2. The subsumption of society by capital and class antagonism

As we have seen in Section 1, the arcane of the Autonomist interest in demonstrating that the work of reproduction, or any work done outside the sphere of production, is productive work, lies in a reading of Marxist categories, which makes the categories of value, abstract labor, etc. have ‘meanings’ in terms of subjective categories: the imposition of work by capital and the resistance to work by the working class. The way value and its laws can immediately mean a class relation of antagonism is explained by De Angelis. Abstract labor, the creation of value, being tantamount to imposed, boundless and alienated labor, is the ‘form’ of work in capitalism. For De Angelis then any waged or unwaged work, insofar as it is alienated, boundless and coerced, is abstract labor and consequently a creation of value. And since antagonism and resistance necessarily come out of the coercive and alienated nature of this work, then antagonism is one with the expenditure of abstract labor and the creation of value in capitalism, and it can manifest itself among the waged as well as the unwaged proletariat.

It is true that a good deal of antagonism to capital is experienced outside the sphere of production: there are plenty of examples of struggles of the unemployed, students, etc. It is also true that antagonism is experienced within a society where capital effectively subsumes many of the activities that are done outside the workplace, so that not only are these activities functional to capital, but they also acquire an imposed, boundless and alienated character. The whole of society may then well be seen as an extended factory where direct or self-imposed discipline, haste, boredom, misery and sweat are the subjective aspects that necessarily complement the motion of self-valorization of capital.[85] To understand and explain the relation of antagonism outside the sphere of production in relation to the way capital subsumes unwaged work in this sphere is important and desirable; however, the question is: is it necessary for this understanding to assume that there must be creation of value outside the sphere of production?

Let us consider first the relation between antagonism and the subsumption of labor by capital within production. Productive labor has a double nature, as work that is aimed to make something or have some specific effect (concrete labor), and as the creation of value (abstract labor). This double nature of labor is the fundamental character of labor in the capitalist mode of production. Since the capitalist’s aim of production is the valorization of his capital, for him production is principally an extraction of abstract labor, a creation of value. This aim, and the movement of value, as Marx explains in Capital, implies the subsumption of the concrete practice of labor, the despotic organization and command in production, the fragmentation of its tasks, its rationalization, etc. The capitalist subsumption of labor in its concrete aspect implies, from the point of view of the worker, boredom, exhaustion, misery, pain, — the character of alienation and coercion of work then implies as a necessary consequence the worker’s reaction against it.[86]

The concrete activities (concrete labor) that are done outside the sphere of production can be subsumed and shaped by capital too. The fundamental mechanism for the subsumption of activities outside the sphere of production is their commodification. For example, since a further education course can only be run with money, it is more likely to attract finance if it shows to be ‘useful’, i.e. to make people more ‘useful’ to capital (or to a sponsor). This influences the nature, aim and quality of the courses and tends to relate them to the needs of capitalist production in general (or the needs of their sponsors). Capital also shapes the form of the course besides its content, since the need to pay for hiring staff, renting premises, etc. will impose pace, deadlines, organization, which will make the college more like a workplace. The concrete subsumption of the course is then likely to imply haste, boredom, and antagonism in the experience of the student. This antagonism can be explained without necessarily assuming that the work of these students is a creation of value.

The family is shaped by capital, too. The individualization brought about by bourgeois relations of exchange means that it is the value we own as individuals, not our role in a social structure (family or extended family), that is necessary for the satisfaction of our needs and our social recognition. The family wage, paid by the employer to the male chief family income earner, becomes the economic basis for a patriarchal despotism which is intolerable within bourgeois relations — and the direct relations of the family then become real obstacles to individual freedom.[87] If on the one hand the stability of the family is useful for the running of capitalism, on the other hand, the same relations brought about by capital itself imply antagonism to the family as a direct social relation. This antagonism is explained without having to demonstrate that these family relations are hidden waged-work relations.

