Empire (49 page)

pondingly. From the standpoint ofthe capitalist, the value ofneces-

sary labor appears as an objective economic quantity—the price of

labor power, like the price ofgrain, oil, and other commodities—

but really it is determined socially and is the index ofa whole series

ofsocial struggles. The definition ofthe set ofsocial needs, the

quality ofthe time ofnon-work, the organization offamily relation-

ships, the accepted expectations of life are all in play and effectively

represented by the costs ofreproducing the worker. The enormous

rise in the social wage (in terms ofboth working wages and welfare)

during the period ofcrisis in the 1960s and 1970s resulted directly

from the accumulation ofsocial struggles on the terrain ofreproduc-

tion, the terrain ofnon-work, the terrain oflife.

The social struggles not only raised the costs ofreproduction

and the social wage (hence decreasing the rate ofprofit), but also

and more important forced a change in the quality and nature of

labor itself. Particularly in the dominant capitalist countries, where

the margin of freedom afforded to and won by workers was greatest,

the refusal ofthe disciplinary regime ofthe social factory was accom-

panied by a reevaluation ofthe social value ofthe entire set of

productive activities. The disciplinary regime clearly no longer

succeeded in containing the needs and desires ofyoung people.

The prospect ofgetting a job that guarantees regular and stable

work for eight hours a day, fifty weeks a year, for an entire working

life, the prospect ofentering the normalized regime ofthe social

factory, which had been a dream for many of their parents, now

274

P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

appeared as a kind ofdeath. The mass refusal ofthe disciplinary

regime, which took a variety offorms, was not only a negative

expression but also a moment ofcreation, what Nietzsche calls a

transvaluation ofvalues.

The various forms of social contestation and experimentation

all centered on a refusal to value the kind offixed program ofmaterial

production typical ofthe disciplinary regime, its mass factories, and

its nuclear family structure.22 The movements valued instead a more

flexible dynamic ofcreativity and what might be considered more

immaterial
forms of production. From the standpoint of the tradi-

tional ‘‘political’’ segments ofthe U.S. movements ofthe 1960s,

the various forms of cultural experimentation that blossomed with

a vengeance during that period all appeared as a kind ofdistraction

from the ‘‘real’’ political and economic struggles, but what they

failed to see was that
the ‘‘merely cultural’’ experimentation had very
profound political and economic effects.

‘‘Dropping out’’ was really a poor conception ofwhat was

going on in Haight-Ashbury and across the United States in the

1960s. The two essential operations were the refusal of the disciplin-

ary regime and the experimentation with new forms of productivity.

The refusal appeared in a wide variety of guises and proliferated

in thousands ofdaily practices. It was the college student who

experimented with LSD instead oflooking for a job; it was the

young woman who refused to get married and make a family; it

was the ‘‘shiftless’’ African-American worker who moved on ‘‘CP’’

(colored people’s) time, refusing work in every way possible.23 The

youth who refused the deadening repetition of the factory-society

invented new forms ofmobility and flexibility, new styles ofliving.

Student movements forced a high social value to be accorded to

knowledge and intellectual labor. Feminist movements that made

clear the political content of‘‘personal’’ relationships and refused

patriarchal discipline raised the social value ofwhat has traditionally

been considered women’s work, which involves a high content of

affective or caring labor and centers on services necessary for social

reproduction.24 The entire panoply ofmovements and the entire

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

275

emerging counterculture highlighted the social value ofcooperation

and communication. This massive transvaluation ofthe values of

social production and production ofnew subjectivities opened the

way for a powerful transformation of labor power. In the next

section we will see in detail how the indexes ofthe value of

the movements—mobility, flexibility, knowledge, communication,

cooperation, the affective—would define the transformation of

capitalist production in the subsequent decades.

The various analyses of‘‘new social movements’’ have done

a great service in insisting on the political importance ofcultural

movements against narrowly economic perspectives that minimize

their significance.25 These analyses, however, are extremely limited

themselves because, just like the perspectives they oppose, they

perpetuate narrow understandings ofthe economic and the cultural.

Most important, they fail to recognize
the profound economic power

of the cultural movements,
or really the increasing indistinguishability ofeconomic and cultural phenomena. On the one hand, capitalist

relations were expanding to subsume all aspects ofsocial production

and reproduction, the entire realm oflife; and on the other hand,

cultural relations were redefining production processes and eco-

nomic structures ofvalue. A regime ofproduction, and above all

a regime ofthe production ofsubjectivity, was being destroyed and

another invented by the enormous accumulation ofstruggles.

