Tamara d’Auvergne 2013

The Crisis of Capital & the Right to Revolution

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Introduction: Global Crisis of Capital and Society

When we view capital as a global system that is economic, political and social then we can begin to

understand the contemporary world. Comprehending the complex processes of economic globalization and

contemporary financial crises is impossible without understanding the dynamics of capital. Classical and

neoclassical economics cannot adequately explain why we have financial crises; they can only barely describe

what has happened. Without Marxian analysis of capital we cannot begin to adequately explain the

underlying causes of the crisis of the capital system as an entirety. Marx saw the tendencies of capital to view

life itself as a commodity; Nature, humans as part of nature and all human activity can potentially be

appropriated and commodified by capital. The Marxian articulation of the dynamics of capital

commodification, privatization and alienation as well as his category of fictitious capital, are fundamentals for

understanding the world we live in today. The construction of the world market has been and continues to be

a historical process that is intertwined with the uneven economic development of states, various political

models and the advent of technologies that transform communication and production. Contemporary

capitalism must be approached from the level of the world market as must the social relations of capitalism

gone global.

The transition in the 1970s from the gold standard to currency as commodity in itself was also a transition

to the financialization of markets. Profits from material production of goods in the western world have been

superseded by profits generated from speculative money flows, corporate mergers and acquisitions. At the

same time labor has become more service oriented while production of material goods has shifted to China

and newly developed and developing countries. Financial crises, neoliberal policies of privatization and

deregulation have had a devastating effect on society and the environment. We are in the throes of three

dialectically interrelated crises that are symptoms of the crisis of capital; the crisis of the market, the political

crisis of society and the crises of ecological systems that support and sustain life itself. The spectacular failure

of private banks, major corporations and financial institutions is a failure of the capital system that is

symptomatic of the limits to capital growth in the global market. The predominant government policies of

bank bail-outs with public funds and austerity measures that significantly cut social spending have generated

public outrage and demands for social justice.

We are witnessing a time of escalating public opposition to the domination of society by global

capital and neoliberal ‘free market’ politics. Marx argued long ago that capital would become global and

dominate society; both Marx and Polanyi (2001) argued that when this happened society would rise up in

opposition. When we understand capital as a social relation in its totality then we can make more sense of the

mass civil uprisings and the underlying common and systemic causes for them. Although the protests and

occupations of public spaces are necessarily local, there is an increasing awareness among everyday people

that their causes and problems are connected across the world. There are growing realizations of global

solidarity against the ravages of capitalism neoliberal style. I argue that the various social movements and

mass protests that have captured world attention are the beginnings of a global social movement to counter

the social pathology of capital. The masses are voicing their opposition to the various manifestations of a

system that is increasingly perceived as anti-human, anti-nature and against life itself. These mass

demonstrations of public protest have become battlegrounds as states forcefully and violently step in to

quash mass dissent in public places.

The crises of democracy and of the ecological system that sustains and supports life itself are the result of

historical capital expansion. The environment has always been neglected in the economic growth paradigm.

We are confronted in our times with environmental and socio-financial crises that our current political

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models are unable to cope with. Marxian revolutionary ideas and a re-examination of what communism can

be for us are prevalent. The issue of exploitation, appropriation and systemic dispossession of the commons

and what is or should be common is the problem of confronting capitalistic and neoliberal agendas. Part of

the problem in the West is our historic view of nature as available for human exploitation. Now that we are

confronted with the result of centuries of plundering natural resources and the environmental effects of

industrialization it is clear that we need new ways of understanding that we as humans are also nature. What

happens to the global environment is not external to us as objects in nature but as natural subjects. We must

find ways of articulating this relationship to create more human/nature sustaining political and social life.

The myth of endless growth and no limits to capital are increasingly seen as such by people across the

world. What is new is that the crisis has come to the developed world just when the western conventional

wisdom held that colonialism and imperialism were historical phases long past. Current debates about

whether globalization is transnational or truly global depend upon understanding uneven geographical

development and imperialism. The legacies of colonialism remain very apparent today. We need to be

mindful of the concrete situation in every case. If we understand David Harvey’s work on the spacio-temporal

geography of contemporary capitalism we can say that globalization is corporate and imperialistic.

Corporations dominate political life at the state level. What we have today is a hybrid corporate/state

imperialism (Harvey 2005). It is also highly Eurocentric that the focus on immaterial biopolitical processes

tends to downplay the ongoing material production that continues unabated in the global South. Resource

exploitation continues at a rampant pace, the loci of material production have shifted from the developed

western economies to the more newly industrially developed areas of the world. These shifts can easily be

explained within Marx and Engels’ expectation in the Communist Manifesto that capitalism was a global

phenomenon and that regional differences in capitalist development were to be expected due to the various

manifestations and outcomes of capitalistic/imperialistic activity.

Marx consistently held that capital was a social relation between the market and society. His development

of the concepts of value and surplus labor recognized that the social relations of industrial capital exploited

human life and human bodies for capitalist gain. This was seen by him to be most evident in the processes of

production which reflected concrete reality at the time. In our times Marxian concepts are necessary to

explain the financial crises that are also generating political dissent. The Occupy movement and public

protests are a response to these crises and show a growing awareness that developed democracies are

hollow, for the benefit of capitalists and not the people. The issue of the proletariat, who it includes and

excludes and the changing nature of waged employment to temporary and precarious work is fundamental to

understand what is common to the anti-capitalist social movements that have occurred in recent times.

People feel excluded from democratic processes and they are; electoral representation is in crisis because it

has been dominated by corporate interests. These social uprisings are also experimenting and enacting

different models of decision making and direct participatory democratic processes that are inclusive.

Horizontal and non-hierarchic methods of organization are enabling people who had no voice or no audience

to speak and to be heard. This is a process of political subjectivation that counters the alienation and social

exclusion that capitalistic social relations reproduce.

