of networking’ and the ‘logics of aggregation’. This

refocussing of the role of communication technology on the physical aggregation

of people in spaces was shown to enable us to move beyond the de-politicised

space of the digital network, and examine real political struggle in concrete

192

locales. The encampment created a political moment that enabled technology to be

utilised in new ways, and combined with a diverse repertoire of actions that

appears as something more than merely the passive, switching of networks. It is to

the political organisation of the common that this thesis must now turn.

Blank Page

194

Chapter 4

The Political Common:

Radical Organisation against Capital

‘democracy can only be learned by doing’

Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth1

1. Introduction This thesis sets out to answer the question of what a substantive conceptualisation

of the common, for Hardt and Negri, might look like. The common appears to

offer an interesting and enlightening approach to contemporary production and

struggle, yet is left underdeveloped in Hardt and Negri’s work. This thesis has

highlighted specific moments of the common which I claim are potentially

rewarding sites of investigation in the process of substantiation. In order to

contribute to the concept of the common at large, the political moment is here the

site of investigation and development. I argue that developments in the economic

and political landscape lead to the need to reconfigure the content and structure of

political struggle, or more precisely, struggles over political life. I argue that the

common frames questions of political organisation and social life which features

as a central issue in contemporary radical theory, as well as contemporary social

movements. Building on the previous chapters, this chapter claims that under

changing socio-economic conditions, the transformations in social movement

organisation represent a development of a politics appropriate to the management

of the common. This task is achieved in a number of ways, firstly through an

engagement with Jodi Dean’s recent compelling work on the future of communist

movements under new socio-economic conditions.

1 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 362.

195

Jodi Dean’s work represents something of an outlier in contemporary radical

theory: her work accepts and develops on the conceptions of late capitalist culture

and production as one of technological, communicative capitalism, yet refuses to

accept that this context implies a retreat from political action, and instead seeks to

reclaim the vanguard party as the most effective and appropriate form of

organisation for the contemporary age. Dean refuses to accept that the

experiments in twentieth century communist societies were an unqualified failure,

and that we must recognise the progress made and the potential progress that is

possible. Dean, then, does not fit neatly into the recognised camps of orthodox

Marxists who seek to show how the transformations of capitalism have done little

to affect the traditional workings of capitalism, and that to discuss this is a mere

distraction from the real work of building a party and a critique of capitalism. On

the other hand, Dean sits uneasily with those, such as Hardt and Negri, who

endorse the implications of fragmentation, decentralisation and technological

possibility. These factors, along with her urgent and engaging writing style make

Dean’s work some of the most challenging and thought-provoking contributions

to contemporary political theory.

Therefore, this chapter follows a parallel structure to the two previous chapters in

that it draws out the specifically relevant theoretical contributions of Dean’s work

on organisation and how radical movements can become effective, before moving

on to develop Hardt and Negri’s thought in this area in light of the challenges

levelled at it from Dean’s work. Not only has Dean emerged as a prominent

theorist of contemporary organisation and political action, her work has been

developed in response to the occupations and encampments of 2011.2 This

2 For immediate reflection see J. Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’. https://www.academia.edu/1510438/Occupy_Wall_Street_Division_Representation_Collectivity?auto=download. Accessed 25/4/17; J. Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Forcing Division’, Constellations 21:3 (2014) pp. 382-389; and J. Dean and J. Jones, ‘Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Representation’,

196

discussion is of particular interest due to the fact that many of the reference points

and arguments made by the authors appear to be interrelated, yet the conclusions

drawn are highly distinct. Dean positions her theorisation of social movements in

opposition to the dominant anarchist readings of the struggle,3 and much of her

work can be read as a direct engagement with the perspectives associated not only

with the new anarchist theories, but with the likes of Hardt and Negri. From this

discussion I develop a conception of the political common that ties together the

concerns of the urban and digital common in new organisational forms.

This chapter, then, focusses on two distinct, yet interrelated elements of the

theories of Dean and of Hardt and Negri, utilising the research of Dean to

challenge the thought of Hardt and Negri. Firstly, I consider the conception of the

nature of society under communicative capitalism; the ways it may have changed,

the challenges this raises and the possibilities for organising resistance. Secondly, I

consider the conceptions of organisational principles that the theorists consider as

necessary if we are to transform the world in which we live. Whilst I have sought

to show the politically contentious nature of the common throughout this thesis,

and have undertaken brief discussions of how both the urban and the digital

common implies organisational transformations, this chapter engages in more

depth the relations between new social forms and political organisation

appropriate to such forms. I posit that Dean’s contribution to the nature of

political organisation ends up being rather empty, and that somewhat counter-

intuitively, Hardt and Negri’s discussion of horizontalism can be seen to be richer,

more progressive and substantive. Whilst social struggle acts to open up spaces of

Chto Delat? 10–34, https://chtodelat.org/b8-newspapers/12-38/jodi-dean-and-jason-jones-occupy-wall-street-and-the-politics-of-representation/. Accessed 25/4/17. For more sustained analysis and theoretical development, see J. Dean, Crowds and Party (Verso, London, 2016); J. Dean, The Communist Horizon (Verso, London, 2012). 3 J. Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Forcing Divisions’, p. 382.

197

radical politics, it is not necessarily political parties that must be constructed, but

instead, reflexive political organisations adequate to new forms of life.

This chapter turns from a consideration of the possibilities of urban resistance, in

Chapter 2, and digital contestation, in Chapter 3, toward a consideration of

struggle embedded in every-day life; from the urban and digital common, to the

principles appropriate to the organisation of the common. In particular, the

previous chapters have highlighted the changing nature of production and

communication in the contemporary era; an era in which concomitant shifts in

political organisation can be witnessed which respond to and are shaped by such

politico-economic changes. Specifically, this chapter tackles the question of the

role of political organisation within contemporary struggles over the common.

What organisational forms are most appropriate to struggles over the common?

Therefore, in order to answer the central research question of: How can the common

in Hardt and Negri be substantiated? I here confront the interstitial question of; In

what ways does the concept of the common require an investigation of alternative political

forms?

2. 1 Dean: Capitalism and the Party In order to begin the process of substantiating the concept of the political common,

I firstly begin by excavating and developing Dean’s contributions to the

understanding of political organisation in novel social conditions. This allows me

to clarify and challenge Hardt and Negri’s own understandings in this area and

also to contribute to areas in which it can be highlighted that such a perspective

may fall short of an adequate conceptualisation of the political common. Emerging

as part of the recent left revival Dean’s work has reached a widespread, popular

audience through recent publications, in particular The Communist Horizon and

Crowds and Party. Dean’s work combines aspects of Marxism, feminism,

198

psychoanalysis and media theory, and her more recent works in particular seek to

defend a fairly unpopular strand of orthodox Marxism; of strong centralised

parties in an age of horizontalism and distributed networks. Indeed, J.C. Isaac

claims that the three central arguments of The Communist Horizon are as follows:

‘(1) a commitment to a “communism without apologies,” (2) a professedly

Leninist conception of “the political party” as the primary agent of (revolutionary)

communism, and (3) a psychoanalytic understanding of the sources of social

compliance’.4

Such a communist revivalism has come under criticism by some on the left, with

some suggesting that to seek to reclaim the developments of Soviet communism is

to fail to undertake a Marxian examination of the conditions found there;5 a form

of whitewashing of the experience, rendering that to be reclaimed as a mere

hollow shell of real social life under such regimes. Particularly problematic is the

concern that Dean dismisses the fight for democracy as counter-revolutionary.6 In

so doing, it can be suggested that Dean ignores much of the most progressive

Marxist analysis of the previous fifty years. However, the issue of the role of

twentieth century communism is not at issue in this chapter. As such, I focus

almost solely on the second of Dean’s key arguments set out above; that of the role

of the party in contemporary society; and challenge the Dean’s assertion that ‘the

party is emerging as the site of an answer’ to new political forms.7

4 J. C. Isaac, ‘The Mirage of Neo-Communism’, Dissent (Summer 2013) https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-mirage-of-neo-communism. Accessed 6/4/17. 5 Isaac, ‘Neo-Communism’, Dissent. 6 S. Harkin, ‘A way forward for the 99%’, International Socialist Review 96. http://isreview.org/issue/96/way-forward-99. Accessed 25/4/17. 7 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 4.

199

The focus of this chapter, and the theoretical work of Dean, is concerned with the

potential overlaps in theoretical response to issues such as the development, even

predominance, of communicative capitalism in the contemporary era and the

implications of this for class analysis of working practices and the possibilities of

resistance and revolution. Harkin is correct to compare the work of Dean and that

of Hardt and Negri in their response to the developments of technological

capitalism to the possibilities of working class organisation and struggle. Here,

Harkin suggests that both Dean and Hardt and Negri seek to contest the notion

that the distributed labourer of cognitive capitalism fail to present a potential

subject for communist revolution.8 In doing so, both Dean and Hardt and Negri’s

response is to undertake a shift in theoretical paradigm that moves radical analysis

away from a strict focus on the working class.9 The unifying claim made regarding

the new forms of labour practices is that contemporary labour operates far beyond

the workplace and instead, dominates across our free time.

However, whereas Hardt and Negri, and other theoretical responses to recent

social movements are often at pains to highlight the power, adaptability and

openness of networked organisation and horizontal decision making structures,

Dean is far more sceptical about the abilities of such organisational forms to

radically challenge and transform capitalism. Instead, whilst not dismissing the

organisational developments made by recent struggles, Dean seeks to show that

such a structure is merely one moment in the struggle; a moment of openness and

expansion in which new and diverse members are drawn into class conflict. Such a

moment acts as an opening, or radical break in capitalism, from which an

organised class party must emerge to hold open the space gained and to ensure

political and economic gains are made as a result of the struggle. Dean argues that

8 Harkin, ‘A way forward for the 99%?’, International Socialist Review. 9 Harkin, ‘A way forward for the 99%?’, International Socialist Review.

200

theorising the political struggles of 2011 must face the reality that ‘some of the

ideas that most galvanised people in the fall [Occupy Wall Street] – those

associated with autonomy, horizontality, and leaderlessness – have also come to

be faulted for conflicts and disillusionment’.10 In its place, Dean sets out to develop

‘a new theory of the communist party’.11

In response to the theories of contemporary resistance that assert the

horizontalism and leaderlessness of social movements as their key strength, Dean

argues that the rejection of representation is clearly a flawed perspective since

leaders have emerged, and always will emerge in moments of political struggle.12

Instead, we must recognise, argues Dean, that rather than rejecting or

transcending leadership, Occupy has created a new form of representation.13 To

Dean, representation within struggle is unavoidable, especially when those

involved come from such diverse backgrounds and such diverse political

positions.14 Dean suggests that the new form of representation means that the

occupiers were acting on behalf of the 99%; and as such this representation asserts

division.15 The division that Occupy asserted highlights the gap between

capitalism and the people; a gap that leads to class struggle.16 This understanding

of the events of 2011 as asserting a division in society; a class relation necessitates a

level of representation if progress is to be made in the wake of the ruptures

created. The contemporary left, therefore faces a contradiction at its core between

10 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 1. 11 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 4. 12 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 11. 13 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 12. 14 J. Dean and J. Jones, ‘Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Representation’ 15 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 10. 16 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, pp. 3-4.

201

the individualist, autonomist, anarchist impulses and the need to create and

construct collectivity. This is the ‘impasse facing the Left’, Dean claims.17

In the previous Chapter, I set out how Hardt and Negri saw the process of digital

technology and communication as transforming the possibilities of producers in

the contemporary era. I argued that the utilisation and expansion of such forms of

production and communication contributed to a digital commons that was

exploited by capital, but contained the possibilities of collaborative, horizontal,

networked resistance and the creation of a new world. This, again, plays a central

role in the thought of Dean on the changing subjectivity of revolution; the new

processes of capital extraction and the new forms of production, exploitation and

resistance possible in this context. I do not seek to repeat the discussion

undertaken in the previous chapter here, but merely seek to outline the key claims

made by Dean in this regard, and the ways this plays into her thought on

organisation. In building on the discussion in the previous chapter, I am therefore

able to further progress toward a substantive conception of the common as

associated with the work of Hardt and Negri.

2.2 Communicative Capitalism In this section I therefore set out how Dean interprets the transformations toward

communicative capitalism and the parallels of this with the shifts noted by Hardt

and Negri. Despite this, I highlight the distinctive conclusions for the implications

of these developments on the possibilities of political action. This enables an

elucidation of the basis of the political moment of the common as found in Hardt

and Negri. Much like Hardt and Negri, Dean sees the growth of digital technology

as ushering in an era she terms ‘communicative capitalism’. For Dean,

17 J. Dean Crowds and Party, p. 4.

202

‘communicative capitalism designates that form of late capitalism in which values

heralded as central to democracy take material form in networked

communications technologies’.18 Dean says, in The Communist Horizon, that Hardt

and Negri are correct to argue that the contemporary world is defined by a shift to

new forms of digital communications and the extraction of profit from such forms

of collaboration.19 Under communicative capitalism, the majority of people are

drawn, often unintentionally, into producing for capitalism; production in this

context is all but unavoidable,20 and has led to decentralisation and self-

organisation of production, as well as resulting in highly educated young people

producing more and receiving less.21 The technological revolution, and rise of

communicative capitalism has meant the circuits of capital have moved to take in

the un(der)paid labour of the newly proletarianised intellectual youth.22 Through

the expansion and consumption of smart phones, broadband technology and

working from home, we build the trap that captures us, Dean argues.23

Dean, does, however, warn us to be wary of technological fetishism which denotes

the perspectives that take networked communications as a fantasy of participation

in which we believe we matter to the working of such networks, through

contributing, consuming and circulating knowledge and information. In reality

such participation only prevents something real from happening. Such a concern

demonstrates Dean’s distinction of politics as circulation of information, the type

of politics associated with post-political narratives, and the politics of official

policy.24 This distinction demonstrates a gap between the age of communication

18 J. Dean, ‘Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Enclosure of Politics’, Cultural Politics 1:1 (2005) p. 55. 19 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 18. 20 Dean, Crowds and Party, pp. 17-18. 21 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 17. 22 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 17. 23 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 124. 24 Dean, ‘Communicative Capitalism’, p. 53.

203

and that of official democracy, which reveals a parallel growth in communication

with a decline in struggle.25 Whereas a greater distribution and access to

information and knowledge through digital networks is often equated with the

growth of equality and a destruction of centres of power, in fact we find that some

nodes in the networks become vastly more influential than others,26 and we find

huge inequalities and concentrations of wealth in the global economy, Dean

argues.27

Whilst neoliberal, global, informational capitalism is often depicted as an exciting

new world of infinite possibility, creativity and dynamism, it also brings with it

surveillance, deskilling and the intensification of work.28 As a consequence of the

shift to a digitised, communication and knowledge based form of capital

extraction, there is a need to think through the repercussions on the potentials of

class struggle.29 Instead of concentrating workers in large-scale centralised

locations, communicative capitalism disperses them across the globe.30 Such a

situation has led to the retreat of class analysis, and the need to reimagine the

politics of the left;31 a ‘reimagining that needs to go further’,32 argues Dean. Due to

the transformations in capitalism, and specifically the potential, and compulsion to

produce everywhere, ‘we should not expect class struggle in communicative

capitalism to manifest primarily as workplace struggles’, but simply because it

does not emerge from the workplace, does not mean that it is not class struggle.33

The problem the left must face is that resistance in communicative capitalism

25 Dean, ‘Communicative Capitalism’, p. 54. 26 Dean, ‘Communicative Capitalism’, pp. 59-60. 27 Dean, ‘Communicative Capitalism’, p. 55. 28 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 125. 29 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 18. 30 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 70. 31 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 22. 32 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 24. 33 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 20.

204

appears to be contained within the parameters of the circulation of knowledge.34 In

light of this, Dean insists that political action in this context cannot merely emerge

from the logics of technological advance, but instead must find new ways of

asserting division and struggle. In order to highlight the ways in which Dean

argues this is possible, I now turn to a discussion of the necessity of the party in

asserting a ‘gap’.

2.3 The Party and the ‘gap’ Dean is reluctant to argue that simply because the workplace is no longer the

central site of production and resistive power in new technological capitalist

development it therefore means that class politics no longer has any potential.

Despite this, Dean does seek to shift class analysis away from the strictly industrial

working class, and, indeed, retreats from the terminology of the proletariat instead

favouring the term ‘the people’.35 This reflects the comparable shift, in the work of

Dean as in Hardt and Negri, away from strict forms of production as the source of

value, toward the conception of production taking place across social life. Unlike

Hardt and Negri, who it was shown overtly consider the conception of the

subjective source of resistance and potential revolution, rejecting the terminology

of the people, Dean seeks to reclaim the term. For Dean, such a use of language

highlights not only the language of the 99% versus the 1%; language that asserts a

class division in society, but Dean also seeks to turn such division into a class

based party form targeted at the state; turning the people of the capitalist state into

the people of a socialist state.

Theoretical perspectives, such as those of Hardt and Negri, that seek to build on

the spontaneity and subjectivity of revolt fails to capture the collective

34 Dean, Communicative Capitalism, p. 55. 35 Harkin, ‘A way forward for the 99%?’, International Socialist Review.

205

emancipatory possibilities and the real political work that can be done through the

utilisation of party bureaucracy, Dean argues.36 The fetishisation of the

spontaneous eruptions of anger and revolt on the streets, online and in the

workplace can never make or sustain the real gains that the left must seek to effect.

In fact, Dean contends that the contemporary left fails to present a convincing

vision of the future.37 The derision of the party, and indeed all forms of

institutionalisation and bureaucratisation, is seen as a fundamental flaw of the

contemporary left, a flaw that must be overcome if we are to enact real political

change. For Dean, the left has for too long mirrored the neoliberal demands of

decentralisation, flexibilisation and innovation.38 The resulting emphasis on

horizontalism and network organisation fails to scale, endure or replace capitalist

state power and is the central problem facing contemporary social movements.39

Social struggles, as currently comprised, continually hits the wall of the prevailing

market and state forces that ensure that the social aims can never be achieved.40

The institutional capacity of the party must be valued as a means to overcome this

impasse, and must be seen as necessary to political struggle and rule.41

To Dean, the contemporary emphasis on micro-politics, anarchism and democracy

are easier than the real task of building a party.42 Despite the apparent tendency

toward such organisational forms, Dean contends that the construction of the

party is essential as it provides ‘a strength and direction we would otherwise lack,

the party generates the practical optimism through which struggles endure’.43 The

emphasis on endurance is one that pervades Dean’s writings on the necessity of

36 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 26. 37 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 15. 38 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 264. 39 Dean, Crowds and Party p. 258. 40 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 163. 41 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 26. 42 Dean, Crowds and Party p. 21. 43 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 28.

206

the party form, seeing the party as a means of enabling egalitarianism to endure

after the crowd is gone.44 Therefore, the building of a new party is necessary if the

left is to take advantage of the real breaks and gaps created by street level

spontaneous struggle.

The party, as well as filling the necessary function of organisational bureaucracy

and disciplining of class struggle,45 acts as a means of shaping and intensifying the

day-to-day struggles of people.46 However, despite the emphasis on the practical,

pragmatic and bureaucratic work that Dean claims a party is vital for, her

conception of the nature and understanding of the party is rather different. Dean

argues that; ‘instead of considering the communist party in terms of ideology,

program, leadership, or organisational structure, I approach it in terms of the

dynamics of feeling it generates and mobilizes’.47 In this sense, then, the party

should be taken as a means of communicating the gap in capitalist society as well

as the communist horizon.

