A Common Word

Abstract

This response aims to discuss Michael Hardt's and Gigi Roggero's conception of the “common” vis-à-vis the modern notion of “public,” and to comment on the ideological, linguistic, and affective social implications of their political-economic explication.

Keywords:

• Communism
• Public
• Property
• Common
• Pierre-Joseph Proudhon

Notes

¹Among these are Casarino and Negri (2008), Dyer-Witheford (2006), and Hardt and Negri (2009).

²Proudhon's distinction between “possession” (as the direct product of labor, or a result of social exchange, which takes place in direct relation to labor process) and “property” (as directly related with surplus accumulation) is worth reexamining in the context of this debate.

³In this context it is important to be reminded that Marx's categorical distinction between productive and unproductive labor, which I mentioned above, also was adopted from Adam Smith.

⁴Christian Marazzi's Capital and Language comes to mind in this context. Marazzi points to the fact that the post-Fordist financialization of production also clearly posits the very direct dominance of performative linguistic and affective process over rent (2008).