Occupation and encampments are much more than protest, they are sites of active collective organization

and discussion to find new ways of asserting the power of the people. They are no longer relying on political

representatives to look after their interests; they are organizing around local issues of significance to them

and taking direct action to counter social injustices. Local movements are connecting across the globe, using

the internet, smart phones to share ideas and experiences. When the corporate media ignores collective

actions, the people organize their own media coverage. Mass movements and individuals are able to directly

communicate, collaborate and organize on an unprecedented level. We must pay attention to this because this

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is perhaps the beginning of a real global social movement for alternatives to capital. We need to broaden

traditional categories of class to reflect social reality in theory and praxis. No longer are people separated in

space and as easily manipulated in their thinking by states and capitalist interests. One of the biggest

questions is who are these people that are demanding social justice, how are they organizing and how are

they acting for change?

The Deepening Structural Crisis of Capital: globalization and limits to economic growth

Neoliberalism is the most virulent political form of capitalism to date. It is a result of historical

imperialism, the demise of totalitarian ‘communism’ and the rise of market politics at a level never before

experienced. Although we have new technologies and capital has expanded into the immaterial whatever is

human is material in the Marxian sense. Life is material and reification of either economics, politics, the

market only serves to mystify what are in fact human interventions in human life that are not natural but

socially constructed. Marx recognized this and described the material conditions and manifestations for

industrial capitalism with the clear proviso and warning that capital is global, tenacious and has the

dynamism to constantly morph and adapt to social and historic circumstances. Neoliberalism rides astride

industrial capital in that it is the tendency of capital to search for new ways to privatize and gain profit from

human life. In this sense biopolitical capitalism is just another phase much later in the game that could never

have developed without industrialization and technological and political developments. It is not a ‘stand-

alone’ phenomenon. It is an example of the logic of capitalism that expands into ‘new’ life realms when the

previous stages are exhausted and reaching maximum exploitative capacity.

Mészáros (2011;42), following and developing Marx for our times, tells us we must always keep in mind

the totality of capitalism as a system. He emphasizes the fundamental relationship between the mode of

production, the material basis of society and what he terms ‘social consciousness’. Mészáros reminds us that

globalization is a process that accelerates the antagonisms between nation-states and transnational capital.

We have the forces of state imperialism together with competition between capitalists who exploit

nationalism and the ever-burgeoning international division of labor. He eloquently articulates very

convincing arguments that the current crises of capital are not solely the cyclic crises of capital. He maintains

that the capital system in its totality is in decline and heading for implosion. He thinks capitalism is

synonymous with crisis. Governments could manage and contain cyclic capital crises to some extent through

monetary and fiscal policies such as quantitative easing and public bail outs of private companies and various

forms of nationalization. These measures are followed these days by ‘austerity’ measures that up until

recently were policies primarily pursued by international financial institutions in the ‘developing’ countries.

It is symptomatic of the limits to capital and the failure of the ‘growth’ paradigm that mature capitalist states

have succumbed to monopoly capital dominating society at the expense of people and nature.

In their recent book, ‘The Endless Crisis (2012), Foster and McChesney explain how financialization

is a response to systemic stagnation. There are limits to financial bubbles as a means to growth; the ‘real’

economy of production appears saturated with no space for surplus capital or expansion. The long-term trend

of finance capital speculation relative to production creates artificially inflated and fictitious ‘profit’ or

bubbles. Projected profits from these kinds of capital ventures are not production but circulation, often only

on paper with poor risk assessments for bad loans presented as ‘growth’. The crisis of capital deepens when

the bubble inevitably bursts and the state is compelled as a last resort to bail out failures of private financial

speculation that are deemed ‘too big to fail’. It ends up as socialism for financial elites and austerity measures

for the rest of society. This in turn generates a crisis of democracy as markets continue to become more and

more speculative with more financial ‘bubbles’ that burst. The public clearly see that they are expected to

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‘tighten their belts’ for the good of the national ‘economic recovery’. To add insult to injury the public is

expected to foot the bill for the failure of at best mismanaged private companies. The incidences of corporate

corruption, collusion with politicians and outright financial criminal fraudulence are too big to ignore. When

the free marketeers fail the public picks up the tab; when Joe Citizen cannot find employment or gets behind

on the bills the neoliberal way throws them to the wolves. There are less and less social security measures or

social safety nets available for the little guys. It’s a lose-lose situation for the majority of people when financial

elites fail. The Occupy movements are a social response to economic and political failure to stem the tide of

corporate speculative failures. Neoliberal individualism is seen to be fiscally and morally bankrupt. Social and

economic inequality between rich and poor increases,

‘What we need is for people to realize how disastrous this system is, and especially those on the

bottom who are really losing out-they have to organize, and begin to create something quite different. The

ecological crisis makes this even more pressing…Economically and environmentally we don’t really have a lot of

latitude right now. We have a system that’s economically performing very poorly, and becoming more unequal

all the time, it relies on a global labor arbitrage that exploits people in the global South at horrendous rates, it’s

destroying the planet as a place for human habitation. We’re facing overlapping material crises and we can’t

think simply in economic terms anymore.’ (Foster 2013)

Capital is confronted with limits to the environmental capacity to be exploited to the point of

destroying the planet’s ecosystems. International agreements to protect the environment are watered down

to accommodate economic growth and the demands of corporations. The political rhetoric of climate change

and measures to prevent environmental pollution are not backed up by political will of successive

administrations. It is economy first with corporates driving policy. The corruption of political processes is

staggering in its scale. People have had enough of growing economic inequality and politics that blatantly

favors corporate capital. The people are rising up and taking to the streets in protest at the threats capitalism

and neoliberal politics manifest towards life itself.

