Value and Affect

Author(s): Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt

Source: boundary 2, Vol. 26, No. 2 (Summer, 1999), pp. 77-88
Published by: Duke University Press
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Value and Affect

Antonio Negri
translated by Michael Hardt

I do not think that, in the polemics that have now for two hundred
years accompanied the development of the theory of value, politicalecono-
mists have ever succeeded in decoupling value fromlabor.Even the margin-
alist currents and the neoclassical schools, whose vocation is dedicated to
this decoupling, are forced to take this relationshipinto account (along with
its support, mass livinglabor)every time they confrontpoliticaleconomy in
the concrete. In neoclassical theory, the analyses of market, entrepreneu-
rial,financial, and monetary relations all refute in principleevery reference
to labor: in fact, it is no surprise that neoclassical theorists have nothing to
say when they are faced with politicaldecisions. The theory of labor-value
springs forth again-and they are frozen in their tracks by it-precisely
where the founders of the disciplinesituated it.The place of the conflict(and
the eventual mediation)of the economic relationshipas a social relationship
reveals the ontology of economic theory.
What has irreversiblychanged, however, from the times of the pre-
dominance of the classical theory of value, involves the possibilityof devel-

boundary2 26:2, 1999. Copyright? 1999 by Duke UniversityPress.

78 boundary2 / Summer1999

oping the theory of value in terms of economic order,or rather,the possibility

of considering value as a measure of concrete labor, either individuallyor
collectively. The economic consequences of this difficultyare certainly im-
portant, but equally importantare its anthropologicaland social presuppo-
sitions. These latterelements are what I willfocus on here-on this novelty
that transformsthe theory of value "frombelow,"from the base of life.
In the centuries of capitalist modernization (in the passage, that is,
from manufacturingto large-scale industry,to use Marx'sterms), the pos-
sibilityof measuring labor,which had functioned more or less in the period
of accumulation, progressively declined for two reasons. In the first place,
the possibilityof measurement declined because labor-as it became more
highlyqualifiedand more complex, both individuallyand collectively--could
not be reduced to simple, calculable quantities. Secondly, the possibility of
measurement declined because capital, which was becoming more finan-
cially oriented and more embedded in State regimes, made increasingly
artificialand manipulable,and thus more abstract, the mediation between
diverse sectors of the economic cycle (production,social reproduction,cir-
culation, and the distributionof incomes).
But all this is prehistory.In the global market, in postmodernity,the
problem of measure itself cannot be located.
It is certainlytrue that in the period of the passage to postmodernity,
in the phase of the anti-imperialistand anticolonialstruggles, the theory of
labor-value seemed to rise up again in macroeconomic terms, as a theory
of the internationaldivision of labor,of "unequalexchange," of postcolonial
exploitation. But this renaissance quicklyproved illusory,as soon as it be-
came evident that the set of productiveprocesses, beyond being immersed
in the multinationalizationof industrialactivity and financial globalization,
was further intensified by the technological processes of cybernetics and
communication, as well as by the investment of immaterialand scientific
labor. This does not mean that the internationaldivision of labor and post-
colonial exploitationhave come to an end. On the contrary,they have been
extraordinarilyaccentuated. Butat the same time, they have lost theirspeci-
ficity (and thus the possibilityof reactivatingthe theory of value in concrete
instances) because that type of exploitation has itself become globalized,
has flooded metropolitanterritories, and the measure of exploitation has
definitivelydeclined.
In the economy of postmodernity and in the territoriesof globaliza-
tion, the production of commodities comes about through command, the
divisionof laboris given throughcommand, and the articulationof the mea-
Negri/ ValueandAffect 79

