°Keynes, the Practical Man
John Maynard Keynes, First Baron of Tilton, born June 5 1883.
Keynes was certainly not the first, but he is most associated with, an economics which sets forth the importance of managing subjectivity - in economic parlance: subjective probability, liquidity preference, demand management and so on. He is also prehaps the most well-known exponent of ‘full employment’ and critic of laissez faire capitalism. Like Marx (and Ricardo), Keynes located the points of ‘economic disequillibrium’ in the actions of labour. Unlike Marx, he did so in order to proffer solutions for the smoother running of capitalism, namely: state management.
Paul Mattick’s Marx and Keynes: The Limits of the Mixed Economy influenced a number of readings of Keynes, particularly those around Potere Operaio, such as Mario Tronti: “only Keynes has provided the capitalist point of view with a formidable subjective leap forward.” (Tronti, The Strategy of the Refusal, 1965) Specifically, Tronti argued that capitalists, unlike workers, require an institutionalised form of power (the state) - hence the necessary connection for the Operaistas between dismantling the state and dismantling capitalism. Here is where the thesis of working class autonomy emerges: Keynes’ insight into labour as the independant variable, requiring no institutional form through which to assert its presence in the class struggle is hailed as the strategy of refusal. Antonio Negri elaborated on this argument two years later, in “Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State“, but has since reversed that approach by appealing to European capitalists to constitute themselves as a ‘progressive’ bloc viz US capital and arguing for ‘full (global) employment’.
But if Negri has replaced the strategy of refusal with the strategy of a joyful Spinozian embrace, the question remains as to what ‘refusal’ might mean, without recourse to dialectical schema or the comfort of foundations, including those of the Subject. For if Keynes was astute enough to recognise the lack of foundation in the workings of the capitalist economy, it is not I think quite accurate to read this as a recognition of labour in immediate subjectivist terms, as a kind of voluntarism (contra Tronti). Indeed, what’s interesting about Keynes’ non-foundationalism is that it is both thorough - predating the insight if not the language of Baudrillard’s Political Economy of the Sign - but that he reinstates a very particular and pragmatic foundationalism in so doing:
… there is no scientific basis on which to form any calculable probability whatever. We simply do not know. Nevertheless, the necessity for action and for decision compels us as practical men to do our best to overlook this awkward fact and to behave exactly as we should if we had behind us a good Benthamite calculation of a series of prospective advantages and disadvantages, each multiplied by its appropriate probability waiting to be summed.
We are compelled to behave “as if we had behind us a good Benthamite calculation” because we are compelled to act as “practical men”. What does it mean to act as “practical men”? On this, Agamben’s notion of ‘passive politics’ is worth exploring further, which Stefano Franchi discusses here. Exploring a passional and ‘passive’ politics seems to me a more interesting way to talk about the strategy of refusal, since it also evokes a refusal, not least, of the intersections between ‘activism’ and the political (Benthamite) calculus, of the practical man.
But what is it that defines (compels) the Benthamite calculus as the horizon of action, of what it means to act? The ‘general measure’ - ie., money - to be sure, but what compels this (whether by force or the residual force of a monopoly of self-evidence) is the state, law as the definition of value (and non-value). And it’s here that Agamben’s discussion seems lacking of an engagement with Keynes.
insightful as always, though I must say I had just gotten used to checking the autonomedia site, if you continue your flight across cyberspace I will continually be several steps behind in the reading (instead of just conceptually).
On Agamben and refusal of work, in the piece “On Movement” (on generation-online in the translations section) he makes mention of ‘refusal of opera’, which I take to mean refusal of work (my Italian is very poor, but it might be worth checking on some of this, the terms Tronti and others use along with Agamben’s terms). This is only political/organizational sense I can make of Agamben’s stuff on impotentiality, but I quite like the idea. On the other hand, it seems to me that conceptualizing nonwork as passivity, as absence, is the mirror image of conceptualizing work as affirmation (which Negri seems to do at times) - positivity is value production, nonvalue production is negativity. I prefer the negativity of nonwork to the positivity of work, but what about a positivity of nonwork? (though not in any simple fashion … I keep wanting to use the phrase ‘mediated’, ugh…)Maybe Virno’s insistence on ambivalence is worth something here…
nate [June 6, 2005 @ 4:27 pm]
hmm… I tried to comment before, don’t know if it worked. Abbreviating - Agamben makes a comment on the absence of opera in the piece ‘on movement’, translated on generation-online. I took it to be a point in the direction of what you’re saying, refusal of work. I like that, and it’s the only political corrollary I can see to his stuff on impotentiality. On the other hand, I wonder if thinking ‘refusal’ as ‘absence’ or passivity or negativity is just the inverse of the old marxist (negrian?) thought of work as positivity. I prefer the former, because I hate work, but what about a more complex set of terms, rather than a positive/negative, instead some sort of transverse relationship between work and nonwork, between capital and life (Mark Kelly made this point about the transverse relation of power and resistance, rather than dialectical, in which power conditions the shape of resistance directly [or vice versa], I think it’s an important point.) I quite like where Agamben and Virno say that the point of politics is the good life, happiness. I want to read them as saying that value production is possible because the good life is possible, and value production is a reduction of that set of potentialities (an Aristotelian refusal of work, maybe? the virtue of idleness?), whereas I think Negri seems to say the inverse sometimes, that the good life is possible because we can work, and that it will be achieved by work.
