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Prsentation(s) de louvrage La vie mise au travail par Andrea Fumagalli, co-traduit par D. Gallo Lassere e C. Degoutin , Prface de C. Marazzi, Editions Eterotopia France Rhizome

Andrea Fumagalli (Universit du Pavia - Italie)The concept of life subsumption in cognitive biocapitalism: valorization and governance

Formal subsumption and real subsumption in MarxCapitalist exploitation is described by Marx with two different forms of subsumption (subordination): formal and real, as outcome of the historical evolution of capitalism and the continuous metamorphosis of the capital-labour ratio. These two forms of subsum-ption refer to two different concepts of surplus value: absolute and relative. According to Marx, the stage of the formal subsumption of labour to capital is characterized by the prevalence of absolute surplus value. The real subsumption, instead, is associated with the extraction of relative surplus value .Formal subsumption The historical period of formal subsumption corresponds to the period of pre-industrial capitalism that leads up to the threshold of the Industrial Revolution and the first craft capitalism, in which the exploitation of labour and its submission to the capital takes place on the basis of a pre-existing labour process. In this context, the plus value derives from the extensification of labour overall through the continued lengthening of daily working time:"I call absolute surplus value the surplus value produced by prolongation of the labour day (Marx)Formal subsumptionThe first stage of capitalism can therefore be read as the stage in which the production activity is not affected by a strong acceleration of technological progress, except for the period of the industrial revolution at the end of XVIII century, which marks the widespread introduction of machines and relatively affects the know-how of the workers. However, what it is structurally certified at this stage of formal subsumption is the more or less gradual, more or less violent transition towards the figure of the craft labourer. With this step, the artisan loses its autonomy of self-employed to be transformed on salaried employee of the capital, while maintaining more or less unchanged its work activity (salarization).Formal subsumptionThe extraction of absolute surplus value, however, meets an insurmountable limit: 24 hours a day. The prolonga-tion of the working day cannot be such as to endanger the reproduction of the labour-force. In the first half of the XIX century some legislative limits on labour-time are thus introduced: maximum 10 hours a day, with further limits for women and children.Salarization and the prolongation of the daily labour time are the two aspects of the formal subsumption of labour to capital: they are the starting point of the beginning of capitalism and, at the same time, the arrival point of the process of primitive accumulation.Real subsumptionWith the transition to real subsumption, the process of exploitation and extraction of surplus value passes from the extensification to the intensification of the labour process. This transition takes place through a succession of three different models of organization . The initial "simple cooperation ", typical of the first phase of pre-capitalist formal subsumption, leaves room to the s.c. "manufacture system" of the late XVIII century, in which labour still has a direct result and the worker uses his own tools, albeit in an increasingly exclusive and in confined areas. It is the stage described by Adam Smith , when the "simple cooperation" changes its configuration and transforms itself in the division of labour, with the aim to decompose artisan activity in different and heterogeneous operations, each of which is permanently assigned to individual workers. Real subsumptionThe stage of "manufacture system" of the mid-XIX century, then, turns in the third organizational model which Marx calls the "factory system", where there is no more specialization and the worker is forced by the "machine" to perform monotonous operations throughout the entire workday. The worker becomes so completely servant (enslaved to) of the machine, by reducing himself to a body that acts without thinking. It is in this transformation that takes place the transition to the real subsumption of labour to capital. The extraction of surplus value (now, relative) is thus determined by the increase of the intensification of the pace dictated by the speed of the machines. This intensification ( what economists call "labour productivity") is designed to shorten the labour time socially required for the reproduction of the same labour-force, so as to allow a greater volume of output, surplus-labour and then surplus-value.Real subsumptionIt is with the emergence of the factory system that time becomes the measure of labour and the labour time socially emerges as a central factor. Thus, the chronometer, as a means to quantify the economic value of labour, becomes, together with the mechanization, the essence of economic and cultural changes of the work determined by the industrial revolution and the fundamental characteristics of real subsumption."In this way, labour becomes more abstract, not only in the form of exchange value , but also in its content, devoid of any intellectual quality and creative element (Vercellone, 2007)In other words, the subsumption of labour to capital becomes real when it happens within the production process and not just from the outside.Tayloristic real subsumptionFig. 1 Philosophy and dialectics of real subsumtion (tayloristic labour)disciplinary control

Labour division Passive (parcellization) Co-operation

Towards new form of subsumption?