sures of labor is undone in global command. That said, however, my theme

here, "valueand affect,"has not been broached thus far except throughthe
suggestion of a reconsiderationof the problemof value "frombelow."
In effect, when we look at things from the point of view of political
economy-in other words, "fromabove"-the theme of "value-affect"is so
integrated into the macroeconomic process that it is virtuallyinvisible.Eco-
nomics ignores the problem without any recognition of difficulties.Among
the numerous cases, consider two that are exemplary.The first case con-
cerns the domestic labor of women and/or mothers/wives. Now, in the tra-
dition of political economy, this theme can in no way be posed outside of
the consideration of the direct or indirectwage of the worker(male, head of
family),or rather,in more recent times, outside of the disciplinarytechniques
of the demographic control of populations (and of the eventual interests
of the State-the collective capitalist-in the economic regulation of this
demographic development). Value is thus assumed by strippingit fromlabor
(the labor of women-in this case, mothers and wives), strippingit, in other
words, from affect. A second example resides at the extreme opposite end
of the spectrum. This case deals no longer with the traditionalparadigms
of classical economics but with a really postmodern theme: the so-called
economy of attention. By this term, one refers to the interest in assuming
in the economic calculation the interactivityof the user of communication
services. In this case, too, even in the clear effort to absorb the produc-
tion of subjectivity,economics ignores the substance of the question. As it
focuses attention on the calculation of "audience,"it flattens, controls, and
commands the productionof subjectivityon a disembodied horizon. Labor
(attention) is here subsumed, strippingit fromvalue (of the subject), that is,
from affect.
To define the theme of value-affect, we have to leave behindthe igno-
rance of politicaleconomy. We have to understand it precisely on the basis
of an apparent paradox that I would like to pose in this way: The more the
measure of value becomes ineffectual, the more the value of labor-power
becomes determinantin production;the more politicaleconomy masks the
value of labor-power,the more the value of labor-poweris extended and
intervenes in a global terrain,a biopoliticalterrain. In this paradoxicalway,
labor becomes affect, or better, laborfinds its value in affect, if affect is de-
fined as the "powerto act" (Spinoza). The paradoxcan thus be reformulated
in these terms: The more the theory of value loses its reference to the sub-
ject (measure was this reference as a basis of mediation and command),
the more the value of labor resides in affect, that is, in living labor that is
80 boundary2 / Summer1999

made autonomous in the capital relation, and expresses--through all the

pores of singular and collective bodies-its power of self-valorization.

Deconstruction
My first thesis, a deconstructive and historical thesis, is that mea-
suring labor,and thus orderingit and leading it back to a theory of value, is
impossible when, as today, labor-poweris no longer either outside or inside
capitalist command (and its capacity to structurecommand). To clarifyhow
this is our contemporarysituation, allow me to referto two cases.
First case: Labor-power,or really the use-value of labor-power,is
outside of capital. This is the situation in which the labor theory of value
was constructed in the classical era. Being outside of capital, labor-power
had to be broughtwithinit. The process of primitiveaccumulationconsisted
in bringingwithincapitalist development (and control) the labor-powerthat
lived outside. The exchange-value of labor-powerwas thus rooted in a use-
value that was constituted, in large part, outside of the capitalist organiza-
tion of production.What, then, was this outside? Marxspoke extensively on
this question. When he spoke of labor-poweras "variablecapital"he alluded
in fact to a mixtureof independence and subjectivitythat was organized in:
(a) the independence of "small-scale circulation"(the linkto the earth, the
family economy, the traditionof "gifts,"and so on); (b) the values proper
to "workercooperation"as such, in other words, the fact that cooperation
constitutes a surplus of value that is prior,or at least irreducible,to the capi-
talist organization of labor, even if it is recuperated by it; and (c) the set of
"historicaland moralvalues" (as Marxput it) that is continuallyrenewed as
needs and desires by the collective movement of the proletariatand pro-
duced by its struggles. The struggle over the "relativewage" (which Rosa
Luxemburgstrongly highlighted in her particularinterpretationof Marxism
from the perspective of the productionof subjectivity) represented a very
strong mechanism available to the "outside."Use-value was thus rooted
fundamentally,even if in a relativeway, outside of capital.
A long historiography(which spans from the work of E. P. Thomp-
son to that of the "workerist"Italians and Europeans of the 1970s, and
among which we could situate the brilliantwork of South Asian subaltern
historiographers) describes this situation and translates it into a militant
vocabulary.
For a long historical period, then, capitalist development has under-
gone an independent determinationof the use-value of labor-power,a de-
Negri/ Valueand Affect 81

