Chapter 1: Subjective Figures of the Crisis ... - Negri in English

democratic action will begin to emerge. In the bourgeois societies
of the industrial era, the available avenues for political action
were primarily corporatist and individualist; in postindustrial,
neoliberal societies, the possibilities are even more meager, and
the represented is allowed only a passive and generic political
role. The movement from the bourgeois citizen to the
represented was universalizing in its juridical form and yet
gradually emptied of any content. Now new figures of political
subjectivity can instead discover forms of participation that
overflow corporatist and individualist divisions, and that give
substance and content to the generic and abstract forms of
political activity. The mechanisms of the production of rules can
be constructed only in singular form according to common
modalities. From now on constituent powers must function and
be continually renewed from below.
But why, some friends ask us, are we still taking about
constitutions Why can't we free ourselves from all normative
structures and institutions Every revolution needs a constituent
power—not to bring the revolution to an end but to continue it,
guarantee its achievements, and keep it open to further
innovations. A constituent power is necessary' to organize social
production and social life in accordance with our principles of
freedom, equality, and solidarity. Constituent processes
constantly revise political structures and institutions to be more
adequate to the social fabric and material foundation of social
conflicts, needs, and desires.
Said more philosophically, constituent processes are
dispositifs of the production of subjectivity. But why, our friends
repeat, must subjectivities be produced Why can't we just be
ourselves Because even if there were some original or
primordial human nature to be expressed, there is no reason to
believe it would foster free, equal, and democratic social and
political relations. Political organization always requires the
production of subjectivities. We must create a multitude capable
of democratic political action and the self-management of the
common.
An example can help clarify one aspect of this proposition.
When the Spanish indignados, who had occupied the squares in
the spring of 2011, refused to participate in the fall 2011 national