Crisis of the Commons: Exploitation and Colonization of Everyday Life

Capitalism is continually exploiting and shaping the divisions of public and private life -the family,

education of individuals and the public realm for private profit. Neoliberalism has promoted individualism for

the middle and lower classes and socialism for the rich as far as government policies are concerned. When

banks fail it is public funds that bail them out; when a war is fought the public purse pays and corporates

profit. When an individual cannot find a job or pay debts then it is a private individual moral failure due to

laziness and lack of initiative. Working for wages is a kind of privatization of human life; as Marx (1990; 716)

adroitly observed- when we give of our time and life in working for wages and there is profit to be made by

the capitalist from our labor then we are alienated. Whether the wages are generated from material or

immaterial labor, the dynamic is the same where exploitation is concerned. Someone working in a call center

or coffee shop is still generating profit for their employer. The profit from surplus labor remains in the

equation. The commodification of new forms of human activity and new products are still subject to the same

dynamics that Marx (1990;164-6) described as commodity fetishism, which belongs: ‘to a social formation in

which the process of production has mastery over man, instead of the opposite [and] appear to the political

economists’ bourgeois consciousness to be as much self-evident and nature-imposed necessity as productive

labor itself.’ (Marx:1990;174).

If what we really want to do is find new ways of reproducing society and finding how to overthrow

neoliberalism then I argue that we also need to look at the whole global situation rather than model primarily

on the latest forms of life to be expropriated for capital. The conventional forms of exploitation continue

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under post-colonial corporate imperialism that involves a large degree of material exploitation/extraction.

Without an understanding of this aspect of contemporary capitalism and globalization we are unable to

explain militarization and resource-based conflicts that are connected to the drive for capitalistic profit. If we

view the construction of the global market as a historical process, then we can accommodate the multi-levels

of uneven industrialization. Marx’s writing about labor was to counter the dynamics of industrial capital that

was prevalent in his era. It is all fundamentally about the exploitation of human life for profit. Marx’s

explanation of exploitation in the production process as the capitalist appropriating the ‘surplus labor’ of the

worker and his concept of alienation are just as relevant now as in his day. When Marx begins Capital with his

chapter on commodities he is explaining capital as a social relation where relations between people appear as

relations between things. As Žižek says, ‘only in capitalism is exploitation naturalized, inscribed into the

functioning of the economy…domination is already in the structure of the production process.’ (2013;194)

‘It is here that Marx’s key insight remains valid, today, perhaps more than ever: for Marx, the question

of freedom should not be located primarily into the political sphere proper. The key to actual freedom rather

resides in the “apolitical” network of social relations, from the market to the family, where the change needed if

we want an actual improvement is not a political reform, but a change in the “apolitical” social relations of

production. We do not vote about who owns what….the emergence of an international protest movement

without a coherent program is therefore not an accident: it reflects a deeper crisis one without an obvious

solution.’ (Žižek: 2012)

Capitalistic exploitation thrives on novelty and Marx clearly recognized that, which Hardt and Negri

acknowledge; ‘Since Marx’s time the critique of political economy has focused on the contradiction between

the social nature of capitalist production and the private nature of capitalist accumulation; but in the context

of biopolitical production the contradiction is dramatically intensified, as if raised to a higher power.’ (Hardt

& Negri:2009;149). When living labor is no longer required or cost prohibitive and technology allows for new

and cost effective ways to extract profit then it is not a completely new form of capitalism that we encounter.

It is a new form of exploitation, the ever-increasing exploitation of the common (Hardt & Negri:2009;137).

Hardt & Negri (2009;139-140) explain the commons in the traditional sense of natural resources and their

material scarcity while adding a second area of the commons, knowledge, which they say is not subject to the

logic of scarcity; ‘The expropriation of this second form of the common- the artificial common or, really, the

common that blurs the division between nature and culture - is the key to understanding the new forms of

biopolitical labor…Biopolitical production does present in newly prominent ways the characteristics of

alienation.’ Since biopolitical labor no longer corresponds to the law of scarcity, an idea, image, affect, etc.

does not exhaust itself: ‘…if you use that idea productively, I can use it too, at the very same time. In fact the

more of us that work with an idea and communicate about it, the more productive it becomes.’(2009;381).

This kind of labor and value is increasingly autonomous from capital: ‘…an increasingly autonomous labor-

power and, consequently, a capital that becomes increasingly pure command. Labor-power is thus no longer

variable capital, integrated within the body of capital, but a separate and increasingly oppositional force.’

(2009; 292).

I think that Hardt and Negri overestimate ‘autonomy’ and underestimate neoliberal and market

strategies that control immaterial labor through wage-labor and privatization. The biopolitical is not an

adequate explanation for contemporary times because it has always been present in capitalistic social

reproduction; the difference is that it is now more visible and extensive than before. People still generally

work for wages and people have always had thoughts and activities that are not necessarily defined by their

wage occupation. People have always belonged to community groups, volunteered their labor and time and

had diverse interests. Prostitution and sex work is hardly a new phenomenon as far as affective labor is

concerned and the increased role of migrant domestic workers is more about taking up the gap of wealthier

women working for wages. The feminization of labor is more a result of women moving out of the domestic

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sphere and into waged labor; it is indicative of the globalized division of labor. To me, biopolitical labor is a

fancy term for being human and having a life apart from my occupational status. There is nothing new in

having interests, community and abilities beyond occupational status. These ‘externalities’ are certainly

‘captured by capital at a broader social level’ (Hardt & Negri;2009;152). The advertising of being an

individual, of ‘lifestyle’, niche markets for extra-work interests, of ‘new’ experiences has exploded post World

War II with mass marketing. The market specializes in manipulating consumption and desire for novelty both

material and immaterial. We are still dealing with the human organism and the dualistic body/mind split that

is so distinctive in Western notions of subjectivity/objectivity.

