Antonio Negri and the Encounter with the Times

On December 15, 2023, the Italian Marxist theorist and thinker Antonio Negri completed the final leg of his life’s journey, passing away after leaving behind a wealth of intellectual treasures for our era. Although he remains, for the most part, a thinker of the twentieth century, his thought and spirit now wander in the digital sky of today’s society, helping humanity transcend the limitless digital connections and algorithmic control created by the spectral intelligence of the digital, in search of hope for humanity’s future.

2023年12月15日,意大利马克思主义理论家和思想家安东尼奥·奈格里走完了他人生旅程的最后一程,在为我们这个时代留下了无数思想财富之后,仙逝而去。尽管他在绝大多数时候仍然是一位二十世纪的思想家,但他的思想和灵魂正在今天的数字社会的天空中徘徊,帮助人类超越数字化的幽灵智能创造的无限制的数字链接和算法控制,来寻找人类未来的希望。

Workerism and General Intellect

工人主义与一般智能

In concrete productive labor, workers form an invisible non-material production. It is not quantifiable wages, but an integration of emotions, language, and behavior among one another. In this sense, workers are already actually subsumed under general intellect.

工人们在具体的生产劳动中会形成一种看不见的非物质生产,它不是可以量化的薪酬,而是一种彼此间的情感、语言和行为上的一体化。在这个意义上,工人已经在实际上从属于一般智力。

Italian workerism was born in the 1960s, when a group of Italian left-wing and Marxist intellectuals, especially Raniero Panzieri, a philosophy professor at the University of Messina in Sicily, sought new practical arenas for left-wing political struggle. Around Panzieri, a group of young students and intellectuals with Marxist aspirations quickly gathered, including the young Antonio Negri. These intellectuals and young students issued a strong call: they argued that the struggle against capitalism must mobilize the working class on the most advanced front, fighting against capitalists and the authorities inside the factory. This was the embryo of workerism. The achievement of these Marxist intellectuals’ activities was the founding of a red journal, which they named *Quaderni Rossi* (Red Notebooks). After a long preparatory phase, the first issue of *Quaderni Rossi* was finally published in September 1961. They sought to use a new Marxist theory to name the intellectual impact brought by *Quaderni Rossi*. The slogan they raised was “carrying out working-class struggle inside the capitalist factory.” Thus, they called this new thought “workerism” (Operaismo).

意大利工人主义诞生于二十世纪六十年代,当时一批意大利左翼和马克思主义知识分子,尤其是西西里岛的墨西拿大学的哲学教授拉涅罗·潘齐耶里(Raniero Panzieri)试图寻找左翼政治斗争的新的实践场所,在潘齐耶里周围,很迅速地聚集了一批有着马克思主义志向的年轻学生和知识分子,其中就包括了年轻的安东尼奥·奈格里。这些知识分子和青年学生,发出了强烈的号召,他们主张同资本主义的斗争必须在最前沿的阵地动员工人阶级,在工厂里同资本家和当局进行斗争,这就是工人主义的雏形。而这批马克思主义知识分子参加活动的成就就是主办了一本红色杂志,他们为之起名为《红色手册》(Quaderni Rossi),经过漫长的筹备阶段,《红色手册》第一期终于在1961年9月出版了,而他们试图用一种新的马克思主义理论来称呼《红色手册》所带来的思想冲击,他们提出的口号是“在资本主义工厂内部进行工人阶级斗争”,因此,他们将这种新思想称为“工人主义”(Operaismo)。

Initially, the soul of workerism was undoubtedly Panzieri. In his special contribution to *Quaderni Rossi*, “The Capitalist Application of Machinery,” he argued that with the development of capitalist labor technology, large-scale machine industrial production had already made workers subsumed under machine movement. In this article, Panzieri consciously used two concepts from Marx’s *Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858*: formal subsumption and real subsumption (also translated as formal incorporation and real incorporation). In his view, in Italian industrial production at the time, the relationship between workers and machines had shifted from formal subsumption to real subsumption. That is, the combination of workers’ labor and machine operation formed another kind of tacit relationship, which to a certain extent was independent of capitalist control. Therefore, once workers mastered the machine (not in terms of ownership, but in terms of use and operation), they possessed a force to counterbalance the capitalists. This force became the concept that Negri later heavily relied on: general intellect.