The central reason, posited by Dean, for the necessity of the party form as the most

appropriate form of political organisation in the contemporary era, is focussed on

the issue of the ‘gap’; the gap that exists between capitalism and the needs of

people, the gap that events such as Occupy illuminate and hold open. ‘The role of

the party’, Dean says, ‘isn’t to inject knowledge into the working class. Nor is it to

represent the interests of the working class on the terrain of politics. Rather the

function of the party is to hold open a gap in our setting so as to enable a collective

desire for collectivity’.48 Such a reading of the role of the party, and the relation of

44 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 222. 45 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 201. 46 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 152. 47 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 210. 48 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 5.

207

resistance and the event, display the distance from Hardt and Negri’s

understanding of the possibilities of the common and the network.

For Dean, the necessity of crowd events, such as those of 2011, is to ‘breach the

given, installing a gap of possibility…a positive expression of negation’.49

Therefore, crowd events, which overcome the limitations and feeling of

powerlessness of individuals, are able to open up new possibilities and

demonstrate central problems with capitalist society. The party is necessary, for

Dean, to insert itself into this gap and hold it open, all the while continuing the

struggle. Such an event is essential if we are to transform society; the common,

and the possibilities attributed to it by Hardt and Negri overplays the freedom

inherent in the collaborative, cooperative work undertaken under capitalism.50

Dean argues that we cannot allow the organisational forms that emerge under

communicative capitalism to define the horizon of our collective potential.51 To do

so would be to submit to the exploitation of the capitalist system.

Whilst communicative capitalism has expanded collaborative production

networks across the globe and throughout life, the aim of such networks is not to

increase the democracy and freedom of those involved, but to increase the power

and profit of capitalism. Networks do not automatically produce horizontality, but

hierarchy.52 Dean argues that, rather than the egalitarian utopia of network

society, in reality, networks always contain asymmetrical nodes which reinforce

the distance between top and bottom; profit and poverty.53 The common, to Dean,

generates nodes that will become more successful; a winner, and thus will

49 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 124. 50 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 62. 51 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 70. 52 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 12. 53 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 12.

208

reproduce inequality.54 Additionally, the common is so often built on unpaid, or

underpaid, labour.55 Whilst capitalism exploits the labour of those who produce

under capitalism, through the common and through networks, producers have the

potential to rebel.56

Such a rebellion will take a conscious political moment; a clear political struggle, if

the conditions of production are to be changed. It is this clear political struggle

that Dean accuses anarchists and autonomists of underestimating and

undervaluing. Political struggle is necessary, Dean argues, because capital will not

easily relinquish political control.57 Such a struggle will need a level of collectivity,

not only through the party, but initially through the emergence of the crowd.

Whilst crowd events have often been dismissed as mere riots and thus non-

political, Dean sees the role of the crowd as a means of overcoming the limits of

individuality and providing a sense of invincibility through setting aside self-

interest.58 Anarchist and autonomist perspectives, through the prioritisation of

individual autonomy, destroy collectivity and the power that come with it.59 Dean

suggests that ‘if the subject is interpellated as an individual, the strengths of many

become the imaginary attributes of one’.60 The overcoming of the individual is, to

Dean, essential, and the individual is a form of enclosure in which the common

cause of humanity is enclosed into the individual in a process of making the

common productive.61

54 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 13. 55 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 15. 56 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 16. 57 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 207. 58 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 114. 59 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 125. 60 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 113. 61 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 81.

209

Hardt and Negri, Dean claims, make precisely this mistake in denying the need

for a collective political moment in which the limits of possibility are shattered

and new possibilities emerge. Dean suggests that Hardt and Negri’s political

theory leads to an understanding of alternatives emerging ‘not as the result of

organized struggle or left strategy but immanently, organically, as a direct effect of

capitalism’s own development, spontaneism now refigured as autonomy’.62 Hardt

and Negri provide the theorisation of the state of the left at the end of the 1990s,

and their central contribution, Dean argues, is to have rendered the weakness of

the left as its strength.63 However, for Dean, it is precisely these weaknesses which

need to be overcome.

Dean argues that the theoretical perspective that centres on the role of the

multitude construes the working class as overly broad, with the cost of inclusion

within the multitude being antagonism.64 For Dean, the centrality of the common

in the thought of Hardt and Negri emphasises the existence of the common under

capitalism already occludes the very possibility of antagonism.65 In this sense,

Dean sees Hardt and Negri’s work as furthering the techno-utopian discourse of

communication and digital technology as if it were able to overcome the

contradictions of capitalism. She argues that for Hardt and Negri, capitalism has

subsumed communications resulting in communication no longer providing a

critical outside.66 For Dean, to depict communicative capitalism as such is to posit

the world as one in which we are all entrapped in circuits from which we cannot

escape.67

62 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 23. 63 Dean, Crowds and Party, pp. 23-24. 64 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 78. 65 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 119. 66 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 128. 67 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 155.

210

Whilst, claiming that Hardt and Negri’s understanding of the subjectivities of

resistance in communicative capitalism is too broad a category, echoing other

critiques of their work, some have pointed to the comparable problem of

abstractness in the work of Dean. Reviewing her book The Communist Horizon,

Isaacs points to the highly abstract conception of the party in Dean’s work.68 It

remains unclear what the party looks like and exactly what its function in society

is. Apart from the limited historical examples of party building mentioned in this

work, where are examples of such party structures, and how do they achieve the

Dean’s stated aims? There remains a great distance between (alongside serious

problems with) the building of the Communist Party in the US, and the Latin

American social democratic movements of more recent decades.

Alongside this critique of Dean’s view of the party, we confront another way in

which the party remains highly abstract, in that it is often depicted as a psycho-

social relation of emotion and feeling; opening up, directing and organising

anxiety and anger into a coherent political force. How exactly this fits with the real

‘work’ undertaken through the party form is difficult to decipher. Indeed, such a

conception appears as a rather empty understanding, and one that fails to

distinguish the party as a political form from other, non-party based

organisational forms. It is exactly the leadership and disciplinary organisational

form that distinguish the party, and the reasons that Dean seeks to build a new

party, from the horizontal, networked forms of organisation found throughout the

occupations and encampments of 2011, and indeed, those theorised by Hardt and

Negri. Further evidence of the empty conceptualisation of the party that Dean

puts forward can be found when she argues that the party is merely the common

name of the struggle.69 The obvious question that arises from this is why it is that it

68 Isaac, ‘Neo-Communism’, Dissent. 69 Dean, Crowds and Party, p. 263.

211

must specifically be a party that is the common name of the struggle? Instead, is it

possible that other organisational forms can better encapsulate and communicate

the distinctive radical content of contemporary social movements and of

theoretical perspectives such as those of Hardt and Negri?

3.1 Hardt and Negri and the basis for the Political Common Here, I argue that on the basis of the urban common and the digital common,

Hardt and Negri’s work offers a convincing depiction of the ways in which such

resistance can be organised and continued. Dean is correct in interpreting Hardt

and Negri’s conception of the resistance of the common is one founded on a

notion of democracy; a democracy that must be built to expand and regulate the

common, and in so doing transform the daily lives of people. It is this, and the

experiments toward such a goal that appears as the most convincing and

persuasive account of possibility of change in the contemporary era, and which

provide the basis for the substantive development of the common. In order to

further substantiate the concept of the common, here, the content and structure of

the political common is drawn out and developed.

The central focus of this thesis is to explore the relationship between the forms of

contemporary capitalist exploitation, the creation of the common and the

possibilities of radical political change in order to develop a substantive concept of

the common commensurate with the work of Hardt and Negri. As Chapter 1

made clear, Hardt and Negri’s perspective builds on a range of political theory

that seeks to examine how political control today is ever more defined as ‘a form

of politics entailing the administration of the processes of life’.70 This approach

then recentres discussions of political control away from the state towards an

70 M. Dean, Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Sage, London 1999) p. 98.

212

investigation of how we organise life; the common in which we all live and create.

If we are to struggle against this disciplinarity, Foucault argues we must not

recourse to a new form of sovereignty but to a new right that is both ‘anti-

disciplinary and emancipated from the principle of sovereignty’.71 Hardt and

Negri argue, therefore, that command has become democratised, in the sense that

it is ‘ever more immanent to the social field, distributed through the brains and

bodies of the citizens’.72

Importantly, for Hardt and Negri, the changing role of economic exploitation is

the key driving force of this shift into socialised control mechanisms. They argue

that with a shift away from the factory as the primary site of production (and

along with it, the collapse of the weaponry of factory control),73 ‘the normalising

apparatus of disciplinarity [comes to]…animate our daily practices’.74 Capitalism

has become concerned with the lives of producers due to the need to manage the

faculties of production; the labour power of subjects.75 This intensification of

capitalism has seen it come to dominate and penetrate all aspects of our lives,

including shaping life itself.76

Therefore, under contemporary communicative capitalism, all resistance must

take place on the plane of capital: ‘[t]here is no outside to capital’.77 This gives rise to

a new form of social subject capable of resistance, which is termed the multitude,

which is ‘the living alternative that grows within Empire’.78 Therefore, despite the

fact that the left no longer has recourse to an outside – a space in which to

71 Foucault, “Society must be defended”, pp. 39-40. 72 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 23. 73 Negri, Archaeology and Project, p. 210 74 Hardt and Negri, in Campbell and Sitze, Biopolitics, p. 27. 75 P. Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004) p. 82. 76 Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude, p. 24. 77 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 102. 78 Hardt and Negri, Multitude p. 61.

213

construct alternatives – resistance gains a new found power due to the fact that

‘resistances are no longer marginal but active in the center of a society that opens

up networks’.79 This opening up has the potential for the multitude to recognise

the social production of the common.80 In response to these transformations there

is a need to redefine class antagonism in advanced capitalism.81

3.2 Democracy of the common The transformations in production have led to a situation in which we are all

embedded in the common, and therefore, class struggle is reimagined as a struggle

for the democratic control of the common; the end of exploitation of collaborative

labour for private profit. The growth of communicative and affective labour in

post-Fordist capitalism creates a need to recognise the role of communication in

both production and resistance. Production has become imbued with

communicative practices and radical potentials that such a development may well

provide for resistive practice. Contemporary productive practices are no longer

distinguished from social life itself, relying on knowledge, language, ideas and

communication. Hardt and Negri argue that:

‘The immediately social dimension of the exploitation of living immaterial

labor immerses labor in all the relational elements that develop the

potential of insubordination and revolt through the entire set of labouring

practices’.82

It is therefore necessary, Hardt and Negri claim, to formulate a new political

theory that can account for the radical possibilities that emerge from these shifting

79 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 25. 80 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xv. 81 Negri, Archaeology and Project, p. 199. 82 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 29.

214

productive processes.83 In essence, there is an attempt to resituate struggle at the

heart of contemporary capitalist exploitation.

This growth of communication within contemporary capitalism leads to potentials

for more democratic forms of life to be organised. Tracing the development of

resistance throughout the twentieth century to the present day, it is argued that

‘each new form of resistance is aimed at addressing the undemocratic qualities of

the previous forms, creating a chain of ever more democratic movements’.84 Since

1968 social movements have tended to challenge the notion that democracy is a

form of rule imposed from above, and instead sought to activate the potentials of

democratic discourse, stripping the concept of democracy from its embeddedness

in nation-states.85 Today, the authors argue, we must reinvent the concept of

democracy and create new institutional forms appropriate to the global age.86

The contemporary conception of democracy, for Hardt and Negri, must be based

on the multitude, which differs in nature from conceptions of other social subjects.

The multitude, as discussed in the Introduction to this thesis are all those who

labour and produce under capitalism; differentiated from the traditional working

class which is seen as overly exclusive.87 Similarly other traditional social

groupings face issues; ‘the people’, imposes unity and homogeneity, and is

inherently linked to the state. Virno, a fellow autonomist, notes that in liberal

thought the multitude is seen to be confined to the private sphere, and becomes

83 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 29 84 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 68. 85 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 237. 86 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 238. 87 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. xiv, and p. 99-100, see also Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude, p. 21.

215

‘the people’ when it emerges into public space.88 In response, the radical concept of

the multitude insists on the being many across social life. The ‘Multitude signifies:

plurality – literally: being-many…as opposed to the cohesive unity of the people.

Thus, multitude consists of a network of individuals; the many are a singularity’.89

The ability to accommodate and organise this diversity is the task of contemporary

social movements.

Horizontalist democracy emerges as the potential organisational principle for the

common, and is distinguished from representative democracy of state institutions.

Noting a trend in contemporary alter-globalisation movements toward a new form

of democratic organisation since the Battle of Seattle, Hardt and Negri argue that

‘the various affinity groups come together or converge not to unite into one large

centralised group; they remain different and independent but link together in a

network structure’.90 The diverse and disparate individuals and grievances are not

formulated into a unified claim or set of demands levelled at institutional power

centres, in hope of resolution, but bring into question the very existence of such

centres. The refusal of rationally constructed demands that are formulated in state-

centric policy terms refuses the potential trap laid by institutions and the media,

whose preference for a single demand, eloquently put across by a charismatic

leader,91 contrasts with the idea that no such leadership will emerge from

Occupy.92 Instead the act of representation is called in question and the wider

transformation of society is deemed necessary.93

88 Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude, p. 24. 89 Virno, The Grammar of the Multitude, p. 76. 90 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 288. 91 E. Castaneda, ‘The Indignados of Spain: A Precedent to Occupy Wall Street’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) p. 310 92 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 38. 93 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 289.

216

However, questions remain about the nature of the political answers that such

movements, and theoretical responses to them, can offer. I have noted Dean’s

problematisation of such structures, which she shares with other public

intellectuals such as Badiou who responded to the Occupy movement with a

degree of scepticism, suggesting that Occupiers were ‘blind, naïve, scattered and

lacking a powerful concept of durable organization’.94 This assertion is echoed by

Zizek when he argues that ‘carnivals come cheap’,95 and that change will only

come through a ‘strong body able to reach quick decisions and realize them with

whatever force may be necessary’.96 If the biopolitical approach is to hold, then, we

must come to answer the question of what the politics of the common might look

like?

3.3 Representation and ‘the political’ As we have seen, through a theoretical excavation of the work of Jodi Dean and

that of Hardt and Negri, the process of political representation is today the site of

contestation over conceptions and practices of radical democratic politics, and

therefore of nature of the political common. In order to develop the political

moment of the common, I firstly defend the understanding of the common as a

site of political struggle. Hardt and Negri claim that the multitude cannot be

captured in its entirety by a centralised form of domination.97 Therefore, any

attempt at imposition of centrality or leadership will always fail to contain and

channel the autonomous activity of resistive subjects. At its core, the authors argue

that representation is a process of ‘disjunctive synthesis,98 both opening up and

connecting the multitude with the common, yet at the same time separating them

94 A. Badiou, The Rebirth of History (Verso, London, 2012) p. 5. 95 S. Zizek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (Verso, London, 2012) p. 77. 96 Zizek, The Year of Dreaming Dangerously, p. 82. 97 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 330 98 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 346.

217

from real political power.99 Hardt and Negri claim that orthodox political theory

says that only the one can rule, whether through a monarch, a state, a nation, a

people, or a party.100 Liberal-Republican constitutionalism has long grappled with

attempts to link the governed to the process of governing. In Rousseau we find the

move from the will of all to the general will; the representation of the will of the

people constructed through the separation of the public and private. It is through

this process that the noisy multitudinous voices are transformed into the unified

people that can claim and operate sovereignty.101 I have outlined how Dean thinks

that representation is not only inevitable, but also desirable in that it can transform

the many voices of the crowd into a coherent, effective political force.

Dean explicitly links her theoretical diagnosis and project to the work of those

such as Ranciere and Laclau,102 who argue that politics arises in the gap between

the state and the people. Ranciere draws out the implications of his own

perspective in clear contrast to those of Hardt and Negri. Whilst the police is the

nameable and countable, or generally that referred to as the politics of the state,

the people or the demos is that which remains outside the police.103 Therefore, the

people are the exception to domination; those that are not countable or

nameable.104 Politics thus arises outside of the police, through conflict and

contention.105 Laclau, similarly, seeks to show how ‘the people’ is a social body

that is sharply divided, and thus cannot be immanent.106 Laclau and Mouffe argue

that the social is defined by a ‘displacement between the distinct subject positions

99 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 241. 100 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 328. 101 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 242. 102 J. Dean, Democracy and Other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2009) pp. 13-14. 103 Ranciere, Dissensus, p. 85. 104 Ranciere, ‘Ten Theses on Politics’. 105 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 350. 106 Laclau, ‘Can Immanence explain social struggles?’, p. 3.

218

– which is the condition for the emergence of an antagonism’.107 Laclau and Dean

both criticise Negri for making politics an impossibility in his work by suggesting

that the multitude is immanent, or inside the social order.108 This refusal of the

dialectic leads to the claim that the multitude becomes universal, and thus cannot

be socially and politically constructed.109 For Laclau, and Ranciere, then, ‘[i]t is

only if we accept the notion of antagonism and social division that we can have

political action’.110 Negri’s mistake, such theorists would argue, comes from the

rejection of the negative dialectic, or the ‘being-against’, from which flows a

dissolution of the political to include everything and thus denote nothing.111 The

dissolution of the distinction between the political and the social means politics

has become outdated, and we are left ‘mourning of politics before the triumph of

an immaterial Leviathan’.112

Hardt and Negri attempt to address such concerns through a discussion of the role

of democratic organising in political struggle. Politics in its party form is seen as

retaining a strong notion of totality and thus such a counter-hegemonic project is

seen as a project of ‘becoming state’ of resistive subjects.113 Hardt and Negri

suggest that Laclau’s project situates the hegemonic struggle as one of

constructing the people from the multitude; turning the many into one, in order to

contest state power and transform society;114 echoing the liberal notion of the

people as public. For Dean, ‘the party is a vehicle for maintaining a specific gap of

107 E. Laclau and C. Mouffe, Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso, London, 2001) p. 159. 108 Laclau, ‘Can Immanence explain social struggles?’; and Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 119. 109 Laclau, ‘Can Immanence explain social struggles?’, p. 4. 110 Laclau, ‘Can Immanence explain social struggles?’, p. 5. 111 Ranciere, Dissensus, p. 86. 112 Ranciere, ‘Ten Theses’. 113 B. Arditi, ‘Post-Hegemony: Politics Outside the Usual Post-Marxist Paradigm’, in G. Kioupkiolis and A. Katsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today: The Biopolitics of the Multitude versus the Hegemony of the People (Ashgate, Farnham, 2014) p. 17. 114 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 304-305.

219

desire, the collective desire for collectivity’.115 Such a process of counter-hegemony

is alien to the political project of the multitude where democratic contestation is

not about organising a united social group capable of confronting liberal-

republican hegemony but of negotiated difference.116 The process of representation

inherent within the concept of hegemony is directly counter to the concept of

biopolitics.117

Equally, Hardt and Negri contest the claim that their political thought makes

contentious politics impossible by reasserting that the multitude, whilst

immanent, is about breaking apart, not unifying the social order.118 The project of

Empire is not to demonstrate how hierarchies of power have disappeared, but only

to show how they have become more mobile.119 Therefore, they seek to show how

new political subjects are not marginal, but are marginalised; their marginalisation

is a political act within the broader framework of neoliberalism.120 In claiming and

creating the common in various areas of life, resistive forces seek to demonstrate

the failures of neoliberalism to provide for the conditions of life required. The act

of organising such commons through radically democratic politics is a process of

constructing radical communities that organise the common on distinct political

lines from that of neoliberal-democratic orthodoxy. Therefore, the organisation of

the multitude through the common is not one of spontaneity, but of political

construction in order to create political events.121 Rather than providing an

analysis that disavows political struggle (as Dean, Ranciere and Laclau’s critiques

115 Dean, The Communist Horizon, p. 207. 116 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 106. 117 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 305. 118 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 350. 119 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 4. 120 Negri, ‘Archaeology and Project’, p. 200. 121 G. Kioupkiolis and A. Katsambekis, ‘Introduction: Radical Democracy and Collective Movements Today: Responding to the challenges of Kairos’, in Kioupkiolis and Katsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements, pp. 8-9.