nate [June 6, 2005 @ 4:50 pm]
Hey Nate! Was wondering when you’d visit.
I was thinking along with BN, as we were writing up the most recent piece, whether there is something worth exploring about the relation between ‘passive politics’ and ‘passion’. That seems to me to undercut a notion of ‘passive politics’ as defined by inaction or nonwork, while bringing it into a relationship with passionate politics (or passionate writing, thinking, communication). Keynes’s Practical Man defines passion as inaction, as non-political and unreasoned action. Which, ultimately, means that passion is the absence of calculation.
Ambivalences, sure. But if refusal is passionate, then isn’t it also a kind of work, then? A work without, against or outside calculation? I guess that’s the bit I’m finding interesting. A labour of love (or hate - or sadness, contentment, as BN would insist I also say)? An incalculable labour.
btw, cheers and a bit of passionate plate-smashing for the wedding. Which you’ve already had, but anyway …
Anyway, I’ll be happy to take a shot at the essay we talked about in a couple of weeks or so. Whenever you feel inclined.
archive [June 6, 2005 @ 5:25 pm]
Nate, I think you have to give an email address (which won’t be made public) and type in a url (I suggest your journal over at slash.aut). Otherwise, your comments are sent to moderation.
And, yeah, I think that’s right about Negri and work. At least the feeling I’m getting. But I’m too stuck in my antipathy to ‘work will make you free’ to not feel just a little anxious about any veneration of work.
archive [June 6, 2005 @ 5:31 pm]
Nick Thoburn has a useful discussion of Negri’s ‘positive’ take on labour - but I imagine both of you have seen Nick’s book by now. It would be useful to see how far back that can be traced in Negri’s outlook - certainly Bologna back in the mid seventies suggested that Negri was no fan of the struggle against work …
Steve
Steve [June 7, 2005 @ 11:14 am]
Hey Steve, I thought Thoburn’s take on this was pretty interesting, and on the mark. Though I’ve yet to read it all thorougly. Do you recall offhand where Bologna talks about this?
archive [June 7, 2005 @ 11:47 am]
It’s in Bologna’s review of Proletari e stato_, the short book in which Negri first expounds his notion of the ‘operaio sociale’ (the translation is by Ed Emery):
‘Anyone reading his [Negri’s] comment about the ‘obligation to productive labor’ (obbligo al lavoro produttivo) in the program for workers’ autonomy (Thesis 11) might be forgiven for thinking that it’s a printer’s error. But there is nothing so very surprising about the phrase, because Negri has never been a theoretician of the refusal of work. In fact he has always criticized this concept for its inability to express a program of power. And I would suggest that the explanation of this ‘misprint’ is to be found in Theses 7 and 8, and particularly in the latter.’
Steve [June 7, 2005 @ 12:40 pm]
thanks for the info on how to use the comment button! And thanks as well for the congrats re: the wedding. it was lovely, as was the honeymoon.
Those Negri/Bologna quotes from Steve are fascinating. Do you think he’d translate the Negri Theses (#s 7, 8 and 11) that Bologna mentions, maybe if we bought him chocolates?
nate [June 7, 2005 @ 4:34 pm]
[…] What do you know, Adam Smith and John Maynard Keynes shared a birthday with Laurie. June 5, 1723 […]
Vitro Nasu [June 7, 2005 @ 4:48 pm]
I’d settle for a summary. Am willing to provide chocolates, or a pot of Earl Grey tea.
archive [June 7, 2005 @ 5:01 pm]
I’ll see what I can do about a summary. A translation of Proletari e Stato will be appearing in an anthology of Negri texts that Tim Murphy is putting together for Verso - http://www.signaturebooks.co.uk/cgi-bin/ai.cgi?ISBN=1844670341
Steve [June 9, 2005 @ 1:28 am]