Precarious work is a central concept in movement discussions
of the capitalist reorganization of work and class relations in today’s global
economy. Silvia Federici analyzes the potential and limits of this concept as
an analytic and organizational tool. She claims reproductive labor is a hidden
continent of work and struggle the movement must recognize in its political
work, if it is to address the key questions we face in organizing for an
alternative to capitalist society. How do we struggle over reproductive labor
without destroying ourselves, and our communities? How do we create a
self-reproducing movement? How do we overcome the sexual, racial, and
generational hierarchies built upon the wage?
This lecture took place on October 28th 2006 at
Bluestockings Radical Bookstore in New York City, 172 Allen Street as part of
the “This is Forever: From Inquiry to Refusal Discussion Series."
Tonight I will present a critique of the theory of
precarious labor that has been developed by Italian autonomist Marxists, with
particular reference to the work of Antonio Negri, Paolo Virno, and also
Michael Hardt. I call it a theory because the views that Negri and others have
articulated go beyond the description of changes in the organization of work
that have taken place in the 1980s and 1990s in conjunction with the
globalization process– such as the “precariazation of work,” the fact that work
relations are becoming more discontinuous, the introduction of “flexy time,”
and the increasing fragmentation of the work experience. Their view on
precarious labor present a whole perspective on what is capitalism and what is
the nature of the struggle today. It is important to add that these are not simply
the ideas of a few intellectuals, but theories that have circulated widely
within the Italian movement for a number of years, and have recently become
more influential also in the United States, and in this sense they have become
more relevant to us.
History and Origin of Precarious Labor and Immaterial Labor
Theory
My first premise is that definitely the question of
precarious labor must be on our agenda. Not only has our relationship to waged
work become more discontinuous, but a discussion of precarious labor is crucial
for our understanding of how we can go beyond capitalism. The theories that I
discuss capture important aspects of the developments that have taken place in
the organization of work; but they also bring us back to a male-centric conception
of work and social struggle. I will discuss now those elements in this theory
that are most relevant to my critique.
An important premise in the Italian autonomists’ theory of
precarious labor is that the precariazation of work, from the late seventies to
present, has been a capitalist response to the class struggle of the sixties, a
struggle that was centered on the refusal of work, of as expressed in the
slogan “more money less work.” It was a response to a cycle of struggle that
challenged the capitalist command over labor, in a sense realizing the workers’
refusal of the capitalist work discipline, the refusal of a life organized by
the needs of capitalist production, a life spent in a factory or in office.
Another important theme is that the precariazation of work
relations is deeply rooted in another shift that has taken place with the
restructuring of production in the 1980s. This is the shift from industrial
labor to what Negri and Virno call “immaterial labor.” Negri and others have
argued that the restructuring of production that has taken place in the
eighties and nineties in response to the struggles of the sixties has begun a
process whereby industrial labor is to be replaced by a different type o work,
in the same way as industrial labor replaced agricultural work. They call the
new type of work “immaterial labor” because they claim that with the computer
and information revolutions the dominant form of work has changed. As a
tendency, the dominant form of work in today’s capitalism is work that does not
produce physical objects but information, ideas, states of being, relations.
In other words, industrial work — which was hegemonic in the
previous phase of capitalist development– is now becoming less important; it is
no longer the engine of capitalist development. In its place we find
“immaterial labor,” which is essentially cultural work, cognitive work, info
work.
Italian autonomists believe that the precarization of work
and the appearance of immaterial labor fulfills the prediction Marx made in the
Grundrisse, in a famous section on machines. In this section Marx states that
with the development of capitalism, less and less capitalist production relies
on living labor and more and more on the integration of science, knowledge and
technology in the production process as the engines of accumulation. Virno and
Negri see the shift to precarious labor as fulfilling this prediction, about
capitalism’s historic trend. Thus, the importance of cognitive work and the
development of computer work in our time lies in the fact that they are seen as
part of a historic trend of capitalism towards the reduction of work.