最初,工人主义的灵魂人物无疑是潘齐耶里,在他为《红色手册》撰写的专稿《机器的资本主义应用》中,他提出了随着资本主义工人技术的发展,大机器工业生产实际上已经让工人从属于机器运动。在这篇文章中,潘齐耶里有意识地使用马克思在《1857—1858年经济学手稿》中的两个概念,即形式从属和实际从属(也有人翻译为形式吸纳和真实吸纳),在他看来,在当时的意大利的工业生产中,工人与机器的关系已经从形式从属变成了实际从属,也就是说工人的劳动组合与机器运作形成另一种默契的关系,这种关系在一定程度上独立于资本家的控制。因此,一旦掌握了机器(不是从所有权上掌握,而是从使用和操作上掌握)就拥有了与资本家抗衡的力量,而这种力量就成为了后来奈格里十分倚重的概念——一般智力。

It can be said that Panzieri’s influence on the young Negri was enormous. Although Panzieri did not leave us many writings, his thought, especially his leadership role in founding *Quaderni Rossi*, thoroughly captivated this group of intellectuals, including Negri, Tronti, and Alquati. In fact, shortly after the founding of *Quaderni Rossi*, in 1964, Professor Panzieri passed away, and the task of theoretical creation was quickly passed to the new generation of intellectuals like Negri. Negri and other workerist intellectuals often gathered to read Marx’s manuscripts, especially the section “Fixed Capital and the Development of the Social Productive Forces” from the *Economic Manuscripts of 1857–1858*, which they called the “Fragment on Machines.” In reading this part, Negri drew a wealth of concepts and ideas from Marx’s text. In particular, the concepts he frequently used in works such as *Empire*, *Multitude*, and *Commonwealth* can basically be traced back to his early reading of the “Fragment on Machines.” For example, he and Panzieri both believed that the tacit collaborative relationship in language, emotion, and thought formed by workers in the factory, together with material machine production, constitutes another kind of non-material production. These non-material productions are the part invisible to capitalists, and together with the material products of machine production visible to capitalists, they jointly constitute capitalist production. These invisible forces constitute the unique power of the working class: this is “general intellect.” It is precisely “general intellect” that gives a very positive meaning to the formal subsumption and real subsumption arising from the creation of surplus value as discussed by Marx. That is, workers are not only highly dependent on the capitalist relations of production in terms of employment relations and wage labor, but also form a kind of real subsumption. In other words, what the capitalists fail to see is that in concrete productive labor, workers form an invisible non-material production. What this non-material production produces is not quantifiable wages, but an integration of emotions, language, and behavior among one another. Every worker is part of the general intellect produced by this non-material production. In this sense, workers are already actually subsumed under general intellect, not merely formally subsumed under the capitalist employment-labor relationship.

可以说,潘齐耶里对青年时代的奈格里的影响力是巨大的,尽管潘齐耶里没有为我们留下太多文献,但他的思想,尤其是他在《红色手册》创办中的领导作用,彻底地征服了奈格里、特隆蒂、阿尔夸蒂这一批知识分子。实际上,在《红色手册》创办不久,1964年,潘齐耶里教授就撒手人寰,而理论创造的任务迅速被传递到奈格里这一批新生代知识分子手中。奈格里和其他工人主义知识分子经常会聚在一起阅读马克思的手稿,尤其是《1857—1858年经济学手稿》的“固定资本和社会生产力的发展”,他们称之为“机器论片段”。在对这个部分阅读中,奈格里从马克思的文字里汲取了大量的概念的思想,尤其他在《帝国》《诸众》《大同世界》等著作中经常使用的概念,基本上都可以追溯到他早期对“机器论片段”的阅读。例如,他和潘齐耶里都认为,工人在工厂中形成的语言、情感、思想上默契的协作关系,实际上与物质性的机器生产一样,形成另一种非物质的生产,这些非物质生产是资本家看不到的部分,而与资本家能够看到的机器生产出来的物质产品,共同构成资本主义的生产,而这些看不到的力量构成了工人阶级独有的力量,这就是“一般智力”。而正是“一般智力”让马克思所谈的创造剩余价值中产生的形式从属和实际从属也产生了十分正面的含义,即工人不仅仅在雇佣关系和薪酬劳动上高度依附于资本家的生产关系,还会形成一种实际上的从属,也就是说,资本家没有看到的是,工人们在具体的生产劳动中会形成一种看不见的非物质生产,这种非物质生产出来的不是可以量化的薪酬,而是一种彼此间的情感、语言和行为上的一体化。每一个工人都是这个非物质生产出来的一般智力的一部分,在这个意义上,工人已经在实际上从属于一般智力,而不是仅仅在形式上从属于资本家的雇佣劳动关系。

