From The Factory To The Metropolis: Essays Volume 2

Product Description

This second volume of a new three-part series of Antonio Negri's work is focussed on the consequences of the rapid process of deindustrialisation that has occurred across the West in recent years In this volume Negri investigates exactly what happens when the class subjects of industrial capitalism are demobilised & the factories close Evidently capital continues to make profit but how & where? According to Negri the creation of value extends beyond the factory walls to embrace the whole of society; the 'mass worker' of industrialism gives way to the 'socialised worker' (operaio sociale) & the terrain of exploitation now becomes the whole of human life In postmodernity the metropolis becomes the privileged arena of value extraction We must therefore understand the global city with its stratifications its enclosures & its resistances Old categories of the private & the public are inadequate to describe the new matrix of production which is characterised rather by the 'common' the productive space of cognitive & immaterial labour Today's metropolis can be defined as a space of antagonisms between forms of life produced on the one hand by finance capital (the capital that operates around rents) & on the other by the 'cognitive proletariat' The central question is then how 'the common' of the latter can be mobilised for the destruction of capitalism In an analysis that runs from the Italian workerism (operaismo) of the 1970s to the present day From the Factory to the Metropolis offers readers valuable insight into the far-reaching impact of deindustrialisation presenting both the challenges & opportunities It will appeal to the many interested in the continuing development of Negri's project & to anyone interested in radical politics today