Book reviews

activity from which arises a superstructure of legal, political and cultural beliefs
and institutions' (p . 44). But perhaps
Carver is merely revealing what he believes is an inconsistency in Marx's own
analysis, if so, this could have been more
clearly suggested to the reader who then
might be directed to instances, other than
the 1859 `Preface', where Marx discusses
the relationship between the forces of
production and social relations in ways
that appear to soften the mechanistic
division made elsewhere . This blurring of
the boundaries, it could then be suggested, is anything but equivocation on
Marx's part, rather it reveals the necessary mutual interdependency between
theory and practice, the abstract and the
concrete, tendency and action . As it is, in
the Dictionary the over-emphasis of the
base / superstructure metaphor only
serves to elevate the understanding of
social concepts as economic categories, at
the expense of reading them in terms of
the historical development of the social
antagonism of capital and labour .

Antonio Negri
187
Marx beyond Marx : Lessons on the
Grundrisse .
Bergin and Garvey.
ISBN 0-89789-018-3 . Hb . $27.95 .
Reviewed by Werner Bonefeld
Richard Gunn, Paul Smart
and Hugo Whitiker
In 1978, at the invitation of Louis Althusser, Negri presented a series of seminars
on Marx's Grundrisse in Paris . This is
the book of the seminars . Negri, a leading
figure of the Italian Autonomia, was in
France as a consequence of charges relating to revolutionary action brought
against him by the Italian state .
This context is important because it
shows Marx beyond Marx as an irruption of Autonomist `revolutionary subjectivity' into the theoretical world of
Althusserian structuralism . The seminars, and the book itself, are amongst
other things a polemical response to
Althusser's emphasis on reading (not the
Grundrisse but) Capital, and to his view
of the Grundrisse as a survival of lines of
thought characterising Marx's 'premarxist' (ie Hegelian and humanist) days .
Negri bends the stick in the opposite
direction, away from Capital and towards the Grundrisse, in order to demonstrate class antagonism as the crucial
and irreducible thematic of Marx . His
view is that Marx's mode of presentation
in the Grundrisse is superior to that in
Capital in that it is less 'objectivist' and
so allows this thematic to be clearly seen .
Althusserian structural determinism is
accordingly overturned by Negri into considerations of class agency, and Negri's
reading of the Grundrisse as a revolutionary text plays back the organising concepts of Althusserianism, such as 'overdetermination', against Althusser himself.


Capital & Class

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188

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Book reviews

Whatever may seem one-sided in Negri's

approach - for example, his downplaying
of the importance of Capital - is a consequence of this polemical situation from
which his text derives . Althusserianism in
its narrow sense is no longer current, but
the afterlife of structural Marxism is a
long one and continues up to the present
day. Negri's polemical targets are still
extant ; his emphasis on a revolutionary
renewal of Marxism is timely ; and his
richly detailed reading of the Grundrisse
is a delight .
Marx beyond Marx aims towards a
reconstruction of Marxist theory, a reconstruction that goes beyond Marx by going
back to Marx, an angry Marxism summoned by the real possibility of communism . Negri's reconstruction of Marx follows Marx's dictum on the unity of theory
and practice . His theorising focusses on
class antagonism as the real movement of
the enchanted world of capitalism . The
unity of theory and practice does not
merely provide a point of reference for
Negri ; rather, it entails a political reading
of Marx . This political reading is penetrated by the critique of politics, power
and command as well as by the real
possibility of overthrow ; in other words,
it is informed by communism as the
movement within capitalism inspired by
revolutionary rejection of capital's command over every condition of life .
Negri urges ' this view in a distinctive
way. Far from endorsing the essentialist
and romantic, or 'workerist', approach
exemplified in Tronti's `Lenin in England' (1964), according to which labour's
action always dictates the terms of capital's reaction, Negri remains a realist in
that he rejects capital-logic and labourlogic approaches alike . His own view
focusses on the antagonistic relation of
capital and labour. It is the historical
development of this relation in its contra-