terminationthat is posed (relatively)"outside"of capitalist command. The

price of "necessary labor"(to reproduce the proletariat)is thus presented,
in this period, as a quantitythat is natural(and/orhistorical),but in any case
external--a quantitythat mediates between the productiveeffectivityof the
workingclass and its social and monetary inclusion.
The specificity of the Marxiananalysis, in the traditionthat aims to
use the classical theory of value toward revolutionaryends, is based also
on the consideration of the (relative) extraneousness of the substance of
use-value from labor-powerwith respect to the unityof capitalist command
over the development of accumulation. One could add that, for Marx,the
unit used for measuring value was formed outside (or at least alongside)
the capitalist process of the productionand reproductionof society.
Second case: Labor-power,or really its use-value, is inside capi-
talist society. Throughout its development, capital has continuallyand in-
creasingly led labor-powerback to withinits command; it has progressively
taken away labor-power'sconditions of reproductionexternal to the capital-
ist society and thus has increasingly succeeded at defining the use-value
of labor-powerin terms of exchange-value-no longer only relatively,as in
the phase of accumulation, but absolutely. "Arbeitmacht Frei."One need
not be a postmodernist to recognize how this reduction (or subsumption)
of use-value to a coercive and totalitarianregime of exchange-value was
implemented beginning in the 1930s in the United States, in the 1950s in
Europe, and in the 1970s in the ThirdWorld.
Certainlythere are still situations, in the ThirdWorldas well as the
in
First, which importantforms of independence exist in the formation of
proletarianuse-value. But the tendency of their reabsorptionis irreversible.
Postmodernitydescribes a continuous, impetuous, and rapidtendency. One
could, in fact, claim that, in distinctionto what still persisted in the time of
Marx's analysis, today one cannot imagine a definition of use-value that
could be given even partiallyindependent of exchange-value.
Therefore, the economic calculation, originatingwith classical and
Marxisteconomics, that foresaw an independent unit of measure (an "out-
side") as the basis of the dialectic of capital no longer has any reason to
exist. This disappearance is real, and the theory of the measure of value
has thus become circularand tautological:There is no longer anything ex-
ternal that can offer it a ground. Ineffect-and here, too, there is no need to
be a postmodernist to recognize it-ever since the 1960s (forwhat interests
us here), every use-value has been determined by the regime of capitalist
production. And also, every value that in the theory of accumulation was
82 boundary2 / Summer1999

not posed in an immediatelycapitalist regime (such as the social capacity

of reproduction,the productivesurplus of cooperation, the "small-scale cir-
culation,"the new needs and desires produced by the struggles, and so
on), all such value is now immediatelyrecuperated and mobilizedwithinthe
regime of (globalized) capitalist control.
Thus, if (to stick to classical terminology) the theory of value must
determine a criterionof measure, it can findone today only withinthe global
constitution of exchange-value. Now, this measure is money. But money,
precisely, is neither a measure of nor a relationshipover use-value, but-at
this point of development-its pure and simple substitution.
Inconclusion, the theory of value has ceased to fulfillits rationalizing
function in politicaleconomy (not to mention its founding role). This comes
out of capitalist development at the margins of postmodernity,transfigured
into monetary theory--constructed on the horizon of globalization, orga-
nized by imperialcommand. "Adollar is a dollar."Money is no longer the
productof a regime of exchange (between capital and more or less subjec-
tivized labor-power)but the productionof a regime of exchange. The theory
of value is banalized as an instrumentof monetary measure, of the order
of money.
But the value of productionhas not been abolished. When the value
of productioncannot be brought back to measure, it becomes s-misurato
(immeasurable and immense). I mean to emphasize here the paradox of
a labor-powerthat is no longer either outside or inside capital: In the first
case, the criterion that allowed for its control, through measure, was its
relative independence (which today no longer exists-labor-power is really
subsumed); in the second case, the criterionthat allowed for the command
of labor-power,despite the absence of measure, consisted in its absorption
in the monetary regime (Keynesianism, to mention the most refined tech-
nique of control). But also this second criterionhas disappeared insofar as
monetary control has become completely abstract. We must thus conclude
that labor-power,which we find again in postmodernity(in the global and/or
imperialsystem of the capitalist economy), is situated in a non-place with
respect to capital.