220

would suggest) Hardt and Negri claim that their ‘methodological variant is first

and foremost conflictual; it implies an alternative’.122

I have shown how the conception of the multitude is able to resituate a conception

of the political that maintains antagonism whilst refusing to be reduced to an

attempt at hegemony, or the construction of fixed party forms. Therefore, Hardt

and Negri’s notion of the common leads us to understand contemporary social

movements, specifically Occupy, as forms of both distituent and constituent

political struggles;123 in which I argue Occupy contains both traces of critique and

the creation of alternatives. Whilst the rejection of the negative dialectic appears to

deprive the multitude of the possibility of political action, instead it insists on

antagonism across the social domain. We can say, then, that this perspective is

antagonistic rather than oppositional.124 Equally, it demonstrates that contestation

need not appeal to, or confront state power; ‘in the realm of biopolitics it may be

more productive not to generate reform proposals but to develop experiments for

addressing our global situation’.125 Social movements are able not only to refuse

and reject social control, but are increasingly able to address, or at least approach,

the specifically political question of what to do next; what to establish in place of

the old, even if only for a short time, in a small space.

As noted in Chapter 1, I read the common as a concept developed from an

understanding, in part, of the philosophical perspective of Deleuze and Guattari’s

work, and in particular in this respect, of the conception of state forms and the role

122 Hardt and Negri, Empire, p. 9. 123 M. Hardt, ‘Real Democracy: An Interview with Michael Hardt’ (May 14th 2013), https://libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Creal-democracy%E2%80%9D-interview-michael-hardt. Accessed 25/4/17. 124 K. Weeks, ‘The Refusal of Work as Demand and Perspective’, in T.S. Murphy and A.K. Mustapha, Eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri: Resistance in Practice (Pluto, London, 2005) p. 130. 125 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 305.

221

of the war machine. In opposition to the role of the state which is perceived as a

vehicle of capture, the war machine is that which refuses to be captured; the

nomad or the pack.126 Such an impulse can be witnessed in the contemporary

social movements, in their refusal to present demands to decision makers, but

instead to undertake a fundamental critique of conventional politics.127 Such a

critique of conventional politics is reconstrued, in the Deleuzian emphasis on the

power of flight and echoed in Virno’s concepts of exit and exodus.128 Here, we can

stress Negri’s insistence on the role of the refusal of work.129 Seen as such, the act

of flight or withdrawal is never purely an act of escape, but always contains

invention and antagonism. In Deleuze, this understanding is put across through

the encouragement to ‘flee, but while fleeing grab a weapon’.130 In Hardt and

Negri, such a sentiment takes on the requirement of not only fleeing but also

constructing a constituent process of a viable alternative: ‘Not only must the

multitude configure its exodus as resistance, it must also transform that resistance

into a form of constituent power, creating the social relations and institutions of a

new society’.131

Such a sentiment renders Hardt and Negri’s analysis as wholly unique in relation

to social movement activism. Not only does such an analysis respond through

taking the activism of recent struggle on its own terms, rather than seeking to

impose external organisational forms upon it, as Dean would have us do, but it

also goes beyond the limitations of the prefigurative politics discourse. I therefore

argue that struggle, in this light, is understood to be highly self-reflexive;

126 Day, Gramsci is Dead, pp. 136-138. 127 D. della Porta, ‘Organisational Structures and Visions of Democracy in the Global Justice Movement’, in D. della Porta, Ed., Democracy in Social Movements (Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, 2009) p. 1 128 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 334. 129 Weeks, ‘Refusal of Work’, in Murphy and Mustapha, Eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri, p. 122. 130 Deleuze and Guattari, On The Line (Semiotext(e), 1983) pp. 91-92. 131 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 348.

222

negotiating the relationships of the world as it is and the world as it could be.

Activism, understood thusly, is not naïve or utopian, but constructs the very act of

resistance as a site of struggle and conflict between organising a response to

exploitation and control whilst developing the very techniques and processes

necessary to construct alternative ways of life. Democracy is, then, not a process of

constructing an alliance or building a counter-hegemonic force capable of taking

on state power, but a process central to the very act of creating the common.

Whilst I argue this is a theoretically cogent perspective that responds to the

questions of the changing nature of working practices and resistive subjectivity, it

also appears as important to comprehend in light of the Occupy movement which

sought to break away from conventional political channels. In light of such

development, we must think through the implications of such organisational

forms if we are able to imagine radical political change today.

4. Political Organisation of Encampments In order to further substantiate the political moment of the common, I argue that

the Occupy movement has done much to develop forms of political action

appropriate to the management and expansion of the common in real, material

ways. As such, I utilise the secondary literature on the Occupy movement

specifically that on the political forms and processes developed therein, in order to

contribute to and compliment the theoretical work undertaken thus far. This

literature, I argue highlights the ways in which contemporary political action is

being drawn into the regulation of life and thus takes place on the plane of the

common.

223

The creative process of democratic construction in the Occupy movement features

prominently in the secondary literature.132 This literature stresses the ways in

which diverse individuals and groups were engaged in discussions, decision

making and the operations of the camps. Much focusses on the decision-making

techniques deployed by Occupy, and discusses the potentials of these forms of

organising to transform political protest and traditional ways of doing politics. In

particular the literature highlights the complex forms of working groups and

General Assemblies (GAs) that enabled Occupy to organise internal life of the

camps. Not only does consensus decision making link Occupy to a long history of

social movement struggle,133 it also highlights what occupiers saw as the crisis of

representative democracy associated with the politics of the state.

132 Anonymous, ‘Occupy – The End of an Affair’; Calhoun, ‘Occupy Wall Street in perspective’; Castaneda, ‘The Indignados of Spain: A precedent to Occupy Wall Street’; F. Fox Piven, ‘On the Organizational Question’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 191-193; T. Gitlin, ‘Occupy’s Predicament: the moment and the prospects for the movement’, The British Journal of Sociology 64:1, pp. 3-25; D. Graeber, ‘Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots’, Al Jazeera 30/11/2011, http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112872835904508.html. Accessed 11/12/2013; R. Gunn, and A. Wilding, ‘Occupy as Mutual Recognition, Pers Comm (2013) pp. 1-8; N. Hughes, ‘”Young People Took to the Streets and all of a sudden all the Political Parties got old”: The 15M Movement in Spain’, Social Movement Studies 10:4 (2011) pp. 407-413; S. Jaffe, ‘Occupy Wall Street was humbling to many of us’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 198-202; J. S. Juris, M. Ronayne, F. Shokooh-Valle, and R. Wengronowitz, ‘Negotiating Power and Difference within the 99%’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 434-440; D. K. Leach, ‘Culture and the Structure of Tyrannylessness’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 181-191; M. McCleave Maharawal, ‘Occupy Wall Street and a radical politics of inclusion’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 177-181; R. Milkman, P. Lewis, and S. Luce, ‘The Genie’s out of the Bottle: Insiders Perspectives on Occupy Wall Street’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 194-198; D. Nugent, ‘Commentary: Democracy, temporalities of capitalism and dilemmas of inclusion in Occupy Movements’, American Ethnologist 39:2 (2012) pp. 280-183; D. Rushkoff, ‘Permanent Revolution: Occupying Democracy’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 164-173; J. Smith, B. Glidden, ‘Occupy Pittsburgh and the Challenges of Participatory Democracy’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 288-294. 133 S. Constanza-Chock, ‘Mic Check! Media Cultures and the Occupy Movement’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) p. 381; Smith and Glidden, ‘Occupy Pittsburgh’, p. 288.; M. Sitrin, ‘One No, Many Yeses’, in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 9.

224

In response to this perceived failure of representative democracy, Occupy’s action

was often said to be to debate and talk.134 In this sense occupiers were enacting the

liberal tradition of debate and discussion of public issues in public space.

However, the democratic ideals being operated in Occupy were more radical and

progressive than the representative democratic institutions of contemporary

liberal democracies. For instance in the daily, sometimes twice daily, GAs in which

decisions were made on a consensus basis, where everyone had to agree on the

final decisions.135 Indeed, the focus was often less on the outcome of such decision

making technologies, but instead on the process itself,136 which was felt to be of

intrinsic value within the encampment communities. This removed the

majoritarian, confrontational style of decision making so often associated with

national parliaments, whilst also ensuring that each member represented

themselves. Speeches were made through the use of the ‘human mic’ which

tended to inhibit charisma,137 and acted as a shared corporeal bond between the

protesters,138 whilst hand signals were used in order to show the thoughts of the

participants without the need to shout out.139 The focus on leaderlessness of

Occupy encampments was of vital importance for many of the camps.140 As such,

no individuals were recognised as official spokespeople and none gained

institutionalised power.

Here, then, clearly Occupy sought to construct and adopt structures that aimed at

preventing the emergence of hierarchy and power within the camp. As such,

134 E. Schmitt, A. Taylor and M. Greif, ‘Scenes from an Occupied America’, in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 4. 135 L. A. Kauffman, ‘The Theology of Consensus’, in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 47. 136 S. Halvorsen, ‘Beyond the Network? Occupy London and the Global Movement’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012), p. 428. 137 B. E. Harcourt, ‘Political Disobedience’, Critical Inquiry 39:1 (2012) p. 40. 138 A. Conio, ‘Introduction’, in A. Conio, Ed., Occupy: A People Yet to Come (Open Humanities Press, London, 2015) pp. 31-32. 139 Leach, ‘Culture and the Structure of Tyrannylessness’, p. 184. 140 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 5.

225

occupiers claimed that they ‘sought to create the most horizontal and democratic

space possible’.141 These structures can be seen as attempt to formulate and

constitute a new means of organising life within the camps that recognised and

brought into being the political common. Democratic organisation here aimed at

enabling an organisation and regulation of the common with protest seen as a

‘horizontal, swarm-like struggle for freedom’,142 in which the many are able to

coordinate, without the need for external leadership or concrete aims. Such

democratic processes were not only a critique of institutional representative

democracies, but also functioned as part of an ongoing experiment of ‘exploring

forms of social organization and trying out new ways of governing itself’.143

Such attempts to create lasting political organisation raises the question of the role

of structures.144 Truly democratic processes, according to Hardt and Negri, would

mean fewer meetings, through the reabsorption of political decision making into

daily life. This clearly did not occur in Occupy.145 Instead of political decision

making disappearing as a distinct act, the time-consuming meetings and

assemblies often became a drag on resources, enthusiasm and morale. Perhaps

here, it is important to retain a sense of the antagonistic rather than purely

prefigurative elements of Occupy; an appreciation that such a constituent process

was done in conditions not of the activists’ choosing, and a relation to outside

power structures remained.

141 Sitrin, ‘One No, Many Yeses’, in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 8. 142 Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, ‘Introduction’, in Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements, p. 3. 143 Harcourt, ‘Political Disobedience’, p. 44. 144 Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, ‘Introduction’, in Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements, p. 3. 145 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 350.

226

I have shown how, in Hardt and Negri’s work that the link between the form and

content of Occupy has been emphasised: that the means of organising are as much

part of the politics of Occupy as the demands and transformations that the

movement creates. Here, I argue that this impulse was central to the popular

politics of the Occupy movement. For Buchanan, in reference to the manifesto

issued by Occupy Wall Street;

The manifesto was never really that important…It functioned simply as a

chronicle of what the people were thinking in those heady weeks of the

occupation, rather than a carefully thought out and precisely articulated

position statement, much less a utopian vision of the future.146

Whilst this may well be somewhat hyperbolic, the Initial Statement and

consequent statements were clearly laboriously produced distillations of the

contentions of the occupiers, Buchanan goes on to suggest that more than the

content of the manifesto, ‘It was rather the process of putting the manifesto

together that was important’.147 Here, then, I focus on both the content and the

form of production of the statements; both the statements themselves and the

discursive process of production in order to develop the understanding of the

political moment of the common as both one of critique and construction.

We can see, in Occupy’s practices and secondary literature, a destituent process of

the rejection of representation; of institutions of representative politics, and as an

internal tool of democratic organising.148 Such a rejection is evident in both the

critiques made of institutions by activists and by the alternative structures

developed within the encampments which sought to resituate people at the centre

146 I. Buchanan, ‘September 17, 2011: Occupy without counting’, in A. Conio, Ed., Occupy: A People Yet to Come (Open Humanities Press, London, 2015) p. 193. 147 Buchanan, ‘September 17, 2011’, in Conio, Ed., Occupy, p. 193. 148 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, pp. 46-47.

227

of democratic processes. Through rejection and construction, Occupy sought to

create a new politics that corresponded more closely to a liberated regulation of

life. A clear emphasis is placed on the notion of leaderlessness and the

horizontalist impulse that we have shown features heavily in autonomist thought.

For instance the distance from parties and the state is emphasised: Occupy is ‘a

people’s movement. It is party-less, leaderless, by the people and for the people’.149

Such a sentiment is repeated in this statement when it is argued that ‘We wish to

clarify that Occupy London is not and never has been affiliated with any

established political party, candidate or organisation. Our only affiliation is with

the people’.150

The ‘Initial Statement’ of Occupy London, agreed on 16th October 2011 on the steps

of St Paul’s Cathedral primarily refers to the issues the protesters have with the

contemporary political situation. The Occupy London protesters argue that ‘the

current system is unsustainable. It is undemocratic and unjust’.151 The claims that

the system is undemocratic and unjust equates the concerns of the nature of

political decision making, with those of social and economic justice. The

continuation of the discussion of interrelated problems of politics, economics and

social issues is seen in Article 4, which argues that ‘We do not accept the cuts as

either necessary or inevitable. We demand an end to global tax injustice and our

democracy representing corporations instead of the people’.152 Here we see the

protesters clearly concerned with the issues of corruption in representative

political institutions, and create links between the role of corporations in

149 Occupy London, ‘Statement of Autonomy’ (14/12/11). http://occupylondon.org.uk/about/statements/statement-of-autonomy/. Accessed 26/4/17. 149 Occupy London, ‘Initial Statement’ (16/10/11). http://occupylondon.org.uk/about/statements/initial-statement/. Accessed 25/8/17. 150 Occupy London, ‘Statement of Autonomy’. 151 Occupy London, ‘Initial Statement’. 152 Occupy London, ‘Initial Statement’.

228

influencing policy, the global tax system and the specific austerity programme

instituted by the Conservative government. Protesters here can be seen to be

linking the specifics of their struggle with similar political events across the world

and more general projects of disempowering people on a global scale.

Their critiques of the current system highlight that protesters believe that

alternatives are possible. In Article 1 of the Initial Statement, for instance, the

protesters argue that ‘We need alternatives; this is where we work towards

them’.153 Interestingly, these ‘alternatives’ are discussed in relation to the issues

that protesters perceive in the contemporary world. As such, the concerns of the

protesters do not arise spontaneously, and the protesters do not act as if they are

already free; instead there is a strong element of critique and antagonism. It is

from such a critique that possible alternatives, variously mentioned in this

document, but also the ‘alternative’ of the camp itself arises from. It is the camp,

the Occupy movement that is pinpointed as the site of construction and creation of

alternatives; ‘this is where we work towards them’. Therefore, it is not only the

proposals put forward during this initial act of protest and construction of this

document, but the act of encampment and organising the common; the process of

living together on different lines that offers an alternative.

Occupy, therefore forces us to confront the possibilities and limitations of

democratic organisation in radical social movements. In particular, it is of note

how Occupy sought to develop and expand techniques that disrupted and

challenge the traditional, hierarchical forms of political organisation. In what are

now fairly well known processes and techniques, we can witness the use of the

human mic, hand gestures, and GAs to enable discussion and debate within

153 Occupy London, ‘Initial Statement’.

229

Occupy camps.154 Many such processes were not developed by Occupy, having a

long history in social movements, but were often new to many of the participants

involved in 2011. The following section develops how exactly, contra Dean, that

such a movement might be considered to present the potentials of a political

moment of the common.

5.1 Toward a Substantiation of the Political Common As previous chapters have sought to outline the transformations in socio-

economic life, and posit the common as a pertinent conceptualisation of shifts in

forms of production. I argue that on this basis, new political processes and

organisational forms are necessary if radical change is to be possible. To this end,

this chapter has thus far excavated and developed both Dean’s and Hardt and

Negri’s understandings of the potentials and possibilities of such transformations.

I have demonstrated that Dean sees new opportunities to reassert traditional

labour organisations in novel situations, and has critiqued the drift toward

dispersed, horizontal organisational forms as she identifies in the Occupy

movement amongst other social movements. However, through my analysis of the

secondary literature on the Occupy movements political organisational

developments, I have analysed the ways in which the organisational forms

developed and deployed therein sought to overcome the traditional dichotomies

of form and content; structure and aims through a complex assemblage of

destituent and constituent political activity. I therefore argue that such political

forms are able to gesture at a substantive conceptualisation of a political moment

of the common.

154 Occupy London, ‘Occupy London - kick off - Part 2’, (Uploaded 15/10/11). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGv3VfZyEM. Accessed 26/4/17.

230

In the consequent section, I therefore seek to build on the findings thus far in order

to develop a conception of the political common which, first, reflexively

incorporates responses to new socio-political forms, thus being adaptable, open

and accessible to non-orthodox productive subjects. Secondly, a politics of the

common must, as with the common at large, be a process of radicalising

contentions across human life, not only raising critiques of the enclosure of the

common, but also of constructing new potentially liberatory means of organising

an emancipated common. In order to achieve this aim, I draw on both the

theoretical understanding of the common set out in this thesis alongside practical

advances of social movements in order to demonstrate that the Occupy movement

and the understanding of horizontal structures can provide a more substantive

conceptualisation of a politics of the common.

Central to conceiving of a politics adequate to the maintenance and expansion of

the common is the notion that political organisation, capable of radical change is

possible without recourse to an outside ‘leader’ or leadership structure.

Identifying the ways in which this has been shown to be possible, and the ways in

which this relates to the management of the common moves analysis beyond the

patronising attitude of many on the left who claim that contemporary social

movements remain ‘blind, naïve, scattered’.155 Such a claim begins to draw out

some of the important contributions to organisation and resistance that Occupy

has made; recognising and investigating where such ideas and practices may lead

in the future. This response revolves around the conviction that social movements

should be taken on their own terms and structures and developments studied in

order to unravel what might emerge. For della Porta, this is vital as if we only

focus on social movements as instruments we fail to study the internal processes

155 Badiou, The Rebirth of History, p. 5.

231

of democracy.156 The internal processes of democracy are what define the potential

forms of the political common. For Hardt and Negri, ‘organisation is therefore not

just a means, but also an end in itself’.157

Thinking through the Occupy movement, utilising the development of the concept

of the common set out in this thesis, reveals certain key insights into the ways in

which politics is possible in novel circumstances. Firstly, clearly the composition

of the Occupy camps was not simply one of the working class in its traditional

forms. As Mason notes, this was a dramatically un-Marxist revolt,158 in both its

identification with, and relation to, the working class and the organisational

principles so often associated with the labour movement. Despite the clear support

for both the, then upcoming, strikes by public sector unions, and the demonstrable

support for the NHS as a social institution and the struggle of its employees, this is

evidently not one and the same struggle. For instance, participants were heard to

declare that ‘it doesn’t matter what class you are from as long as you support the

99%’, and for the word ‘class’ to be replaced with ‘background’ as ‘we are all

equal’.159 Clearly, not all protestors perceive their struggle as a class-based

struggle, and the forms the struggle took did not rely on the structures and

organisational principles associated with the labour movement. Therefore,

corresponding to my diagnosis of the encampment struggles of 2011 as struggles

over the common, the creation of distinctive political forms able to organise and

communicate variegated political demands was necessary.

