Lunedì 24 novembre ore 17, Aula B
Corso transdisciplinare:
"Etica e politica negli studi di genere".
Andrea Fumagalli e Cristina Morini
La vita messa al lavoro e forme di
governance del lavoro: oltre il welfare
verso il Commonfare
Riferimenti teorici I
Trasformazione dell’accumulazione
• teorizzazioni relative all’economia
informazionale (Manuel Castells, 1996)
• nozione più larga e aperta di economia
della conoscenza (Enzo Rullani 2004)
• le tesi sul capitalismo cognitivo (scuola
dell’Isys-Matisse, Sorbona, 2002)
Riferimenti teorici II
Trasformazioni del lavoro
• Lavoro autonomo di seconda generazione
(Bologna-Fumagalli, 1997)
• Lavoro immateriale (Lazzarato , 1997, da
un lato, Gorz, 2003, dall’altro)
• Condizione precaria (Sennet, Baumann,
Beck, Gallino ma anche MayDay e
movimenti sociali)
Riferimenti teorici III
Pensiero femminista
• Temi relativi alla riproduzione e al salario
di lavoro domestico (fine anni ‘70, Dalla
Costa & co, Silvia Federici)
• Il ruolo del pensiero della differenza sui
temi del lavoro (da fine anni ‘80, Libreria
delle donne di Milano, Luisa Muraro, Lia
Cigarini)
• Femminilizzazione del lavoro (anni 2000)
Cognitive Bio-capitalism and value
theory
Continuities:
1. Labour continues to be the basis of value
2. Labour exploitation continues to be the basis of
accumulation, but in different forms.
Breaks:
1. Redefinition of productive-unproductive labour
ratio
2. Redefinition of living-dead labour ratio
3. Redefinition of concrete-abstract labour ratio
Il biocapitalismo cognitivorelazionale
- Lavoro produttivo/improduttivo
- La vita messa a valore
- Dalla teoria del valore-lavoro alla
teoria del valore-vita
- Ri/produzione sociale
Cognitive Capitalism and the new
labour value theory I
With the shift from Fordism to cognitive capitalism, the
social relationship embodied by capital from being a
relationship between labour-power and machineries
becomes a relationship between body and mind, brain
and heart, unfolding itself within human beings. But,
far from being the capital that becomes human, it is
individual’s life, with its multiple singularities and
differences, to become the basis for the expropriation
by capital.
Cognitive Capitalism and the new
labour value theory
• New forms of productive labour: knowledge, affect,
imagine.
• Towards an “Anthropogenetic model of production”
(Marazzi, 2007) , in which General Intellect is
embodied in human beings and not in machineries
• Irreducibility of concrete labour to abstract labour
• Life is put to labour and it becomes a source of value.
Towards a theory of life-value
Towards a theory of life-value
We enquiry three levels of productive labour:
1. The knowledge value (cognitive labour)
2. The affective value (affective labour)
3. The imagine value (symbolic labour)
Il biocapitalismo cognitivo-relazionale
• All’interno del nuovo sistema di
produzione, le differenze, di generi e di
razza, le soggettività, diventano centrali.
• Altro aspetto determinante del
biocapitalismo cognitivo relazionale: non
è più basato sul binarismo fordista
(produzione/riproduzione; tempo di
vita/tempo di lavoro; uomo/donna;
natura/cultura; casa; fabbrica)
La ri-produzione sociale
- forme di sfruttamento e di distruzione
della terra e alla immissione delle
biotecnologie all’interno di circuiti
commerciali
- coinvolgimento “emozionale”
- messa al lavoro della dimensione
sociale indotta da forme cooperative
che producono valore per il mercato
- divisione cognitiva del lavoro
La vita come plusvalore
Esempio della rivoluzione biotech (tecnologie
genetiche; microbiologia, biologia molecolare
e chimica organica tutelata da brevetti):
utilizzata dal neoliberismo nei suoi tentativi di
ristrutturare l’economia lungo linee
postindustriali (bioproduzione post fordista:
dalla produzione di fertilizzanti chimici o
diserbanti alla reale generazione della pianta)
Melinda Cooper, 2008
Femminilizzazione e precarietà
La femminilizzazione del lavoro si basa su tre linee
guida
• La precarietà del lavoro intesa come modalità
generale dell’organizzazione del lavoro
contemporaneo
• Lo sfruttamento NEL LAVORO - ALL’INTERNO DEI
PROCESSI PRODUTTIVI STESSI
• Processo di soggettivazione del lavoro, nel senso
che il lavoro finisce per inglobare l’anima della
lavoratrice e del lavoratore all’interno dei suoi
stessi processi.