In other words, Negri dematerialized Panzieri’s claim that “workers are really subsumed under machine production.” What we see is not only the bodies of workers moving back and forth in machine production, but also that these workers’ bodies are already actually subsumed under a larger association. This association is a force not controlled by capitalists, and it is also a capital that all workers can use to resist capitalist control. Once united, they can use exit as a way to resist capitalist relations. This is also the strategy of struggle that Negri repeatedly discusses. The logical basis for this strategy’s feasibility originates from the general intellect and non-material labor of the workerist movement.

换言之,奈格里将潘齐耶里谈到的“工人实际从属于机器生产”非物质化了,我们看到的不仅仅是在机器生产中来来回回逡巡的工人身体,还需要看到这些工人的身体已经实际上从属于一个更大的联合体,这个联合体非资本家所掌控的力量,也是所有工人可以用来抵抗资本家控制的资本,他们一经联合,便可以用出走的方式来抵抗资本主义关系,这也是奈格里反复谈到的斗争策略。而这个策略能够成立的逻辑基础滥觞于工人主义运动的一般智力和非物质劳动。

Empire and the Network Era

帝国与网络时代

For Negri and Hardt, the multitude is not a heap of loose sand or the “rabble” in Le Bon’s sense. The reason the multitude possesses power is precisely that they are a whole linked together through networks and platforms, a multitude united by technology.

在奈格里和哈特那里,诸众不是一盘散沙或勒庞笔下的“乌合之众”,诸众之所以具有力量,恰恰在于他们是通过网络和平台链接起来的整体,是被技术团结起来的诸众。

Clearly, by the 1990s, the workerist movement had gradually declined. There are many reasons for its decline, including the end of the Cold War and the rise of neoliberal ideology, which made it impossible to organize workers’ movements in factories. Another reason is that Western developed capitalist countries gradually shifted labor-intensive industries from Western countries to Third World countries. The phenomena of capitalists’ ruthless exploitation and oppression of the working class, as described in classical Marxist works, had largely disappeared in major Western countries. Meanwhile, the bloody factories in the vast regions of Asia, Africa, and Latin America, and the miserable scenes of African miners working under conditions nearly as slave-like as in ancient societies, could no longer be directly presented to those intellectuals living in comfortable and affluent developed countries. Their critique of capitalism was more a superficial critique from the perspectives of consumption and spectacle, space and culture.

显然,在二十世纪九十年代,工人主义运动逐渐式微。其式微的原因有很多,其中包括了冷战结束和新自由主义意识形态的兴起,在工厂里无法组织起工人开展运动。西方发达资本主义国家将劳动力密集型产业逐步从西方国家转移到第三世界国家也是一个原因,那些曾经在马克思主义经典著作中描述的资本家对工人阶级惨无人道的剥削与压榨的现象,基本上在主要的西方国家里绝迹,而那些在广大亚非拉国家的血汗工厂,以及近乎古代社会奴隶一般劳动条件的非洲矿工的悲惨景象,已经无法直接呈现给那些生活在惬意而富足的发达国家里的知识分子,他们对资本主义的批判更多是从消费和景观、从空间和文化对资本主义进行一场隔靴搔痒般的批判。

But in the view of Negri and others, an important reason for the decline of the working class is that the capitalist mode of production had already undergone a fundamental change in the 1980s and 1990s. The Fordist production that had previously existed in factories gradually gave way to a more flexible post-Fordist production. In this way, capitalist production no longer required all workers to be gathered in a common space; instead, it used new technologies such as communication networks to extend the tentacles of production into every field of society. Industrial workers have gradually been replaced by white-collar employees in towering office buildings. Although these employees are still subordinated to the relations of production of capitalist society, their specific conditions of production and life have been greatly improved. Moreover, the definition of what it means for them to go to work also needs to be revised. For example, receiving a phone call from the boss outside of the eight-hour workday, requiring the employee to quickly revise a report or PPT on the computer at home—this is something a white-collar employee who needs to support a family cannot refuse. Although his body is not in the office, the equipment at home, even the computer and mobile phone carried on vacation, can all become tools of production under the conditions of contemporary communication technology. Once the sphere of production expands from the factory to the sphere of urban life, the earlier strategy of organizing the workers’ movement solely within the factory space will inevitably be gradually eliminated. Intellectuals of the former workerist or left-wing movement, such as Negri, Tronti, Bobbio, and Cacciari, had to change their strategy, which forced them to abandon the factory-centered workerist current of thought.