dictory unity which conditions society in 189

terms of a continuous displacement and
reconstitution of its own mode of existence .
The historical determination of just this
relation intensifies both capital's command over society and the possibility of
overthrow. This inherent possibility is
informed by the contradictory mode of
existence of capital, that is, by the continous need for capital to revolutionise the
relation between necessary and surplus
labour in order to increase the latter. But
surplus labour only exists in antithesis to
necessary labour. It is here that capital's
self-contradictory mode of existence becomes manifest in the most intense terms :
capital depends entirely on living labour.
Hence Negri's notion of the presence of
labour within capital . The workingthrough of this antagonistic tendency
compels capital to increase surplus labour
to its maximum and thus to reduce necessary labour to its absolute limit . However,
the tendency towards the elimination of
necessary labour undermines the existence of capital as depending on living
labour. Capital cannot autonomize (free)
itself from living labour : the only autonomizing possible is on labour's side . What
is labour without capital? Surely everything, in that it inverts the capitalist form
of the relation between necessary and
surplus labour into the revolutionary project of non-work .
Negri's presentation of Marx's discussion of the relation between necessary and
surplus labour in the Grundrisse is of
major importance here . It entails capital's
compulsion to produce relative surplus
value and hence the expansion of capital's
command through the subsumption of
the production process in real terms .
Capital's thirst for surplus value is progressively mediated by the replacement of
living labour with constant capital, espe-

Capital & Class

190 cially in its fixed form . Hence the tendency of the rate of profit to decline - and
crisis . Capital's solution to this intensification of the antagonistic tendency is a
further mediation : it extends its command into society and into the world
market . Thus circulation is the form in
which capital normalizes crisis, a normalization which integrates society as a
whole into capital . Social capital subjugates society ; society becomes social
capital.
In this way the transformation of capital
from manufacture to big industry and to
the `social factory' entails the totality of
capital's command over society. This universalisation, however, is at the same time
the generalisation of the presence of
labour within capital . `On this level,
capitalist relations are reduced to a relation of force' (Negri) . The extension of
capital's command forces, correlatively,
the `multiple variety of the constituting
process of the historical individuality of
the communist subject' (Negri again) .
Negri presents his reconstruction of
Marx along these lines methodologically .
The antagonism of capital and labour is
seen as mediating itself in an historical
process of continuous de- and recomposition of the material world of
capitalism . The antagonism of capital
and labour is seen as the abstract determination of society which illumines this
permanent process of de- and recomposition or, in Negri's terms, the continuous displacement and constitution of
the mode of existence of the social relations of production . For Negri, it is the
movement of the antagonism just outlined
which implies the possibility of the autonomization of labour within and against
capital . The working through of this
tendency forces capital to expand and to
displace its command, a displacement
which only gives the antagonism a new

mode of existence or lease of life . Communism is thus seen as transition inscribed in capitalist society taken as a
self-antagonistic whole .
In our discussions of Marx beyond
Marx, a number of issues struck us as
important and/or as problematic . Various
of these, but not all, have been touched on
in the foregoing summary. We indicate the
relevant issues here in order to supply
signposts for a new reader in Negri's
interpretively and substantively complex
text .
One important issue was Negri's understanding of the phenomena characterising
capitalist society - money, social capital,
etc - as mediations or in other words
modes of existence of the antagonistic
class-relation in which capital consists .
For example, viewing all relations of
capitalist society as modes of existence of
struggle, Negri refuses to admit Marx's
category of `value' independently of the
category of `surplus value' so that objectivist and economistic readings of Marx
are disallowed : antagonism is made the
key to all else . This conception of the
mediation of antagonism enables Negri to
break with conventional `dualistic' readings of Marx, which turn on juxtaposing
ideology and politics as `appearance to
production as `essence', and also with the
no-less-conventional readings according
to which Marx announces a set of proliferating distinctions between societal
`levels' as well as between class-fractions,
capital-fractions and so on . Frequently,
Marxists protest against understanding
Marxism
in
a
causalist basesuperstructure fashion ; no less frequently,
however, such protests are gestural rather
than real . Negri for his part demonstrates,
eloquently and by sustained argument,
the richness of a Marxist discourse in
which the causalist dualism of base and
superstructure has no place .

Book reviews
Arising from his approach, however, we
found it difficult to resolve the question of
whether or not essentialism (with regard
both to class struggle and to struggle itself)
is not after all a danger to which Negri's
reading of Marx is exposed . His emphasis
on Marx's unwritten book on `The
Theory of the Wage' - for Negri, not to be
confused with the chapters discussing
wages in Capital Volume One - raised, for
us, a question about the manner in which
the expansion of the realm of `necessary'
(as opposed to `surplus') labour might
function, in the way it appears to for
Negri, as a realm of workers' selfvalorization and autonomy. Are not problems of alienation - problems of who
consumes what and of what kind - raised
by the notion of revolutionary subjectivity
summond in these terms? And a further
difficulty : Negri contends that, in Marx,
the diachronic and synchronic dimensions
of categories form a unity but this proposal remained, for us, unclarified . To be
sure, and importantly, every categorical
advance in Marx registers a fresh mediation (and thence site) of class struggle .
But might not a diachronic/synchronic
unity install a Marxism constructed as an
essentialist `philosophy of history' once
more?
Most difficult of all, and in our discussions irresolvable, were two additional
problems .
(i) Why does Negri declare against what
he calls Marx's `miserable' definition of
productive labour, a definition which he
may or may not think covers only manual
labour but in which, at any rate, he
believes a socialist 'axiology of manual
labour' to be inscribed? The problem here
is to relate Marx's definition of productive
labour as (in capitalism) labour which
produces surplus value and which is, for
that reason, undeniably `miserable
enough to Negri's own - fertile - insist-

