The constitution of the multitude in Negri’s philosophy

from the conceptual dualisms to a marxist biopolitics

Abstract

In our paper we are concerned with the constitution of the concept of multitude and its determination as a concept of social class through its formal and philosophical aspects and through its unique ontological, political and economic aspects in contemporary times. Thus, we began with some of the most important conceptual dimensions of the multitude: their dualisms. They are: between power and Power (inherited from Spinoza); between virtue and fortune (Machiavelli's); between living and dead labor (Marx’s); between constituent power and constituted power (torn from the tradition of legal thought). We then develop some aspects essential to the understanding of the multitude as a concept of an effective social class in the contemporary composition of capitalism, such as immaterial labor and real subsumption and biopolitics or bioproduction, which make all life and society the central elements of capital’s valorization. Thus we come across another dualism, that between biopolitics and biopower, which marks the multitude in its most important sense, since this concept is inseparable from the historical analyzes of the transformation of capitalism.

Keywords: Multitude. Negri. Biopolitics. Immaterial labor. Living labor