但在奈格里等人看来,工人阶级之所以式微,一个重要的原因在于在二十世纪八九十年代资本主义的生产方式已经发生了根本性改变,原先在工厂中的福特制生产已经逐渐让位于更富有弹性的后福特制生产,这样,资本主义的生产不再要求将所有的工人聚集在一个共同空间里,而是利用通讯网络等新技术,将生产的触角延伸到社会的各个领域。产业工人已经逐渐被在高耸入云的写字楼的白领雇员所取代,这些雇员虽然仍隶从于资本主义社会的生产关系,但其具体的生产和生活条件已经得到了极大的改善。而且,对于他们上班的定义也需要进行修正,例如,在八小时工作之外接到老板的电话,要求员工尽快在家里的电脑上来修改报表或PPT,这对于需要养活家庭的白领员工是无法拒绝的,尽管他的身体并不在办公室里,但家庭的设备,甚至在度假地随身携带的电脑和手机,都可以成为当代通讯技术条件下的生产工具。一旦生产领域从工厂扩展到城市生活的领域,那么早期仅仅在工厂空间中组织工人运动的策略肯定会逐渐被淘汰,诸如奈格里、特隆蒂、博比奥、卡西亚里这样的曾经的工人主义或左翼运动的知识分子必须改变策略,这让他们不得不放弃以工厂为主的工人主义思潮。

However, regarding how to shape a new Marxist or left-wing theory of resistance, Negri had serious disagreements with his former comrades, such as Tronti and Cacciari. For Tronti and others, they accepted the proposals of Habermas and others regarding the public sphere and the theory of communicative action, advocating for occupying public space through dialogue and consultation. But the price of doing so was that the concepts and theories once cherished by this group of Italian Marxist intellectuals would essentially be abandoned. Negri, Virno, and Lazzarato were clearly unwilling to embrace the neoliberalized left-wing political philosophy like Tronti and others. They continued concepts originating from Marx—such as general intellect, immaterial production, and real subsumption—within the space of capitalism, but the form certainly needed to change. This is perhaps the reason Negri titled one of his collections of essays from that period *From the Factory to the Metropolis*! Indeed, the real subsumption and general intellect that earlier workerism discussed were the immaterial general intellect formed within the factory due to large-scale industrial mechanized production. But under post-Fordist relations of production, workers have become office white-collar workers, who, through mobile phones, laptops, and network devices, generate themselves as a networked whole. In this sense, the earlier general intellect, which was limited to the factory centered on machinery, has now, through the connection of the internet, extended to every corner of the capitalist metropolis, constituting all white-collar workers and personnel using these devices into a network whole.

不过,对于如何塑造新的马克思主义或左翼抵抗理论,奈格里与他曾经的同志,如特隆蒂和卡西亚里等人产生了严重的分歧。对于特隆蒂而言,他们接受了哈贝马斯等人提出的公共领域和交往行动理论的提议,主张进行通过对话和协商的方式,让今天左翼知识分子可以占领公共空间,但这样做的代价是,曾经被这一批意大利马克思主义知识分子所珍视的概念和理论基本上会付诸东流。奈格里、维尔诺、拉扎拉托显然不愿意和特隆蒂等人一样去拥抱新自由主义化的左翼政治哲学,他们将肇始于马克思的一般智力、非物质生产、实际从属等概念在资本主义的空间中延续下去,但是,在形式上肯定需要有所变化。这或许是奈格里将自己的那一时期的一本文集起名为《从工厂到大都市》的原因吧!的确,原先工人主义所谈到的实际从属和一般智力都是在工厂里由于大工业机器化生产所形成的非物质的一般智力,但在后福特制生产关系下,工人已经变成了办公室白领,他们通过手机、笔记本电脑以及网络设备生成为一个联网的整体。在这个意义上,原先的一般智力只局限在以机器为中心的工厂里,现在已经通过互联网的链接,延伸到资本主义大都市的各个角落,将所有使用这些设备的白领和人员构成为一个网络整体。