ence that production is increasingly inter- 191

wined with capitalist circulation and with
social capital itself. If all labour which
extends the command of capital into society counts as productive, what social and
political force does the term `productive
retain? Does Negri excessively restrict the
definition of `productive he imputes to
Marx? Does he excessively broaden the
definition he endorses on his own behalf?
Or are Marx's and Negri's interpretations
of the category 'produtive labour' compatible, despite Negri's own conviction
that he must quarrel with what, on this
score, Marx says?
And (ii) when Negri urges that, tendentially, the law of value becomes sheerly a
law of command, does he mean by this
that the law of value no longer, in contemporary capitalism, obtains? (That the law
of value is a law of command is clear
enough, but what relation between 'command' and `value obtains in current
terms?) Since Negri refers both to the
`extinction' of the law of value and to the
'tranformation of its functioning' his formulations remain ambiguous in this regard . Possibly, his meaning is that the
tranformation of the law of value into the
law of command expresses the development of social capital towards total social
power; if so, however, the way in which it
does so is not directly evident in his text .
And a final point : might not various of
Negri's interpretive and substantive arguments - especially, that relating to 'command' - have been clarified and
sharpened through a more sustained
treatment of the state? The theme of the
state is sounded throughout Marx beyond
Marx, as it is throughout the Grundrisse, but nowhere does it receive discussion
of a systematic kind .
All this said, the issues raised in the
areas above mentioned appear to us not so
much as points which tell against Negri as

Capital& Class
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Book reviews

points vital for a reconstruction and renewal of Marxist thought . In setting the
agenda for such a reconstruction, and in
clarifying its priorities, Marx beyond
Marx is a pathbreaking and an indispensable work.

Allan Cochrane (Ed).

Developing Local Economic Strategies
Open University Press,
1987 pp 86 . 4 .50
Reviewed by Mike Geddes
This short book is a collection of four
papers which, as the editor says in his
(very brief) introduction, start to reconsider issues raised by local economic development strategy, especially the GLC experience . Two of the papers (Massey on
equal opportunities in GLEB, Mackintosh
on transport planning in London) reflect
the authors' experiences within GLEB and
the GLC, while the other two (Clarke and
Cochrane himself on Enterprise Boards,
Jefferis and Robinson on social investment in production) are by academics
closely linked to `practice .
All four of the papers are interesting and
perceptive and are to be recommended to
anyone working in the local economy
C&C 35-M

field ; yet all four raise more questions 193

than they answer, and the volume as a
whole is tantalising in the extreme in that
no attempt is made to draw together, and
draw out, the collective issues and implications . Clarke and Cochrane on Enterprise Boards (EBs) is a very succinct and
useful summary of the different antecedents and trajectories of the various agencies in London, Lancashire, Merseyside,
the West Midlands and West Yorkshire .
Their argument stresses the contradictions of `restructuring for labour by investment in capital' and shows clearly but
depressingly how the more radical objectives of certain of the EBs have given way
over the last couple of years to a `new
realist' consensus of a more conventionally
social-democratic nature on the role of the
local state in relation to the market . Limitations to Clarke and Cochrane's analysis
are the way they explain the EB experiment, which stresses party politics and
the symptoms of economic crisis rather
than more structural tendencies in the
accumulation process, and their reluctance to move beyond a discussion of specific contradictions of the EB-private capital relation to a more general problematic of
state and capital . Rather similar limitations apply to Mackintosh on transport in
London . She shows very effectively how
the conventional approach to `public'
transport management, based on neoclassical competition and welfare economics,
has produced a negative and defensive
approach to service provision which fails
to meet social needs and thus opens the
way to privatisation . GLC transport thinking is then used to demonstrate the possibility of a `propulsive' and positive role for
transport in a co-ordinated, coherent and
socially-responsive `public' sector, leading
rather than following the market . Yet it is
not merely carping to note that she fails to
do more then mention the problematic