New Lines of Alliance, New Spaces of Liberty

by Félix Guattari, Antonio Negri

"The project: to rescue 'communism' from its own disrepute. Once invoked as the liberation of work through mankind's collective creation, communism has instead stifled humanity. We who see in communism the liberation of both collective and individual possibilities must reverse that regimentation of thought and desire which terminates the individual...."
Thus begins the extraordinary collaboration between Felix Guattari and Antonio Negri, written at dawn of the 1980s, in the wake of the crushing of the autonomous movements of the previous decade. Setting out Guattari and Negri diagnose with incisive prescience transformations of the global economy and theorize new forms of alliance and organization: mutant machines of subjectivation and social movement.


Prefiguring his collaboration with Michael Hardt, Negri and Guattari enact a singular hybridization of political and philosophical traditions, brining together psychiatry, political analysis, semiotics, aesthetics, and philosophy. Against the workings of an increasingly integrated world capitalism, they raise the banners of singularity, autonomy, and freedom to search out new routes for subversion.


This newly expanded edition includes previously untranslated materials and a new introduction by Matteo Mandarini.

Genres: Philosophy, Politics

144 pages, Paperback

First published January 3, 2011

About the author

Pierre-Félix Guattari was a French militant, an institutional psychotherapist, philosopher, and semiotician; he founded both schizoanalysis and ecosophy. Guattari is best known for his intellectual collaborations with Gilles Deleuze, most notably Anti-Oedipus (1972) and A Thousand Plateaus (1980), the two volumes of Capitalism and Schizophrenia.

Reviews

[Peter · Rating 4 out of 5]

The collaboration we always knew we needed but never fully appreciated 🙏

Some of the things discussed are certainly ever so slightly outdated but I think most of the analysis is spot on and actually ends up predicting pretty well the current state of IWC. What we should really be taking away from this book is the guidelines into the formation of a new revolutionary movement and a revolutionary subjectivity. Within this I'd say the most important things to properly define and put into practice are the new conception of democracy freed of its neoliberal capitalist constraints, aka democracy as the democratic organization of production, as well as the revised concept of communism (which is sort of the whole purpose of the book) not only as a tool to fight capitalism but as a living breathing reality that exists within capitalism in a quasi-dormant state, that starts by creating autonomous spaces inside the system and without its consent, like poking small holes in a barrel full of water.

Interesting is also the part where they discuss Leninism and the question of the state, of course in typical autonomist fashion they're not too fond of the vanguardist leninist position which ended up just leading to the USSR becoming an alternative model of capitalism as opposed to an actual alternative to capitalism. And thus the failure of socialism to create that alternative. But they aren't anarchists either, they realize that the hundreds of years of the state form as we know it isn't going to crumble the day after the revolution because the state isn't just the physical apparatus that governs us but also extends itself into our subjectivity and into the very way we think and feel. Its something I think we never truly get a clear enough answer about because it is unfortunately incredibly complicated to dismantle a system that is so entrenched into people's existence, not to say it isn't doable but certainly it requires a great deal of effort, which is why I think its probably a good idea to individually begin to rethink how the state infects your own life and the only real way to properly engage with it might just be to frequent these spaces of liberty that exist in opposition to capitalism. The "decoding" of the state within you isn't something you can achieve by just reading books or articles online or even by just going to a therapist every now and then, you must actually physically live it with the places and people you surround yourself with.

And I think that brings me into the rethinking of communism as the spaces of liberty within capitalism, as the reorganization of productive social forces from within capitalism. And by that I don't just mean the physical production of goods and commodities but of the production of subjectivity as well, and this is where we can see Guattari shine through the text the most. The idea that as communists we must do our best to promote singularity, to support the self-determination of every little subjectivity that forms in opposition to the generalized capitalist one. Its something which is going to necessarily destabilize capital and is going to organically create new organizations of society within the current one, and they might not all be ideologically aligned wih each other but to that Negri and Guattari would probably respond with who cares? The point is that they are, that they exist outside the prescribed schemas of acceptable subjectivity, ideological purity and sectarianism are a tool of capital that will only end up dividing us further and hinder us from seeing the truly revolutionary developments in the field of subjectivity.

I feel like this is probably one of the easier books I've read from these two authors, mostly because it manages to lay out its own thesis without the often protracted explanation of all the concepts, which is both positive and negative depending on how you look at it. Either way there's so much more to discuss about this book like the role of pacifism and denuclearization or how they discuss ecology and the green movement which now seems to have faded as a revolutionary project, or the infamous north-south alliance which never seems to have formed etc.

Excellent read

[Tabitha Beavitt · Rating 4 out of 5]

Guattari and Negri’s collaboration is fantastic here, and it’s so rewarding to see the ideas of these two great theorists come together. For the most part, their analysis holds up relatively well for having been originally published in 1985, though I did question the viability of some arguments in this current era of authoritarian neoliberalism. The lack of definitions/time given clarifying concepts can sometimes be frustrating, especially in the last chapter, which can result in the point being lost a little, or for me it did anyway. I found their dismantling of traditional/Leninist workers movements particularly helpful as an explanation of the untenability of mass action in this age, as well as their arguments surrounding the potential of new, unexpected alliances in place of traditional organising. On the whole, it is a truly inspiring work, and one that gave me a bit of hope. Though it is utopian at times, I think it is a great primer for thinking about the next steps we can take. I would recommend it to every communist, especially those who have been tempted to compromise with statist demands, as well as any Marxists who still believe that socialism is actually an alternative to capitalism.

[Steve Kas · Rating 5 out of 5]

Alt title for Communists Like Us.

[Aaron Schuschu · Rating 4 out of 5]

Basically, Negri’s concepts using Guattari’s word choice.