156 della Porta, ‘Organisational Structures and Visions of Democracy’, p. 4. 157 della Porta, ‘Organisational Structures and Visions of Democracy’, p. 5. 158 Mason, Why it’s still kicking off everywhere, p. 281. 159 J. Kelsey, ‘First Reading of Initial Statement from Occupy London 7:30pm October 16th 2011’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7MdyVooe-2o. Accessed 25/8/17.

232

This apparent rejection of class unity, allied with the obvious complexity of

identification, grievances and critiques at play in the Occupy camp highlights the

inability of a counter-hegemonic framing to account for and theorise such a

movement as anything other than a failure. Whilst problematizing the activism,

structures and political perspectives is a vital part of reflection, we must also

enable a comprehension of the changing nature of struggle today. As this thesis

has stressed throughout, the concept of the common expands the understanding of

production and exploitation to encompass the whole range of human activity that

is subsequently exploited by capital at large; therefore exploitation takes place

through reproductive work alongside more traditionally construed productive

labour.160 As such, capital is concerned with the daily lives of all subjects. Not only

does this mean that power and control are reconfigured, but the potentials of

revolution are transformed also. Resistance no longer emerges from marginal,

exploited groups, but can arise from all sectors of society. Whereas political

perspectives aimed at constructing counter-hegemony require united (either pre-

existing or constructed) subjective groups, the political moment of the common

enables radical tendencies of diffuse social subjects to create political action

through negotiation, discussion and diversity of action.

Secondly, we can see in Occupy a destituent process of the rejection of

representation; of institutions of representative politics and of representation as an

internal tool of democratic organising.161 Such a rejection is evident in both the

critiques made of institutions by activists and by the alternative structures

developed within the encampments which sought to resituate people at the centre

of democratic processes. Despite the rejection of formal politics of the state,

parliament, parties and hierarchy, I have sought to argue that social movement

160 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, xiv and pp. 99-100. 161 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, pp. 46-47.

233

activism can come to act and organise politically. Through rejection and

construction, Occupy sought to construct a new politics that corresponded more

closely to a liberated regulation of life.

Such a creation of alternative forms can be conceived as a constitutive process of

developing a political organisation through ‘doing’.162 Such an emphasis on

‘doing’ prioritises the centrality of bodies in space; the active, engaged process of

affective political construction brings with it new relations between individuals

and political processes. As such, the process of the GAs transforms political

decision making from a process of unifying and representing; the ‘general will’, to

a recognition of the ‘will of all’.163 The active politics of the Occupy movement go

beyond the rejection of representation and we find the process to be ontological;

producing subjectivity, rather than merely seeking to represent pre-ordained

identities.164 If interpreted as new productive and communicative relations,

operated on distinctive political line, this process of democratic rejection-

construction can be construed as a politics of the common.

The ontological production of new subjectivities that defines the politics of the

common is the political moment in which ‘the political act is understood as one

that concerns the question of living and the social being of society, as well as the

production of autonomous subjectivities’.165 Such a construction of new

subjectivities is evident in debates held at Occupy encampments in which

speakers highlight how the engagement in novel forms of democratic participation

is difficult due to the fact that it is alien, that no one has the answers, but through

162 J. P. Zuquete, ‘”This is what democracy looks like”. Is Representation under siege?’, Global Studies 6:1 (2012) p. 7. 163 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 64. 164 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, p. 67. 165 A. Feigenbaum P. McCurdy and F. Frenzel, Protest Camps (Zed Books, London, 2013) p. 25.

234

engaging in the process, solutions are created. When approached as such, we

understand the contention that political events are not purely defined by the

eventual structural transformation achieved by the protest, but the production of

new subjectivity and a new existence can be just as important and in many cases

‘it is the event’.166 In the consequent section, I discuss how limitations of the

politics of Occupy necessitate a return to radical political theory and allow me to

argue that such failings do not necessitate a rejection of the framing of the political

common.

5.2 Constitutive Democracy As I have highlighted throughout this section, the production of radical

subjectivity is, perhaps, the most vitally important aspect of the Occupy

movement in its attempt to construct a politics of the common. The production of

subjectivity in struggle is linked to the attempts to create lasting political

organisations and raises the question of the role of and relationship between

subjectivity and structure; roles and relationships which are potentially

problematic.167 One of the first issues that such decision making structures face is

that of time. For many involved in Occupy, attending two GAs per day, one at

lunch time and the other in the evening, that could sometimes go on for hours was

simply not possible. Such an emphasis on process evokes Polletta’s assertion that

freedom is an endless meeting.168 Not only could the time consuming nature of

consensus politics become tiresome, it also operated to exclude the least privileged

of the 99%; those who have to work two or three jobs and take care of families.169

Such processes clearly privileged those living in the camps, rather than those who

166 A. Conio, ‘Introduction’ in Conio, Ed., Occupy: A people yet to come, p. 39. 167 Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, ‘Introduction’, in Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements, p. 3. 168 F. Polletta, Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) 169 Zizek, in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 64, and Smith and Glidden, ‘Occupy Pittsburgh’, p. 290

235

could only attend at certain times. This privilege was also felt in how decisions

were being made, with those who resided in the camps having their opinions

more widely respected and far less challenged than non-residents further

enforcing the exclusion.170

The emphasis on diversity and openness, then, comes into conflict with the

conceptualisation of the protesters as an emerging identity. The phrase, found in

the Statement of Autonomy, that; ‘We stand in solidarity. We are Occupy

London’,171 appears to designate who is and is not Occupy London; clearly

denoting a creation of hierarchy of place and participation in a group claiming to

be free, horizontal and open. In contrast to the opening up of space and place; the

tendency to see Occupy as ‘Occupy Everywhere’, it appears that protesters have a

clear understanding of who it is that is an occupier and what it takes to be

considered an occupier based on physical presence and participation in the

Occupy encampment. Returning to reflect on Occupy through the theoretical lens

of Hardt and Negri we can see that in this regard, Occupy reduces the many to the

one; playing the game of the state in constructing a fixed identity and fixed set of

principles that provide the foundation of the political structures enacted in that

space.

Whilst officially the movements were leaderless it soon became apparent that the

real decisions were being made behind the scenes and not at the daily GAs.172

Numerous commentators,173 point to Jo Freeman’s ‘The Tyranny of

170 Smith and Glidden, ‘Occupy Pittsburgh’, p. 289. 171 Occupy London, ‘Statement of Autonomy’. 172 K. Gessen, A.Taylor and S. Resnick, ‘Scenes from an Occupation’, in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 54. 173 Constanza-Chock, ‘Mic Check!’, p. 383; Harcourt, ‘Political Disobedience’, p. 38; Smith and Glidden, ‘Occupy Pittsburgh’, p. 288; Taylor, ‘Scenes from an Occupation’, in Taylor et al., Occupy, pp. 63-65.

236

Structurelessness’ as an example of historical experiences with leaderless or

structureless organisations which seek to avoid institutionalising leaders or power

centres.174 For Freeman, in her experience of feminist organising in the 1960s and

1970s, ‘structure may be flexible; it may develop over time; it may evenly or

unevenly distribute tasks, power and resources over the members of the group.

But it will be formed regardless of abilities, personalities, or intentions’.175

Therefore, for Freeman, by simply refusing to create official structures, we do not

avoid power relations, but instead make power less contestable and accountable

by obscuring it.

This is certainly an experience attested to in many examples of Occupy

movements, where the daily GAs became relatively powerless and tended merely

to approve pre-discussed resolutions. Participants and commentators mention

how often de facto leaderships were established by the most active protestors.176

Further, the potentially exclusionary practices of the experiences of participatory

democracy within the Occupy camps suggests that the very reality of structureless

organisations gives power to the middle class elements, especially those who are

tech-savvy, due to their ability to make use of their access to resources.177 Activists

writing in Occupy: Scenes from Occupied America also noted that the focus on

consensus politics may over-privilege the troublemakers and the stubborn, who

fail to accept proposals despite all others happy for them to pass.178 Despite these

issues, it is evident that Occupy was not structureless.

174 J. Freeman, ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’, (1972). http://uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/joreen/tyranny.htm (Accessed 10/2/2014) 175 Freeman, ‘Tyranny of Structurelessness’. 176 R. Wegronowitz, ‘Lessons from Occupy Providence’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2013) p. 215. 177 Such an experience recalls the experiences of educated, eloquent ‘respectable’ women of Yellow Camp during the Greenham Common camp in S. Roseneil, Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham (Cassell, London, 2000) pp. 81-84. 178 Gessen et al., in Taylor et al., Occupy, p. 54.

237

If the construction of horizontal, leaderless organisational forms is linked to the

management of the common, the problems faced by such structures are important

to confront when discussing the political moment of the common. Highlighting

the emergence of leaders and the dilemmas of consensus based political decision

making, Dean claims that ‘some of the ideas that most galvanised people in the fall

– those associated with autonomy, horizontality, and leaderlessness – have also

come to be faulted for conflicts and disillusionment’.179 Instead, following a similar

line of argument to Laclau and Ranciere in their insistence on the people as

essentially divided, Dean insists that the slogan of the 99% displays this division

between capital and the people whilst also highlighting the ability of protesters to

begin to create a collective basis from which to challenge and assert a gap between

capitalism and people .180 Occupy must, therefore, be read as class struggle.181

Highlighting the inescapability of representation Dean points to the fact that

evidently, it was not the 99% on the streets, but those claiming to represent the

99%.182 In order to organise and coordinate a non-homogenous grouping,

representation is the most appropriate form of organisation.183 Instead of claiming

that Occupy is an example of non-representative politics, Dean insists that we

must read the political forms as attempts to construct a new form of

representation, based on openness and malleability through which the positions of

Occupy are constantly debated and problematized.184

The criticism such a perspective raises for the concept of the common developed

in this thesis is one that parallels the critiques raised by Ranciere and Laclau. Yet

the concept of the common as developed here argues that Occupy appears as an

179 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 1. 180 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Forcing Division’, p. 385 181 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Forcing Division’, p. 383. 182 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, pp. 13-14. 183 Dean and Jones, ‘Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Representation’. 184 Dean and Jones, ‘Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Representation’.

238

immanent struggle at the heart of capitalism, rather than asserting as gap or

division between people and capitalism. As discussed in the Introduction to this

thesis, for Laclau and Ranciere it is only through division that we can have

political action. Dean argues that taking Occupy to highlight that ‘everything is

capitalism…in its communicative, social, and affective, that is to say, common,

dimensions’,185 is to enable Occupy to be nothing more than a brand, that dovetails

neatly with contemporary communicative capitalism.186

I have attempted, throughout this chapter, to demonstrate the complex way in

which Occupy not only raises a critique, but also poses alternatives through

creativity. The actions of Occupy are created in reference to the perceived failures

of capitalism and current institutional arrangements. As such, to depict the work

of Hardt and Negri as presenting the multitude as contained within the limits of

capitalism and thus unable to formulate alternatives, misses the claim that the

multitude is ‘within and against’; that the creative impulses and energies of the

multitude are exploited and enclosed through capitalist accumulation and

ownership. The struggle for the common corresponds to a form of capitalism that

has sought to penetrate all aspects of life, and Occupy is seen as a means of

contesting this intrusion by creating and asserting an alternative vision.

Despite the development of leadership and less open forms of democracy

developing out of frustrations of political efficiency, I argue that no hegemonic

project was attempted in the camps. Whilst this may well be a source of the

perceived failure of the movement to continue beyond the few months in the

square, or to radically challenge or transform the structures of oppression and

exploitation, the mere fact that this tendency exists in such a strong and resilient 185 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 4. 186 Dean, ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’, p. 8

239

form tells us something about the organisational principles of the most active and

enthusiastic protesters today. The very fact that occupiers sought to construct new,

alternative structures intended to regulate life on different lines, no matter how

embryonic or flawed, demonstrate the intensions of those at the forefront of global

anti-capitalist activism and the path that such protests may well follow pursuing

and constructing a politics of the common.

Whilst the limitations of structurelessness have been noted, and play a preeminent

role in critiques raised by the likes of Dean, as well as in the mainstream media, it

should also be made explicit, as I have sought to do throughout this chapter, that

Occupy did not seek to rid itself of all structures. Indeed, some participants have

suggested that whilst the shortcomings of the democratic experiment are clear,

that it is the overly-structured organisation of Occupy that creates power centres

and exclusions. It can be argued that Occupy was too structured, too cumbersome

and too laborious which led to behind-the-scenes organising in the name of

efficiency.187 GAs could often go on for hours, outside in the rain, frustrating all

but the most committed activists and putting off those who attended after

working all day. Both Leach and Harcourt note that whilst there are certainly

limits to the participatory forms of democracy, the intention itself should be

commended.188 It must be recognised that Occupy was an attempt to create new

structures that were suitable for promoting and maintaining leaderless and

participatory forms of decision making.189

187 Leach, ‘Culture and the Structure of Tyrannylessness’, p. 189; McCleave Maharawal, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, pp. 178-179; Smucker, ‘Occupy: A Name Fixed to a flashpoint’, p. 220. 188 Leach, ‘Culture and the Structure of Tyrannylessness’, p. 183; and Harcourt, ‘Political Disobedience’, p. 39. 189 Leach, ‘Culture and the Structure of Tyrannylessness’ p. 183.

240

Finally, of course, the question of translating the experience of organising the

squares and parks into a long term, large-scale political project remains

unanswered. We must not confuse ‘communism in miniature’ to the real thing; we

must not exaggerate the bounded progress established in those short months.190

How is it that we can go beyond organising a square for a few months, and

instead come to organise a society?191 Despite the framing of movements as

autonomous and hostile to the notion of the state, and the general antipathy to

unification of the multitude into the people,192 Hardt and Negri make a relatively

striking admission in discussion with Harvey that; ‘We have nothing against

taking state power’, but winning it and maintaining it is ‘impossible’.193 Such a

claim comes into apparent conflict with many of their claims relating to the radical

potentials of the multitude. As earlier noted, Hardt and Negri take issue with

Laclau’s political project in that they see it as transforming the multitude into a

unified people in order to both contest state power and control the subjective

body. 194 I have argued that such a perspective fits closely with the impulses and

actions of the Occupy protesters in attempting to construct a politics of the

common, and retaining a critical distance from the operations of the state and

representative political bodies in general.

Clearly in their claim relating to the taking of state power, Hardt and Negri are

considering and responding to issues of constructing widespread and long-lasting

political organisational structures for the transformation of society. Specifically

they are responding to the claim by Harvey, that ‘it is simply naïve to believe that

polycentricism or any other form of decentralization can work without strong

190 Conio, ‘Introduction’, in Conio, Ed., Occupy: a people yet to come, p.32. 191 Hardt, ‘On the right to the Common’, Lecture given at the Franke Institute, University of Chicago (16/10/12). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meZKqZMoCvs. Accessed 26/4/17. 192 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 242. 193 Hardt and Negri, ‘Reply to Harvey’, p. 215. 194 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, pp. 304-305.

241

hierarchical constraints and active enforcement’.195 I argue that Hardt and Negri’s

response does not equate to the calls from those on the left to organise the squares

into political organisations capable of contesting and winning state power as a

necessary next step. As Hardt and Negri point out, contesting state power must be

seen as a means of destabilising and contesting Empire.196

In contrast, despite all the emphasis on developing a theory of a new communist

party, much of Dean’s work rests on traditional understandings and justifications

of the party form, as well as numerous references to the benefits and development

of the CPUSA and CPGB of the 1930s, 1940s and 1950s. The state, despite

distinguishing between purely seizing, and transforming the state as the aim of

the communist party, remains the target of political organisation.197 In this

perspective, the state is essential as it can be wielded to suppress minorities, such

as the bourgeoisie that stand in the way of communist revolution, so the majority

must be organised with this as the aim, in order to make use of this tool.198 Seeing

the party as central to the organisation of the working class across regions and

nations; an organisational form that scales, in opposition to a horizontalist

organisational form that does not, appears to be somewhat flawed and

contradictory in regards to recent experience.

As Chapter 3 demonstrated the paradox of incommunicability was largely

overcome in the Occupy movement, in which we can see that various

encampments spoke to each other. When Dean describes with excitement how ‘a

massive crowd filled New York’s Times Square…Half a million people came out

195 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 84. 196 Hardt and Negri, ‘Reply to Harvey’, p. 215. 197 Dean, Crowd and Party, p. 150. 198 Dean, Crowd and Party, p. 150.

242

in Madrid. Riots broke out in Rome…’,199 it must be recognised that, limitations

aside, it was the autonomist impulse and organisational forms that inspired such

events. Encampments emerged not only across the globe, but were able to remain;

to sustain the eruption of anger and creativity for relatively long periods of time.

Throughout which time, institutional, organisational, and bureaucratic structures

were built; comprising a constitutive period of struggle, beyond the act of

negation, or rejection.

6. Conclusion This chapter has contributed to answering my research question of; How can the

common in Hardt and Negri be substantiated? I argue that the common frames

questions of political organisation and social life which features as a central issue

in contemporary radical theory, as well as contemporary social movements. In

previous chapters, I established that the urban common and the digital common

have come to play a central role in both capitalist production and social movement

struggle. Each of these forms of the common has been shown to revolve around

the affective relations of reclaiming and constructing the common. Therefore,

answering the question of In what ways does the concept of the common require an

investigation of alternative political forms?, is the basis of this chapter. The task of

developing a conception of political organisation appropriate to the management

of the common has been shown to be a vital one, due to the changing social

relations at the heart of contemporary capitalism. As such, traditional workers

movement struggles have to be rethought, with the organisational basis in fixed

communities and workplaces no longer providing the central subjective group for

struggle. Just as Marx celebrated the concentration of workers in factories as the

potential subject of socialist revolution,200 and Gramsci celebrated the productivity

199 Dean, Crowd and Party, p.1. 200 K. Marx and F. Engels, The Communist Manifesto (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) p. 4.

243

of Fordist labour practices,201 Hardt and Negri seek to demonstrate that alongside

the inevitably exploitative relations of contemporary capitalism, such a context

also reveals new possibilities for workers struggles.

Such a diagnosis is one shared in both Jodi Dean and Hardt and Negri’s work, yet

the response to such issues is one which separates the theorists in interesting and

enlightening ways. Dean responds to the questions raised by new contexts by

reasserting the need for a disciplined, organised, centralised political party to

harness and direct the resistive energies of emergent social groups. As this chapter

has shown, Dean constructs an argument that seeks to highlight the limitations of

spontaneous social movements, and the theoretical responses which understand

this as a potentially transformative force. Dean suggests that to emphasise

horizontality and network structures in social movements means resistance

remains within the confines of the neoliberal-democratic paradigm.

I contrast Dean’s theoretical work with that of Hardt and Negri who see potential

in the network form which is built upon the production of the common, and

comes to be the paradigmatic organisational form appropriate to the management

of the common. As earlier chapters have shown, struggle can no longer rely on

pre-defined communities that undertake urban struggle, and no pre-defined

workplace upon which labour movements can be built. Instead, what we find is

that the growth of financialised, digitised late-capitalism situates the site of

struggle on the common – a site of struggle that necessitates the constant, on-going

construction of resistive communities. In this context, I argue horizontal, radically

democratic communities lend themselves to the reflexive, responsive and creative

forms of struggling against the moving target of contemporary capitalism.

201 A. Gramsci, Selections from The Prison Notebooks (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 2007) pp. 301-302.