Housework is shaped by capital, too. Once time is measured in terms of the money it is worth as hourly wage, every hour spent in the kitchen acquires the character of a... negative hourly wage, which is as real for the woman insofar as her possibility of earning a wage outside home is real for her. Confusing the two different facts of earning a wage and producing value, Fortunati manages to analyze the phenomenon described above as the creation of a negative value, a ‘non-value’, i.e. a value that capital does not reward.[88] What is interpreted by Fortunati as the creation of non-value is in fact something substantially different. It is the result of the fact that capital imposes the form of waged work on non-waged activities — in this case housework — through the ‘natural’ need to earn a wage and own money as individuals. The imposition of capitalist temporality extends itself from the immediate production process to the rest of nonproductive activity.[89] Thus the character of housework is made to conform with that of any waged work, either productive or unproductive.

Let us look at the concrete aspects of this imposition. The time attracted by waged work outside home will impose quality, form, pace, to housework, shaping it concretely. The more capital subsumes housework, the more it will require the purchase of appliances (washing machines, food processors...) in order to free time for productive work; the more the kitchen will look like a science-fiction ‘factory’; the more the work in it will have the pace of a workplace; the more boring, unskilled, and alien the work in the kitchen will become — just the evening chore of turning the microwave on and heat up some pre-made food. Again, it is the concrete labor of housework that is shaped by capital, and this will imply coercion, boredom, and misery.

Thus capitalism can affect any concrete labor in society, and generate antagonism also where no value is actually created.[90] If we consider the interrelation of abstract labor, concrete labor, value and it laws, with antagonism (i.e. objectivity and subjectivity) we can have a ‘theoretical framework’ to explain the various struggles of the dispossessed without any need whatsoever to demonstrate that every proletarian must produce value. Although Autonomia had the great merit of having highlighted the reality of the subsumption of society and its relation to class antagonism, this relation is not so straightforward as an equation antagonism = abstract labor (value).

Let us now consider the difference between the above Autonomist approach and that attempted in The Arcane of Reproduction. To the students in movement, someone like De Angelis would say: ‘It should be clear for us theorists something that is true in your real experience: the fact that you are in movement against capital because, although you are unwaged, you are subjected to capitalist work, and to the boredom and pain it implies’. The students feel the real effects of a real alienated ‘capitalist work’; they do not need De Angelis to tell them that they do alienated capitalistic work. The students really feel antagonistic, because of their real experience of alienation; they do not need De Angelis to reveal anything to them in order to give them a space and aim for struggle. Only, De Angelis tells the Marxian world that they ought to describe the students’ work as it is really experienced by the students and as it is really shaped by capital: i.e. as a waged work, if they want to understand the roots of the students’ class antagonism. Whatever its theoretical problems and incongruities are, this analysis still has a moment of truth in the understanding of capitalism as class struggle.

But Fortunati does not say this! In the case of housework she claims: capital has contrived to ‘camouflage’ the woman’s work as a non-waged, nonproductive, non-factory-like work ‘to reduce the space for struggle against it’ (p. 110; see also p. 108).[91] To the housewife, Leopoldina Fortunati would say: ‘you cannot find the space for your struggle against capital because capital has duped you into believing in appearances’. But Leopoldina Fortunati is there to reveal the ‘reality’ behind these ‘appearances’ and removes the ideological hindrances on class antagonism.

One of the strengths of Autonomist Marxism is the way it links an everyday experience of antagonism (boredom, hatred of work, conflict with our bosses, etc.) with a theory of how capitalism functions. Autonomist Marxism generally has intuitive appeal — it seems to capture and explain how we experience the world and why we fight back. By contrast, Fortunati’s account creates a sharp divergence between the world of experience (‘illusion’) and the real world of capital and its needs (which only the intellectual like Fortunati can reveal). This is only exacerbated by her excessive use of jargon and avoidance of ‘everyday’ language in relation to Marxian theory.