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

"Over against the I as absttact being-for-itself, there standslikewise its inorganic nature, as being [seyena']. The I relatesitself negatively to it (its inorganic nature], and annuls it asthe unity of both-but in such a way that the I first shapesthat abstract being-for-itself as its Self, sees its Own form [init] and thus consumes itself as well. In the element of being assuch, the existence and range of natural needs is a multitudeof needs. The things serving ro satisfy those needs are workedup [verarbeitet] , their universal inner possibility posited[expressed] as Outer possibility, as form. This processing[Verarbeiten] of things is itself manysided, however; it is consciousnessmaking itself into a thing. But in the element ofuniversality, it is such that it becomes an abstract labor. Theneeds are many. The incorporation of their multiplicity in the1, i.e., labor, is an abstraction of universal models (Bilder), yet[it is] a self-propelling process of formation (Bilden)."7The alienated character of labor is linked here explicitly (even if ina very obscure, typically Hegelian language) to the becoming of theMind, and to the dialectic of being-for-itself and of being-for-theother.This way of thinking absorbs the entire (concrete, historical)dialectic oflabor and of capiralisric expropriation wirhin the idealisricdialectic of subject and substance. In Hegel's Phenomenology ofSpirit we read:"Further, the living Subsrance is being which is in truth Subject,or, what is the same, is in truth actual only in so far as itis the movement of positing itself, or is the mediation of itsself-othering with itself This Substance is, as Subject, puresimple negativity [ .. . J. Only this self-resroring sameness, Otthis reflection in otherness within itself-not an original orimmediate unity as such-is the True. It is the process of itsown becoming, the circle that presupposes its end as its goal,having its end also as its beginning; and only by being workedout to its end, is it actual."sDespite his critique of idealist philosophy, in his Manuscripts of1844 Marx is still trapped in the Hegelian conceptual system,when he proposes to think of communism as "resolution of thestrife between existence and essence/) attributing a transcendentand eschatological character to communism, as if there were aradical beyond representing the truth to be realized outside thecontradictions of the existing. This theological vision of communismis not without consequences in the history of theworkers) movements.Alienation between history and ontologyThe great success known by critical theory, whose foundations canbe found in the pages of authors like Horkheimer, Adorno and Marcuse,can be understood in the context of this idealistic renaissance.The issue of alienation is at the core of the critical thought ofthe Frankfurt School, and also--although with a completely differentinflection-of the Existentialists' reflection, especially inJean Paul Same, although from different points of view. Referringto the twO most significant examples within existentialism andcritical thought, Same's and Marcuse's standpoints-though radicallydifferent-exist on the same terrain: the humanisticfoundations for the process of liberation from capitalism. Examiningthese divergent positions will allow us to get to the heart of the40 I The Soul at Won