Reading Negri

Abstract

This review article sets out to explore three main themes that emerged through reading Murphy and Mustapha's edited two-volume collection of essays on the thought of Antonio Negri. These themes are ‘the refusal of work’; questions of socialist organization, and finally the debate pertaining to the emergence of new forms of labour—specifically ‘immaterial labour’ in contemporary capitalist societies. In relation to the first, I conclude that—despite the claims of a number of contributors—such a notion of ‘refusal’ prioritizes a rather trivial form of resistance over a more concrete strategically grounded mode of socialist struggle. Moreover, I maintain it is mistaken to believe that work in itself ought to be refused; rather socialists should focus their sights on resisting alienating (bad) work; that is, primarily work located in exploitative labour processes of which contemporary capitalism is the most significant. In relation to the second, the paper takes as its key focus Negri's strategic engagement with Leninism, specifically as this concerns revolutionary subjectivity and organizational questions. Here I challenge Negri's (pragmatic) reading of Lenin specifically, and more generally Leninism as an approach to the issue of socialist organisation. In relation to the third theme, I utilise a range of the contributing chapters to explore Negri's (and indeed Hardt's) arguments on immaterial labour and bio-politics. Against Negri's tendency to overstate the immateriality of labour, I emphasize both the relationship of complex interdependency of all forms of labour ‘material’ and ‘non-material’, in contemporary global capitalist society, and the continuing physicality of processes of exploitation.