Nuovi apparati della governance
contemporanea
Si assiste all’istituzione di nuovi meccanismi della governance contemporanea fondati sul ricatto del bisogno e
sul dispositivo del debito da un lato,
nonché sulla retorica della creatività,
del merito e della autorealizzazione,
dall’altro.
Apparati biopolitici: l’era della
ri-produzione sociale forzata
La governance della riproduzione sociale, oltre
alla precarietà, il debito e il coinvolgimento
emotivo (riconoscimento) è molto pervasiva.
Con il passaggio dal capitalismo fordista al
biocapitalismo il rapporto sociale rappresentato
dal capitale tende a diventare tutto interno
all’essere umano. Ma lungi dall’essere il capitale
che si umanizza, è la vita degli individui a essere
resa capitalizzabile.
Apparati biopolitici: l’era della
ri-produzione sociale forzata
Il meccanismo di sfruttamento e accumulazione
non si limita all'individuo inserito nel contesto
lavorativo vero e proprio, tradizionalmente
inteso, ma invade, forzando, tutta la sfera della
vita, diventando bioproduzione. Così tempi e
spazi della vita vengono razionalizzati
brutalmente in funzione di una capacità
produttiva, altrettanto attiva ma sicuramente
meno consapevole (consumo, immaginazione,
comunicazione, debito).
Interrogativi I
• La femminilizzazione del lavoro illumina un
cambio centrale nel rapporto tra produzione
e riproduzione nonché la crisi della divisione
sessuale del lavoro (non vuole dire che si
sono risolti i problemi per le donne…)
• Sulla scia delle analisi recenti della teorica
femminista statunitense Nancy Fraser ( va
approfondito, a questo punto, il rapporto tra
donne e neoliberismo
Interrogativi II
• L’organizzazione del lavoro si modella
oggi sul lavoro riproduttivo da cui
l’assenza di barriere di tempo, di limiti
all’impegno che, insieme alla perenne
reperibilità, genera il pensiero perenne
del lavoro, delle scadenze, dei progetti,
dei contatti, degli obiettivi, delle
possibilità. Esattamente come avviene
nella riproduzione, nell’amore, nella
cura
Interrogativi III
• Quando il corpo e la vita divengono la materia
prima, chi è soggetto (attivo e passivo) di
questo processo può essere riconosciuto come
lavoratore?
• Dentro la dimensione precaria della a messa a
valore del bios, evidentemente la nozione di
classe (intesa come classe dei produttori) ha
necessità di essere aggiornata. Che percezione
ha questa presunta classe del proprio essere
tale, nella frammentarietà della precarietà?
Possiamo parlare di una condizione sociale
comune?
Towards life subsumption I
In the bio-cognitive capitalism, real subsumption
and formal subsumption are two sides of the
same coin and feed off one each other. They,
together, create a new form of subsumption,
we can define life or subsumption of general
intellect and human relations. This new form of
the modern capitalist accumulation highlights
some aspects that are at the root of the crisis of
industrial capitalism. This leads to the analysis of
new sources of valorisation (and increasing
returns).
Towards life subsumption III
When life becomes labour-force, labour time is not
measured in standard units of measurement
(hours, days). The labour day has no limits, if not
the natural ones. We are in the presence of formal
subsumption and extraction of absolute surplus
value. When life becomes labor-force because
brain becomes machine, or "fixed capital and
variable capital at the same time", the intensification of labour performance reaches its maximum:
we are so also in the presence of real subsumption
and extraction of surplus value relative .
The governance of life subsumption I
"Foucault located the disciplinary societies in the
eighteenth and nineteenth centuries; they reach their peak
at the beginning of the twentieth. They proceed to the
organization of large areas of imprisonment. The individual
never ceases passing from one closed environment to
another, each with its own laws: first the family, then the
school ("you are no longer in the family"), then the
barracks ("you are no longer at school"), then the factory,
sometime the hospital, and eventually the prison, which is
disciplinary environment for excellence.“ (Deleuze, 1990)
From disciplinary society to the society of control
The governance of life subsumption III
Three form of social control
1. Debt and the violence of financial markets
(Marazzi, 2013, Ross, 2014)  i.e: austerity
policy (in Europe)
Today, debt is no more only an economic and
accountability term, but an indirect disciplinary
tool (and therefore of social control), able to
regulate the individual psychology (subjectivity)
up to develop a sense of guilt and self-control
(Lazzarato, 2013)
The governance of life subsumption IV
2. Precarity (Fumagalli, 2013, Standing, 2013)
The precarious condition today is synonymous with uncertainty, instability, nomadism, blackmail and psychological
subordination by the means of survival. It is a dependency
condition that does not manifest itself at the very moment
in which it formally defines a labour contract but it is
upstream and downstream. It’s an existential condition
that induces total forms of self-control and self-repression
with even stronger results than those of the direct discipline of the factory. The precarious condition defines an
anthropological and behavioral psychology that is as strong
as the labour becomes more cognitive and relational.
