On the Parasitic Character of Wage Labor

Abstract

Paolo Virno was active in the Italian autonomist left during the 1970s, when he edited the journal Metropoli. He has worked as an editor for the communist daily il manifesto and has published mainly in the fields of philosophy and political theory. His works include Convenzione e materialismo. L'unicita senza aurora (Rome: Theoria, 1986) [Convention and Materialism. Uniqueness Without A Halo], Mondanita. L'idea di 'mondo' tra esperienza e sfera pubblica (Rome: manifestolibri, 1994) [Wordliness. The Idea of "the World" Between Experience and the Public Sphere], and the recent Grammatica della moltitudine (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2002), which has been translated into English as A Grammar of the Multitude (New York: semiotext[e], 2004). In the two short essays translated below, Virno addresses the social consequences of the transformations of labor characteristic of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. "On the Parasitic Character of Wage Labor" polemicizes against those "neoliberal" economic theories that celebrate the decline of the welfare state but refuse to abandon its ideological corollary, the Fordist work ethic. "Automation plus guaranteed income"--a program that can be traced back to the labor struggles of the 1960s and that found expression in the publications of the international situationist movement as well as in certain currents of