244

I have argued that camps were able to become political; raising critiques and

creating new forms of organisation that are appropriate to the management of the

common. I have argued that autonomism, rather than theories of the party,

theorises the implications of the aims of dispersed leadership and diverse

participation, and the ability to create a critical politics based on creation of

alternative organisational structures. Occupy has begun to construct a critical

politics of the common. Such a politics tirelessly developed structures for

organising the common of everyday life within camps, enduring for significant

periods of time, and feeding into political resistance beyond the existence of the

camps themselves. This tireless, time consuming and difficult work of creating

and transforming politics toward a form appropriate to the organisation of the

common must not be dismissed as the easy work of micro-politics and lifestyle

anarchism. What emerges from both the theory and the practice is that the

‘multitude is capable of organising itself and making decisions without need for

hegemonic decision making body’.202

The politics of the common evident in the Occupy movement is best evoked as

‘attempting to bridge the apparent divide between republican…and social

demands’.203 Whilst Mason notes how hierarchy and power were able to reassert

themselves over network forms after 2011,204 the task now in both theory and

practice is not to seek to ‘codify new social relations in a fixed order, but instead to

create a constituent process that organizes those relations and makes them lasting

202 Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, ‘Introduction’, in Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements, p. 9. 203 Feigenbaum et al, Protest Camps, p. 25. 204 Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, ‘Introduction’, in Kioupkiolis and Kalsambekis, Eds., Radical Democracy and Collective Movements, p. 2-3

245

whilst also fostering future innovations and remaining open’.205 The politics of the

common continue to encounter significant obstacles and limitations; in particular

the gap between the ideal and realisation of leaderless, horizontalist structures.

However, the radical politics of the common attempts to extend political struggle

to daily life, tying together the social relationships of production through urban

spaces and digital communications in novel and reflexive ways.

205 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, pp. 7-8.

Thesis Conclusion

‘the real flesh of postmodern production’

Hardt and Negri, Multitude1

1. Introduction Starting from the problematisation with the concept of the common as ‘mostly

concerned with the formal preconditions for the existence of commons and less

with the material requirements for the construction of a commons-based

economy’,2 alongside the startling admission that Hardt and Negri have not

adequately understood or developed the concept of the common sufficiently,3 I set

out to substantiate the common in Hardt and Negri. Therefore, my central

research question for this thesis has been: How can the common in Hardt and Negri be

substantiated?

I have argued consistently throughout this thesis that the answer to such a

question turns on three central and pertinent moments of the common which must

be read as moments in which struggle reveals the reality of productive and

communicative relations and the potentialities of the creation of alternatives. I

have argued that contemporary struggle must be understood in all its physicality

which enables a subjective moment in which alternatives are constructed. Through

each chapter of this thesis, this conceptualisation of the moments of the common

was developed in order to contribute to the overarching conception of the

common set out here.

1 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 101. 2 Federici, ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, p. 4. 3 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 72.

247

The 2011 Occupy movements have been shown to be commons movements in that

they undertake a political organisation of urban space and operate a contested

politics in the digital sphere. Whilst the Empire trilogy appeared to be ‘theorising

without movements’,4 and thus remained highly abstract, the question of ‘What

specific and concrete practices will animate this political project’,5 remained. I

argue the Occupy movement must be seen as a movement that enables us to

reflect on the politics of the common.

2. Method, Structure and Contribution In order to achieve a substantive conceptualisation of the common, commensurate

with the writings of Hardt and Negri, Chapter 1 established the basis upon which

such a task could be achieved. Chapter 1, then, focused on the first of the sub-

questions to this thesis of; How does an engagement with Hardt and Negri’s theoretical

development enable a substantiation of the common? Central to this task was a

comprehensive excavation of Negri’s particular intellectual heritage and

development and relationship with the ideas developed in the Italian workerist-

autonomist tradition, as well as the French philosophical tradition which were

shown to be central to understanding the contemporaneous intellectual work

undertaken by Hardt and Negri.

From this process of excavating the intellectual development of the concept of the

common, I identify the urban, digital and political moments of the common as of

particular importance. Not only are these moments which can be observed in the

work of Hardt and Negri, but they also chime particularly strongly with the recent

encampment protests of 2011. These moments form the basis of the discussion and

4 P. Virno and M. Hardt, Eds., Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996) p. 5. 5 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 399-400.

248

development in consequent chapters, the culmination of which enables the

concept of the common to be substantiated. Each of these theoretical chapters is

undertaken through a process of interlocution between Hardt and Negri’s thought

and key thinkers on respectively, urban, digital and political moments of the

common.

In Chapter 1, I argued that the contemporary thought of Hardt and Negri owed

much to Negri’s participation in workerist and autonomist organisations in 1960s

and 1970s Italy. Two central implications of this period on the contemporary

thought of Hardt and Negri were identified. Firstly the necessity of taking the day-

to-day struggles and politico-economic contestations of the working class as

entrance points into the wider processes of production, exploitation and

resistance. Secondly, autonomism in particular makes the radical step of

suggesting that the industrial working class and the factory are no longer the

primary producers under late-capitalism, and that, in its place, production and

thus exploitation of production has moved beyond the factory and invaded all

areas of social life. The historical aims of autonomism of workers struggles to ‘take

over the factories, exercise counter-power by creating liberated zones that would

free the productive forces and prefigure communism’,6 are reproduced anew in

novel circumstances in which we find the ‘common must be created – or occupied

- for the multitude to exist’.7

Negri’s real-world organising work within the Italian ultra-left led to his exile in

France and his encounters with the continental thought of Foucault, as well as

Deleuze and Guattari. In this period, I argued that the above autonomist impulses

were combined with continental philosophy which was assimilated and contested 6 Negri, Marx beyond Marx, p. xxix 7 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 73.

249

in order to provide a Marxism constructed around Foucault. In considering this

period, I argued that Negri’s philosophical outlook added two central elements to

the autonomist basis set out above. Firstly, in considering the work of Foucault,

Negri develops an understanding of biopolitics that seeks to synthesise the

autonomist impulse to read production and struggle as pervading social life. In

this regard, Negri does not see Foucault as presenting a picture of the foreclosure

of social struggle and biopolitical resistance, but in the necessity of reading

Foucault’s subjectivity as containing an inescapable remainder, biopolitical life can

never, truly prevent contestation and the possibility of emancipation. Secondly,

such an understanding is developed in relation to the work of Deleuze and

Guattari, whom Negri sees as presenting the potentialities of escape, through lines

of flight, yet, to Negri, lack an understanding of the moments of political

subjective production and antagonism.

Negri’s intellectual history in the development of workerism and autonomism

highlighted the urgent need identified by that strand of Marxist thought to

identify the changing nature of work and social organisation with the shift toward

globalised, fragmented, digital capitalism. In recent years the rise of precarious

working practices; of zero-hours contracts, self-employment, short-term and

temporary contracts, sub-contracting and the ‘gig-economy’ has been the source of

major debate within radical political theory. Reading Negri as I have set out

above; as concerned directly with the interrelationships of work and life, we see

that such developments can be seen to displace the site of exploitation and control

from the factory and company to the individual.8 The individual becomes a micro-

entrepreneur and takes on responsibility for survival and creative engagement

with the neoliberal economy; assuming responsibilities and risks previously

8 S. Shukaitis and J. Figiel, ‘The Factory of Individuation: Cultural Labor and Class Composition in the Metropolis’, South Atlantic Quarterly 114:3 (2015) p. 537.

250

undertaken by the vertically integrated, hierarchical workplace.9 Whilst strict

forms of workplace discipline and control continue to operate, the degree of

invasiveness of contemporary neoliberal control is revealed through the emphasis

that all of life is an attempt to market, produce and network oneself. It is on this

basis that the common emerges as a potential site of contestation and organisation

for a different future.

I highlight three central moments through which I argue that such a process of

substantiation is possible. I argue that the common must be read as pervading

moments of everyday life in which struggles reveal productive relations and

potentialities of transformation. The three moments of the common I identify are

therefore the urban, digital and political moments. Each of which is in itself a

moment of the common, whilst, at the same time, a microcosm of the common as a

whole. Taking the lack of clarity and academic rigour of the Empire trilogy into

account, this process is achieved via a central interlocution between the

fragmentary discussions of the common found in Hardt and Negri, and a

correspondingly influential theoretical research perspective for each respective

moment of the common. This allows key areas of clarification and development to

be highlighted and addressed throughout each of the respective chapters.

Comprising the subject matter of Chapter 2, and in response to the second of the

sub-questions of; In what ways does the concept of the common necessitate an

investigation of urban production? I argued that the urban common should be

considered to comprise of the productive relations of workers; a new scale in

which to approach relations of production in an ever more globalised world

whereby urban production centres on the production of the common. In this

9 Shukatis and Figiel, ‘The Factory of Individuation’, p. 537.

251

chapter I utilised the work of Harvey as a central interlocutor of the urban

common under capitalism. Whilst the thinkers have acknowledged a growing

affinity between their works, I demonstrated that in key areas, their work displays

distinctive traits which underpin divergent diagnoses of the urban condition.

Developing Hardt and Negri’s perspective on this, I highlighted the central claim

that the metropolis is to the multitude what the factory was to the industrial

working class, and that this factory is a factory for the production of the

common.10 Echoing the concerns of this thesis, and engaging this claim directly,

Harvey seeks to push Hardt and Negri to define what this actually means.11 I

therefore utilise Harvey’s challenge to Hardt and Negri as a means of

substantiating the urban common. In response to Harvey I argue that the

emphasis on corporeality necessitates we consider new forms of productive

practice as the material basis for new forms of struggle in the urban environment.

In order to achieve this, I developed Hardt and Negri’s call for a construction of a

‘unionism of the metropolis’.12 In so doing, I argue that struggles find themselves

grounded in the urban common, which enables us to view the contestation of the

common more broadly. Through a discussion of how secondary literature has

considered the Occupy movement created complex forms of spatial organisation,

‘most obviously the strategy of encampment or occupation’,13 and argued that

such a creative impulse cannot be separated out from the processes at work in

contemporary neoliberalism.14 Through conceptual development and reflection of

Occupy, I posit that resistance is able to reclaim and recreate the forms of life in

10 Hardt and Negri, Commonwealth, p. 250. 11 Harvey, Rebel Cities, p. 67. 12 Negri, Goodbye Mr. Socialism, p. 211. 13 Hardt and Negri, Declaration, pp. 4-5. 14 Bulley, ‘Space, Community, and Urban Counter-Conduct’, p. 248.

252

the city and thus take on a constituent, constructive role in producing and

reproducing what it means to dwell in the metropolis. Occupy demonstrates the

common is a virtual location that is constantly being actualised in physical space.15

The reclamation and recreation of the common through means such as occupation

functions as a unionism of the metropolis; the means of contesting and

reorganising the ways we engage each other and manage the urban common.

In order to establish a unionism of the metropolis such resistive practices must be

capable of organising a fragmented urban labour force; a labour force undertaking

drastically different working practices, but through comparable biopolitical,

physical and intellectual means. These forms may well take the form of expanded

unionisation; for which cleaners unions and the IWW form Hardt and Negri’s

reference points for such a tendency, and recent progress by Deliveroo workers,16

and Uber workers amongst others have also worked toward. Alternatively,

struggles have sought to increasingly constitute political struggles of diverse

groups and individuals through novel bodily practices and spatial politics,

through which otherwise intangible, immaterial labour appears to be embodied in

space and organised through constantly changing political structures that remain

adaptive to shifting impulses and demands. Such constituent political processes

can be seen, with the common fixed firmly at the centre of their politics, to be more

than resistive practices that seek to limit the intrusion of capital, but instead, to

build new forms of life beyond capitalism.

15 Hight and Hardt, ‘Designing Commonspaces’, p. 72. 16 T. Frymorgen, ‘The Rise of the Unorganisable’, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/the-rise-of-the-unorganizable/ (Accessed 1/3/2017); and J. Haynes, ‘A Sharing Economy Strike’, https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/deliveroo-strike-sharing-economy-living-wage/ (Accessed 1/3/2017).

253

The second of the moments of the common identified in this thesis, Chapter 3

addressed the third of the sub questions: In what ways does the concept of the common

necessitate an investigation of digital communication? Through Chapter 3, therefore, I

highlighted the necessity of reading digital production and communication as a

biopolitical struggle for the common. Manuel Castells’ work was utilised in order

to provide key insights into the manner in which the rapid expansion of digital

technology and network communications have transformed political and

economic organisation, and raised the possibility of such developments offering

liberatory potentials. Hardt and Negri, like Castells, see the emerging forms of

communication and production as epoch-defining in that they reshape systems of

production and working patterns. Whilst digital technologies emerge at the very

forefront of neoliberal globalisation, and are regularly bound up with hyper-

exploitative working methods, they also offer the potential for alternative social

relations and productive processes.

Central to Hardt and Negri’s thesis is the understanding that labour has been

transformed in late capitalism, coming to encompass ‘cybernetic, intellectual, and

affective social networks’.17 These transformations in labour are said to

demonstrate that ‘the seeds of a communist society already exist in the virtual

paths that potentially link together this labor in new collective articulations’.18

Whilst I have highlighted that comparable claims in the established literature often

stray into technological-utopian or deterministic terrain, Hardt and Negri’s claims

can be grounded in the physicality and productive relations of the common.

Through discussion with Castells’ work, I demonstrated how a technological-

determinist perspective develops a particular position in which politics becomes 17 Virno and Hardt, Radical Thought in Italy, p. 6. 18 Virno and Hardt, Radical Thought in Italy, p. 6.

254

merely a process of switching between alternatives. This perspective disavows

political struggle, instead reducing political contestation to a technological fix. I

argue that we must not allow discussions of digital communication and

production to obscure the physical implications and interactions of workers,

products and resistance. I have argued that a concept of the common must go

beyond limiting human experience, and political contestation, to cognitive

processes and technological switches. I demonstrated that by coupling the

autonomist impulse to observe struggle across social life along with the necessity

of political struggle recognising the central role played by bodies in space means

Hardt and Negri’s digital common can be shown to frame an intricate and

complex affective linking of digital and physical struggle.

The secondary literature on the Occupy movement highlighted that whilst

technology was central to the inspiration, distribution and organisation of protest

camps, the striking consideration is not how digital technology was used to get

people to the squares, but how these technologies combined with the physical

proximity and act of encampment. In this way, I have demonstrated how Juris’

conception of the digital communications plays out across both ’logics of

networking’ and the ‘logics of aggregation’. This refocusing of the role of

communication technology on the physical aggregation of people in spaces was

shown to enable us to move beyond the de-politicised space of the digital

network, and examine real political struggle in concrete locales. The encampment

created a political moment that enabled technology to be utilised in new ways,

and combined with a diverse repertoire of actions that appears as something more

than merely the passive, switching of networks.

255

Chapter 4 sought to build on the contributions of the previous chapters through a

process of more directly tackling the political implications of the analysis of

contemporary production and struggle through the concept of the common. It

therefore confronted the fourth of the sub-questions set out in the Introduction: In

what ways does the concept of the common require an investigation of alternative political

forms? The task of developing a conception of political organisation appropriate to

the management of the common has been shown to be vital due to the changing

social relations at the heart of contemporary capitalism. In previous chapters, I

established that the urban common and the digital common have come to play a

central role in both capitalist production and social movement struggle. As such,

traditional workers movement struggles have to be rethought, with the

organisational basis in fixed communities and workplaces no longer providing the

central subjective basis. The concept of the common seeks to demonstrate that

alongside the inevitably exploitative relations of contemporary capitalism, such a

context also reveals new possibilities for workers struggles.

Such a diagnosis is one shared by Jodi Dean and Hardt and Negri’s work, yet the

responses separate the theorists in interesting and enlightening ways, enabling the

specificity of Hardt and Negri’s common to be rendered more clearly. Dean

perceives the solution to new productive contexts as one in which we must

reassert the need for a disciplined, centralised Communist party to direct political

struggle. Dean develops her argument through highlighting the limitations of

spontaneous social movements and theoretical responses which take such

spontaneity as potentially transformative, which Dean argues remain constrained

within the limits of capital. Hardt and Negri’s work, on the other hand claims that

the network is inherently tied to the production of the common, which comes to be

the paradigmatic organisational form of alternative socio-economic models. The

growth of financialised, digitised late-capitalism situates the site of struggle on the

256

common – a site of struggle that necessitates the constant construction of resistive

communities. Based on the framing of struggle developed here from the work of

Hardt and Negri, I argue that networked democratic protest-communities lend

themselves to the reflexive, responsive and creative forms of struggling against

contemporary capitalism.

Through reflecting on the encampment protests of 2011, I have argued that camps

were able to act politically; raising critiques and creating new forms of political

organisation appropriate to the management of the common. I have argued that

autonomism, and the common specifically, rather than theories of the party,

theorises the implications of the aims of dispersed leadership and diverse

participation, and the ability to create a critical politics based on creation of

alternative organisational structures. Thus, Occupy has begun to construct a

critical politics of the common. Such a critical politics tirelessly developed

structures for organising the common of everyday life within camps. This time

consuming and difficult work of creating and transforming politics toward a form

appropriate to the organisation of the common must not be dismissed as an easy

alternative to the construction of a Communist party.

I have argued that through the use of theoretical analysis and readings of

secondary literature on contemporary social struggles the problem of the

substantiation of the common can be resolved. The work of Hardt and Negri

enables a conceptualisation of many of the diverse processes at work, and is best

evoked as ‘attempting to bridge the apparent divide between republican…and

social demands’.19 Whilst the politics of the common continues to encounter

significant obstacles and limitations; in particular with the gap between ideal and

19 Feigenbaum et al, Protest Camps, p. 25.

257

realisation of leaderless, horizontalism, it attempts to extend political struggle to

daily life, tying together the social relationships of production through urban

spaces and digital communications in novel and reflexive ways.

Therefore, in response to the central research question posed in this thesis, I argue

that a concept of the common, commensurate with the wider work of Hardt and

Negri, should be seen as an understanding of production centred on bodies in

neoliberalism. This enables an understanding of the urban, digital and political

moments of, production, communication and struggle. The urban environment

has come to be defined by the intensities of the common produced through

cooperation and proximity across the metropolitan environment, enabling the city

as a whole to be read as a site of production and resistance. The digital moment

highlights the complexities of physicality today, in particular the need to read

digital technology as impacting upon physical action. Such an understanding

argues that it is essential that outdated binaries of body-mind and digital-physical

are overcome. Finally, new forms of production necessitate new political models

which are able to account for the complexities of productive life today. I show how

a concept of the common must revolve around the corporeality of struggle which

creates new social relations beyond capital and the state. As such, the common is

an attempt to pinpoint the site of production and reproduction of society as a

whole; the collaborative work undertaken, and then exploited and enclosed under

capital.

Through each moment of the common that is investigated in this thesis, the

Occupy movement is utilised to highlight the real world implications of

theoretical discussions of the common. I suggest that the Occupy movement and

the wave of encampment protests that emerged throughout 2011 can be read as a

258

commons movement; in various ways contributing to, illuminating and

challenging many of the theoretical claims made by Hardt and Negri, and thus, by

this thesis. In light of this work on substantiating the concept of the common, and

my claims regarding its relation to the analysis of contemporary work and

resistance, I posit that future research in this area will have to be more careful and

considered over the use of the concept. As a redress to commentaries and critiques

on Hardt and Negri’s work, I hope this thesis has established the centrality of the

concept of the common at the heart of the contribution of the Empire trilogy, and

that the concept holds the possibility of being more than an empty term.

3. Limitations of the research I have therefore, throughout this thesis developed a substantive concept of the

common, which centres on the analysis of autonomous productive bodies in

resistance, specifically in reference to the moments identified as areas of particular

interest in this thesis. Whilst each of these moments reveal more about the nature

of the concept of the common in general, other moments of the common may well

be identified and thus require substantiation of their own. In particular, moments

such as that of the struggle over scientific-organic materials and intellectual

property;20 of gene-sequencing, GM crops and the patenting of the very material of

life is noted by Hardt and Negri as a key site of contestation over the common, yet

one which this thesis does not deal with directly. This limitation is justified firstly

through the fact that deeply technical-scientific debates are outside the author’s

remit of expertise, but also because this thesis sought to deal with moments of the

common that were of specific relevance to the encampment protests of 2011. There

may well be other areas of the common that require further research alongside

this, which further research may well identify.