These new circuits ofthe production ofsubjectivity, which

were centered on the dramatic modifications ofvalue and labor,

were realized within and against the final period ofthe disciplinary

organization ofsociety. The movements anticipated the capitalist

awareness of a need for a paradigm shift in production and dictated

its form and nature. If the Vietnam War had not taken place, if

there had not been worker and student revolts in the 1960s, ifthere

had not been 1968 and the second wave ofthe women’s movements,

ifthere had not been the whole series ofanti-imperialist struggles,

capital would have been content to maintain its own arrangement

ofpower, happy to have been saved the trouble ofshifting the

paradigm ofproduction! It would have been content for several

276

P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

good reasons: because the natural limits ofdevelopment served it

well; because it was threatened by the development ofimmaterial

labor; because it knew that the transversal mobility and hybridization

ofworld labor power opened the potential for new crises and class

conflicts on an order never before experienced. The restructuring

of production, from Fordism to post-Fordism, from modernization

to postmodernization, was anticipated by the rise ofa new subjectiv-

ity.26 The passage from the phase of perfecting the disciplinary

regime to the successive phase ofshifting the productive paradigm

was driven from below, by a proletariat whose composition had

already changed. Capital did not need to invent a new paradigm

(even ifit were capable ofdoing so) because
the truly creative moment

had already taken place.
Capital’s problem was rather to dominate a new composition that had already been produced autonomously

and defined within a new relationship to nature and labor, a relation-

ship ofautonomous production.

At this point the disciplinary system has become completely

obsolete and must be left behind. Capital must accomplish a negative

mirroring and an inversion ofthe new quality oflabor power; it

must adjust itselfso as to be able to command once again. We

suspect that for this reason the industrial and political forces that

have relied most heavily and with the most intelligence on the

extreme modernization ofthe disciplinary productive model (such

as the major elements ofJapanese and East Asian capital) are the

ones that will suffer most severely in this passage. The only configu-

rations ofcapital able to thrive in the new world will be those that

adapt to and govern the new immaterial, cooperative, communica-

tive, and affective composition of labor power.

The Death Throes of Soviet Discipline

Now that we have given a first approximation ofthe conditions

and forms of the new paradigm, we want to examine briefly one

gigantic subjective effect that the paradigm shift determined in the

course ofits movement: the collapse ofthe Soviet system. Our

thesis, which we share with many scholars ofthe Soviet world,27

R E S I S T A N C E , C R I S I S , T R A N S F O R M A T I O N

277

is that the system went into crisis and fell apart because of its

structural incapacity to go beyond the model ofdisciplinary govern-

ability, with respect to both its mode ofproduction, which was

Fordist and Taylorist, and its form of political command, which

was Keynesian-socialist and thus simply modernizing internally and

imperialist externally. This lack offlexibility in adapting its deploy-

ments ofcommand and its productive apparatus to the changes of

labor power exacerbated the difficulties of the transformation. The

heavy bureaucracy ofthe Soviet state, inherited from a long period

ofintense modernization, placed Soviet power in an impossible

position when it had to react to the new demands and desires

that the globally emerging subjectivities expressed, first within the

process ofmodernization and then at its outer limits.

The challenge ofpostmodernity was posed primarily not by

the enemy powers but by the new subjectivity oflabor power and

its new intellectual and communicative composition. The regime,

particularly in its illiberal aspects, was unable to respond adequately

to these subjective demands. The system could have continued,

and for a certain period did continue, to work on the basis of the

model ofdisciplinary modernization, but it could not combine

modernization with the new mobility and creativity oflabor power,

the fundamental conditions for breathing life into the new paradigm

and its complex mechanisms. In the context ofStar Wars, the

nuclear arms race, and space exploration, the Soviet Union may

still have been able to keep up with its adversaries from the techno-

logical and military point ofview, but the system could not manage

to sustain the competitive conflict on the subjective front. It could

not compete, in other words, precisely where the real power con-

flicts were being played out, and it could not face the challenges

ofthe comparative productivity ofeconomic systems, because ad-

vanced technologies ofcommunication and cybernetics are efficient

only when they are rooted in subjectivity, or better, when they

are animated by productive subjectivities. For the Soviet regime,

managing the power ofthe new subjectivities was a matter oflife

and death.

278

P A S S A G E S O F P R O D U C T I O N

According to our thesis, then, after the dramatic final years of

Stalin’s rule and Khrushchev’s abortive innovations, Brezhnev’s

regime imposed a freeze on a productive civil society that had

reached a high level ofmaturity and that, after the enormous mobili-

zations for war and productivity, was asking for social and political

recognition. In the capitalist world, the massive cold war propaganda

and the extraordinary ideological machine offalsification and misin-

formation prevented us from seeing the real developments in Soviet

society and the political dialectics that unfolded there. Cold war

ideology called that society totalitarian, but in fact it was a society

criss-crossed by extremely strong instances ofcreativity and freedom,

just as strong as the rhythms ofeconomic development and cultural

modernization. The Soviet Union was better understood not as a

totalitarian society but rather as a bureaucratic dictatorship.28 And

only ifwe leave these distorted definitions behind can we see how

political crisis was produced and reproduced in the Soviet Union,

to the point finally ofburying the regime.

Resistance to the bureaucratic dictatorship is what drove the

crisis. The Soviet proletariat’s refusal of work was in fact the very

same method ofstruggle that the proletariat in the capitalist countries

deployed, forcing their governments into a cycle of crisis, reform,

and restructuring. This is our point: despite the delays ofdevelop-

ment ofRussian capitalism, despite the massive losses in World

War II, despite the relative cultural isolation, the relative exclusion

from the world market, the cruel policies of imprisonment, starva-

tion, and murder ofthe population, despite all this, and despite

their enormous differences with the dominant capitalist countries,

the proletariat in Russia and the other countries ofthe Soviet bloc

managed by the 1960s and 1970s to pose the very same problems

as the proletariat in the capitalist countries.29 Even in Russia and