Knowledge itself and personal information are increasingly commodified and privatized. The

internet is a perfect example of information as a commodity. All the big internet companies provide their

services for free to consumers- but the price is paid in personal information which is gathered and used to

target advertising. The recent exposé of the United States National Security Agency ‘Prism’ program that can

directly access internet service providers to collect information about individual communications shows how

we may think we are autonomous but we are also increasingly under state surveillance. Hardt and Negri

underestimate the collusion of corporates and political elites in manipulating society. The rise of public

relations, mass media and advertising that influence affective behavior through campaigns of epic

proportions leave very little room for ‘openings’ for public and collective displays of autonomous dissent.

Propaganda and state/political control and surveillance of the masses have never been so prevalent. We

could look at education as another example of how knowledge is actually becoming privatized and

commodified. The trend towards privatization of higher education together with the ‘market specific’

qualifications has resulted in the significant shrinking of liberal arts and humanities departments in

universities worldwide. This is hardly opening up opportunities for intellectual talents in these fields. Market

forces are dominating higher education in the sciences as well. Private funding for research is on the increase

which is also limiting the scope of research to profit-generating. There is an increase in privatizing human

innovation through patents, branding and private corporate ownership of innovation rather than the open

access that Hardt and Negri want to see. Intellectual property and trade-related intellectual property rights

(TRIPS) are rapidly appropriating life and discoveries in the biological and chemical sciences for private

profit. Private corporations set the research agendas for scientists far more than scientists having free-reign

to follow their own research. Production may have significantly moved outside the factory in post-

industrialized states and may be immaterial or affective but it doesn’t necessarily come without a price or

without profit for private gain. The corporate structure still dominates biopolitical labor in my view.

It is also not sufficient to explain new technologies and commodities as biopolitical when we are

confronted with a world where industrial capitalism is still so evident in less industrialized areas of the global

South. If biopolitics wants to say that it focuses on, ‘the “subjective” conditions contained in the antagonistic

relationship between capitalists and workers, which are expressed in exploitation and revolt’ (Hardt & Negri:

2009;137), then perhaps we should not be too quick to reject the ‘old’ forms of exploitation. To understand

Marx’s analysis of capital merely in terms of ‘the producing subject and the produced object’ (Hardt & Negri:

2009; 136) is an oversimplification of Marxian political economy and dialectical processes. I disagree with

Hardt and Negri about the extent of autonomy of biopolitical labor. They rely upon the, ‘…growing rupture

within the organic composition of capital, a progressive decomposition of capital in which variable capital

(and particularly biopolitical labor power) is separating from constant capital along with its political forces of

command and control’ (2009;151). I think they have underestimated the scope of temporary labor and

precarity for the traditional working class as well as the middle classes. Most people globally are dependent

on wage labor; whether their work is productive in Marxian terms is whether their labor is profitable for

capital: ‘…the capitalist produces the worker as a wage-laborer. This incessant reproduction, this

perpetuation of the worker, is the absolutely necessary condition for capitalist production.’ (Marx 1990; 716).

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Although Hardt and Negri include precarious and temporary labor as a category where human life is ‘on call’

for work (2009;146-7), I think they underestimate its impact and are rather starry-eyed about the potential

for biopolitical labor to transcend capitalist confines and control. The neoliberal political agenda of

systematically dismantling trade unions together with the shift to temporary and contract labor is a form of

capitalist control. Most people have not chosen temporary and contract labor, it has been imposed on them.

Labor has consistently struggled against neoliberalism’s inroads into collective organization for labor and the

dwindling public sphere in government. A hallmark of neoliberalism is the intimate relationship between the

corporate world and government in implementing public policies that benefit corporations before people. It

is another kind of colonization and appropriation of everyday life.

Reconfiguring Class struggle, the Multitude and Classes in the Making

Harvey (2005) emphasizes the competing and antagonistic agendas of corporate and political elites.

Political elites require periodic democratic legitimizing through elections whereas the corporates are more

concerned with short-term profit and lobbying for business-friendly legislation and government policies.

Social cohesion even in elite classes is fragmented by the competing agendas of political and economic elites.

The ‘revolving door’ between public policy and government positions and private corporate interests is one

of the primary ways that has been used to circumvent the competing agendas of administrative politics and

private corporate interests. Harvey (2009: 212) sides with Zizek on the issue of the structural importance of

class in capitalist society:

‘ …Hardt and Negri dismiss Slavoj Žižek’s contention that there is something far more foundational about class

than there is about all the other forms of identity in relation to the perpetuation of capitalism…while revolution is quite

properly opposed to prevailing notions of the republic of property, the presumption that the world’s six and a half billion

people can be fed, warmed, clothed, housed, and cleaned without any hierarchical form of governance and outside the reach

of monetarization and markets is dubious in the extreme. This question is far too huge to be left to the horizontal self-

organization of autonomous beings.’ He also finds that Hardt and Negri are too abstract and lacking, ‘specification of any

revolutionary transformation in the material foundations of daily life to parallel the revolutionary transformation in class

identities…’.

