Jonathan, 1. Does what you say differ -- or if it does, how does it differ -- from Postone's distinction between social domination as the "fundamental core of capitalism" and the regime of accumulation as its 19th century, "increasingly abstract" form (Time, Labor, and Social Domination?
2. The same question(s) with regard to Virno's analysis of the politicization of post-fordist labor (A Grammar of the Multitude)? You see, I think you're on to something. But I don't believe you're alone. 3. Regarding a comment by Virno on labor power, I think it would have general application to the issue of power. He pointed out that labor power is always something that is not yet real. It is, rather, a potential, as the Latin term renders more explicit. When power is realized as something concrete, that something -- whether it be the making of a commodity, the sacking of a town, the issuing of a decree (or the withdrawal of labor or political consent) -- is no longer power per se although the end product may of course contribute to the renewal and expansion of the power -- a new potential. Returning again to the "left-hand side of the equation," it seems to me that labor power is an expression of capitalist power in both a positive and negative form. So long as labor power is available to be bought by capital, those human capabilities are not being exercised as autonomous political action. Thus one might say that the political power of capital is precisely the abdication of a possible alternative to that power and in fact it is NOTHING MORE than that abdication. So, in a manner of speaking the qualitative side can be understood as simply the uninterrupted reproduction of the quantitative side _as_ quantitative. Jonathan Nitzan wrote: > More specifically, we argue that the QUANTITATIVE > process of > differential capitalization (the right [left] hand side of > the "equation") > represents or "discounts" the QUALITATIVE processes > of social power (the > left [right] hand side of the "equation"). ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