20 Hardt and Negri, Multitude, p. 110.

259

Additionally, this thesis has constrained itself to the very unique theoretical

perspective of Hardt and Negri. Despite this restriction being justified on the basis

of scope of the project and the influential nature of the Empire trilogy, Hardt and

Negri are not alone in the use of the concept of the common. Many working in the

autonomist tradition use the concept of the common and therefore, this thesis has

not substantiated the concept of the common in general, only a concept of the

common commensurate with the work of Hardt and Negri’s Empire trilogy.

4. Future research Therefore, future work is necessary to extend the scope of this research. Some of

the ways this could be achieved are through further research into the following:

1. Further work on Hardt and Negri, in particular Negri’s role within and

relationship to wider autonomist theory and autonomist uses of the common.21 As

Bohm, Dinerstein and Spicer note,22 the broad tradition of autonomism can be sub-

divided into those who focus primarily on the creation of autonomy vis a vis

capital, those who prioritise autonomy against the state and those who prioritise

autonomy against hegemonic development. If this distinction can be upheld, the

role, importance and content of the concept of the common within each of these

tendencies will evidently play a distinctive role.

2. Further material research into the concrete forms of political organisation only

fleetingly discussed herein, is also necessary. In particular into contemporary

attempts to construct organisations and unions which draw together the dispersed

labourers of late-capitalism such as the IWW, Deliveroo riders, cleaners, casual

21 Including, but not limited to those mentioned in the Introduction to this thesis; G. Caffentzis, ‘Autonomous Universities and the Making of the Knowledge Commons’, The Commoner (November 18 2008); G. Caffentzis, ‘The Future of ‘the Commons’: Neoliberalism’s ‘Plan B’ or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?, New Formations 69 (2009) pp, 23-41; Federici, ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, The Commoner, p. 4; Holloway, Crack Capitalism, pp. 29-30; Midnight Notes Collective and Friends, Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons. 22 Bohm, Dinerstein and Spicer, ‘(Im)possibilities of Autonomy’, p. 17.

260

workers, unemployed unions amongst other headline struggles in the gig-

economy.

3. Relations between Negri and others in particular Gramsci on the

understandings of political organisation in light of epoch defining socio-economic

transformations, that require shifts in our analysis of and responses to exploitation

and capitalism. Understanding more on the relations between these highly

divergent, yet widely influential Marxian paradigms would further the theoretical

knowledge base of radical thought, whilst, at the same time, furthering our

understandings of the relations between such theoretical bodies of work and their

applicability to struggle today.

261

Blank page

Bibliography

Abellan, J., Sequera, J., and Janoschka, M., ‘Occupying the #HotelMadrid: A laboratory for urban resistance’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 320-326 Adbusters, ‘Is America Ripe for a Tahrir Moment?’, https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/america-ripe-tahrir-moment.html. Accessed 4/1/2014 Anarchist Federation, ‘1977 – The Bologna Uprising’. https://libcom.org/history/1977-the-bologna-uprising, Accessed 25/2/2016 Anonymous, ‘Occupy – The End of an Affair’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 441-445 Anonymous, ‘Occupy Wall Street’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l6jdkpQjueo. Accessed 21/1/2016 Ali, T., ‘Between Past and Future: Reply to Asef Bayat’, New Left Review 80 (2013) pp. 61-74 Alimi, E. Y., ‘“Occupy Israel”: A Tale of Success and Hopeful Failure’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 402-407 Badiou, A., My Translation, ‘A Multiple, Multiplicities’, Multitudes, http://www.multitudes.net/Un-multiple-multiplicite-s/. Accessed 23/3/2014 Badiou, A., ‘Greek anti-Fascism protests put the left’s impotence on display’, The Guardian (3/10/13). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/oct/03/greek-anti-fascism-protests-left. Accessed 5/9/17 Badiou, A., The Rebirth of History: Times of Riots and Uprisings, Verso, London, 2012 Balakrishnan, G., ed., Debating Empire (Verso, London, 2003) Bailey, S., ‘The Commons Movement in Italy’, The South Atlantic Quarterly 112:1 (2013) pp. 366-378 Barker, A. J., ‘Already Occupied: Indigenous Peoples, Settler Colonialism and the Occupy Movements in North America’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 327-334

263

Bayat, A., ‘Revolution in Bad Times’, New Left Review 80 (2013) pp. 47-60 Bell, D., Cyberculture Theorists: Manuel Castells and Donna Haraway (Routledge, London, 2007) Benkler, Y., The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom (Yale University Press, London, 2006) Berardi, F., Futurability: The Age of Impotence and the Horizon of Possibility (Verso, London, 2017) Bey, H., TAZ: The Temporary Autonomous Zone, Ontological Anarchy, Poetic Terrorism (Autonomedia, Brooklyn, 1991) Blackman, L., and C. Venn, C., ‘Affect’, Body and Society 16:1 (2010) pp. 7-28 Bohm, S., Dinerstein, A. C., and Spicer, A., ‘(Im)possibilities of Autonomy: Social Movements in and Beyond Capital, the State and Development’, Social Movement Studies 9:1 (2010) pp. 17-32 Bologna, S., ‘Workerism beyond Fordism: On the Lineage of Italian Workerism’, Viewpoint (15/12/2014). https://www.viewpointmag.com/2014/12/15/workerism-beyond-fordism-on-the-lineage-of-italian-workerism/. Accessed 24/8/17 Bonefield, W., and Holloway, J., ‘Commune, Movement, Negation: Notes from Tomorrow’, South Atlantic Quarterly 113:2 (2014) pp. 213-215 Bou Akar, H., and Mountaz, N., ‘On why struggles over urban space matter: An interview with David Harvey’, Jadaliyya (15/11/13). http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/15156/on-why-struggles-over-urban-space-matter_an-interv. Accessed 03/04/2016 Bulley, D., ‘Occupy Differently: Space, Community and Urban Counter-Conduct’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp.238-257 Butler, J., Gender Trouble (Routledge, New York, 2007) Butler, J., ‘Bodies in Alliance and the Politics of the Street’, European institute for progressive cultural policies (2011). http://www.eipcp.net/transversal/1011/butler/en (Accessed 11/2/14) Butler, J., ‘Foucault and the Paradox of Bodily Inscriptions’, The Journal of Philosophy 86:11 (1989) pp. 601-607

264

Bustani, H., ‘Dissonances of the Arab Left’, Radical Philosophy 184 (2014) pp. 35-41 Caffentzis, G., ‘Autonomous Universities and the Making of the Knowledge Commons’, The Commoner (2008) Caffentzis, G., ‘The Future of ‘The Commons’: Neoliberalism’s ‘Plan B’ or the Original Disaccumulation of Capital?, New Formations 69 (2010) pp. 23-41 Calhoun, C., ‘Occupy Wall Street in perspective’, The British Journal of Sociology 64:1 (2013) pp. 26-38 Cammack, P., ‘The Governance of Global Capitalism: A New Materialist Perspective’, Historical Materialism 11:2 (2003) pp. 37-59 Campbell, T., and Sitze, A., Biopolitics: A Reader (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2013) Carlsson, C., and Harvey, D., ‘David Harvey on Rebel Cities’, Shareable (5/9/12). http://www.shareable.net/blog/interviewed-david-harvey-on-rebel-cities. Accessed 25/8/17 Casarino, C., and Negri, A., In Praise of the Common: A Conversation on Philosophy and Politics (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2008) Castaneda, E., ‘The Indignados of Spain: A precedent to Occupy Wall Street’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 309-319 Castells, M., Communication Power (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2013) Castells, M., Ed., High Technology, Space and Society (SAGE, London, 1985) Castells, M., Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume I: Rise of Network Society (Blackwell, Oxford, 1996) Castells, M., Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume II: The Power of Identity (Blackwell, Oxford, 2009) Castells, M., Information Age: Economy, Society, and Culture Volume III: End of Millennium (Blackwell, Oxford, 2010) Castells, M., Networks of Outrage and Hope: Social Movements in the Internet Age (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2013)

265

Castells, M., The City and the Grassroots: A Cross-Cultural Theory of Urban Social Movements (Edward Arnold, London, 1983) Castells, M., The Informational City: Information Technology, Economic Restructuring, and the Urban-Regional Process (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1989) Castells, M., The Internet Galaxy: Reflections of the Internet, Business, and Society (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2002) Castells, M., ‘The Service Economy and Postindustrial Society: A Sociological Critique’, International Journal of Health Services 6:4 (1976) pp. 596-607 Chatterton, P., ‘‘‘Give up Activism’’ and Change the World in Unknown Ways: Or, Learning to Walk with Others on Uncommon Ground’, Antipode 38:2 (2006) pp. 259-281 Charnock, G., ‘Lost in Space? Lefebvre, Harvey and the Spatiality of Negation’, South Atlantic Quarterly 113:2 (2014) pp. 313-325 Charnock, G., Purcell, T., and Ribera-Fumez R., ‘¡Indignate!: The 2011 popular protests and the limits to democracy in Spain’, Capital and Class 36:1 (2012) pp. 3-11 Charnock, G., and Ribera-Fumaz, R., ‘A New Space for Knowledge and People? Henri Lefebvre, Representations of Space, and the Production of 22@Barcelona’, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 29 (2011) pp. 613-632 Class against Class, Italy 1977-8: Living with an earthquake (Red Notes, London). https://libcom.org/library/italy-1977-8-living-earthquake-red-notes. Accessed 25/8/17 Cleaver, H., ‘A Study Guide for Capital’, https://libcom.org/chapter-15-machinery-and-modern-industry. Accessed 10/2/2017 Cleaver, H., Reading Capital Politically (Anti/Theses Press, Leeds, 2000) Clemoes, C., and Soule, J., ‘Experiments in Socialist Urbanism: From Red Vienna to Red Bologna’, City Metric (17/8/15). http://www.citymetric.com/skylines/experiments-socialist-urbanism-red-vienna-red-bologna-1319. Accessed 25/2/2016 Clover, J., Riot. Strike. Riot. (Verso, London, 2016)

266

Cohen, J. L., and Arato, A., Civil Society and Political Theory (MIT Press, London, 1997) Constanza-Chock, S., ‘Mic Check! Media Cultures and the Occupy Movement’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 375-385 Conio, A., Ed., Occupy: A People Yet to Come (Open Humanities Press, London, 2015) Cooper, L., ‘The problem of autonomism’, Workers Power http://www.workerspower.co.uk/2011/04/the-problem-of-autonomism/. Accessed 12/1/2017 Cote, M., and Pybus, J., ‘Learning to Immaterial Labour 2.0: MySpace and social networks’, ephemera 7:1 (2007) pp. 88-106 Couldry, N., ‘Disrupting the media frame at Greenham Common: a new chapter in the history of mediations?, Meida, Culture and Society 21 (1999) pp. 337-358 Cremin, C., and Roberts, J. M., ‘Postmodern Left-Liberalism: Hardt and Negri and the Disavowal of Critique’, Critical Sociology 37 (2011) pp. 179-197 Curcio, A., and Ozselaik, C., ‘On the Common, Universality and Communism: A Conversation between Etienne Balibar and Antonio Negri’, Rethinking Marxism 22:3 (2010) pp. 312-328 Dalla Costa, M., ‘The Door to the Garden: Feminism and Operaismo’, Paper Presented at the Operaismo a Convegno Conference, Rome (1-2/6/02). http://libcom.org/library/the-door-to-the-gardenfeminism-and-operaismo-mariarosa-dalla-costa. Accessed 25/8/17 Dalla Costa, M., and James, S., The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (1975). https://libcom.org/library/power-women-subversion-community-della-costa-selma-james. Accessed 25/8/17 Day, R.J.F., Gramsci is Dead: Anarchist Currents in the Newest Social Movements (Pluto, London, 2005) Davies, A. D., ‘Assemblage and social movements: Tibet Support Groups and the spatialities of political organisation’, Transactions 37 (2012) pp. 273-286 Davies, J. S., ‘Urban Regime Theory: A Normative-Empirical Critique’, Journal of Urban Affairs 24:1 (2002) pp. 1-17

267

de Angelis, M., Omnia Sunt Communia: On the Commons and the Transformation to post-capitalism (Zed Books, London, 2017) de Angelis, M., ‘Social Revolution and the Commons’, South Atlantic Quarterly 113:2 (2014) pp. 299-311 Dean, J., Blog Theory: Feedback and Capture in the Circuits of Drive (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2010) Dean., J., ‘Communicative Capitalism: Circulation and the Foreclosure of Politics’, Cultural Politics 1:1 (2005) pp. 51-74 Dean, J., Crowds and Party (Verso, London, 2016) Dean, J., Democracy and other Neoliberal Fantasies: Communicative Capitalism and Left Politics (Duke University Press, Durham and London, 2009) Dean, J., ‘Occupy Wall Street: Division, Representation, Collectivity’,https://www.academia.edu/1510438/Occupy_Wall_Street_Division_Representation_Collectivity?auto=download. Accessed 25/4/17 Dean, J., ‘Occupy Wall Street: Forcing Division’, Constellations 21:3 (2014) pp. 382-389 Dean, J., The Communist Horizon (Verso, London, 2012) Dean, J., and Jones, J., ‘Occupy Wall Street and the Politics of Representation’, Chlto Delat 34 (2012) Dean, M., Governmentality: Power and Rule in Modern Society (Sage, London, 1999) Death, C., ‘Bodies, Populations, Citizens: The Biopolitics of African Environmentalism’, in Prozorov, S., and Rentea, S., The Routledge Handbook of Biopolitics (Routledge, Abingdon, 2016) Death, C., ‘Counter-Conducts: A Foucauldian Analytics of Protest’, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest (2010) pp. 237-238. Death, C., ‘Counter-Conducts as Modes of Resistance: Ways of “Not being like that” in South Africa’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp. 201-217

268

Death, C., ‘Disrupting Global Governance: Protest at Environmental Conferences for 1972 to 2012’, Global Governance 21:4 (2015) pp. 579-598 Death, C., ‘Interrogating Michel Foucault’s Counter-Conduct: Theorising the Subjects and Practices of Resistance in Global Politics’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp. 151-156 DeLanda, M., Assemblage Theory (Speculative Realism) (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2016) Deleuze, G., ‘An Open Letter to Negri’s Judges’, first published in La Repubblica (Rome, May 10, 1979). http://nomadologiaz.blogspot.co.uk/2006/01/gilles-deleuze-open-letter-to-negris.html. Accessed 25/8/17 Deleuze, G., Expressionism in Philosophy: Spinoza (Zone Books, New York, 1992) Deleuze, G., and Guttari, F., Trans. Massumi, B., A Thousand Plateaus: Capitalism and Schizophrenia (Continuum International Publishing, London, 2012) Deleuze, G., and Guattari, F., On The Line (Semiotext(e), 1983) Deleuze, G., and Guttari, F., Trans., Massumi, B., The War Machine (Semiotext(e), 1986) Deleuze, G., with annotations from Hardt, M., Postscript on Societies of Control, http://news.rapgenius.com/Gilles-deleuze-postscript-on-the-societies-of-control-annotated. Accessed 13/3/2014 Della Porta, D., Ed., Democracy in Social Movements (Palgrave MacMillan, Hampshire, 2009) Della Porta, D., ‘Mobilizing against the crisis, mobilizing for “another democracy”: comparing two global waves of protest’, Interface 4:1 (2012) pp. 274-277 DeLuca, K. M., Lawson, S., and Sun, Y., ‘Occupy Wall Street on the Public Screens of Social Media: The Many Framings of the Birth of a Protest Movement’, Communication, Culture and Critique 5 (2012) pp. 483-509 Diken, B., and Laustsen, C. B., ‘The Camp’, Human Geography 88:4 (2006) pp. 443-452

269

Dinerstein, A. C., and Deneulin, S., ‘Hope Movements: Naming Mobilizations in a Post-development World’, Development and Change 42:2 (2012) pp. 585-602 Dinerstein, A. C., ‘Power or Counter-Power? The dilemma of the piquetero movement in Argentina post-crisis’, Capital and Class 81 (2003) pp. 1-8 Dolphijn, R., and van der Tuin, I., New Materialism: Interviews and Cartographies (Open Humanities Press, University of Michigan, 2012) Dowling, E., ‘Valorised but not valued? Affective remuneration, social reproduction and feminist politics beyond the crisis’, British Politics 11:4 (2016) pp. 452-468 Dowling, E., Nunes, R., and Trott, R., ‘Immaterial and Affective Labour: Explored’, ephemera 7:1 (2007) pp. 1-7 Dyer-Witheford, N., Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of struggles in high-tech capitalism (University of Illinois Press, Urbana and Chicago, 1999) Eden, D., Autonomy: Capitalism, Class and Politics (Routledge, London, 2012) Eklundh, E., ‘Who is speaking? The Indignados as political subjects’, Global Discourse: An Interdisciplinary Journal of Current Affairs and Applied Contemporary Thought 4:2-3 (2014) pp. 223-235 Elk, R., ‘Georgio Agamben and the Spatialities of the Camp: An Introduction’, Swedish Society of Anthropology and Geography (2006) pp. 363-386 Fager, C., Uncertain Resurrection: The Poor People’s Washington Campaign (William B Eerdmans Publishing Company, Michigan, 1969) Farrell, P. B., ‘America’s Tahrir Moment – Does the American Left have the guts to pull this off?’, Adbusters. http://www.adbusters.org/action/occupywallstreet/does-the-american-left-have-the-guts-to-pull-this-off/. Accessed 22/9/17 Federici, S., ‘Feminism and the Politics of the Commons’, The Commoner (2011) Federici, S., ‘From Commoning to Debt: Financialization, Microcredit, and the Changing Architecture of Capital Accumulation’, South Atlantic Quarterly 113:2 (2014) pp. 231-244 Feidlschuster, M., ‘Occupying Space: Representation, Participation and Democracy in Occupy Wall Street’, Presented at ECPR Conference, Bourdeau (2013).