Žižek argues for a return to Marx’s Capital and the fundamental structural importance of

unemployment in the context of globalization as far more than the classic conception of the unemployed as a

reserve army of labor1: ‘…unemployment is structurally inseparable from the dynamic of accumulation and

expansion which constitutes the very nature of capitalism as such.’2 This is Standing’s ‘precariat’: the

inclusion of the global population in the total capitalist world market. Those whose are excluded from

‘society’ yet still perhaps involved in the world market through the black market, illegal labor and the

machinations of corporations extracting resources from the developing world, those in failed states, the

‘lumpen proletarians’3: ‘Does not this extension of the circle of the ‘unemployed bring us back from Marx to

Hegel: the ‘rabble is back, emerging in the very core of emancipatory struggles’ (2013:192). He reminds us

that Marx referred to the French peasants in his Eighteenth Brumaire as ‘sacks of potatoes’ without

community, national bond, political interest or class who could not represent themselves and needed

representation: ‘In the great twentieth-century revolutionary mobilizations of peasants (from China to

1 See Marx (1990; 796) Capital Vol.1, where Marx talks about the ‘third category of the relative surplus population’ as stagnant with ‘extremely

irregular employment’: ‘It’s conditions of life sink below the average normal level of the working class, and it is precisely this which makes it a braod foundation for special branches of capitalist exploitation. It is characterized by a maximum of working time and a mini mum of wages…It’s extent grows in proportion as, with the growth in the extent and energy of accumulation, the creation of a surplus population also advances. But it forms at the same time a self-reproducing and self-perpetuating element of the working class, taking a proportionally greater part in the general increase of that class than the other elements…It calls to mind the boundless reproduction of animals individually weak and constantly hunted down. 2 Cites Fredric Jameson, Representing Capital (London:, Verso, 2011), p.149

3 Marx (1990;797) Finally, the lowest sediment of the relative surplus population dwells in the sphere of pauperism. Apart from vagabonds,

criminals, prostitutes, in short the actual lumpen proletariat, this social stratum falls into three categories

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Bolivia), these ‘sacks of potatoes’ excluded from the historical process proper started to represent themselves

actively.’ (2013:192).

I do agree with Hardt and Negri that what we have to develop, ‘…are the terms of class struggle today: on

what resources is it based, what are the primary social lines of conflict, and what are the political forms

available for its organization?’ (2009;151). Hardt and Negri’s views on the significance of the commons for

alternatives to capitalism feature the city and urban life as the scene of dissent as well as the production of

the commons. Their ideas about autonomy have value for us as it is clear that changes in the social

consciousness of people about their situation in capitalistic society is very important. The question of the

political forms available for reorganization of class struggle strikes to the heart of urban collective

demonstrations of dissent. The Occupy movements and urban resistance to privatization of the commons

across the world are experimenting with non-hierarchical and horizontal ways for people to express their

views and desires for a better, more equitable life. Horizontalism one of the primary ways that people have

been organizing and it has been transforming people to become more autonomous in the sense that they are

directly expressing their concerns. People are no longer relying on representation through the liberal

democratic electoral politics which have failed them. They are organizing themselves in neighborhood

collectives that network with other collectives. This political subjectification of individuals interacting in

various collective processes is what Hardt and Negri’s multitude expresses. When they speak of ‘singularity’

and ‘the multitude’ against ‘axes of domination’ they want to include aspects of social life they feel are not

sufficiently articulated solely by traditional notions of class:

‘We certainly agree that more attention to class is necessary, but insisting on its priority is not an adequate

solution…We intend the concept of multitude as a means of approaching such problems [of coloniality, racism,

gender hierarchy] both of an analysis of the structures of power, and of the practical organization of political

activity…the challenge is to organize the intersections and encounters among class, race, gender, sexuality, and

other struggles in a process of liberation.’ (Hardt and Negri: 2009b; 213)

Standing (2011) also argues that we must reconfigure how we conceptualize class. Class composition

has changed as capital and neoliberal policies have made inroads into public life. The nature of work has

become more temporary, less secure and collective workers’ rights have been systematically dismantled

under neoliberal governments in collusion with business elites. Standing has put forward new social ‘classes

in the making’, particularly the ‘Precariat’, that are the result of decades of neoliberal policies of privatization,

deregulation and putting the interests of financiers and big business before the interests of the people. He

describes the Precariat as those who are increasingly marginalized and/or live without security of regular

income. It includes large numbers of educated young people who have been unable to find work related to

their studies or training as well as those who have always tended to be socially marginalized; unskilled

migrant labor, domestic workers and those unwaged who care for families. Standing would agree with Žižek

when he points out that we need to rethink the concept of exploitation to realize that in our times, ‘…in a

properly dialectical twist, exploitation includes its own negation-the exploited are not only those who

produce or ‘create’, but also (and even more) those who are condemned not to create …[they] are not simply

outside the circuit of capital, they are actively produced as not-working…’ (2013:193).

This is quite a different dynamic to Hardt and Negri’s ‘exodus’ (2009:306) where autonomous people

choose to live outside the influence of capital. I think in this sense there are objective material conditions and

subjective and revolutionary awakenings in people disaffected by government policies. Having already said

that Hardt and Negri under-estimate the power of people to be autonomous from the necessity of earning a

living, I do think that they have a powerful description of what is happening to many people when they

participate in uprisings against political and economic tyranny. Hardt and Negri focus on modes of

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subjectification under capitalism and the subjective transformation that is required to create a future that is

radically different and for the people.

‘So many of the movements of 2011 direct their critiques against political structures and forms of

representation, then, because they recognize clearly that representation, even when it is effective, blocks

democracy rather than fosters it. Where, they ask, has the project for democracy gone?...One path, the

movements teach, passes through the revolt and rebellion against the impoverished and depotentialized

subjective figures we have outlined….Democracy will be realized only when a subject capable of grasping and

enacting it has emerged.’ (Hardt and Negri 2012; 22)

It is indeed the Multitude, which includes the Precariat that has taken to the streets. Hardt and Negri’s

contribution to the debate about how to overthrow capitalism, and the kind of wage labor system that we live

with today is profoundly resonant with the mood of contemporary mass movements.

Marx’s Theory of Value: production of world value and the metropolis

We need to return to the Marxian idea of simple ‘labor’, as a creative human activity as opposed to

commodified ‘work/wages’ and reexamine what is productive and unproductive in the context of our own

era. Marx (1990; 287) thought that,

‘Labor is, first of all, a process between man and nature, a process by which man, through his own

actions, mediates, regulates and controls the metabolism between himself and nature. He confronts the

materials of nature as a force of nature…Through this movement he acts upon external nature and changes it,

and in this way he simultaneously changes his own nature.’