In *Empire*, Negri and Hardt saw this change and thus pointed out very clearly: “In the production of surplus value, the labor force composed of workers engaged in large-scale production in factories originally played a central role. Today, this role is increasingly being replaced by intelligent and paperless labor in the field of communication and transmission.” [5]5 Michael Hardt and Antonio Negri, *Empire* (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 280. Today’s general intellect, or today’s real subsumption under immaterial labor production, is no longer the collaborative relationship of language, emotion, and action formed by workers beside the machines, but an invisible network that permeates the entire globe, formed entirely through the internet and communication applications. During this period, the release of the Wachowskis’ *The Matrix* was simply the best interpretation of Negri’s theory of “Empire.” Although each of us still possesses an independent body, our gaze has been attracted by the blue light of mobile phone or computer screens, and our souls have been linked into a huge whole by the platforms of Empire within the infinitely expanding data network. Today’s capitalist production is not purely the production of material products; it also contains a greater potential for production. Whether it is our likes and comments on Twitter or Facebook, or our joint efforts to kill enemies in games on the Steam platform, all constitute a specific relation of production and produce a link and relationship of immaterial labor, which in turn ultimately dominates each of us, becoming a power of surveillance. In their later book *Commonwealth*, Negri and Hardt absorbed the views of Foucault and Deleuze, calling this power, established through communication, transmission, and digital network technology and dominating all users, “biopower.” The emergence of biopower reflects the transition of capitalism from the stage of imperialism to the stage of Empire. That is to say, the matrix possessing biopower, created by network technology, not only dominates everyone but also transcends the surveillance of nation-states. Only a very few truly supranational powers can harness this force.

在《帝国》中,奈格里和哈特看到了这一变化,所以才十分明确地指出:“在剩余价值生产中,有在工厂中从事大规模生产的工人组成劳动力原先起到了核心作用,而今天,这种作用越来越被通信传播领域的智能化和非无纸化的劳动力所取代。”今天的一般智力,或者说今天的非物质劳动生产的实际从属,不再是工人在机器旁形成的语言、情感和行动上的协作关系,而是完全通过互联网和传播应用形成的一张弥漫全球的看不见的网络。在这个时期,沃卓斯基兄弟拍摄的《黑客帝国》的上映简直就是对奈格里的“帝国”理论的最佳阐释,尽管我们每个人仍然拥有着独立的身体,但我们的目光已经被手机或电脑屏幕中的蓝光所吸引,我们的灵魂已经在无限扩张的数据网络中被帝国的平台链接成为一个巨大的整体。今天的资本主义生产不纯粹是制造物质产品的生产,也蕴含着更大的生产潜能,无论是我们在Twitter或Facebook上的点赞和评论,还是我们一起在Steam平台的游戏里勠力杀敌,都构成了一种特定的生产关系,并生产出一种非物质劳动的链接和关系,最终反过来凌驾在我们每一个人之上,成为一种监控的权力。奈格里和哈特在后来的《大同世界》一书中,吸收了福柯和德勒兹的观点,将这种通过通信传播和数字网络技术建立起来的凌驾于所有用户至上的权力,称之为“生命权力”,而生命权力的出现体现了资本主义从帝国主义阶段向帝国阶段的过渡,也就是说,网络技术缔造出来的拥有生命权力的矩阵不仅凌驾在所有人之上,也超越了民族国家的监控,只有极少数真正的超国家的权力才能驾驭这种力量。

Although the biopower of capitalist Empire is unprecedentedly powerful under the support of communication technology and network technology, this does not mean that Negri and Hardt theoretically move towards a kind of pessimism and anti-progressivism. Negri’s early experience in the Fiat automobile factory in Italy taught him that highly organized machinery, while strengthening the control and surveillance of capitalists, also generates a general intellect invisible to the capitalists. Similarly, in *Empire* and many subsequent works, Negri repeatedly reiterates that while communication, transmission, and digital networks generate a new Empire, they also continuously shape its opposite—the multitude connected by the internet and various platforms, which he calls the multitude (multi-tudo). In the view of Negri and Hardt, the multitude is not a heap of sand or the “rabble” in Le Bon’s work. The reason the multitude possesses power is precisely that they are a whole connected through networks and platforms, no longer fighters fighting alone, but a multitude united by technology. Although many left-wing theorists (such as Žižek) believe Negri’s concept of the “multitude” is overly optimistic, Negri’s optimism regarding the “multitude” is precisely a new spark ignited in the pessimistic atmosphere of the 1980s and 1990s, when neoliberal ideology was rising. With the further development of the internet and digital technology, it will incorporate more proletarians and the precariat into a whole. Just as Agamben argues that when capitalism produces its Leviathan, it necessarily simultaneously generates Leviathan’s opponent, Behemoth. These two beasts from the *Book of Job* correspond precisely to the confrontation between “Empire” and “multitude” in Negri’s *Empire*. This new binary opposition also rekindles a beacon for Western Marxism, which is in a state of pessimism and desolation.