How Can We Define This Non-Place?

To introduce this discussion, one must, first of all, identifythe theo-
retical displacement that the globalization of capitalist exploitationhas de-
termined. Now, when one speaks of globalization, one really speaks of it
Negri/ ValueandAffect 83

in a double sense: extensively, as the global enlargement of the productive

fabricthrough markets;and intensively, as the absorption of all of social life
within capitalist production. In the first sense, labor-poweris presented in
mobile and interchangeable, materialand immaterialaggregations (or sub-
jectivities), the productionpower of which is organized according to mecha-
nisms of mobilization (and/or of segregation, segmentation, and so on):
Productive force is here separated from circulation. In the second sense,
labor-power is presented as the social fabric, as population and culture,
traditionsand innovation,and so forth-in short, its productiveforce is ex-
ploited within the processes of social reproduction. Production becomes
coextensive with reproduction,in the "biopolitical"context. (The term bio-
political here defines a context of social reproduction,which integrates pro-
duction and circulation,along with the political mechanism that organizes
them. This is not the place to explore this theme more fully:Allowme simply
to introducethe term.)
The non-place of labor-poweris thus negatively defined by the disso-
lutionof the separation that had existed among the forms of the realizationof
capital--the separate forms that classical economics had recognized. The
non-place can be positively defined both by the intensityof the mobilization
and by the consistency of the biopoliticalnexus of labor-power.

Construction
We have thus far posed a number of affirmations:(1) that the mea-
sure of labor-value,grounded on the independence of use-value, has now
become ineffectual;(2) that the rule of capitalist command that is imposed
on the horizon of globalization negates every possibility of measure, even
monetary measure; and (3) that the value of labor-poweris today posed in
a non-place and that this non-place is s-misurato (immeasurable and im-
mense)--by which we mean that it is outside of measure but at the same
time beyondmeasure.
To address the theme of value-affect now, we would propose delving
into one among the many themes that the introductionto this discussion
has presented-that of the nexus between production and social repro-
duction-and investigating it according to the indications that the analysis
has suggested: first, from below, and second, in the immeasurable and
immense non-place.
To do this, one must still refuse the temptation to go down a simple
path that is presented to us: the path of reintroducingthe Marxianfigures of
84 boundary2 / Summer1999

use-value and pretending to renovate them in the context of the new situa-
tion. How do the philosophers and politicianswho situate themselves in this
perspective proceed? They reconstruct a fictionaluse-value that they nos-
talgically oppose to the growing processes of globalization;in other words,
they oppose to globalizationa humanistic resistance. In reality,in their dis-
course, they bringto lightagain all the values of modernity,and use-value is
configured in terms of identity.(Even when use-value is not invokedexplic-
itly,it ends up being inserted surreptitiously.)One example should suffice:
the resistance of workers' trade unions to globalization. To establish this
resistance, they resurrect the territorializationand the identity of the use-
value of labor-power,and they insist on this, blind to the transformations
of productivity,desperate, incapable of understandingthe new power that
the immeasurable and immense non-place offers to productiveactivity.This
path thus cannot be taken.
We must then search for another one. But where can we find it? We
have said "frombelow."Up untilthis point, in fact, we have reasoned on the
basis of a Marxianrelationthat led from productionto social reproduction
and thus fromvalue to the biopoliticalreality.Inthis relation-seen widely-
could be included also affect; affect could emerge as a power to act on the
lower limitof the definitionof use-value. But this end point of the deduction
of the conditions of value has only determined importanteffects when it has
been assumed abstractly as an element of the unity of calculation. Now,
then, one must change the direction of the reasoning, avoid that deduc-
tion, and assume ratheran induction--from affect to value-as the line of
construction.
This line of construction has been adopted with good results, but the
findings are nonetheless not sufficientto demonstrate to us the power of af-
fect in the radicalityand the extension of the effects that now, in postmoder-
nity,await us. I am referringhere to those historiographicaland dialectical
schools I cited earlier-from E. P. Thompson, to the European "workerists"
of the 1970s, to the "subaltern"historiographers.Now, from this theoretical
perspective, affect is assumed from below. Moreover,it is presented, in the
first place, as a production of value. Through this production, it is repre-
sented, then, in the second place, as a product of struggles, a sign, and
an ontological deposit or precipitateof the struggles. Affectthus presents a
dynamic of historicalconstruction that is rich in its complexity.And yet it is
insufficient. Fromthis perspective, the dynamic of the struggles (and their
affective behaviors) determines, in fact, in every case, the restructuringof
capitalist command (in technical terms, politicalterms, and so on). The de-
Negri/ Valueand Affect 85