The precarity of labor is rooted in the new forms of
production. Presumably, the shift to immaterial labor generates a
precariazation of work relations because the structure of cognitive work is
different from that of industrial, physical work. Cognitive and info work rely
less on the continuous physical presence of the worker in what was the
traditional workplace. The rhythms of work are much more intermittent, fluid
and discontinuous.
In sum, the development of precarious labor and shift to
immaterial labor are not for Negri and other autonomist Marxists a completely
negative phenomenon. On the contrary, they are seen as expressions of a trend
towards the reduction of work and therefore the reduction of exploitation,
resulting from capitalist development in response to the class struggle.
This means that the development of the productive forces
today is already giving us a glimpse of a world in which work can be
transcended; in which we will liberate ourselves from the necessity to work and
enter a new realm of freedom.
Autonomous Marxists believe this development is also
creating a new kind of “common” originating from the fact that immaterial labor
presumably represents a leap in the socialization and homogeneization of work.
The idea is that differences between types of work that once were all important
(productive/reproductive work e.g.; agricultural/industrial/”affective labor”)
are erased, as all types work (as a tendency) become assimilated, for all begin
to incorporate cognitive work. Moreover, all activities are increasingly
subsumed under capitalist development, they all serve to the accumulation
process, as society becomes an immense factory. Thus, e.g. the distinction
between productive and unproductive labor also vanishes.
This means that capitalism is not only leading us beyond
labor, but it is creating the conditions for the “commonization” of our work
experience, where the divisions are beginning to crumble.
We can see why these theories have become popular. They have
utopian elements especially attractive to cognitive workers–the “cognitariat”
as Negri and some Italian activists call them. With the new theory, in fact, a
new vocabulary has been invented. Instead of proletariat we have the
“cognitariat.” Instead of working class, we have the “Multitude”, presumably
because the concept of Multitude reveals the unity that is created by the new
socialization of work; it expresses the communalization of the work process,
the idea that within the work process workers are becoming more homogenized.
For all forms of work incorporate elements of cognitive work, of computer work,
communication work and so forth.
As I said this theory has gained much popularity, because
there is a generation of young activists, with years of schooling and degrees
who are now employed in precarious ways in different parts of the culture
industry or the knowledge-production industry. Among them these theories are
very popular because they tell them that, despite the misery and exploitation
we are experiencing, we are nevertheless moving towards a higher level of
production and social relations. This is a generation of workers who looks at
the “Nine to Five” routine as a prison sentence. They see their precariousness
as giving them new possibilities. And they have possibilities their parents did
not have or dreamed of. The male youth of today (e.g.) is not as disciplined as
their parents who could expect that their wife or partners would depend of them
economically. Now they can count on social relationships involving much less
financial dependence. Most women have autonomous access to the wage and often
refuse to have children.
So this theory is appealing for the new generation of
activists, who despite the difficulties of resulting from precarious labor, see
within it certain possibilities. They want to start from there. They are not
interested in a struggle for full employment. But there is also a difference
here between Europe and the US. In Italy e.g. there is among the movement a
demand for a guaranteed income. They call it “flex security.” They say, we are
without a job, we are precarious because capitalism needs us to be, so they
should pay for it. There have been various days of mobilization, especially on
May 1st, centered on this demand for a guaranteed income. In Milano, on the May
Day of this year, movement people have paraded “San Precario,” the patron saint
of the precarious worker. The ironic icon is featured in rallies and
demonstrations centered on this question of precarity.
Critique of Precarious Labor
I will now shift to my critique of these theories– a
critique from a feminist viewpoint. In developing my critique, I don’t want to
minimize the importance of the theories I am discussing. They have been
inspired by much political organizing and striving to make sense of the changes
that have taken place in the organization of work, which has affected all our
lives. In Italy, in recent years, precarious labor has been one of the main
terrains of mobilization together with the struggle for immigrant rights.