尽管在通信技术和网络技术的加持下,资本主义帝国的生命权力空前强大,但这并不意味着奈格里和哈特在理论上走向一种悲观主义和反进步主义。奈格里早期在意大利菲亚特汽车工厂中的经验告诉他,高度组织化的机器在加强资本家控制和监控的同时,也生成资本家看不见的一般智力。同样,在《帝国》以及之后的许多著作中,奈格里多次重申,在通信传播和数字网络生成新的帝国的同时,也不断在塑造其对立面,即那些被互联网和各大平台连接起来的广大群众,他们称之为诸众(multi-tudo)。在奈格里和哈特那里,诸众不是一盘散沙或勒庞笔下的“乌合之众”,诸众之所以具有力量,恰恰在于他们是通过网络和平台链接起来的整体,不再是孤军奋战的斗士,而是被技术团结起来的诸众。尽管很多左翼理论家(如齐泽克)认为奈格里的“诸众”观念过于乐观,但奈格里对“诸众”的乐观恰恰是在新自由主义意识形态崛起的二十世纪八九十年代的悲观氛围中点燃的一簇新的火苗,随着互联网和数字技术的进一步发展,它会将更多的无产者和流众纳入到一个整体中来,正如阿甘本提出资本主义在生产其利维坦(leviathan)的时候,必然同时生成了利维坦的对手比希莫特(Behemoth),这两只《约伯记》中的怪兽正好对应了奈格里的《帝国》中“帝国”与“诸众”对抗,而这个新的二元对抗,也为处于悲观凄凉之中的西方马克思主义重新点燃了一盏明灯。

Negri in the Age of Intelligence

智能时代的奈格里

If we are to reinvent Negri in the age of intelligence, we must begin by enabling the multitude to regain control of general data.

倘若我们在智能时代重新发明奈格里,就需要从让诸众重新掌握一般数据开始。

The man has passed away; the living continue as before. Mourning Negri’s thought cannot become a burial of his thought. As Marx’s famous saying in *A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right: Introduction* goes: “The weapon of criticism cannot, of course, replace criticism by weapons, material force must be overthrown by material force; but theory also becomes a material force once it has gripped the masses.” This saying is equally applicable to Negri and Hardt’s theory of Empire and multitude. In today’s highly intelligent and digitalized era, we still need to read Negri, to read his vast body of literature. The purpose is not to memorize certain of his concepts or remember certain of his phrases, but to recreate Negri in the new era, to let his theory once again radiate vigorous vitality.

斯人已逝,生者如斯。对奈格里的思想悼念,不能变成对其思想的埋葬。正如马克思在《黑格尔法哲学导言》中的名言:“批判的武器当然不能代替武器的批判,物质力量只能用物质力量来摧毁;但是理论一经掌握群众,也会变成物质力量。”这句话同样也适用于奈格里和哈特的帝国和诸众理论。在高度智能化和数字化的今天,我们仍然需要阅读奈格里,阅读他那些浩如烟海的文献,并不在于去记住他的某些概念,记住他们某几句言辞,而是在新的时代里重新创造奈格里,重新让其理论焕发出蓬勃的生机。