Later in the same passage it seems as though Marx is using the terms ‘labor’ and ‘work’ interchangeably. He

also comments that the labor process,

‘…is purposeful activity aimed at the production of use-values. It is an appropriation of what exists in nature for

the requirements of man. It is the universal condition for the metabolic interaction between man and nature, the

ever-lasting nature-imposed condition of human existence…it is common to all forms of society in which human

beings live.’ (Marx 1990;290)

Marx viewed the wage labor process as a commodity purchased and consumed by the capitalist (1990; 292).

The Marxian category of surplus value is where the ‘…value of the labor power, and the value which that labor

power valorizes in the labor process, are entirely two different magnitudes: and this difference was what the

capitalist had in mind when he was purchasing the labor power.’ (1990; 300) This is where exploitation and

alienation for the worker occur in the work place. There are also other ways workers contribute to capital

accumulation through rents, credit and debt- what Marx termed ‘relative surplus value’:

‘The capitalist who produces surplus value, ie. who extracts unpaid labor directly from the workers and fixes it

in commodities, is admittedly the first appropriator of the surplus value, but he is by no means its ultimate

proprietor. He has to share it afterwards with capitalists who fulfill other functions in social production taken as

a whole…Surplus value is therefore split up into various parts. Its fragments fall to various categories of person,

and take on various mutually independent forms such as profit, interest, gains made through trade, ground rent

etc. We shall be able to deal with these modified forms of surplus value only in Volume 3.’ (Marx 1990; 709)

Amin (2010; 11) extends Marx’s law of value to the law of worldwide value that includes the concrete

situation of unequal global development and continuing imperialism:

10

‘My major contribution concerns the passage from the law of value to the law of globalized value, based on the

hierarchical structuring -itself globalized -of the prices of labor-power around its value. Linked to the management

practices governing access to natural resources, this globalization of value constitutes the basis for imperialist rent. This, I

claim, orders the unfolding of really existing capitalism/imperialism’s contradictions and of the conflicts linked to them,

so that classes and nations are imbricated, in their struggles and clashes, in all the complex articulation, specific and

concrete, of those contradictions…I claim that our reading of the twentieth and twenty –first centuries can be nothing

other than that of the emergence –or of the “reawakening” –of peoples and nations periphic to the globalized

capitalist/imperialist system.’

The importance of Amin’s concept of the law of worldwide value is that he articulates so well the global

hierarchic division of labor and resource exploitation and how it happens in reality. The category of

imperialist rent is material in the extraction of resources and labor, immaterial in instruments of

financialization and the movements of fictitious capital in money markets. The complex relationships

between states and transnational corporations produce and exacerbate uneven development, military

conflicts and political interference in the self-determination and political processes in many developing

countries.

The critique by Harvey of Hardt and Negri’s ‘Commonwealth’ and their responses characterize the

debate between post-structuralism/postmodern theorists and those who return to Marx’s theory of value to

explain the changes in capital, class and social production. I agree with Harvey (2103; 128) when he says that

‘Any anti-capitalist alternative has to abolish the power of the capitalist law of value to regulate the world

market’. Harvey thinks that markets for things are saturated, so capital responds by expanding into

immaterial production and commodification of affects, information and experiences. He also agrees that the

commons is a critical and important foundation of political struggle. The fundamental differences are whether

it is understood that geography, place, the material political economy and material living conditions are

included in the analysis, including the circulation of wages as variable capital. Including material concrete

conditions and how they influence subjectivity as well as how fictitious capital operates in its concrete effects

is essential in my view. Consumption in any form, material and immaterial, are part of the capital system as a

totality. Harvey (2009;214) emphasizes that :

‘Marx’s conception of value as immaterial but objective underpins his theory of fictitious-capital formation…Hardt

and Negri occasionally mention financialization and concede its general importance in recent times, they have absolutely no

theory of fictitious capital…This omission could be forgiven were it not for the brute fact that political subjectivities have been

as deeply affected by ficitious –capital proliferation - everything from the credit-card culture to speculating on gains in housing

value _as they have by any Foucouldian exercise of biopower (i.e., state power over life)…But now look at the objective

consequences of this fiction (foreclosed homes, unemployment, collapsing consumerism, failed banks and so on). The point

here is not to say they are wrong, rather their analysis is far too partial to bear the burden of a satisfactory framework fo r

understanding the current crisis and its underlying political dilemmas, including the problem of producing political

subjectivities.’

Amin (2010) and Harvey (2013; 129) remind us that the total circulation of capital is not only in production;

it is also in circulation of commodities and money which is uneven and global. All are able to generate profit

and contribute to capital accumulation as well as the social woes that result; ‘…the dynamics of class

exploitation are not confined to the workplace…These secondary forms of exploitation are primarily

organized by merchants, landlords and the financiers; and their effects are primarily felt in the living space

not the factory.’ He is also concerned to include the category of rent as an important aspect of capital

accumulation and exploitation. He suggests we focus on the city as ‘the prime site of surplus value

production’. Harvey (2013; 129) challenges us to rethink and focus on the production and reproduction of city

life as socially necessary because it is part of the reproduction of the class relations between capital and labor

as well as the site and source of dissent:

11

‘Practices of accumulation by dispossession, rental appropriations, by money and profit gouging, lie at the heart

of many of the discontents that attach to the qualities of daily life for the mass of the population. Urban social movements

typically mobilize around such questions, and they derive from the way in which the perpetuation of class power is

organized around living (my italics) as well as around working…The fact that these urban discontents relate to the

commodity and monetary rather than the production circuit of capital matters not one whit: indeed it is a big theoretical

advantage to reconceptualize matters thus, because it focuses attention on those aspects of capital circulation that so

frequently play the nemesis to attempts at work control in production. Since it is capital circulation as a whole that

matters (not merely what happens in the productive circuit), what does it matter to the capitalist class as a whole

whether value is extracted from the commodity and money circuits rather than the productive circuit directly? The gap

between where surplus value is produced and where it is realized is as crucial theoretically as it is practically. Value

created in production may be recaptured for the capitalist class from the workers by landlords charging high rates on

housing.’

