The Grundrisse beyond Capital? Negri’s Marx and the Problem of Value

Abstract

In this chapter I do something fairly simple, but I hope also fairly useful. I look at the work of Antonio Negri before he more obviously started using the concepts of Deleuze and Guattari and Foucault. I suggest that here we can already find a conceptualisation of capitalism that fits well with his later work, which does draw on these post-structuralist authors. This not only explains why Negri’s Marxism can fit together so well with post-structuralism, hopefully it also draws to the surface some of the key elements of Negri’s understanding of capitalism and his innovative use of Marx. This will help me to assess what this understanding can contribute to emancipatory communist activity and also what its weaknesses are. This is a continuation of a critique I previously made of Negri and elements of current post-workerism on the question of value (see Eden 2012b; 2012a). Also in this chapter, I quickly sketch out Negri’s current use of post-structuralism, present Negri’s early theorisation of capital and then test how much either helps us grasp our condition. While I draw on a reading of Marx and argue that Negri makes some errors in his use of Marx, this is not the centre of my critique (after all, what is the point of laying charges of heterodoxy against the author of Marx beyond Marx?). Rather, I find Negri’s description of capitalism limited. Against this I pose a different communist approach.