Towards life subsumptionWith the crisis of the Fordist paradigm, that is the crisis of real subsumption based on material production, it starts a transition, where we see a shift from the production of money by means of commodities: (M-C-M') to the production of money by means of knowledge and relational activities [C( k ]: [M-C(k)-M'], with structural effects on the mode of production and on the valorization process (bio-cognitive capitalism) .We are entering a new phase of subsumption of labor to capital, where at the same time formal subsumption and real subsumption tend to merge and feed off one each other.The formal subsumption in life subsumptionToday we can still talk of formal subsumption of labor to capital when the labour activity refers to the ability and to relational learning processes that the individual worker holds on the basis of his life experience. These are skills that that are partially completed in a period prior to time of their use for the production of exchange value. The learning and the relationship, initially, arise as use values and, such as tools and manual skills of the artisans of the first pre-tayloristic stage of capitalist, are then "salarized", obtorto collo, and formally subsumed in the production of exchange value.The formal subsumption in life subsumption"The mass-education and the development of a diffuse intellectuality will make the educational system in a central place as origin of the crisis of the Fordist wage relation. The key role attributed to the issue of the development of "socialized and free" teaching inside the conflicts inherent in the control of "intellectual powers of production" is therefore, in our view, an essential element of Marx's elaboration of the hypothesis of the general intellect. The emergence of a diffuse intellectuality is configured as the necessary historical condition, even if in the Grundrisse this reference is implicit and in some cases concealed by a dialectical approach to the evolution of division of labor that favors the analysis of structural changes at the expense of institutions and individuals who could be at the origin of these changes" (Vercellone, 2007)

The formal subsumption in life subsumptionUnlike Marx, the general intellect is not fixed in machinery, it is not just "growth of fixed capital" but today is more and more dependent on li-ving labour, ie the variable capital (Virno, 2004).

As well argued by Marazzi, the bio- cognitive capitalism tends to be seen as an anthropoge-netic model of production and accumulation (Marazzi, 2009) The valorization process works by exploiting the capabilities of learning, relationship, and social (re)production of human beings. It is in effect a kind of primitive accumulation, which is able to put to labour and to value those activities that in the Fordist-Taylorist paradigm were considered unproductive. The formal subsumption in the bio capitalism, therefore, has the effect of broadening the basis of accumulation, including training, care, breeding, consumption, social, cultural, artistic and leisure activities. The idea of human productive act changes, the distinction between directly productive labour (labor), the artistic and cultural work (opus/work), leisure activities (otium and play) fail and tends to converge into labour, a directly and indirectly productive (of surplus value) activity .The formal subsumption in life subsumptionThe real subsumption in life subsumptionIn the bio - cognitive capitalism, the real subsumption is modified with respect to the Taylorism, as consequence of the transition from repetitive, mechanical technologies to linguistic, relational ones. Static technologies, at the basis of the growth of productivity and of intensity in labour performance (size scale economies) switch to dynamic technologies able to exploit learning and network economies, by simultaneously combining manual tasks and brain-relational activities. The result has been the increase of new, more flexible forms of labour, in which design and manufacturing stages (CAD-CAM-CAE) are no longer perfectly separable but more and more interdependent and complementary. Towards life subsumptionIn the bio-cognitive capitalism, real subsumption and formal subsumption are two sides of the same coin and feed off one each other. They, together, create a new form of subsumption, we can define life or subsumption of general intellect and human relations. This new form of the modern capitalist accumulation highlights some aspects that are at the root of the crisis of industrial capitalism. This leads to the analysis of new sources of valorisation (and increasing returns). Towards life subsumptionThe traditional theory of labour value needs to be revised towards a new theory of value, in which the concept of labour is increasingly characterized by "knowledge" and is permeated with the human life and life time. We can call this step as the transition to a theory of life value (Fumagalli-Morini, 2011), where the fixed capital is the human being "in whose brain resides the knowledge accumulated by the company (Marx, Grundrisse, p. 725).Life (composed by labour, work, leisure and play activity) becomes the main source of valorization.Towards life subsumptionWhen life becomes labour-force, the working time is not measured in standard units of measurement (hours, days). The working day has no limits, if not the natural ones. We are in the presence of formal subsumption and extraction of absolute surplus value. When life becomes labor-force because brain becomes machine, or "fixed capital and variable capital at the same time", the intensification of labour performance reaches its maximum: we are so also in the presence of real subsumption and extraction of surplus value relative(dynamic learning and network economies)The governance of life subsumption"Foucault located the disciplinary societies in the 18th and 19th centuries; they reach their peak at the beginning of the twentieth. They proceed to the organization of large areas of imprisonment. The individual never ceases passing from one closed environment to another, each with its own laws: first the family, then the school ("you are no longer in the family"), then the barracks ("you are no longer at school"), then the factory, sometime the hospital, and eventually the prison, which is the disciplinary environ-ment for excellence. (Deleuze, 1990)