I do not want to minimize the work that is taking place
around issues of precarity. Clearly, what we have seen in the last decade is a
new kind of struggle. A new kind of organizing is taking place, breaking away
from the confines of the traditional workplace. Where the workplace was the
factory or the office, we now see a kind of struggle that goes out from the
factory to the “territory,” connecting different places of work and building
movements and organizations rooted in the territory. The theories of precarious
labor are trying to account for the aspects of novelty in the organization of
work and struggle; trying to understand the emergent forms of organization.
This is very important. At the same time, I think that what
I called precarious labor theory has serious flaws that I already hinted at in
my presentation. I will outline them and then discuss the question of
alternatives.
My first criticism is that this theory is built on a faulty
understanding of how capitalism works. It sees capitalist development as moving
towards higher forms of production and labor. In Multitude, Negri and Hardt
actually write that labor is becoming more “intelligent.” The assumption is
that the capitalist organization of work and capitalist development are already
creating the conditions for the overcoming of exploitation. Presumably, at one
point, capitalism, the shell that keeps society going will break up and the
potentialities that have grown within it will be liberated. There is an
assumption that that process is already at work in the present organization of
production. In my view, this is a misunderstanding of the effects of the
restructuring produced by capitalist globalization and the neo-liberal turn.
What Negri and Hardt do not see is that the tremendous leap
in technology required by the computerization of work and the integration of
information into the work process has been paid at the cost of a tremendous
increase of exploitation at the other end of the process. There is a continuum
between the computer worker and the worker in the Congo who digs coltan with
his hands trying to seek out a living after being expropriated, pauperized, by
repeated rounds of structural adjustment and repeated theft of his community’s
land and natural sources.
The fundamental principle is that capitalist development is
always at the same time a process of underdevelopment. Maria Mies describes it
eloquently in her work: “What appears as development in one part of the
capitalist faction is underdevelopment in another part.”
This connection is completely ignored in this theory; in
fact and the whole theory is permeated by the illusion that the work process is
bringing us together. When Negri and Hardt speak of the “becoming common” of
work and use the concept of Multitude to indicate the new commonism that is
built through the development of the productive forces, I believe they are
blind to much of what is happening with the world proletariat.
They are blind to not see the capitalist destruction of
lives and the ecological environment. They don’t see that the restructuring of
production has aimed at restructuring and deepening the divisions within the
working class, rather than erasing them. The idea that the development of the
microchip is creating new commons is misleading. communalism can only be a product
of struggle, not of capitalist production.
One of my criticisms of Negri and Hardt is that they seem to
believe that the capitalist organization of work is the expression of a higher
rationality and that capitalist development is necessary to create the material
conditions for communism. This belief is at the center of precarious labor
theory. We could discuss here whether it represents Marx’s thinking or not.
Certainly the Communist Manifesto speaks of capitalism in these terms and the
same is true of some sections of the Grundrisse. But it is not clear this was a
dominant theme in Marx’s work, not at least in Capital.
Precarious Labor and Reproductive Work
Another criticism I have against the precarious labor theory
is that it presents itself as gender neutral. It assumes that the
reorganization of production is doing away with the power relations and
hierarchies that exist within the working class on the basis of rage, gender
and age, and therefore it is not concerned with addressing these power
relations; it does not have the theoretical and political tools to think about
how to tackle them. There is no discussion in Negri, Virno and Hardt of how the
wage has been and continues to be used to organize these divisions and how
therefore we must approach the wage struggle so that it does not become an
instrument of further divisions, but instead can help us undermined them. To me
this is one of the main issues we must address in the movement.
The concept of the “Multitude” suggests that all divisions
within the working class are gone or are no longer politically relevant. But
this is obviously an illusion. Some feminists have pointed out that precarious
labor is not a new phenomenon. Women always had a precarious relation to waged
labor. But this critique goes far enough.
