Introduction to Paolo Virno's "On the Parasitic Character of Wage Labor" and "Post-Fordist Semblance"
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Paolo Virno was active in the Italian autonomist left during the 1970s, when he edited the journal Metropoli. He has worked as an editor for the communist daily il manifesto and has published mainly in the fields of philosophy and political theory. His works include Convenzione e materialismo. L'unicità senza aurora (Rome: Theoria, 1986) [Convention and Materialism. Uniqueness Without A Halo], Mondanità. L'idea di 'mondo' tra esperienza e sfera pubblica (Rome: manifestolibri, 1994) [Wordliness. The Idea of "the World" Between Experience and the Public Sphere], and the recent Grammatica della moltitudine (Rome: DeriveApprodi, 2002), which has been translated into English as A Grammar of the Multitude (New York: semiotext[e], 2004).
In the two short essays translated below, Virno addresses the social consequences of the transformations of labor characteristic of the transition from Fordism to post-Fordism. "On the Parasitic Character of Wage Labor" polemicizes against those "neoliberal" economic theories that celebrate the decline of the welfare state but refuse to abandon its ideological corollary, the Fordist work ethic. "Automation plus guaranteed income"—a program that can be traced back to the labor struggles of the 1960s and that found expression in the publications of the international situationist movement as well as in certain currents of the Italian autonomist left—is identified as the only realistic response to the end of full employment. The essay "Post-Fordist Semblance" examines ideological phenomena such as the celebration of "self-employment" and traces them to the material transformations of the sphere of production.
"On the Parasitic Character of Wage Labor" was first published in the journal Metropoli in June 1981. "Post-Fordist Semblance" first appeared in La Rivista del manifesto, a journal published by the Italian communist daily il manifesto, in April 2001. Both essays have been re-published, along with many other short works by Virno, in the volume Esercizi di esodo. Linguaggio e azione politica (Verona: ombre corte, 2002) [Exercises in Exodus. Language and Political Action].
Max Henninger (MA, PhD) lives in Berlin and works as a translator. He is the German translator of Italian novelist and poet Nanni Balestrini. His critique of Antonio Negri's theory of post-Fordism is forthcoming in the online journal Ephemera.