When we look at producing the city then we can include temporary workers, illegal workers, family and

domestic life, services like water and electricity and transport; all areas where people are active that

contribute toward city life and communities. Providing goods and services, accommodation and just the

primary necessities of life is not unproductive:

‘All of these activities (including spatial movement) are productive of value and of surplus value. If capitalism

often recovers from crises, as we saw earlier, by “building houses and filling them with things,” then clearly everyone

engaged in that urbanizing activity has a central role to play in the macroeconomic dynamics of capital accumulation. And

if maintenance, repairs, and replacements…are all part of the value-producing stream (as Marx avers), then the vast army

of workers involved in these activities in our cities is also contributing to value and surplus value production.’ (Harvey

2013: 131).

The Right to the City: Urban Revolutions, Occupations and Uprisings

Harvey has long emphasized the role urbanization has played in the current social, political and

economic crises. The social and economic conditions of increasingly urbanized life are the problem and the

city is the battleground. At the same time it is also where alternatives to the social relations of capital could

develop and bring about real alternatives to society dominated by the market. Hardt and Negri’s (2012)

response to the Arab Spring, the various Occupy movements and social uprisings around the world since

2010, is that they are all struggling against political and economic tyranny. They are all struggling against

some form of domination. They see these local movements as connected in their causes and the fact that they

do communicate with each other through social media. They are examples of the singularity of the Multitude

par excellence. These movements are part of a global uprising of the masses that are asserting their right to

social justice and social change.

‘Many who are not part of the struggles have trouble seeing the connections in this list of events. The North

African rebellions opposed repressive regimes and their demands centered on the removal of tyrants, whereas the wide-

ranging social demands of the encampments in Europe, the United States, and Israel addressed representative

constitutional systems. Furthermore, the Israeli tent protest (don’t call it an occupation!) delicately balanced demands so

as to remain silent about questions of settlements and Palestinian rights; the Greeks are facing sovereign debt and

austerity measures of historic proportions; and the indignation of the British rioters addressed a long history of racial

hierarchy- and they didn’t even pitch tents. Each of these struggles is singular and oriented towards specific local

conditions. The first thing to notice though, is they did, in fact, speak to one another. The Egyptians, of course, clearly

moved down paths traveled by the Tunisians and adopted their slogans, but the occupiers of Puerta del Sol also thought of

their struggle as carrying on the experiences of those at Tahrir. In turn, the eyes of those in Athens and Tel Aviv were

focused on the experiences of Madrid and Cairo. The Wall Street occupiers had them all in view, translating, for instance,

the struggle against the tyrant into a struggle against the tyranny of finance. You may think that they were just deluded

12

and forgot or ignored the differences in their situations and demands. We believe, however, that they have a clearer vision

than those outside the struggle, and they can hold together without contradiction their singular conditions and local

battles with the common global struggle.’ (Hardt and Negri 2012;3)

Worldwide people are disillusioned with representative democracy if they have it, and if they don’t

have it then they want it. People are acting on this disillusionment with outrage and indignation rather than

passively putting up with a system they feel is unaccountable and not for the people. They are asserting

themselves as the public in a public space; they claim the right to their cities and political action in their

communities. We can add the May/June 2013 mass demonstrations and occupations of public spaces in

Turkey (Traynor & Letsch 2013), and now Brazil (Watts 2013) to the growing list of mass social protests and

occupations that are indicative of a global people’s movement against capital and oligarchy. The fact that

there is so much communication between spatially separated movements challenges the conventional

division of politics into nation-states. People are mobilizing globally and locally by sharing ideas, experiences

and tactics in dealing with state forces that violently suppress uprisings. There is a very real sense of

solidarity and community because people know that they are experiencing common problems and these

problems are systemic and structural. Alone against the state and governments people feel powerless,

whereas collective strategies get results that empower people to act together to solve community problems

even when politicians do not. Sitrin (2013; 69-70) talks about ‘affective politics’ as a natural development of

people organizing together and supporting each other as an essential and important feature of the

movements she has studied in Argentina:

‘ …affective politics is still articulated as one of the most important foundations of what is being

created…While it may seem like an oversimplification to say that if you feel happier with or closer to those with

whom you organize, the result will be more social construction and militant activity, this is in fact, what is seen

in practice…Affect and emotion are too often relegated to the politics of gender and identity, and thus not seen

as “serious” theory or as a possibly revolutionary part of politics. This argument denies the fact that

responsibility for the other and solidarity are the basic conditions of a future society not grounded in capitalist

principles.’

People who participate in these mass public demonstrations know the neoliberal democratic process

has failed to deliver for them and they are actively searching and experimenting with what could be

alternatives to capitalism, oligarchy and authoritarianism. In the Middle East and North African states there

were various national contexts but there were also common factors that brought about the Arab Spring

uprisings:

‘Though there can be no singular narrative of uprisings that occurred in such different national contexts, the

articles in this volume do highlight some shared underlying conditions that laid the groundwork for the

insurrections. Relatively stagnant economic systems made worse by the 2008 financial crisis and recent rises in

food prices, combined with relatively high unemployment –especially among educated youth- poorly managed

public services, and rampant corruption created systems of entrenched and pervasive social inequality.

Metastasizing security apparatuses inserted themselves into ever more aspects of daily life and impinged upon

higher levels of the social spectrum…Authoritarian practices combined with economic inequality in ways that

rendered the state –as arbiter of both political activity and socio-economic well-being-utterly alien to most

citizens. The region faced a crisis of governance.’ (McMurray & Somers 2013; 3).