My concern is that the Negrian theory of precarious labor
ignores, bypasses, one of the most important contributions of feminist theory
and struggle, which is the redefinition of work, and the recognition of women’s
unpaid reproductive labor as a key source of capitalist accumulation. In
redefining housework as WORK, as not a personal service but the work that
produces and reproduces labor power, feminists have uncovered a new crucial
ground of exploitation that Marx and Marxist theory completely ignored. All of
the important political insights contained in those analysis are now brushed
aside as if they were of no relevance to an understanding of the present
organization of production.
There is a faint echo of the feminist analysis –a lip
service paid to it– in the inclusion of so called “affective labor” in the
range of work activities qualifying as “immaterial labor.” However, the best
Negri and Hardt can come up with is the case of women who work as flight
attendants or in the food service industry, whom they call “affective
laborers,” because they are expected to smile at their customers.
But what is “affective labor?” And why is it included in the
theory of immaterial labor? I imagine it is included because –presumably– it
does not produce tangible products but “states of being,” that is, it produces
feelings. Again, to put it crudely, I think this is a bone thrown to feminism,
which now is a perspective that has some social backing and can no longer be
ignored.
But the concept of “affective labor” strips the feminist
analysis of housework of all its demystifying power. In fact, it brings
reproductive work back into the world of mystification, suggesting that
reproducing people is just a matter of making producing “emotions,” “feelings,”
It used to be called a “labor of love;” Negri and Hardt instead have discovered
“affection.”
The feminist analysis of the function of the sexual division
of labor, the function of gender hierarchies, the analysis of the way
capitalism has used the wage to mobilize women’s work in the reproduction of
the labor force–all of this is lost under the label of “affective labor.”
That this feminist analysis is ignored in the work of Negri
and Hardt confirms my suspicions that this theory expresses the interests of a
select group of workers, even though it presumes to speak to all workers, all
merged in the great caldron of the Multitude. In reality, the theory of precarious
and immaterial labor speaks to the situation and interests of workers working
at the highest level of capitalistic technology. Its disinterest in
reproductive labor and its presumption that all labor forms a common hides the
fact that it is concerned with the most privileged section of the working
class. This means it is not a theory we can use to build a truly
self-reproducing movement.
For this task the lesson of the feminist movement is still
crucial today. Feminists in the seventies tried to understand the roots of
women’s oppression, of women’s exploitation and gender hierarchies. They
describe them as stemming from a unequal division of labor forcing women to
work for the reproduction of the working class. This analysis was basis of a
radical social critique, the implications of which still have to be understood
and developed to their full potential.
When we said that housework is actually work for capital,
that although it is unpaid work it contributes to the accumulation of capital,
we established something extremely important about the nature of capitalism as
a system of production. We established that capitalism is built on an immense
amount of unpaid labor, that it not built exclusively or primarily on
contractual relations; that the wage relation hides the unpaid, slave -like
nature of so much of the work upon which capital accumulation is premised.
Also, when we said that housework is the work that
reproduces not just “life,” but “labor-power,” we began to separate two
different spheres of our lives and work that seemed inextricably connected. We
became able to conceive of a fight against housework now understood as the
reproduction of labor-power, the reproduction of the most important commodity
capital has: the worker’s “capacity to work,” the worker’s capacity to be
exploited. In other words, by recognizing that what we call “reproductive
labor” is a terrain of accumulation and therefore a terrain of exploitation, we
were able to also see reproduction as a terrain of struggle, and, very important,
conceive of an anti-capitalist struggle against reproductive labor that would
not destroy ourselves or our communities.
How do you struggle over/against reproductive work? It is
not the same as struggling in the traditional factory setting, against for
instance the speed of an assembly line, because at the other end of your
struggle there are people not things. Once we say that reproductive work is a
terrain of struggle, we have to first immediately confront the question of how
we struggle on this terrain without destroying the people you care for. This is
a problem mothers as well as teachers and nurses, know very well.
This is why it is crucial to be able to make a separation
between the creation of human beings and our reproduction of them as labor-power,
as future workers, who therefore have to be trained, not necessarily according
to their needs and desires, to be disciplined and regimented in a particular
fashion.
