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Metropolitan proletarian research
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METROPOLITAN PROLETARIAN RESEARCH
Preface
Preface This collection of articles aims to, firstly, function as a facilitator in the comprehension of the postindustrialized productional structure, and secondly, as a methodological guide in the research of productional conditions and in the production of struggle connected to these conditions. The construction process of our "package" is connected to a panel discussion called "Immaterial labor", held in Make-world -festival (http://make-world.org), organized in Münich, October 18th-21st 2001. The presentations in this panel were done by the authors of our articles, Maurizio Lazzarato, Antonio Conti and Paolo Punx. Even if all these writings come from Italy, we believe that they have wider relevance and value, in other words that they concern also other areas than that particular country. This preface aims to clarify the concepts used in the articles and to specify their context. We use the concept "metropolitan" because in the urbanized societies metropolises are the central places of productivity and activity, the multi-layered factories of current times. As agriculture and other traditional sources of livelihood have become more automatized and as they demand less and less work force, the production of wealth is becoming centered into metropolises, which are not compatible with national states, but they both break state power within them and network with other metropolises exceeding the borders of national states. The work that is taking place in metropolises is often "immaterial". With this concept we refer to the transformations in production, which appear as the emphasized partiality of information, communication and affects in the total fabric of the productional field. This does not only mean the products themselves or the things which they make possible, but also those relations and conditions by which production is taking place, and therefore dichotomies such as manual/mental have become helplessly old-fashioned. Intellect has become a more and more important feature of work in our postindustrialized era, in which it seems like communicativity and co-operativeness are demanded in every task. Physical performance is a diminishing character in the content of work, as things like self-initiative and creativity are presupposed. Naturally these questions are also tied to the internationalization of economy, in the inter-connectedness of worldwide productional forces. Contingent - or rather dependent of a large number of factors - conditions are a part of our societies, and it seems impossible to travel back to the certainty of the industrial wage work society (which actually also included depressions and other difficult phases). This is also about the interesting question of what will happen to the welfare society, when the traditional connection between welfare state and fordism has broken. When we talk about contingency, it is also essential that we talk about flexibility, about the "switching on/off" of the productivity of subjects ("switching on/off" being a very descriptive concept concerning our societies of high technology, also in the sense of the technologies of power which produce subjects). This has many aspects. On the other hand it means that those who have a job, are faced with demands to be flexible according to the needs of the company, concerning both time and skill. Therefore irregular hours and contingent shifts are a part of the reality of working life, as much as the constant development of oneself and of one's know-how. Work contracts are offered only for a short time, so that "problems" (from the point of view of the employer) such as higher wages and social security costs can be avoided. Therefore flexibility also means insecurity concerning one's future and livelihood. Flexibility concerns also those who don't have a job, as their few work possibilities are mostly contingent jobs (and therefore also the salaries would be contingent). Concerning their position, in the current wage work society, unemployment may also mean increasing problems with mental health and self-esteem, as these people feel that they cannot fulfil the model of the full and self-responsible productive subject. In the current talk about "responsibility" the life project of an individual is represented as a process in which the individual becomes gradually more rational, bearing more and more useful features etc. This way life history is made to appear as a description of the individual's growth and development - therefore flexible tasks in one's work history are just a proof of one's unfinished, incomplete progression as an individual, and it is a situation, which has been caused by the efficient measurement of different abilities, in other words free competition. We can say that insecurization and flexibility are technologies of power. Another technology of power is the way in which teamwork - a very fashionable concept nowadays - is represented as self-organization of production, even if it may be that it is rather self-organization within given limits and obligations, self-organization of cost restriction and increasing efficiency. In addition to this, the technological observation of the production process may make the workers feel that they are objects of calculative control. Actually this pattern of increasing communicativity and more efficient co-operation as a whole produces remarkable pressures in many workers, and feelings about how the employer has succeeded in grasping a larger and larger part of their time and productivity. The mental pressure of the immaterial worker is caused by the collision of the limited, material capacity of the brain with the extreme demands of information inputting. Even if flexibility and immaterial labor offer the capital ways of producing surplus value, it is actually in them that there resides a positive possibility of livelihood. This is shown for example by the increasing significance of the third sector: it employs a remarkable amount of both in cultural and in social areas. This work, which is often voluntary and informal, does not so much include enormous demands of efficiency, but nevertheless it can be remarkably enriching to individuals and communities. The third sector, as a certain kind of intermediate form, is a possibility for sociality and solidarity without the intervention of the national state or the market. On the other hand, the arising of intellect as a more and more central factor of production means that the significance of capital investement is decreasing, which further improves the possibilities for the growth of the third sector. Even if flexibility may therefore seem like the interest of both companies and productive subjects, it is not a question of symmetry but a question of paradox. The difference is in the content of flexibility, in the question of whose needs it serves. One answer to this paradox is unconditioned income, guaranteeing a such income to everyone, which is enough for living, regardless of one's productivity. This would mean sharing the positive effects of automatization, and simultaneuously it is an answer to the situation where it is impossible to specificly measure the productive time of a subject. Can anyone switch of one's brain as long as one is alive, and