Franco ''Bifo'' Berardi - The Soul at Work From Alienation to Autonomy

f
k
'
;::
I bring to the labor process. Because thl' s contemporary refor
. fi
l1e
::::i
in which I am
most myself
ons through the incitement of my specific
l
creative:::
powers, I expenence wor k as t h e segment of social life
most fj ree, most capable of realizing my de ' .
The Sou! at WOrk analyz es the contem orar d ' '
its" ..
" h
Sltes.
.
cogn1t1ve p ase using a
.
met h 0 d It . calls compositionism . Th' IS
1 0 to aVOl the
.
misconceptions
o
induced by the
operatsmo--worker' ls:--:-t o d escribe the
current
specifically
of Marxism h b .
Italian
e ot m hents and breaks
.
strictly h Th
speakin
h
the h .
oug
19 60s and end; .: se f classlcal operaismo begins in the early
Wlt t e dlssolutlOn of the g R
term lS used by B'£,
use f
" P y ynamlcs of capltal m
( ithin which Bifo militated) in 1973
, the lar:
e
'd
:"%.
eld
Wlt .
ot;e Operaio
tlOnlSt thought remains very active today, encompas=n
CO l_
range f e
tendencies represented by thinkers such
A
as
ntonw
Paol: V .
Negri
lrno,
and M aur1Z10 " L
On th
.
azzarato. This tradition
ree
is
1m b"
founded
ncated theoretical breakth h . .
h
the primacy of wo r k er ' s struggles in the
Stu
development of
yo t e
capital th
chang' mg composition of the
for
working class,
dec'ph 1
as the
enng '
key
novel forms of po 1" 1t1ca I
and
organization
M '
and
d " .
action,
rundriSSe) of the emergence of the
d f h
"generate:: , : o s
n
a
(
n the G
roug s. t e axIOm asserting
rorm 0 wor er h h
, e
power t at
destroy the bases for 0
. .
t reatens to
rgantzmg Production to extort
The fi rst concept
surplus-value .
requires that every analysis of the
ture
ch
of
angmg '
capital be
strucerstoo
d not on the basis of h
und
.
t e contradictions of
lnternal
capital itself. b .
of.
.
Ut
'
as a Certain
, pro
response to
1 and
etanan
Use
aggression: worker insubordination
.
alone
restructuration "
on the part 0 f
.
capltaJ. ' This response
organlc ' in which th e
composition of capital-the ratio of fixed
to variable
ID1tlates
capital-undergoes a mutation, induces a recomposltlOn of the
internal consistency of the working class. This axiom of the priority
of worker refusal required, in turn, the development of a
phenomenology of proletarian experience. This phenomenology
described the changing internal composition of the various layers
of the working class, identifYing emerging strata that would assume
a dominant role in the immediate process of production: for example,
the increasing importance of the mass worker in the Fordist
factory, after the hegemony of the skilled worker of earlier social
compositions. On the basis of this analysis of the different strata of
the working class, novel political forms of organization and
action-beyond the Leninist party and its revolutionary straregyadequate
to this composition . Finally, the thesis on the "general
intellect," in which Marx sees the use of automation in the production
process reaching a moment when labor-time can no longer
be posited as the measure of value, implies both of the preceding
concepts: the move to an increasingly automated system of production
is seen as a response to worker struggles atound the
working day, while the positing of the intellect and knowledge as a
productive force implies a change within the composition of the
working class, with certain sectors (in Bifo's analysis, the cognitariat)
emerging as the paradigmatic form of labor. Insofar as the
method of class composition is undertaken in view of seeking out
novel openings in the social war-its elevation to another level of
complexity and intensity-the specter of a labor process increasingly
founded on the production and management of knowledge
initiated, an erosion of the classical division of labor and its corresponding
organizational diagrams. Placing pressure on Marx's
analysis of the general intellect allowed the militants of the
compositionist tradition to diagram a series of mutations in the
14 I The Soul at Work
Preface: Soul on Strike / 15