What do you think?
Rate this book
Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse
A key figure in the Italian "Autonomia" Movement reads Marx's Gr¼ndrisse, developing the critical and controversial theoretical apparatus that informs the "zero-work" strategy and other elements so crucial to this new and "heretical" tendency in Marxist theory. A challenge to both capitalist and socialist apologists for waged slavery.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1979
17 people are currently reading
892 people want to read
About the author
Antonio Negri
191Ìýbooks287ÌýfollowersAntonio Negri was an Italian political philosopher known as one of the most prominent theorists of autonomism, as well as for his co-authorship of Empire with Michael Hardt and his work on the philosopher Baruch Spinoza. Born in Padua, Italy, Negri became a professor of political philosophy at the University of Padua, where he taught state and constitutional theory. Negri founded the Potere Operaio (Worker Power) group in 1969 and was a leading member of Autonomia Operaia, and published hugely influential books urging "revolutionary consciousness."
Negri was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing urban guerrilla organization Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse or BR), which was involved in the May 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. On 7 April 1979, he Negri was arrested and charged with a long list of crimes including the Moro murder. Most charges were dropped quickly, but in 1984 he was still sentenced (in absentia) to 30 years in prison. He was given an additional four years on the charge of being "morally responsible" for the violence of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The question of Negri's complicity with left-wing extremism is a controversial subject. He was indicted on a number of charges, including "association and insurrection against the state" (a charge which was later dropped), and sentenced for involvement in two murders.
Negri fled to France where, protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, he taught at the Paris VIII (Vincennes) and the Collège international de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was behind bars. He hence lived in Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel. He was the father of film director Anna Negri.
Like Deleuze, Negri's preoccupation with Spinoza is well known in contemporary philosophy. Along with Althusser and Deleuze, he has been one of the central figures of a French-inspired neo-Spinozism in continental philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after a well-known rediscovery of Spinoza by German thinkers (especially the German Romantics and Idealists) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Negri was accused in the late 1970s of various charges including being the mastermind of the left-wing urban guerrilla organization Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse or BR), which was involved in the May 1978 kidnapping and murder of former Italian prime minister Aldo Moro. On 7 April 1979, he Negri was arrested and charged with a long list of crimes including the Moro murder. Most charges were dropped quickly, but in 1984 he was still sentenced (in absentia) to 30 years in prison. He was given an additional four years on the charge of being "morally responsible" for the violence of political activists in the 1960s and 1970s. The question of Negri's complicity with left-wing extremism is a controversial subject. He was indicted on a number of charges, including "association and insurrection against the state" (a charge which was later dropped), and sentenced for involvement in two murders.
Negri fled to France where, protected by the Mitterrand doctrine, he taught at the Paris VIII (Vincennes) and the Collège international de philosophie, along with Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze. In 1997, after a plea-bargain that reduced his prison time from 30 to 13 years, he returned to Italy to serve the end of his sentence. Many of his most influential books were published while he was behind bars. He hence lived in Venice and Paris with his partner, the French philosopher Judith Revel. He was the father of film director Anna Negri.
Like Deleuze, Negri's preoccupation with Spinoza is well known in contemporary philosophy. Along with Althusser and Deleuze, he has been one of the central figures of a French-inspired neo-Spinozism in continental philosophy of the late 20th and early 21st centuries, that was the second remarkable Spinoza revival in history, after a well-known rediscovery of Spinoza by German thinkers (especially the German Romantics and Idealists) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
October 30, 2012
A very detailed explication on Marx's Grundrisse. It is too focused on class at times, and it is not the most exciting read, but it does highlight ideas in Marx's notes from a perspective I would not likely consider.
May 11, 2013
This is one of the best books concerning Workerism. It gets back to the source of its origins in Marx's Grundrisse. To understand the *Empire* trilogy, a detour through Negri's early work is very helpful.
November 4, 2013
10/15/13. Am re reading this now, since I have come to understand Negri much better then when I read this the first time.
In the middle of the night last week, I had an epiphany, a EUREKA moment...and it all became clear.
So much to learn from this book and the third time really was the charm....
In the middle of the night last week, I had an epiphany, a EUREKA moment...and it all became clear.
So much to learn from this book and the third time really was the charm....
October 6, 2007
Fantastic! Definitely a laudable libertarian-Marxist vision, even if Negri's language here was often hard to grasp.
November 12, 2022
Oh boy here we go.
To begin, I really don't get what is so unique and special about Negri’s take on marxist theory (specially now that I've read him).
While his political analysis is really creative and enriching sometimes, his understanding of basic marxist concepts, such as money, value, class struggle (or class hate as he calls it), work and mode of production are plain wrong.
I'm even tempted to say that he only read the first chapter of Capital because of some rookie mistakes he proudly presents as "achievements".
To give you some concrete examples, on page 23 he says that value equals money, and while this is true in strictly monetary terms, value, as we see in Das Kapital, is much more complex than that: it is crystallized labour, particularly labour power, and its time-lapse/duration spent to produce a determined commodity (considering that value only realizes itself until the commodity is sold, that is, until the surplus is secured on the form of profit). Reducing value exlcusively to the form of money is negating the totality of the different capitalist phenomena that occur on the distinct economic spheres (distribution, circulation, consuming, etc.)
Another example: Negri considers money as the essence and substance of capital (p. 35 � 36). This statement is plain wrong and ahistorical: money is not exclusive to the capitalist mode of production. If we want to talk about the substance/essence of capitalism, then we have to see the law of value, the production of surplus value through exploitation, and it’s concrete manifestation on the capitalist societies, as waged labour, as the true essence of capital (considering all the political and social phenomena it entails, such as social classes, primitive accumulation, division of labour, etc.)