In 2016, Negri came to Nanjing University and gave a lecture on digital capitalism to the faculty and students of the Department of Philosophy. In that lecture, he had already seen that data had become a new means of production, and thus gave birth to the critique of political economy for a new era that he depicted in *Empire*. On this point, Negri was right: the internet and smartphones, through the ceaseless flow of data-traffic, link together people from every corner of the world. Whether it is the elite of Wall Street, tourists on the beaches of the Maldives, temporary workers in a Bangladeshi garment factory, or white-collar workers staring intently at screens in high-rise office buildings in Tokyo’s central district, they all share one characteristic: they are threaded through by an endless stream of data, forming a whole. These individuals are no longer independent and autonomous individuals, but a collective bound together by networks and intelligent technology. Negri still insisted on using “general intellect” to describe this collective; however, this time he spoke of it no longer as moving from the factory to the metropolis, but directly as a global, total “general intellect.” This is a worldwide, integrated data system formed through the biopolitical production of each individual, through the combination of every person using a smartphone and computer, and every logistics truck and automated machine fitted with digital sensors. Benjamin Bratton calls it a “planetary-scale computing system.” That is to say, Negri still adhered to his long-held concepts of immaterial production and general intellect, except that digital society and intelligent society have brought an even vaster and more complex matrix, truly absorbing all people and things into it, making every node actually subordinate to this immense general intellect.

在2016年,奈格里来到南京大学,曾经为南京大学的哲学系师生做了一场关于数字资本主义的讲座。在讲座上,他已经看到了数据成为新的生产资料,也因此诞生了他在《帝国》中描绘出来的新时代的政治经济学批判。在这一点上,奈格里是对的,互联网和智能手机正在通过不断涌动的数据-流量,将世界上各个角落的人都链接在一起。无论是华尔街的精英,还是马尔代夫海滩上的游客,抑或孟加拉国服装厂里的临时小工,还有东京中央区高层写字楼里正在紧盯着屏幕的白领,他们都有一个特征:被无穷无尽的数据流贯穿起来,构成了一个整体。这些个体不再是独立自主的个体,而是被网络和智能技术结合在一起的集合。奈格里仍然坚持使用“一般智力”来形容这个集合,不过,这次他谈到不再是从工厂到大都市,而直接就是全球总体的“一般智力”,这就是通过每一个人的生命政治生产,通过将每一个使用智能手机和电脑,装上了数字传感器的物流货车和自动化机器,结合成一个世界范围的整体数据系统,本杰明·布拉顿(Benjamin Bratton)称之为“行星级别的计算体系”。也就是说,奈格里仍然坚持了他一直以来的非物质生产和一般智力的观念,只不过数字社会和智能社会带来的是更为庞大,也更为复杂的矩阵,将所有的人与物都真实吸纳到其中,让每一个节点都实际从属于这个庞大的一般智力。

Next, however, Negri misunderstood the nature of this planetary-scale general intellect. He believed that this general intellect is constituted by various subjects, and therefore possesses subjectivity; consequently, all the subjects constituting the general intellect have the potential to resist capitalism. But what Negri failed to see is that all those who use smartphones and computers, all the producers and logistics that participate in platform networks, do not participate as subjects; rather, they are reified into data, subordinated as data to the planetary-scale data matrix, participating in various intelligent algorithms and hierarchical classifications, and ultimately subjugated to invisible underlying protocols and rules. People participate not so much as embodied life, but as objectified data. In this sense, Negri’s subjective general intellect has become a general data that is indifferent to life. Consequently, because general data is objective and indifferent, Negri’s strategy of exodus cannot become a strategy for resisting capitalism in the intelligent age.

接下来奈格里却理解错了这个行星级别的一般智力的属性,他认为这个一般智力是由各个主体构成的,所以这种一般智力具有主体性,因此,所有构成一般智力的主体拥有着与资本主义进行抗争的潜能。但奈格里没有看到的是,所有使用智能手机和电脑,所有参与平台网络的生产商和物流,都不是以主体方式参与的,而是被物化为一种数据,作为数据从属于行星级别的数据矩阵,参与到各种智能算法的和等级划分,最终隶从于看不见的底层协议和规则。人与其说是以身体化的生命,不如说是以客观化的数据,参与其中。在这个意义上,奈格里的主体性的一般智力,已经变成了对生命漠不关心的一般数据。于是,由于一般数据是客观的和冷漠的,奈格里的出走策略不能成为智能时代对抗资本主义的方略。

However, we see that Negri’s direction was correct, because only by taking possession of general data can we prevent intelligent machines and big-data algorithms from becoming tools for a minority of capital platforms to extract enormous profits, and instead turn them into public instruments for the welfare of all. Therefore, if we are to reinvent Negri in the intelligent age, we must begin with the multitude regaining control of general data.