270

https://ecpr.eu/filestore/paperproposal/776bc308-81bd-4c2e-bbd5-cc00b76bc04d.pdf. Accessed 5/9/17 Feigenbaum, A., ‘“Now I’m a Happy Dyke!”: Creating Collective Identity and Queer Community in Greenham Women’s Songs’, Journal of Popular Music Studies 22:4 (2010) pp. 367–388 Feigenbaum, A., Tactics and Technology: cultural resistance at the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp (Unpublished Doctoral Thesis, McGill University, Montreal, 2008). http://digitool.library.mcgill.ca/webclient/StreamGate?folder_id=0&dvs=1503649766275~578. Accessed 25/8/17 Feigenbaum, A., ‘Written in the Mud’, Feminist Media Studies 13:1 (2013) pp. 1-13 Feigenbaum, A., Frenzel, F., and McCurdy, P., Protest Camps (Zed Books, London, 2013) Feigenbaum, A., McCurdy, P., and Frenzel, F., ‘Towards a Method for studying Affect in (micro)Politics: The Campfire Chats Project and the Occupy Movement’, Parallax 19:2 (2013) pp. 21-37 Flacks, R., ‘Where is it likely to lead?’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 202-205 Flisfeder, M., ‘The Entrepreneurial Subject and the Objectivization of the Self in Social Media’, South Atlantic Quarterly 114:3 (2015) pp. 553-570 Foley, C., Of Cabbages and Kings: The History of Allotments (Frances Lincoln Publishing, London, 2014) Foucault, M., Trans., Sheridan Smith, A.M., Archaeology of Knowledge (Routledge, London, 2004) Foucault, M., Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison (Penguin, London, 1991) Foucault, M., Of Other Spaces, Heteroptopias, http://foucault.info/documents/heterotopia/foucault.heterotopia.en.html. Accessed, 21/3/2014 Foucault, M., Eds., Bertani, M., and Fontana, A., Trans., Macey, D., “Society Must be Defended”: Lectures at the College de France 1975-1976 (Picador, New York, 2003)

271

Foucault, M., and Deleuze, G., ‘Intellectuals and Power’. https://libcom.org/library/intellectuals-power-a-conversation-between-michel-foucault-and-gilles-deleuze. Accessed 25/8/17 Fox Piven, F., ‘On the Organizational Question’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 191-193 Fuchs, C., Reading Marx in the Information Age: A Media and Communicative Studies Perspective on Capital Volume I (Routledge, London, 2016) Fuchs, C., Social Media: A Critical Introduction (SAGE, London, 2014) Fuster Morrell, M., ‘The Unethics of Sharing: Wikiwashing’, International Review of Information Ethics 15 (2011) pp. 9-16 Fracchia, J., ‘The Capitalist Labour-Process and the Body in Pain: The Corporeal Depths of Marx’s Concept of Immiseration’, Historical Materialism 16:4 (2008) pp. 36-66 Fraser, N., ‘From Discipline to Flexibilization? Rereading Foucault in the Shadow of Globalization’, Constellations 10:2 (2003) pp. 160-171 Fraser, N., ‘Michel Foucault: A "Young Conservative”?’, Ethics 96: 1 (1985) pp. 165-184 Frassinelli, P. P., ‘Biopolitical production, the common, and a happy ending: on Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri's Commonwealth’, Critical Arts: South-North Cultural and Media Studies 25:2 (2011) pp. 119-13 Freeman, J., ‘The Tyranny of Structurelessness’, (1972). http://uic.edu/orgs/cwluherstory/jofreeman/joreen/tyranny.htm. Accessed 10/2/2014 Frenzel, F., ‘Exit the system? Anarchist Organising in the British Climate Camps’, ephemera 14:4 (2014) pp. 901-921 Frymorgen, T., ‘The Rise of the Unorganisable’, Jacobin (7/9/16). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/09/the-rise-of-the-unorganizable/. Accessed 1/3/2017 Gaby, S., and Caren, N., ‘Occupy Online: How Cute Old Men ad Malcolm X recruited 400000 US users to Occupy Wall Street on Facebook’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 367-374

272

Gandy, M., ‘Zones of Indistinction: bio-political contestations in the urban arena’, Cultural Geographies 13 (2006) pp. 497-516 Gitlin, T., ‘Occupy’s Predicament: the moment and the prospects for the movement’, The British Journal of Sociology 64:1, pp. 3-25 Gitlin, T., ‘Post Occupied’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 226-228 Gitlin, T. ‘Reply to Craig Calhoun’, The British Journal of Sociology 64:1, pp. 39-43 Gilroy, P., ‘1981 + 2011: From Social Democratic to Neoliberal Rioting’, South Atlantic Quarterly 112:3 (2013) pp. 550-559 Gledhill, J., ‘Collecting Occupy London: Public Collecting Institutions and Social Protest Movements in the 21st Century’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 342-348 Global-Square.net, https://www.global-square.net/. Accessed, 18/9/17 Goodley, D., and Lawthorn, R., ‘Hardt and Negri and the Geo-Political Imagination: Empire, Multitude and Critical Disability Studies’, Critical Sociology 39:3 (2011) pp. 369-384 Gordon, U., ‘Israel’s ‘Tent Protests’: The Chilling Effect of Nationalism’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 349-355 Graeber, D., ‘Occupy Wall Street’s Anarchist Roots’, Al Jazeera (30/11/2011). http://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/opinion/2011/11/2011112872835904508.html. Accessed 11/12/2013 Graeber, D., Revolution in Reverse: Essays on Politics, Violence, Art, and Imagination (Minor Compositions, London) Gramsci, A., Ed., and Trans., Hoare, Q., and Nowell Smith, Selections from the Prison Notebooks (Lawrence and Wishart, London, 2007) Greenfield, A., Radical Technologies: The Design of Everyday Life (Verso, London, 2017) Guttari, F., and Negri, A., New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty, (Autonomedia, Brooklyn, 2010)

273

Gunn, R., and Wilding, A., ‘Occupy as Mutual Recognition, pers comm (2013) pp. 1-8 Guyer, S., and Keller, R. C., ‘Life after Biopolitics’, South Atlantic Quarterly 115:2 (2016) pp. 227-230 Guzman-Concha, C., ‘The Students’ Rebellion in Chile: Occupy Protest or Classic Social Movement?’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 408-415 Hailey, C., Camps: A guide to 21st century space (MIT Press, London, 2009) Hallward, P., ‘Defiance or Emancipation?’, Radical Philosophy 183 (2014) pp. 21-32 Halvorsen, S., ‘Beyond the Network? Occupy London and the Global Movement’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 427-433 Halvorsen, S., ‘Review of Walter Nicholls, Byron Miller and Justin Beaumont, Eds., Spaces of Contention: Spatialities and Social Movements’, Antipode, http://radicalantipode.files.wordpress.com/2013/09/book-review_halvorsen-on-nicholls-et-al.pdf. Accessed 21/9/17 Halvorsen, S., ‘Review: “The Democracy Project”’, STIR 2 (2013). https://www.stirtoaction.com/article/review-thedemocracyproject. Accessed 31/8/17 Haraway, D., ‘A Cyborg Manifesto: Science, Technology and socialist-feminism in the late twentieth century’, in Bell, D., and Kennedy, B. M., Ed., The Cybercultures Reader (Routledge, London, 2000) Harcourt, B. E., ‘Political Disobedience’, Critical Inquiry 39:1 (2012) pp. 33-55 Hardin, G., ‘The Tragedy of the Commons’, Science 162 (1968) pp. 1243-1248 Hardt, M., Gilles Deleuze: An Apprenticeship in Philosophy (University of Minnesota Press, Minnesota, 2002) Hardt, M., ‘How to write with four hands’, Genre 46:2 (2013) pp. 175-182 Hardt, M., ‘On the right to the Common’, Lecture given at the Franke Institute, University of Chicago (16/10/12). https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meZKqZMoCvs. Accessed 26/4/17

274

Hardt, M., ‘Real Democracy: An Interview with Michael Hardt’ (May 14th 2013), https://libcom.org/library/%E2%80%9Creal-democracy%E2%80%9D-interview-michael-hardt. Accessed 25/4/17 Hardt, M., ‘Reclaim the Common in Communism’, The Guardian (3/2/11) https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/03/communism-capitalism-socialism-property. Accessed 25/8/17 Hardt, M., ‘The Common in Communism’, Rethinking Marxism 22:3 (2010) pp. 346-356 Hardt, M., and Negri, A., ‘Arabs are Democracy’s New Pioneers’, The Guardian (24/2/11). https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2011/feb/24/arabs-democracy-latin-america. Accessed 24/2/2011 Hardt, M., and Negri, A., Commonwealth (The Belknapp Press of Harvard University Press, London, 2011) Hardt, M., and Negri, A., Declaration (Argo Navis Author Services, New York, 2012) Hardt, M., and Negri, A., Empire (Harvard University Press, London, 2000) Hardt, M., and Negri, A., Multitude: War and Democracy in the age of Empire (Penguin Books, London, 2005) Hardt, M, and Negri, A., ‘Occupy Wall Street as a fight for “real democracy”’, Foreign Affairs (11/10/2011). https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/north-america/2011-10-11/fight-real-democracy-heart-occupy-wall-street. Accessed 5/9/17 Hardt, M., Smith, C., and Minardi, E., ‘The Collaborator and the Multitude: An Interview with Michael Hardt’, Minnesota Review 61-62 (2004) pp. 63-77 Harkin, S., ‘A way forward for the 99%?’, International Socialist Review 96. http://isreview.org/issue/96/way-forward-99. Accessed 24/8/17 Harvey, D., A Brief History of Neoliberalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2003) Harvey, D., Consciousness and the Urban Experience: Studies in the History and Theory of Capitalist Urbanisation (Basil Blackwell, Oxford, 1985)

275

Harvey, D., Cosmopolitanism and the Geographies of Freedom (Columbia University Press, New York, 2009) Harvey, D., Justice, Nature, and the Geography of Difference (Blackwell, Oxford, 1996) Harvey, D., ‘“Listen, Anarchist!” A personal response to Simon Springer’s “Why a radical geography must be anarchist”’, Reading Marx’s Capital with David Harvey (10/6/17). http://davidharvey.org/2015/06/listen-anarchist-by-david-harvey/. Accessed 25/8/17 Harvey, D., ‘Reading Marx’s Capital Volume I’. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBazR59SZXk. Accessed 24/8/17 Harvey, D., Rebel Cities: From the Right to the City to the Urban Revolution (Verso, London, 2012) Harvey, D., Social Justice and the City (Blackwell, Oxford, 1988) Harvey, D., Spaces of Capital: Towards a Critical Geography (Routledge, New York, 2001) Harvey, D., Spaces of Global Capital: Towards a theory of uneven geographical development (Verso, London, 2006) Harvey, D., Spaces of Hope (Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, 2000) Harvey, D., The Condition of Postmodernity: An Enquiry into the origins of cultural change (Blackwell, Oxford, 1989) Harvey, D., The Enigma of Capital and the crises of capitalism (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2010) Harvey, D., ‘The Future of the Commons’, Radical History Review 109 (2011) pp. 101-107 Harvey, D., The Limits to Capital (Verso, London, 2006) Harvey, D., The Urbanisation of Capital (The John Hopkins University Press, Oxford, 1985) Harvey, D., and Hardt, M., Negri, A., ‘Commonwealth: An Exchange’, artforum (November 2009) pp. 211-215 and pp. 256-262.

276

http://antonionegriinenglish.files.wordpress.com/2010/09/6422-commonwealth_an_exchange.pdf. Accessed 25/8/17 Harvie, D., ‘All Labour Produces Value for Capital and We All Struggle Against Value’, The Commoner 10 pp. 132-171 Haynes, J., ‘A Sharing Economy Strike’, Jacobin (16/8/16). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/deliveroo-strike-sharing-economy-living-wage/ (Accessed 1/3/2017) Hight, C., and Hardt, M., ‘Designing Commonspaces: Riffing with Michael Hardt on the Multitude and Collective Intelligence’, Architectural Design 76:5 (2006) pp. 70-73 Hodgkinson, S., and Chatterton, P., ‘Autonomy in the City?’, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 10:3 (2006) pp. 305-315 Holloway, J., Changing the World Without Taking Power: The Meaning of Revolution Today (Pluto Press, London, 2002) Holloway, J., Crack Capitalism (Pluto Press, London, 2010) Holloway, J., ‘Cracking Capitalism vs the state option’, Interview in ROAR (29/9/2014) Holloway, J., ‘Going in the Wrong Direction; Or, Mephistopheles and Not Saint Francis of Assisi’, Historical Materialism 10:1 (2002) pp. 79-91 Holloway, J., and Pelaez, E., Eds., Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico (Pluto Press, London, 1998) Hughes, N., ‘”Young People Took to the Streets and all of a sudden all the Political Parties got old”: The 15M Movement in Spain’, Social Movement Studies 10:4 (2011) pp. 407-413 Huke, N., ‘Disrupting the European Crisis: A Critical Political Economy of Contestation, Subversion and Escape’, New Political Economy 20:5 (2015) pp. 725-751 Hussey, A., ‘The French Intifada: how the Arab banlieues are fighting the French state’, The Guardian (23/2/2014).

277

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/feb/23/french-intifada-arab-banlieues-fighting-french-state-extract. Accessed 2/3/2014 Huws, U., ‘Logged In’, Jacobin (6/1/16). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/01/huws-sharing-economy-crowdsource-precarity-uber-workers/. Accessed 24/8/17 InterOccupy.net, http://interoccupy.net/. Accessed 18/9/17 Isaac, J. C., ‘The Mirage of Neo-Communism’, Dissent (Summer 2013) https://www.dissentmagazine.org/article/the-mirage-of-neo-communism. Accessed 6/4/17. Jaffe, S., ‘Occupy Wall Street was humbling to many of us’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 198-202 Jaggi, M., Muller, R., and Schmid, S., Red Bologna (Littlehampton Books, Lincoln, 1977) Jones, C., Murtola, A. M., ‘Entrepreneurship and Expropriation’, Organisation 19:5 (2012) pp. 635-655 Juris, J. S., ‘Reflections on #Occupy Everywhere: Social Media, Public Space, and emerging logics of aggregation’, American Ethnologist 39:2 (2012) pp. 259-279 Juris, J. S., Ronayne, M., Shokooh-Valle, F., and Wengronowitz, R., ‘Negotiating Power and Difference within the 99%’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 434-440 Karatzogianni, A., and Kuntsman, A., Digital Cultures and the Politics of Emotion: Feelings, Affect and Technological Change (Palgrave MacMillan, Basingstoke, 2012) Kerton, S., ‘Tahrir, Here? The Influence of the Arab Uprisings on the emergence of Occupy’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 302-308 Klein, N., No Logo (Flamingo, London, 2000) Kleiner, D., The Telekommunist Manifesto (Network Notebooks, Amsterdam, 2010) Kliman, A., ‘The Make Believe World of David Graeber: Reflections on the Ideology Underlying the Failed Occupation of Zuccotti Park’, Marxist Humanist

278

Initiative (13/4/12). https://www.marxisthumanistinitiative.org/alternatives-to-capital/the-make-believe-world-of-david-graeber.html. Accessed 25/8/17 Kicillof, A., and Starosta, G., ‘Value form and class struggle: A critique of the autonomist theory of value’, Capital and Class 31:2 (2007) pp. 13-40 Kioupokiolis, G., and Katsambekis, A., Eds., Radial Democracy and Collective Movements Today: The Biopolitics of the Multitude versus the Hegemony of the People (Ashgate, Burlington and Farnham, 2014) Koksal, I., ‘Walking in the City of London’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 446-455 Kossow, N., and Saliba, I., Trans., Taylor, J., ‘The Myth of the Facebook Revolution’, https://en.qantara.de/content/social-media-and-the-arabellion-the-myth-of-the-facebook-revolution. Accessed 4/4/17 Laclau, E., ‘Can Immanence explain social struggles? A Review of Empire’, Diacritics 31:4 (2001) pp. 3-10 Laclau, E., and Mouffe, C., Hegemony and Socialist Strategy: Towards a Radical Democratic Politics (Verso, London, 2001) Lang, A. S., and Lang/Levitsky, D., Eds., Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement (New Internationalist Publications, Oxford, 2012) Laware, M. L., ‘Circling the Missiles and Staining them Red: Feminist Rhetorical Intervention and Strategies of Resistance at the Women’s Peace Camp at Greenham Common’, NWSA Journal 16:3 (2004) pp. 18-41 Leach, D. K., ‘Culture and the Structure of Tyrannylessness’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 181-191 Lefebvre, H., Trans., D. Nicholson-Smith, The Production of Space (Blackwell, Oxford, 1991) Lessig, L., Free Culture: How Big Media uses Technology and the Law to Lock Down Culture and Control Creativity (Penguin, New York, 2004) Liboiron, M., ‘Tactics of Waste, Dirt and Discard in the Occupy Movement’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 393-401

279

Lotta Continua, Trans., Dowson, E., ‘Take over the City: community struggle in Italy’, Radical America 7:2 (1973) Lottringer, S., and Marazzi, C., Autonomia: Post-Political Politics (Semiotext(e), New York, 1980) LSE, ‘A Facebook Revolution?’, http://www.lse.ac.uk/researchAndExpertise/researchHighlights/societyMediaAndScience/A-Facebook-revolution.aspx. Accessed 4/4/17 Lumley, R., States of Emergency: Culture of Revolt in Italy from 1968 to 1978 (Verso, London, 1990) Manilov, M., ‘Occupying at Year One: Growing the Roots of a Movement’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 206-213 Marom, N., ‘Activising Space: The Spatial Politics of the Protest Movement in Israel’, Urban Studies 50:13 (2013) pp. 2826-2841 Marx, K., Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy (Rough Draft) (Penguin, London, 1973) Marx, K., and Engels, F., The Communist Manifesto (Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008) Mason, K., ‘Becoming Citizen Green: prefigurative politics, autonomous geographies and hoping against hope’, Environmental Politics 23:1 (2014) pp. 140-158 Mason, P., Live Working or Die Fighting: How the working class went global (Vintage Books, London, 2008) Mason, P., Postcapitalism: A guide to our future (Allen Lane (Penguin), London, 2015) Mason, P., ‘The End of Capitalism has begun’, The Guardian (17/7/2015) http://www.theguardian.com/books/2015/jul/17/postcapitalism-end-of-capitalism-begun. Accessed 17/7/2015 Mason, P., Why it’s still kicking off everywhere: The new global revolutions (Verso, London, 2013)

280

McCleave Maharawal, M., ‘Occupy Wall Street and a radical politics of inclusion’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 177-181 Merrifield, A., The Politics of Encounter: Urban Theory and Protest Under Planetary Urbanization (University of Georgia Press, Georgia, 2013) Midnight Notes Collective and Friends, Promissory Notes: From Crisis to Commons. http://www.midnightnotes.org/Promissory%20Notes.pdf. Accessed 24/8/17 Mills, C., The Philosophy of Agamben (Acumen, Stocksfield, 2008) Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Preface to “Occupy: Three Inquiries in Disobedience”’, Critical Inquiry 39:1 (2012) pp. 1-7 Mitchell, W. J. T., ‘Image, Space, Revolution: The Arts of Occupation’, Critical Inquiry 39:1 (2012) pp. 8-32 Milkman, R., Lewis, P., and Luce, S., ‘The Genie’s out of the Bottle: Insiders Perspectives on Occupy Wall Street’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 194-198 Miller, P. D., and Matviyenko, S., Eds., The Imaginary App (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2014) Miller, V., Understanding Digital Culture (Sage, London, 2011) Minca, C., ‘Empire Goes to War, or, The Ontological Shift in the Transatlantic Divide’, ACME 2:2 (2003) pp. 227-235 Morell, M. F., ‘The Free Culture Movements in Spain: Composition, Social Networks, and Synergies’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 386-392 Morris, A., ‘Whoever, Whatever: On Anonymity as Resistance to Empire’, Parallax 18:4, 2012, pp. 106-120 Mottiar, S., ‘From ‘Popcorn’ to ‘Occupy’: Protest in Durban, South Africa’, Development and Change 44:3 (2013) pp. 603-619 Mudu, P., ‘Where is Hardt and Negri’s Multitude? Real Networks in Open Spaces’, ACME 8:2 (2009) pp. 211-244 Murphy, T. S., and Mustapha, A., Eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri: Resistance in Practice (Pluto Press, London, 2005)

