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

Asad Haider noswine at gmail.com
Fri Oct 9 09:51:02 PDT 2009



> 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.
>
>
This is touched on in some ways in Empire, which speaks interestingly of "Toyotism" rather than post-Fordism. If you are banging on a widget that will be bought by several different companies who have already advertised them according to various cultural logics and will brand them accordingly, you are participating in a new system, one which includes old industrial forms just as much as newer communicative ones.



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