what about all the reproductive, mostly collective, work which we do outside of the official working time? In addition to this, in the era of globalization guaranteed income cannot be distinguished from the redefinition of citizenship and from how free circulation (or remaining in one's place) should be a central human right. The question of guaranteed income is posed neither from the point of view of the postindustrial production that is flexible according to the needs of the companies, nor from the point of view of the industrial wage work society, but it is posed to define another kind of path. In this context it is important to stress that the transformations, which have occurred in the metropolitan areas of production, are not only sources of technological development or automatization, but also results of social struggle. The model of fordist work was destroyed also as the effect of those struggles, which the fordist workers realized: strikes, sabotages, absencies, occupations of factories etc. It is exactly from the perspective of subjectivities producing ruptures, that it is important to talk about metropolitan research, both to clarify conditions of production, to increase comprehension about possibilities of change and to give tools for the change. Therefore research is a political method, not a tool of pseudo-objective calculation. It is not a question of observation from above or leading, but about an interactive and communicative process (all the way since the phase of "pre-research"), in which the productive subjects manage as much as possible their own research and the production of struggle. The assumptions of a homogeneous working class have been left behind, because nowadays we encounter fragmentary productive subjectivities, many of which want to leave behind the obligations and pressures of the wage work society. To specify the perspective of the subjectivities producing fights, concerning the introduction of metropolitan research as a method, we need to emphasize two matters. Firstly, we are living in a stage, in which we can perceive an authoritarian phase in the practises of power of the globally constructed sovereignty. The procedures directed towards the groups and the people who have organized demonstrations and meetings in connection to top summits, have reached a remarkably violent phase, including the arbitrary rejections of civil rights and the cancellations of agreements guaranteeing such rights. These procedures have not been directed just on groups which have had riots as their aim, but also on the peaceful multitude. Of course the authoritarian phase is also connected to the effects of the terrorist attacks on September 11th 2001, to the state of emergency and to the finding of "enemies" for whatever price. Secondly, metropolitan research as a methodological choice is connected to a certain feature which has, for the time being, been a part of the characteristics of the mobilizations mentioned above. This feature is the inability to go "inside production", the inability to create antagonisms in the circle of the forces of productional co-operation. In this situation metropolitan research means "rooting" fights, nevertheless in a way which enables circulation, into the reproduction of society and into questions which are central to human life, such as livelihood and the use of time. Brief introductions of the articles As the first article of our collection, "Immaterial labor" by Maurizio Lazzarato makes us familiar with the basics of the use of this concept. Lazzarato emphasizes that the old divisions between conception and execution or between creativity and work are losing their significance as the character of work continues to transform. In this transformation work can be defined as capacity to activate and to manage productive co-operation, as these divisions are transcended within working tasks. The same concerns the traditional divisions between production and consumption: communication becomes a part consumption, and the consumer intervenes actively into the construction of a product through this communication. It is also central that in this new stage of work, workers are expected to become active subjects concerning the co-ordination of different parts of production: the collective process of learning becomes the core of productivity. This does not mean the disappearance of antagonisms, because as the demand there is the situation in which command resides inside every subject and inside the communicative process. Immaterial labor has financial value if it is able to produce the relation of innovation, production and consumption: labor does not only produce commodities, but also relation to capital. "Productive units" are often small and they are organized as projects to realize a particular task; when the task is done, the cycle is discharged into the networks and the flows, which enable the reproduction and the enriching of its productive capacities. "Research as a political method" by Antonio Conti aims to deconstruct assumptions about the objective nature of science and to produce for it a content of antagonistic subjectivity and construction of relations. Conti works with the "archeology" of proletarian research through two examples, both the form made by Marx to factory workers in 1880 and the analyses of Quaderni Rossi in the early 1960's, in order to translate the wealth of these experiences into the current conditions. According to Quaderni Rossi a successful researcher gives the worker a possibility to reach a critical attitude towards his/her own position, and on the other hand the researches produces - together with the worker - tools with which to exit from passivity, from one's own restriction, from exclusion to the working task and from the relationship of exploitation. Conti handles also the difficulties encountered by the researcher, such as suspicion (both concerning social sciences as such and concerning the researcher who is producing knowledge just for some publication). The first phase of research is to transcend this suspicion, the second is the background research to get discussion materials and the third is the performative stage, in which the workers do self-research, which is rooted into self-organization and fights. If Conti handles proletarian research through translating the teachings of its archeology, "Milano, proletarian research and the universal unconditioned income" by Paolo Punx, on the contrary, works with the experiences of metropolitan research in the postindustrial era through a specific case. In this metropolitan research from Milano, the background research shows the fragmentarity of the postindustrial proletariat and its experiences of attempts directed at itself to appropriate the wealth included in its work, communicativity, the building of relations and the affective level. Punx shows how the diverse living conditions are characterized centrally by two aspects: time and livelihood, and that to the insecurization and to the limiting of freedom connected to these aspects, guaranteed income can be offered as an answer, in a situation where aiming for profit exceeds the formal working time. Punx also handles the form of the movement demanding livelihood and a different content of globalization, and raises as starting-points the inclusion of difference and the self-management of communication.
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