Well-being, prosperity, health in capitalist culture is the end product of a

repeated differentiation of lives. This symbolic order establishes a division of

those who have from those who have not, those with a voice from those
without, those whose suffering matter from those whose suffering is ignored.
The unequal distribution of resources, rights and means of production is
necessitated by the logic that an efficient accumulation of Capital requires a
large difference in proportions. This ratio is the result of historical conflicts that
both develop Capital and constitute its limits. These are limits posed by
natural catastrophes, general strikes and other physical and social realities
that impede the speed, consistency and stability of the infrastructures of value
production.
Mario Tronti argues in Operai e Capitale (1966) that the limits posed by class
struggle, by the refusal of work; provide the mechanism for Capitals
reconstitution leading to the overcoming of historical conflicts by technical
innovation and managerial reconfiguration. Perhaps today Trontian dialectics
is less relevant as other theories of class struggle have come to the fore.
Theories that recognise the evolutionary force within Capital that strives to
become immune to the limits posed by a politicized and organized working
class. Other non-human limits seem more pertinent while the technologies of
submission have both multiplied and advanced in efficacy, brutality and
sophistication. However Tontis reading of Marx still provide us with an
important lesson on how the divided global working class needs to understand
that it becomes a political force capable of changing the ratio to its own
advantage by its capacity to negate itself as a productive force. This suggests
that overcoming the dividing forces within capitalism requires negation at
different levels.
Following the recent work by French philosopher Catherine Malabou this
paper will explore those specific forms of division operating on and through
the biological level, Marxs species-being . For both Foucault (2007) and
Agamben (1998) the administration of lives becomes the primary means to
gain and maintain power. Malabou argues that these theories of bio-power
that identify a relationship between the biological and the symbolical, remain
theories of Sovereignty and fail to recognize the inherently symbolical and
thus political in the biological as such (Malabou 2015). With Malabou I will
argue that this understanding of the biological as inherently political calls for
new practices of negation and resistance for both the individual and the social
body.
Tronti M.,1966. Operai e Capitale. Enaud, Torino
Marx K., Theses on Feurebach, Marxist.org
Agamben G., 1998. Homo Sacer: Sovereing Power and Bare Life. Stanford
University Press, Stanford
Foucault M., 2007. Security, Territory, Population. Palgrave Macmillan, UK

Catherine M., 2015. Will Sovereignty ever be Deconstructed?. Plastic

Materialities. Duke Univeristy Press, Durham
Michele Masucci is an activist, artist and writer living in Stockholm, Sweden.