velopment of affect is closely related to a dialectic that ends up presenting

its dynamic as completely circular-as a dialectic, tout court. And there is
no good dialectic to separate here from the bad dialectic: Allthe dialectics
are bad. Allare incapable of liberatingthemselves from historicaleffectivity
and its enchantment. The dialectic, even a dialectic frombelow, is incapable
of presenting radical innovation in the historical process, the explosion of
the power to act (affect) in all its radicality.
A line of reconstructionfrom below must thus be added to the per-
ception of the non-place. Only the radical assumption of the point of view
of the non-place can liberate us from the dialectic of modernity,in all its
figures, even those that triedto develop frombelow the dialecticalconstruc-
tion of affect. What does it mean, then, to add the approach from below, the
perception of the non-place, and the ruptureof every dialectical instance in
a path that goes from affect to value?
Affectcan be considered, as a firsthypothesis, as a power to act that
is singular and at the same time universal. It is singular because it poses
action beyond every measure that power does not contain in itself, in its
own structure, and in the continuous restructuringsthat it constructs. It is
universal because the affects construct a commonalityamong subjects. In
this commonality is posed the non-place of affect, because this common-
ality is not a name but a power; it is not the commonality of a constriction
or a coercion but of a desire. Here, therefore, affect has nothing to do with
use-value, because it is not a measure but a power, and it does not runinto
limitsbut only obstacles to its expansion.
But this first definitionof affect as power to act opens toward other
definitions.We could, in fact, note, in the second place, that if the relation-
ship between singularityand commonality (or universality)is not static but
dynamic, if in this relationshipwe witness a continuous movement between
the singular that is universalized and "what is common" that is singular-
ized-well, we could then define affect as a power of transformation,a force
of self-valorization,which insists on itself in relationto what is common and
which therefore brings what is common to an expansion that does not run
into limitsbut only obstacles.
But this process is not formal:It is rathermaterial.Itis realized in the
biopoliticalcondition. In the thirdplace, then, we speak of affect as power
of appropriation,in the sense that every obstacle that is overcome by the
action of affect determines a greater force of action of the affect itself, in the
singularityand universalityof its power. The process is ontological and its
power is ontological. The conditions of action and transformationare from
86 boundary2 / Summer1999

time to time appropriatedand go toward enriching the power of action and

transformation.
In the fourth place, we could bring together the definitions of affect
as power to act in a further definition:affect as an expansive power. In
other words, it is a power of freedom, ontological opening, and omnilateral
diffusion. Really, this further definition could be seen as pleonastic. If in
fact affect constructs value from below, if it transforms it according to the
rhythmof what is common, and if it appropriates the conditions of its own
realization, then it is more than evident that in all of this there resides an
expansive power. But this definitionis not pleonastic. We can see that, on
the contrary,it adds a new concept when we insist on the positive tonality
of the non-place, on the irresistibilityof affect as power beyond measure,
and on its consequent absolutely antidialecticalcharacter. (Playingwith the
history of philosophy,which deserves nothing more than such a game, one
could add that whereas the first three definitions of affect are Spinozian,
this fourth definition recuperates a Nietzschean effect.) In any case, the
omnilateralexpansivity of affect demonstrates, one could say, the moment
that transvaluates its concept, to the point of determining the capacity to
sustain the shock or impact of postmodernity.