不过,我们看到,奈格里的方向却是对的,因为只有占有了一般数据,才能避免让智能机器和大数据算法成为少数资本平台牟取巨大利润的工具,从而成为为所有人谋得福利的公器,那么,倘若我们在智能时代重新发明奈格里,就需要从让诸众重新掌握一般数据开始。

Negri, who has left us in his ninetieth year, experienced the era of machine automation in the 1960s and 1970s, the era of communication, transmission, and networks at the turn of the century, and today’s intelligent age. With his unique wisdom and theories, he encountered the times again and again, telling us the future direction of Marxism. He is not a Don Quixote tilting at windmills with a lance, but a Neo who grasps the secrets of the matrix. He hands us a red pill, a pill of general intellect, enabling us to truly see the path of the intelligent age. The future is not a wasteland; it is a matrix that must be built by reinventing Negri’s thought.

鲐背之年离我们远去的奈格里,经历了二十世纪六七十年代的机器自动化时代,世纪之交的通信传播和网络时代,以及今天的智能时代,他用他独特的智慧和理论一遍又一遍地与时代际会,告诉我们马克思主义未来的发展方向。他不是用长枪挑战风车的堂吉诃德,而是掌握矩阵奥秘的尼奥,他递给我们一粒红色的药丸,一粒一般智力的药丸,让我们真正可以看清智能时代的道路,未来不是一片废墟,而是需要在重新发明奈格里思想上去筑造的矩阵。

Life and Writings

生平与著述

Antonio Negri (1933–2023), Italian Marxist philosopher and activist, graduated from and taught in the Department of Philosophy at the University of Padua.

安东尼奥·奈格里(Antonio Negri,1933—2023),意大利马克思主义哲学家、活动家,毕业并任教于帕多瓦大学哲学系。

In 1969, he founded the organization Potere Operaio (Worker Power) and became a leading figure in the famous “Autonomia Operaia” (Worker Autonomy) movement. In the 1970s, Negri was charged with multiple crimes, including plotting with the left-wing terrorist organization the Red Brigades. In April 1979, he was arrested along with other leaders of the Autonomia movement. A year later, Negri was found not guilty of involvement in the murder of Italian Prime Minister Aldo Moro, and almost all the charges against him were dismissed for lack of evidence. However, Negri’s convergence with left-wing terrorism remains a controversial issue to this day.

1969年,他成立了工人力量组织(Potere Operaio),而且成为著名的“自主运动”(Autonomia Operaia)的领军人物。20世纪70年代,奈格里被控多项罪名,其中包括策划了左翼恐怖组织“红色旅”。1979年4月,与其他自主运动的领导人同时被捕。一年后,奈格里被判与意大利总理莫罗的被害无关,几乎所有被告罪责全部因为缺乏证据而被推翻。但奈格里与左翼恐怖主义的合流直到现在还是一个争议性的问题。

After going into exile in France, Negri was protected by the Mitterrand decree. He taught at the University of Vincennes (Paris VIII) and the Collège International de Philosophie, alongside French philosophers Jacques Derrida, Michel Foucault, and Gilles Deleuze.

流亡到法国后,奈格里受到了密特朗法令的保护,他在文森大学(巴黎八大)和国际哲学学院,与法国哲学家雅克·德里达、米歇尔·福柯和吉尔·德勒兹一起任教。

In 1997, after requesting that his sentence be reduced from 30 years to 13 years, Negri returned to Italy to serve his term. While in prison, Negri published most of his most influential works, most famously the trilogy co-authored with Michael Hardt: *Empire*, *Multitude*, and *Commonwealth*. Other major works include *Marx Beyond Marx: Lessons on the Grundrisse*, *The Savage Anomaly*, *Subversive Spinoza*, and *Letters from Prison*.

1997年,在要求把刑期从30年缩短到13年后,奈格里回意大利服刑。在狱中,奈格里出版了他大多数最有影响力的著作,以与迈克尔·哈特合著的《帝国》《诸众》和《大同世界》三部曲而闻名。其他主要著作有《<大纲>:超越马克思的马克思》《野蛮的反常》《颠覆性的斯宾诺莎》《狱中书信》等。

On the evening of December 15, 2023, local time, Negri died in Paris at the age of 90.

当地时间2023年12月15日晚,奈格里在巴黎逝世,享年90岁。

(The author is a professor in the Department of Philosophy at Nanjing University)

（作者系南京大学哲学系教授）

Online editor: Zhang Jian

网络编辑：张剑