It was important for feminists to see, for example, that
much housework and child rearing is work of policing our children, so that they
will conform to a particular work discipline. We thus began to see that by
refusing broad areas of work, we not only could liberate ourselves but could
also liberate our children. We saw that our struggle was not at the expense of
the people we cared for, though we may skip preparing some meals or cleaning
the floor. Actually our refusal opened the way for their refusal and the
process of their liberation.
Once we saw that rather than reproducing life we were
expanding capitalist accumulation and began to define reproductive labor as
work for capital, we also opened the possibility of a process of re-composition
among women.
Think for example of the prostitute movement, which we now
call the “sex workers” movement. In Europe the origins of this movement must be
traced back to 1975 when a number of sex workers in Paris occupied a church, in
protest against a new zoning regulation which they saw as an attack on their
safety. There was a clear connection between that struggle, which soon spread
throughout Europe and the United States, and the feminist movement’s
re-thinking and challenging of housework. The ability to say that sexuality for
women has been work has lead to a whole new way of thinking about sexual
relationships, including gay relations. Because of the feminist movement and
the gay movement we have begun to think about the ways in which capitalism has
exploited our sexuality, and made it “productive.”
In conclusion, it was a major breakthrough that women would
begin to understand unpaid labor and the production that goes on in the home as
well as outside of the home as the reproduction of the work force. This has
allowed a re-thinking of every aspect of everyday life — child-raising,
relationships between men and women, homosexual relationships, sexuality in
general– in relation to capitalist exploitation and accumulation.
Creating Self-Reproducing Movements
As every aspect of everyday life was re-understood in its
potential for liberation and exploitation, we saw the many ways in which women
and women’s struggles are connected. We realized the possibility of “alliances”
we had not imagined and by the same token the possibility of bridging the
divisions that have been created among women, also on the basis of age, race,
sexual preference.
We can not build a movement that is sustainable without an
understanding of these power relations. We also need to learn from the feminist
analysis of reproductive work because no movement can survive unless it is
concerned with the reproduction of its members. This is one of the weaknesses
of the social justice movement in the US.
We go to demonstrations, we build events, and this becomes
the peak of our struggle. The analysis of how we reproduce these movements, how
we reproduce ourselves is not at the center of movement organizing. It has to
be. We need to go to back to the historical tradition of working class
organizing “mutual aid” and rethink that experience, not necessarily because we
want to reproduce it, but to draw inspiration from it for the present.
We need to build a movement that puts on its agenda its own
reproduction. The anti-capitalist struggle has to create forms of support and
has to have the ability to collectively build forms of reproduction.
We have to ensure that we do not only confront capital at
the time of the demonstration, but that we confront it collectively at every
moment of our lives. What is happening internationally proves that only when
you have these forms of collective reproduction, when you have communities that
reproduce themselves collectively, you have struggles that are moving in a very
radical way against the established order, as for example the struggle of
indigenous people in Bolivia against water privatization or in Ecuador against
the oil companies’ destruction of indigenous land.
I want to close by saying if we look at the example of the
struggles in Oaxaca, Bolivia, and Ecuador, we see that the most radical
confrontations are not created by the intellectual or cognitive workers or by
virtue of the internet’s common. What gave strength to the people of Oaxaca was
the profound solidarity that tied them with each other–a solidarity for instance
that made indigenous people from every part of the state to come to the support
of the “maestros,” whom they saw as members of their communities. In Bolivia
too, the people who reversed the privatization of water had a long tradition of
communal struggle. Building this solidarity, understanding how we can overcome
the divisions between us, is a task that must be placed on the agenda. In
conclusion then, the main problem of precarious labor theory is that it does
not give us the tools to overcome the way we are being divided. But these
divisions, which are continuously recreated, are our fundamental weakness with
regard to our capacity to resist exploitation and create an equitable society.