281

Murphy, T. S., and Mustapha, A., Eds., The Philosophy of Antonio Negri: Volume Two (Pluto Press, London, 2007) Negri, A., Trans., Bove, A., ‘A Marxist Experience of Foucault’, Paper presented at Collogue – Marx-Foucault, Nanterre (18-19 December 2014) Negri, A., Trans., Bove, A., Books for Burning: Between Civil War and Democracy in 1970s Italy (Verso, London, 2005) Negri, A., Trans., Bove, A., ‘In Search of the Commonwealth’, http://eipcp.net/transversal/0811/negri/en. Accessed 21/2/14 Negri, A., Trans., Messing, D., ‘Communism as Continuing Constituent Process’, Viewpoint Magazine (18/1/17). https://www.viewpointmag.com/2017/01/18/communism-as-a-continuing-constituent-process/. Accessed 25/8/17 Negri, A., Trans., Cleaver, H., Ryan, M., Viano, M., Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse (Autonomedia (Brooklyn)/Pluto (London) 1991) Negri, A., Trans Emery, E., Pipeline: Letters from Prison (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2014) Negri, A., Revolution Retrieved: Selected Writings on Marx, Keynes, Capitalist Crisis and New Social Subjects 1967-1983 (Red Notes, London, 1988) Negri, A., The Savage Anomaly: The Power of Spinoza’s Metaphysics and Politics (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2003) Negri, A., Trans., Murphy, T. S., Trilogy of Resistance (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 2009) Negri, A., Ed., Murphy, T. S., Trans., Murphy, T. S., Hardt, M., Stolze, T., and Wolfe, C. T., Subversive Spinoza: (un)contemporary variations (Mnachester university Press, Manchester, 2004) Negri, A., My Translation, ‘The Political Monster – Bare Life and Power’, Multitudes, http://www.multitudes.net/le-monstre-politique-vie-nue-et/. Accessed, 23/3/2014 Negri, A., and Guattari, F., New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty; or Communists like Us (Minor Compositions, London, 1990)

282

Negri, A., with contributions from Hardt, M., and Zolo, D., Trans., Emery, E., Reflections on Empire (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2003) Negri, A., Petcou, C., Petrescu, D., and Querrien, A., ‘What makes a biopolitical space? A discussion with Toni Negri’, Eurozine (21/1/2008). http://www.eurozine.com/what-makes-a-biopolitical-space/. Accessed 24/8/17 Negri, A., and Roos., J., ‘Toni Negri: from the refusal of labor to the seizure of power’, ROAR (18/1/5). https://roarmag.org/essays/negri-interview-multitude-metropolis/. Accessed 25/8/17 Negri, A., with Scelsi, R. V., Thomas, P., Trans., Goodbye Mr. Socialism: Radical Politics in the 21st Century (Serpent’s Tail and Seven Stories Press, London, 2008) Ness, I., Ed., New Forms of Worker Organization: The Syndicalist and Autonomist Restoration of Class Struggle Unionism (PM Press, Oakland, 2014) Nicholls, W., ‘Place, networks, space: theorising the geographies of social movements’, Transactions 34 (2009) pp. 78-93 Nicholls, W., Miller, B., and Beaumont, J., Eds., Spaces of Contention: Spatialities and Social Movements’ (Ashgate Press, Surrey, 2013) Nielsen, R. K., ‘Mundane Internet Tools, Mobilizing Practices, and the Coproduction of Citizenship in Political Campaigns’, New Media and Society 13 (2011) pp. 755–771 Nişancıoğlu, K.,and Pal, M., ‘Counter-Conduct in the University Factory: Locating the Occupy Sussex Campaign’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp. 279-300 Norris, A., ‘The exemplary exception: Philosophical and political decisions in Giorgio Agamben’s Homo Sacer’, Radical Philosophy 119 (2003) pp. 6-16 Nugent, D., ‘Commentary: Democracy, temporalities of capitalism and dilemmas of inclusion in Occupy Movements’, American Ethnologist 39:2 (2012) pp. 280-183 Nunes, R., ‘The Lessons of 2011: Three theses on organisation’ (2012). https://libcom.org/library/lessons-2011-three-theses-organisation. Accessed 19/9/17 Nunns, A., and Idle, N., Tweets from Tahrir: Egypt’s revolution as it unfolded, in the words of the people who made it (OR Books, New York, 2011)

283

Occupy London, ‘Initial Statement’ (16/10/11). http://occupylondon.org.uk/about/statements/initial-statement/. Accessed 25/8/17 Occupy London, ‘Occupy London - kick off - Part 2’, (Uploaded 15/10/11), https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0UGv3VfZyEM. Accessed 26/4/17 Occupy London, ‘Statement of Autonomy’ (14/12/11). http://occupylondon.org.uk/about/statements/statement-of-autonomy/. Accessed 26/4/17. Odysseos, L., Death, C., and Malmvig, H., ‘Interrogating Michel Foucault's Counter-Conduct: Theorising the Subjects and Practices of Resistance in Global Politics’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp. 151-156 Osbourne, P., ‘The Postconceptual Condition: Or, the cultural logic of high capitalism today’, Radical Philosophy 184 (2014) pp. 19-27 Ostrom, E., Governing the Commons (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2015) Pamett, H. M., ‘Community/Common: Jean-Luc Nancy and Antonio Negri on Collective Potentialities’, Communication, Culture and Critique 5 (2012) pp. 171-190 Panzieri, R., ‘The Capitalist use of Machinery: Marx versus the objectivists’ in Slater, P., Ed., Outlines of a Critique of Technology (Atlantic Highlands, London, 1980) Passavant, P. A., and Dean, J., Eds., Empire’s New Clothes (Routledge, London, 2004) Pickerill, J., Cyberprotest: Environmental activism online (Manchester University Press, Manchester, 2003) Pickerill, J., and Krinsky, J., ‘Why does Occupy matter?’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 279-287 Polletta, F., Freedom is an Endless Meeting: Democracy in American Social Movements (University of Chicago Press, Chicago, 2002) Pradeau, J. F., Plato and the City: A New Introduction to Plato’s Political Thought (University of Exeter Press, Exeter, 2002)

284

Purcell, T., Ribera-Fumaz, R., and Charnock, G., ‘Indignate!: The 2011 popular protests and the limits to democracy in Spain’ Capital and Class 36:1 (2012) pp. 3-11 Rabbat, N., ‘The Arab Revolution Takes Back Public Space’, Critical Inquiry 39:1 (2012) pp. 198-208 Ranciere, J., Dissensus: On Politics and Aesthetics (Continuum, London and New York, 2010) Ranciere, J., ‘Ten Theses on Politics’, Theory and Event 5:3 (2001), http://www.egs.edu/faculty/jacques-ranciere/articles/ten-thesis-on-politics/. Accessed 2/3/2014 Ranciere, J., Interviewed by Lie, T., On Police Order: What can be said seen and done, http://www.eurozine.com/articles/2006-08-11-lieranciere-en.html. Accessed 3/3/2014 Ramadan, A., ‘From Tahrir to the World: The Camp as a Political Public Space’, European and Regional Studies 20 (2013) pp. 145-149 Razsa, M., and Kurnik, A., ‘The Occupy Movement in Zizek’s Hometown: Direct Democracy and a politics of becoming’, American Ethnologist 39:2 (2012) pp. 238-258 Reynolds, L., and Schofield, J., ‘Silo Walk: Exploring Power Relations on an English Common’, Radical History Review 108 (2010) pp. 154-160 Revel, J., ‘Transcendence, Spirituality, Practices, Immanence: A Conversation with Antonio Negri’, Rethinking Marxism 28:3-4 (2016) pp. 470-478 Revel, J., and Negri, A., ‘The Commons in Revolt’, UniNomade 2.0 (12/7/11). http://www.uninomade.org/commoninrevolt/. Accessed 2/3/14 Rifkin, J., The Zero Marginal Cost Society: The Internet of things, the collaborative commons, and the eclipse of capitalism (Palgrave MacMillan, New York, 2014) Riker, D., ‘The Struggle Against Enclosures in Jay, Maine: An Account of the 1987-88 Strike Against International Paper’, Midnight Notes (10) pp. 42-53 ROAR Collective, ‘The Global Square: an online platform for our movement’, ROAR (2/11/11). https://roarmag.org/essays/the-global-square-an-online-platform-for-our-movement/. Accessed 24/8/17

285

Robcis, C., ‘The Biopolitics of Dignity’, South Atlantic Quarterly 115:2 (2016) pp. 313-330 Robinson, A., ‘Autonomism: The Future of Activism?’, Ceasefire (8/10/2010). https://ceasefiremagazine.co.uk/in-theory-5-autonomism/. Accessed 12/1/2017 Robson, J.P., and Lichtenstein, G., ‘Special Issue on Latin American Commons: An Introduction’, Journal of Latin American Geography 12:1 (2013) pp. 5-31 Roseneil, S., Common Women, Uncommon Practices: The Queer Feminisms of Greenham (Cassell, London, 2000) Rossdale C., and Stierl, M., ‘Everything Is Dangerous: Conduct and Counter-Conduct in the Occupy Movement’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp.157-178 Ruddick, S., ‘The Politics of Affect: Spinoza in the work of Negri and Deleuze’, Theory, Culture and Society 27:4 (2010) pp. 21-45 Ruggiero, V., and Montagna, N., Eds., Social Movements: A Reader (Routledge, London, 2008) Rushkoff, D., ‘Permanent Revolution: Occupying Democracy’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 164-173 Sassen, S., ‘Does the City have Speech?’, Public Culture 25:2 (2013) pp. 209-221 Sassen, S., ‘The Global Street: Making the Political’, Globalizations 8:5 (2011) pp. 573-579 Saunders, C., ‘Reformism and radicalism in the Climate Camp in Britain: benign coexistence, tensions and prospects for bridging’, Environmental Politics 21:5 (2012) pp. 829-846 Schein, R., ‘Whose Occupation? Homelessness and the Politics of Park Encampments’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 335-341 Schlembach, R., Against Old Europe: Critical Theory and Alter-Globalization Movements (Routledge, London, 2014) Schofield, J., and Anderton, M., ‘The Queer Archaeology of Green Gate: Interpreting Contested Space at Greenham Common Airbase’, World Archaeology 32:2 (2000) pp. 236-251

286

Schrager Lang, A., and Lang/Levitsky, D., Eds., Dreaming in Public: Building the Occupy Movement (New Internationalist Publications, Oxford, 2012) Schram, S. F., ‘Occupy Precarity’, Theory and Event 16:1 (2013) Seller, A., ‘Greenham: a concrete reality’, Journal of Applied Philosophy 2:1 (1985) pp. 133-141 Shearlaw, M., ‘Egypt Five Years on: Was it ever a social media revolution?’, The Guardian (25/1/2015). https://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/25/egypt-5-years-on-was-it-ever-a-social-media-revolution. Accessed 4/4/17 Sheehan, T., ‘Italy: Behind the Ski Mask’, New York Review of Books (16/8/79). http://www.nybooks.com/articles/1979/08/16/italy-behind-the-ski-mask/. Accessed 25/8/17 Shepard, B., ‘Occupy against Inequality’, Socialism and Democracy 26:2 (2012) pp. 26-29 Shukaitis, S., and Figiel, J., ‘The Factory of Individuation: Cultural Labor and Class Composition in the Metropolis’, South Atlantic Quarterly 114:3 (2015) pp. 535-552 Skinner, J., ‘Social Media and Revolution: The Arab Spring and the Occupy Movement as seen through three information studies paradigms’, Sprouts: Working Papers on Information Systems 169 (2011) pp. 1-26 Slater, P., Ed., Outlines of a Critique of Technology (Atlantic Highlands, London, 1980) Smith, C., Castaneda, E., Heyman, J., ‘The Homeless and Occupy El Paso: Creating Community among the 99%’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 356-366 Smith, J., Glidden, B., ‘Occupy Pittsburgh and the Challenges of Participatory Democracy’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 288-294 Smith, N., Lee, D., ‘Corporeal Capitalism: The Body in International Political Economy’, Global Society 29:1 (2015) pp. 64-69 Smucker, J. M., ‘Can Prefigurative Politics Replace Political Strategy?’, Power and Prefiguration 58 (2014). http://berkeleyjournal.org/2014/10/can-prefigurative-politics-replace-political-strategy/. Accessed 24/8/17

287

Smucker, J. M., ‘Occupy: A Name Fixed to a Flashpoint’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 219-225 Singer, A., ‘Rebellion in Brazil: Social and Political Complexion of the June events’, New Left Review 85 (2014) pp. 19-37 Sokhi-Bulley, B., ‘Re-reading the Riots: Counter-Conduct in London 2011’, Global Society 30:2 (2016) pp. 320-339 Springer, S., ‘Why a radical geography must be anarchist’, Dialogues in Human Geography 4:3 (2014) pp. 249-270 Stalder, F., Manuel Castells: The Theory of the Network Society (Polity Press, Cambridge, 2006) Stavrides, S., Common Space: The City as Commons (Zed Books, London, 2017) Stein, S., ‘How the Trumps got rich’, Jacobin (4/8/16). https://www.jacobinmag.com/2016/08/trump-real-estate-theft-public-land-taxes. Accessed 2/11/2016 Swyngedouw, E., ‘Every Revolution Has Its Square’, http://citiesmcr.wordpress.com/2011/03/18/every-revolution-has-its-square/. Accessed 11/2/14 Tarrow, S., Power in Movement: Social Movements and Contentious Politics (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1998) Tarrow, S., The New International Activism (Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2006) Taussig, M., ‘“I’m so angry I made a sign”’, Political Inquiry 39:1 (2012) pp. 56-88 Taylor, A., Gessen, K., n+1, Dissent, Triple Canopy and The New Inquiry, Eds., Occupy: Scenes from Occupied America (Verso, London, 2011) Taylor, C., ‘Why not call it a Facebook Revolution?’, CNN (24/2/11) http://edition.cnn.com/2011/TECH/social.media/02/24/facebook.revolution/. Accessed 4/4/17 Terranova, T., Network Culture: Politics for the Information Age (Pluto Press, London, 2004)

288

The Invisible Committee, The Coming Insurrection (Semiotext(e), USA) Therborn, G., ‘New Masses? Social Bases of Resistance’, New Left Review 85 (2014) pp. 7-16 Thoburn, N., ‘Autonomous Production? On Negri’s ‘New Synthesis’’, Theory, Culture and Society 18:5 (2001) pp. 75-96 Thorburn, E.D., ‘A Common Assembly: Multitude Assemblies and a New Politics of the Common’, Interface 4:2 (2012) pp. 254-279 Tiqqun, How is it to be Done?, http://cnqzu.com/library/Politics/Invisible-Committee-How-it-be-done.pdf. Accessed 25/8/17 Tisdall, S., ‘Recipe for revolt: what do Ukraine, Turkey and Thailand have in common?’ The Guardian (27 February 2014)

Todd, J., ‘Socialize the Internet!’, ROAR 2. https://roarmag.org/magazine/socialize-the-internet/. Accessed 24/8/17 Toscano, A., ‘From Pin Factories to Gold Farmers: Editorial Introduction to a Research Stream on Cognitive Capitalism, Immaterial Labour, and the General Intellect’, Research in Critical Marxist Theory 15:1 (2007) pp. 1-12 Touraine, A., ‘An Introduction to the Study of Social Movements’, Social Movements 52:4 (1985) pp. 749-787 Touraine, A., 'The Importance of Social Movements', Social Movement Studies 1:1 (2002) pp. 89-95 Tronti, M., ‘Lenin in England’, Classe Operaia 1 (1964) pp. 86-93 Tronti, M., ‘Our operaismo’, New Left Review 73 (2012) https://newleftreview.org/II/73/mario-tronti-our-operaismo. Accessed 24/8/17 Uttermark, J., and Nicholls, W., ‘How local networks shape a global movement: Comparing Occupy in Amsterdam and Los Angeles’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 295-301 van der Linden, M., and Roth, K. H., Eds., Beyond Marx: Theorising the Global Labour Relations of the Twenty-First Century (Brill, Leiden and Boston, 2014)

289

Vanzulli, M., ‘Labour, civil society, classes’, Paper delivered at Wars of Position: Marxism and Civil Society (9th June 2017) Vargas, J. A., ‘Spring Awakening: How an Egyptian Revolution began on Facebook’, New York Times (17/2/12). http://www.nytimes.com/2012/02/19/books/review/how-an-egyptian-revolution-began-on-facebook.html?_r=0. Accessed 26/1/2016 Vercellone, C., ‘From Formal Subsumption to General Intellect: Elements for a Marxist Reading of the Thesis of Cognitive Capitalism’, Research in Critical Marxist Theory 15:1 (2007) pp. 13-36 Vergara-Camus, L., ‘The Politics of the MST: Autonomous Rural Communities, the State, and Electoral Politics’, Latin American Perspectives 36:4 (2009) pp. 178-191 Virno, P., The Grammar of the Multitude (MIT Press, Cambridge, 2004) Virno, P., and Hardt, M., Eds., Radical Thought in Italy: A Potential Politics (University of Minnesota Press, Minneapolis, 1996) Wainwright, H., Reyes, O., Berlinguer, M., Dove, F., Foster Morrell, M., and Subirats, J., Networked Politics: Rethinking Political Organisation in an age of movements and networks (XL Edizioni, Rome, 2007) Wapner, P., ‘Democracy and Social Movements’, Proceedings of the Annual Meeting (American Society of International Law) 97 (2003) pp. 305-308 Webster, F., ‘Information, Urbanism and Identity: perspectives on the current work of Manuel Castells’, City 2:7 (1997) pp. 105-121 Webster, F., Theories of Information Society (Routledge, London, 2006) Wengronowitz, R., ‘Lessons from the Occupy Providence’, The Sociological Quarterly 54 (2012) pp. 213-219 Wheeler, M., ‘Democracy and the information superhighway’, Democratization 5:2 (1998) pp. 217-239 White, M., and Lasn, K., ‘A Tahrir Moment on Wall Street: Will people’s encampments emerge in financial districts around the world?’, Adbusters. https://www.adbusters.org/blogs/adbusters-blog/tahrir-moment-wall-street.html. Accessed 22/9/17

290

Wiebenson, J., ‘Planning and Using Resurrection City’, Journal of the American Institute of Planners 35:6 (1969) pp. 405-411 Wilson, J., Abstract Space and the Plan Puebla Panama: A Lefebvrean Critique of Regional Development in Southern Mexico (Unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Manchester, Manchester, 2009) Woodcock, J., ‘Precarious workers in London: New forms of organisation and the city’, City: analysis of urban trends, culture, theory, policy, action 18:6 (2014) pp. 776-788 Woodcock, J., ‘The Workers’ Inquiry from Trotskyism to Operaismo: a political methodology for investigating the workplace’, ephemera 14:3 (2014) pp. 493-513 Woodcock, J., Working the Phones: Control and Resistance in Call Centres (Pluto Press, London, 2016) Wright, E. O., ‘Transforming Capitalism through Real Utopias’, American Sociological Review 78:1 (2013) pp. 1-25 Wright, S., Storming Heaven: Class composition and struggle in Italian Autonomist Marxism (Pluto, London, 2002) Yates, L., ‘Rethinking Prefiguration: Alternatives, Micropolitics and Goals in Social Movements’, Social Movement Studies: Journal of Social, Cultural and Political Protest 14:1 (2015) pp. 1-21 Yegonoglu, M., ‘Smells like Gezi Spirit: Democratic Sensibilities and Carnivalesque Politics in Turkey’, Radical Philosophy 182, pp. 2-4 Young, I. M., ‘Activist Challenges to Deliberative Democracy’, Political Theory 29:5 (2001) pp. 670-690 Zamponi, L., ‘“Why don’t the Italians Occupy?” Hypotheses on a Failed Mobilisation’, Social Movement Studies 11:3-4 (2012) pp. 416-426 Zizek, S., ‘Have Hardt and Negri Rewritten the Communist Manifesto for the Twentieth Century?’. http://www.egs.edu/faculty/slavoj-zizek/articles/have-michael-hardt-and-antonio-negri-rewritten-the-communist-manifesto-for-the-twenty-first-century/. Accessed 23/11/2013 Žižek, S., First as Tragedy, then as Farce (Verso, London, 2003)

291

Žižek, S., Organs Without Bodies (Routledge, London, 2004)

Žižek, S., The Year of Dreaming Dangerously (Verso, London, 2012)

Zuquete, J. P., ‘“This is What Democracy Looks Like”: Is Representation Under Siege?’, New Global Studies 6:1 (2012) pp. 1-17 Film Sources ‘Antonio Negri: A Revolt that Never Ends’, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioQbWtXlPTk (Accessed 10/2/2017).