keynes & the capitalist theory of the state post - 1929

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REVOLUTIONRET IEVEDWritings on Marx, Keynes,

Capitalist Crisisand New Social Subjects(1967-83)

b Toni Negri


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First pub ished in English in 1988 by Red Notes,BPI5, 2a St Paul s Road, London N I England

ntroductory notes by John Merrington

British Library Cataloguing in Publication DataNegri Antonio

Revolution Retrieved: Writings on Marx Keynes Capitalist Crisandnew Social Subjects (1967-83)1 EconomicsI. Title330 HBI71

SBN 0 906305-09-8 Hbk 0 906305-10-1 Pbk

Copy igh :T book may be freely reproduced by any tendency in therevolutionary left movement. Copyright prevents it being poached bycapitalistsWhere material is reprinted we would appreciate if you couldsay where it s taken from. Red Notes 1988.

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to Red Notes at the above addressBookshop sales Copies of this book may also be obtained atCompendium Bookshop 234 Camden High Street London NW1 T 0 -267-1525

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Typesetin 10 5 on 12 Times Roman.

Printed by Billing and Sons td, Worcester


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Keynes and the Capitalist Theory /the State post- 2(1968)

Introduct onThe rst two articles in this selection of Negri's writings were

pub ished in the theoretical review Controp ano (this trans ates asAnti-Plan"), in successive issues of he ou al, nos 1 and 2 1968. Thisou al was un by a group of leading exponents of the Italianworkerist" (operai ta) movement in the 1960s - T onti, Cacciari, Asor

Rosa, Negri and others. Negri ef the review with the second of thesetwo articles, over the issue of tactica entrism into the Italian CommunistParty a party which Tronti and others joined at this point

Both these a ticles shou d b placed in the context of a broadercollective research project in which Negr was invo ved at the time asprofessor f the Institute of Social and Political Sciences at theUniversity of Padova. They were or ginally contr butions to a series ofresearch seminars at the Institute in 1967 for the half centenary of theOctober Revolution. They were eventually repub ished, a ong with theother seminar papers, in Opera e Stato (Fe trine i Milano 972 anantho ogy which became a best se er in the Left movement, runningto numerous editions. Despite their appa ent y academic form theseartic es were a key point of reference for the po itics of the worker andstudent militants who were formed in the mass strugg es in factories,schoo s and universities in 1968-70, and especia y for the newrevo utionary group Potere Operaio ( Workers' Power") in whichNegri was to p ay a leading role. Hence their inc usion in this volume.

The reader can gain some idea of the scope of this pro ect by asummary of the ma or contents of this 1972 antho ogy The full title is:Workers and the State: Workers' Struggles and the Reform of theCap tal st State from the October Revolut on to the New Deal. Apart

om the two Negri articles translated here it includes essays on theworkers' council movements, by Sergio Bo ogna (trans ated in Telos,


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Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State post-1929

increasingly unified as "social apital ; its unity was no longer derivativefrom competition. Advanced capitalism was not only "p annab e but

had co e to represent Marx s own prognosis of a capital t socialism.This theme had been developed earlier in the 1960s by Raniero Panzieri("Surplus Value and Planning Notes for a Reading of Capitatrans ated in Labour Process and Class Str tegies, CSE and Stage OneBooks London 1976) and Mario Tronti (especially in "The Plan ofCapital translated in Telos no. 17 973)

Negri's contribution was to show how the p anner-state (studied herethrough its major theorist Keynes) recognises and assumes workingc assantagonism within the accumulation process through the wagevariable and seeksto regu ate t is dynamically as the central pivot inthe p anning of development thus t e working c ass becomes in theplanner-sta te the "motor of capitalist development . This analysis hadimportant politica impli ations for the workerist movement Itindicated the specific basis of reformist and revisionist lab ur po iticswhich lay wit in the framework of "the plan and saw developmentpo icies as a progressive alte ative to an unregulated capitalism. Theestablished Left "Marxist or otherwise was basically Keynesian.Secondly it indicated the key po itical potentia of the wage struggle asthe specific terrain of antagonism and recomposition of the workingc ass,ou ide and against the plan Once the wage struggle becomesindependent from pro uctivity it becomes the vehicle for a new unity ofpolitical demands for income "more money ess work the decisiveterrain on which the class becomes recomposed and political yautonomo

This perspective in which class autonomy as an independent forceoutside of and against development takes the form of the separation of

income from wage-work provided a key for understanding the natureand impact of the struggles that were to put the system into crisisinte ationally in the period that followed.


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Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State post-1929

1 1929 a a fundamental moment for a periodisation of the modestate

Fifty years have passed since the events of Red October 1917. Thoseevents were the climax of a historical movement that be an with theJune 1848 insurrection on the streets of Paris when the modernindustria proletariat first discovered its clas autonomy, its independentantagonism to the capita ist system. A further decisive turning point wasagain in Paris, with the Commune of 1871 the defeat of which led to thegenera isation of the s ogan of the party and the awareness of the needto organise class autonomy po itically

1848 71 ; 1871 1917. This periodisation seems to provide the onlyadequate amework for a theorisation of the contemporary state. Sucha definition must take into account the tota change in relations of c asspower that was revealed in the revolutionary crises spanning the latterhalf of the nineteenth century The prob em imposed for politica

thought and action by the c ass chal enge of 1848 led to a new criticalawareness mystified to a greater or lesser degree of the centra ro enow assumed by the working class in the capita ist system. Unless wegrasp this class determinant behind the transformation of capital and thestate, we remain trapped within bourgeois theory we end up with aformalised sphere of politics separated from capital as a dynamic classrelation. We must go beyond banal descriptions of the process ofindustrialisation" our starting point is the identification of a secularphase of capitalist development in which the dia ectic of exploitation(the inherent subordination and antagonism of the wage-work relation)was soc al ed,leading to its extension over the entire fabric of po iticaland institutiona relations of the modern state. Any definition of thecontemporary state that does not encompass these understandings islike Hegel's dark night in which all cows appear grey .

1917is a crucial point of rupture in this process: at this point, history


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Revolution Retrieved


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marginalist economics is a denunciation of rationa ity in general. As Robertsonnoted as ear y as the 1920s, it is a readiness to accept the irrational resu ts of thecontemporary isms" 70 On the who e question cf A. Emmanue , Le Taux de Pro it et lesIncompatibilit s Marx-Keynes" in Annales, ESC 21, 966, pp 1 89 1211. 71 This interpretation ofthe American crisis of 1937 is o fered by H.W Arndt, op.cit , pp 68-70 In general, on the rhythym and inf ationary trend of the economiccrises of contemporary capitalism c M. Dobb in Tendenze de Capitalismo Europeo( Trends of European Capita ism" Symposium organised by the GramsciInstitute Rome), Editori Riuniti, Rome 966, pp. 23 36.

keynes & the capitalist theory of the state post - 1929

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