Communism is in no case a product of capitalist development, it is its radical inversion. It is the demystification which becomes the reversal of capitalist development. Communism is neither a teleology of the capitalist system nor its catastrophe. It is a new subject which takes form. which transforms reality and destroys capital. Communism is thus a concept that we can only formulate within the form of the transition. The movement of inversion is powerful, so much so that the form of the transition is not simply antithetical, but rather constitutive of a new subject, and of its potential for total transformation. To mark this transformation in the most rigorous way possible, Marx insists on the abolition of work. Work which is liberated is liberation from work. The creativity of communist work has no relation with the capitalist organization of labor. Living labor - by liberating itself, by reconquering its own use value, against exchange valueopens a universe of needs of which work can become a part only eventually. And in this case, it is a question ofwork as essential, collective, nonmystified, communist work: instead of work as capitalist construction. The reversal is total, it allows no kind of homology whatsoever. It's a new subject. Rich and joyous. Marx said it: there is no need to exaggerate it. Marx said it ten times, a hundred times.
Antonio Negri
1933 - 2023