From disciplinary society to the society of controlThe governance of life subsumptionDeleuze points out that in the society of control, the individual is not defined as a "signature" and "a number" but by "a figure": the figure is a kind of password, access code, while the disciplinary societies are regulated by mots dordre both from the point of view of integration and from the resistance. The digital language of control is made of digits (figures) that mark access to information or rejection."We are no more in front of the couple mass/individual. Individuals have become "dividuals," and masses statistical samples, data, markets or "banks" (big data in the cloud?)Society of control is the governance of life subsumption. The governance of life subsumptionThree forms of social control

Debt and the violence of financial markets (Marazzi, 2013) i.e: austerity policy

Today, debt is no more only an economic and accountability term, but an indirect discipli-nary tool (and therefore of social control), able to regulate the individual psychology up to develop a sense of guilty and self-control (Lazzarato, 2013).The governance of life subsumption2. Precarity (Fumagalli, 2013, Standing, 2013)The precarious condition today is synonymous with uncer-tainty, instability, nomadism, blackmail and psychological subordination by the means of survival. It is a dependency condition that does not manifest itself at the very moment in which it formally defines a labour contract but it is upstream and downstream. Its an existential condition that induces total forms of self-control and self-control with even stronger results than those of the direct discipline of the factory. The precarious condition defines an anthropology and behavioral psychology that is as strong as the labour becomes more cognitive and relational.The governance of life subsumption3. The governance of subjectivity of individuals

Two ways:the control of the processes of formation of knowledge (education system) privatization, specialization, less critical analysis the false ideology of meritocracy

the creation of an ad hoc individualistic imaginary brandisation of life in term of total commodification of existence leads to ensure that the individual transform itself in unique singularity, whose wants and needs aimed more to appear rather than to be.The governance of life subsumptionIn conclusion, the governance of the life subsum-ption is based on a calibrated use of two main di-spositifs: the social subjugation and enslavement.

The social subjugation is precisely the production of subjectivity appropriated by the capital, at the very moment in which the subject worker is freely involved in the valorization process, since in it he/she sees or, better, has the illusion of seeing his own realization.The governance of life subsumptionThe enslavement is, instead, primarily machinic and psychological enslavement. The two attributes are totally interdependent, when the machine is inside the individual brain and affects the psyche. Unlike social subjection, in the enslavement our subjectivity, our perception, our psychology, our (false) consciousness are not required. There is no relationship between subject and object, but rather a mechanical procedure, which results from a reciprocal, intimate communication between human being and machine.

Andrea Fumagalli

Thank-you for your attention

Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery; none but ourselves can free our minds.

Bob Marley, Redemption Song