Not convinced? Negri also thinks value equals exploitation (p. 83), which is a complete fallacy. Value has existed, and will exist, in all kinds of societies because, as I’ve already said, the value of something is the time spent to produce something (independently of exploitation or not). Working is what makes things valuable. To put it simply, to think value is exploitation is to think work didn’t have value on the Soviet Union (and will not have value in future socialist-communist societies), when clearly they had a value, and will have a value. What Negri failed to differentiate was the alienation of labour, the alienation of the value of the work of the proletarian.
The cherry on the cake is in the last pages where Negri says that in communism we will not work (p. 169) and that it will be the ends of dialectics (p. 190).
First, of course we are going to work: to say such a thing is inconceivable to anyone that has read Marx (or that is part of the working class).
Second, to think dialectics is going to end is basically saying that you didn't understand dialectics. Negri completely misunderstood how dialectics works. Whether we like it or not, dialectics will have their way and new contradictions will emerge (even on communism). It is the nature of things, a law that Negri, as he clearly shows, barely understood.
Sorry for the essay, but it really baffles me how some people say Negri is an eminence when he clearly isn't.
To begin, I really don't get what is so unique and special about Negri’s take on marxist theory (specially now that I've read him).
While his political analysis is really creative and enriching sometimes, his understanding of basic marxist concepts, such as money, value, class struggle (or class hate as he calls it), work and mode of production are plain wrong.
I'm even tempted to say that he only read the first chapter of Capital because of some rookie mistakes he proudly presents as "achievements".
To give you some concrete examples, on page 23 he says that value equals money, and while this is true in strictly monetary terms, value, as we see in Das Kapital, is much more complex than that: it is crystallized labour, particularly labour power, and its time-lapse/duration spent to produce a determined commodity (considering that value only realizes itself until the commodity is sold, that is, until the surplus is secured on the form of profit). Reducing value exlcusively to the form of money is negating the totality of the different capitalist phenomena that occur on the distinct economic spheres (distribution, circulation, consuming, etc.)
Another example: Negri considers money as the essence and substance of capital (p. 35 � 36). This statement is plain wrong and ahistorical: money is not exclusive to the capitalist mode of production. If we want to talk about the substance/essence of capitalism, then we have to see the law of value, the production of surplus value through exploitation, and it’s concrete manifestation on the capitalist societies, as waged labour, as the true essence of capital (considering all the political and social phenomena it entails, such as social classes, primitive accumulation, division of labour, etc.)
Not convinced? Negri also thinks value equals exploitation (p. 83), which is a complete fallacy. Value has existed, and will exist, in all kinds of societies because, as I’ve already said, the value of something is the time spent to produce something (independently of exploitation or not). Working is what makes things valuable. To put it simply, to think value is exploitation is to think work didn’t have value on the Soviet Union (and will not have value in future socialist-communist societies), when clearly they had a value, and will have a value. What Negri failed to differentiate was the alienation of labour, the alienation of the value of the work of the proletarian.
The cherry on the cake is in the last pages where Negri says that in communism we will not work (p. 169) and that it will be the ends of dialectics (p. 190).
First, of course we are going to work: to say such a thing is inconceivable to anyone that has read Marx (or that is part of the working class).
Second, to think dialectics is going to end is basically saying that you didn't understand dialectics. Negri completely misunderstood how dialectics works. Whether we like it or not, dialectics will have their way and new contradictions will emerge (even on communism). It is the nature of things, a law that Negri, as he clearly shows, barely understood.
Sorry for the essay, but it really baffles me how some people say Negri is an eminence when he clearly isn't.
April 15, 2023
Negri geht davon aus, dass die Veränderung der Arbeitswelt durch die Strukturveränderung des Kapitalismus in den 70er und 80er Jahren in einer neuen neuen proletarischen Subjektivität führen. Er versucht zu vermitteln, dass infolge der Aufhebung des Wertgesetzes durch die kapitalistische Entwicklung (siehe Maschinenfragment) die Schaffung des neuen, des sozialistischen Menschen schon abgeschlossen sei. Jeder Versuch den Kampf zu institutionalisieren läuft dem Wesen des neuen Subjekts zuwider, jeder sozialistische Staat endet in der Wiedereinführung des Wertgesetzes und schickt sich an, den Kapitalismus zu verwalten anstatt ihn zu zerschlagen. Über 40 Jahre nach erscheinen des Buches sind die Thesen etwas seltsam anmutend, aber nicht weniger interessant. Eine jede Grundrisse-Lektüre kann von Negri nur profitieren. Hegel schreibt in seinen Vorworten zur Enzyklopädie, dass den Menschen derjenige am klügsten erscheint, der ihnen mitteilt was sie bereits wissen - Negri verdient eingehende Beschäftigung und auch anerkennung, weil er uns eben nicht erneut erzählt was wir eh schon wissen. Es gibt wenig Theoretiker, die das Projekt "die Welt verändern" so eindrücklich in den Mittelpunkt zu stellen gewusst haben.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
Read
September 28, 2020Read for class
November 7, 2022
Es enormemente denso y para muy expertos en la obra de Marx. Aún asÃ, es el intento de rastrear en los Gundrisse la importancia del antagonismo, de la subjetividad revolucionaria.
Shelved as 'to-keep-reference'
October 18, 2016Sobre el volumen faltante sobre el salario ver, Antonio Negri, Marx Beyond Marx, trad. Harry Cleaver, Michael Ryan y Mauricio Viano (New York: Autonomedia, 1991), PP. 127-150.
±Êá²µ.177
±Êá²µ.177
April 27, 2013
Knepigt språk. Omständliga förklaringar på saker som går att beskriva enklare.
Read
May 11, 2019A strange but enjoyable read.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
Can't find what you're looking for?
Get help and learn more about the design.