[lbo-talk] Hardt/Negri's Commonwealth as reviewed in WSJ

Matthias Wasser matthias.wasser at gmail.com
Fri Oct 9 09:43:12 PDT 2009


On Fri, Oct 9, 2009 at 12:28 PM, Asad Haider <noswine at gmail.com> wrote:


> > Maybe because the international working class has never been bigger?
> Negri
> > obviously doesn't think much of the Indian peasants being transformed
> into
> > proletarians.
>
>
> How does that make language and communication less relevant?
>
> And I don't understand what is "obvious" about the position you impute to
> Negri.

Because he (Negri) is mistaking the redistribution of existing labor for the supercession of "banging on a widget" production generally. The fact that an increasing number of First Worlders are engaged in symbolic work is surely important, but it doesn't mean that the world capitalist economy is shifting from widgets to symbols overall. As Bhaskar points out, there are more widgets and more people producing them than ever.



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