Back to PoliticalEconomy
Since value is outside of every measure (outside of both the "natu-
ral"measure of use-value and monetary measure), the political economy
of postmodernity looks for it in other terrains: the terrain of the conven-
tions of mercantile exchange and the terrain of communicative relations.
Conventions of the market and communicative exchanges would thus be
the places where the productivenexuses (and thus the affective flows) are
established--outside of measure, certainly, but susceptible to biopolitical
control. Postmodern politicaleconomy thus recognizes that value is formed
inthe relationof affect, that affect has fundamentalproductivequalifications,
and so forth.Consequently, politicaleconomy attempts to control it, mystify
its nature, and limitits power. Politicaleconomy must in every case bring
productiveforce under control, and thus it must organize itself to superim-
pose over the new figures of valorization(and new subjects that produce it)
new figures of exploitation.
We should recognize here that, reshaping the system of its concepts
in this way, politicaleconomy has made an enormous leap forwardand has
attempted to present itself (withoutnegating the instance of dominationthat
Negri/ ValueandAffect 87

defines it but ratherreproducingthat dominationin new languages) outside

of the classical dialectic of capital. Itaccepts the impossibilityof determining
a measure of the productivityof labor-powerthat is objective (transcendent
in the case of use-value or transcendental in the case of money). It thus
sets its theory on the terrainmarkedout by the productionof subjectivityor,
really,by productive subjectivity.The latent recognitionthat politicalecon-
omy gives to the fact that value is now an investment of desire constitutes a
real and proper conceptual revolution.(Once again playingwith the history
of philosophy,which is almost always a disciplineof mystification,one could
highlighthow today Adam Smith's Theory of MoralSentiments is given pri-
orityover The Wealthof Nations, Marx'searly writingsover Capital,Mauss's
Sociology of the Giftover MaxWeber's Economy and Society, and so forth.)
Inany case, this revolutionin politicaleconomy is revealingin that it involves
dominatingthe context of the affects that establish productiverealityas the
superstructureof social reproductionand as the articulationof the circula-
tion of the signs of communication. Even if the measurement of this new
productive reality is impossible, because affect is not measurable, none-
theless in this very productive context, so rich in productive subjectivity,
affect must be controlled. Politicaleconomy has become a deontological
science. In other words, the projectof the politicaleconomy of conventions
and communication is the control of an immeasurable productivereality.
And yet the question is more difficultthan political economy sus-
pects. We have already highlightedthe fact that immeasurabilitymeans not
only "outsidemeasure" but also, and primarily,"beyondmeasure."Probably
the central contradictionof postmodernity resides in this very difference.
Affect (and its productive effects) is at its center. Political economy says,
Okay,we will recognize that what is outside measure cannot be measured,
and we will accept that economics thus becomes a nondialectical theo-
retical discipline. But that does not take away the fact, political economy
continues, that this outside measure can be controlled.Convention(in other
words, the set of productivemodes of lifeand exchange) would thus present
to political economy the opportunityto bring back the immeasurabilityof
affect-value under control. This project of political economy is certainly a
fascinating and titanic effort!
Nevertheless, what escapes political economy (but which also
freezes politicaleconomy in its tracks) is the other aspect: value-affect be-
yond measure. This cannot be contained. The sublime has become normal.
88 boundary2 / Summer1999

To Begin the Analysis over Again

An economy of desire is the order of the day. This is true not only
in philosophical terms but also in the (disciplinary)terms of the critique of
politicaleconomy-in other words, on the basis of (not so much the model
as) the standpoint proposed by Marx: the standpoint of the oppressed
that constructs insurrectionand imagines a revolutionaryreconstruction,a
standpoint from below that richly constructs a non-place of revolutionary
reality.Value-affect opens the way to a revolutionarypolitical economy in
which insurrectionis a necessary ingredientand which poses the theme of
the reappropriationof the biopoliticalcontext by the productivesubjects.
What do we want and what can we do? Responding to these ques-
tions scientifically is not only outside measure but also beyond measure.
But it is paradoxicallyeasy to say it in what is common, in dialogue among
people, in every social struggle-when the events are charged with affec-
tivity. Such is the distance between being and affect. In fact, our social
life, not to mention our productive life, is submerged by the impotence of
action, by the frustrationof not creating, and by the castration of our normal
imagination.
Where does this come from? Froman enemy. Iffor the enemy mea-
suring value is impossible, for the producer of value the very existence of
a measurer of value is unreal. On the basis of affect, the enemy must be
destroyed. Whereas affect (production,value, subjectivity)is indestructible.