The governance of life subsumption V
3. The governance of subjectivity of individuals
Two ways:
a. the control of the processes of formation of
knowledge (education system)  privatization,
specialization, less critical analysis  the false
ideology of meritocracy
b. the creation of an ad hoc individualistic imaginary 
brandisation of life in term of total commodification of
existence leads to ensure that the individual transform
itself in unique singularity, with wants and needs
aimed more “to appear” rather than “to be”.
The governance of life subsumption VI
In conclusion, the governance of life subsumption
is based on a calibrated use of two main dispositifs: social subjugation and enslavement.
Social subjugation is precisely the production of
subjectivity appropriated by the capital, at the
very moment in which the subject worker is freely
involved in the valorization process, since in it
he/she sees or, better, has the illusion of seeing his
own realization.
Commonwealth I
The commonwealth is generally immaterial, it is the
expression of the biopolitical existence of human
beings and, as such, it is just as limited as human life.
The commonwealth is made of the vital and cognitive
faculties of the human being, from knowledge to the
body, from relations to sensations, from language to
movement, from sensuality to thought: there is always
a production of surplus that derives from the mere fact
of existing.
This, why the commonwealth pre-exists cognitive
biocapitalism, just like surplus-labour pre-exists the
capitalist production system.
Commonwealth II
The commonwealth, in its two main
articulations (the re/productive commonwealth
and the cognitive commonwealth), is the basis
on which the process of life subsumption of
labour to capital in the age of cognitive-biocapitalism is articulated: it is a source of absolute
as well as of relative surplus value. Its
expropriation is achieved through different
forms of communism of capital , the forms of
contemporary governance.
Commonfare I
A new idea of welfare, an idea that is able to deal
with the two main elements that characterize the
current phase of the sc . "Western" capitalist
countries:
• precarity and debt condition as dispositif of
social control and dominance
• the generation of wealth that arises from social
cooperation and general intellect.
Commonwealth pre-exists to common goods:
they are not synonymous
Commonfare II
A redefinition of welfare policy should be able to
respond to the unstable trade-off inside the
accumulation process of cognitive bio-capitalism:
the negative relationship between life precarity
and social cooperation. More particularly, it is
necessary to remunerate social cooperation, from
one side, and favour forms of social production,
from the other.
These two aspects constitute the two main pillar
of what some scholars define: commonfare.
Basic Income
The remuneration of social cooperation implies the
introduction of individual, unconditional basic income, for
everyone who lives in the territory regardless of his/her
professional and civil status. The unconditional basic
income (UBI) should be understood as a kind of monetary
compensation (remuneration) of the social productivity and
of productive time which are not certified by the existing
labour contracts. It occurs at the primary level of income
distribution (it’s a primary income), hence it cannot
considered merely as a welfare intervention, according both
to workfare and Keynesian logic. This measure should be
accompanied by the introduction of a minimum wage, in
order to avoid a substitution effect (dumping) between
basic income and the same wages
Commonfare policy
Social needs
Income stability
Education
Information and
communication
Health
Housing
Mobility
Instrument to implement in order to achieve them
Unconditional Basic Income
Public and self-organized education centres till
University
Free access to information and to knowledge, through
free availability of immaterial infrastructure (wi-fi,
network, oper-source and so on). Removal of
intellectual property right and their regulation
Right to a free health system and care system
Guaranteed house: opportunity for everyone to have a
space for the creation and organization of their own
lives
Low cost or free public transport service, free
circulation of bodies in the territory: no border.
Commonfare policy
Social needs
Income stability
Education
Information and
communication
Health
Housing
Mobility
Instrument to implement in order to achieve them
Unconditional Basic Income
Public and self-organized education centres till
University
Free access to information and to knowledge, through
free availability of immaterial infrastructure (wi-fi,
network, oper-source and so on). Removal of
intellectual property right and their regulation
Right to a free health system and care system
Guaranteed house: opportunity for everyone to have a
space for the creation and organization of their own
lives
Low cost or free public transport service, free
circulation of bodies in the territory: no border.
Andrea Fumagalli- Cristina Morini
Thank-you for your attention
“Emancipate yourselves from mental
slavery; none but ourselves can free our
minds”.
Bob Marley, Redemption Song