[p2p-research] Berardi essay

[Ryan Lanham]

Again, enlightening Andy, thanks.

I think using the otherness of Marx to create an aura of resistance,
rebellion, raging against the machine is valid.   I have admitted created a
straw man, but Marx seems to loom over the European left like a deity.
Poking at it is more temptation than I can bear.

I have used Tonnies' *Gemeinschaft und Gesellschaft *to inform my own ideas
of social decay and to speculate that reversal is now in process due to
social network technologies.

Localism is clearly a trait of this general transformation we are all
discussing.  Whether it is induced by transportation crises, the replication
of all culture on a screen, the need to be connected to place and
placemaking, or all of the above is still to be worked out.  We are all
searching for a sociology of the small and personal world linked to the
massive cloud, but I think harkening to any of the standard sociological
schools may prove frustrating and even outright unproductive.

As to borrowing canons, I am completely guilty of weaving scriptures and
other texts quite hypocritically into my texts without necessarily pointing
out my atheism to those I argue with.  Marx has power.  Whether his ideas
do, I'm less certain.

Ryan Lanham



On Fri, May 22, 2009 at 5:15 PM, Andy Robinson <ldxar1 at gmail.com> wrote:

> The choice to refer to affinity-networks as "communism" is certainly rather
> motivated, but has a certain historical continuity with what "communism"
> meant in autonomism in its earlier incarnations, and in things like "council
> communism".  Personally I'd be more inclined to call the model anarchism,
> because of the importance of absence of hierarchy to its definition.
>
> On the other hand, Ryan, I think you're very wrong that he's talking about
> something that's already happened, or could already happen, *in the
> capitalist system*.  A part of Berardi's perspective, assuming he's still
> in the same mould as people like Hardt, Negri, Virno etc, is that capitalism
> contains aspects which are as such reductive - "command" over social life
> (by the boss and the state), reduction of difference/singularity to sameness
> (as universal equivalent for example), the state as command hierarchy, etc.
> Hence, the "us and them" of class struggle is not an arbitrary addition but
> is fundamental to the systemic perspective which is taken.  On the other
> hand, Berardi (and Negri, etc) gives more credence than I do to the idea
> that affective labour is pioneering the transformation to a different
> society.  But the political forms being considered as instances of the new
> society in formation - summit protests, squatting, hackers, etc - are always
> antisystemic.  So the network model is counterposed to a dominant system
> which is in the last instance, necessarily hierarchical and
> representational.  This is a transformational theory, not a displacement of
> present into future.
>
> As to "how much Marx can be taken out of Marxism, etc" and "looking for the
> seven headed dragon", I think you're totally misunderstanding what this
> strain of post-autonomism is trying to do with Marxism.  First off, they
> wouldn't necessarily call themselves Marxists, they simply use certain
> concepts from the Marxist canon.  Secondly, they aren't historical
> determinists, they don't treat Marx as a prophet or as a scientific
> predictive theorist, they have an interpretation of Marxism as an
> agency-based approach.  The key concept they carry over from Marxism is
> exploitation - the dominant system exploits the creativity of a collective
> life-force on which it is parasitic.
>
> I also use certain Marxist concepts in my work, without claiming to be a
> Marxist - I think Marx's understanding of alienation is particularly
> relevant, and maps onto the issue of abundance and scarcity.  Capitalism is
> based on scarcity as a mindset and existential condition, and can only
> reproduce itself as the reproduction of scarcity; one of its problems is
> that it reproduces abundance at each stage and then implodes.  It is also
> transcendentalist; life only has recognised value to the extent that it is
> represented.  On the other hand, affinity-networks are based on an
> existential orientation to immanence and abundance.
>
> bw
> Andy
>
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