There has been much criticism, particularly of the Occupy movements that they do not have agendas

and political programs. I do not think we should be too quick to say that horizontalism is not valid because it

cannot be taken to a global scale to manage resources and governance. There are always dialectical elements

in every life situation. The problem is first how to organize from the local, from a particular place and space.

How do people have a voice that is truly democratic? How are people organizing around concrete material

problems that confront individuals and communities? How can we transform politics from exploitative

13

capitalism and elevate social justice to the primary factor for social organization? A social movement with no

organizational hierarchy is a revelation to many of the people present in that they can have a voice and

participate in a collective. It is people breaking free from the liberal democratic idea that they need

representation. They are making themselves visible to their governments; they are voicing their dissent en

masse and networking with others. This is the autonomous empowerment that Hardt and Negri speak of; a

qualitative subjective change in how people experience themselves socially; it is also a question of value and

what is valued. It is too soon to know about the effects and how being part of a mass social movement has

changed people in the longer term. In many countries the movement has continued with neighborhood

collectives that meet regularly and network with others locally and globally. Sitrin (2012: 5) writes about the

horizontalidad movements that arose and developed as a result of the 2001 Argentinian financial crisis:

‘All of these active movements have been relating to one another, and constructing new types of

networks that reject the hierarchical template bequeathed to them by established politics. Part of this rejection

includes a break with concepts of ‘power over’: people are attempting to organize on a flatter plane, with the

goal of creating ‘power with’ one another…what is created is a revolution of the everyday…The movements in

Argentina, and the articulations of the process of creation there, have become a point of reference for many

others around the world…’

These ways of organizing collectively around local and neighborhood issues are not entirely outside the

frame of capitalism as a whole but they are a shift to people deciding for themselves about questions related

to production;

‘This then raises incredibly important questions on value production…The movements in Argentina are not only

creating horizontal relationships in which the participants feel better and happier, but in many areas they are

finding new ways of surviving, whether by taking over workplaces and running them together, or creating

micro-enterprises. In and of themselves these are not answers to the capitalist market, but within the

experience, within the creation of alternative ways of producing value, one can begin to see the seeds of an

alternative economy that is central to the total transformation of society.’ (Sitrin 2012; 222)

Conclusion: Revolution is a Process

Marx’s theory of value provides conceptual and analytical tools to understand how capital dominates

society. The dialectical relationships between production and capital circulation globally and in urban life

require a broadening of conceptions of class. This is one of the common elements in most contemporary

critiques of capital-driven society. Harvey connects these factors very well in his analysis of the totality of

capital circulation and the effects on how people live and work in urban environments. He argues that

accumulation by dispossession and rent as a source of capital are factors that generate urban discontent and

dissent. We need to be more inclusive and think more dialectically to overcome the separation between work

and life, private life and public life as analytical factors. We need to think more about people’s lives as a

totality just as we think about the global capital system as a totality. When we do this we can connect the

material, immaterial, domestic and wider community, people who work for wages, the unemployed- everyone

who lives in a community. We can see that daily lives and human activities are not based solely around the

factory but around the city. It is a broader scope for analysis that represents how people really live and act in

communities. It requires dialectical thinking and analysis which can allow for contradictions as well as

antagonism at various levels, spaces, places and times.

When people are subjectively or qualitatively transformed and perceive themselves as active rather

than politically passive, as political subjects rather than excluded citizen-consumers, then new social forms

and values can begin to emerge and be created. I agree with Hardt and Negri that subjective transformation is

14

essential to find new ways of relating to each other and begin the process of radical social change. By bringing

in the subjective dimension we can talk about how people feel and what they do about it as well as how

protests and occupations can be a subjectifying process. We cannot effect social change without people

changing how they think about themselves and society and then acting on these changes. If we only focus on

class then we can lose the personal inner dimension that is so fundamental to creating alternatives to

capitalism. When people come together spontaneously in mass demonstrations and then begin to organize in

ways that they feel they have a voice and can participate in local collective decisions it can be life-changing for

them.

If we are too cynical about these movements and try to frame them only in terms of what has gone

before then we are missing the point about the need for people to become autonomous subjects now. When

people have the experience of realizing that they are not alone, that they have many thoughts and feelings

about their life situation in common with others that they would never usually meet or talk to, then they are

moving away from alienation and becoming revolutionary or emancipated political subjects. When these

experiences also include new ways of acting in the process of collective discussions and decision-making

there is an opening for the autonomy that Hardt and Negri advocate. There is much more going on than

protest, there is also revolutionary and emancipatory process. Even if it only looks like it lasts as long as the

public demonstrations which are violently put down by state force, it is too soon for us to judge the long-term

effects of these movements. They could very well be the sprouted seedlings of other ways of organizing and

living in society.

The production and reproduction of the city as a totality has always historically had temporary

workers and involved the connection between the domestic sphere and work as well as services. Harvey

thinks that reconceptualizing class and how social reproduction in the city helps us to redefine the terrain of

class struggle. This is important because then we can think about what role urban social movements can have

in overcoming capital’s domination of society. We can include those who have previously been excluded from

social analysis because we are considering human life and activity in its totality. Part of this totality is what is

common, what and where are public spaces, material and immaterial? Capital as a social relation can be

countered only by including what is the totality of collective human activity. We can analytically separate the

public/private moments of human life and activity temporally and spatially, but then we need to re-establish

how these moments dialectically relate to the whole. Everyday life must have a place in analysis because this

is where social relations are to be found. Work and occupation alone do not sufficiently represent what

people really do or how capital accumulation and commodification really affect people in concrete ways.

Urban life in the city frequently blurs traditional conceptual boundaries of what is production and

reproduction, also of what constitutes value socially. It is where the new and alternatives to capitalism are

likely to come from.

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