Moll Flanders, Prefiguring the Immaterial Worker?

doll_yoko — Fri, 21 Mar 2008 10:26:17 +0100

Moll Flanders, Prefiguring the Immaterial Worker?
(a draft bit of my thesis...in progress)

Writing on Trade was the Whore I really doated upon.
—Daniel Defoe

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Context for this fragment of writing: I am struggling with my readings in autonomous Marxism - H&N, Virno, Marazzi, Lazzarato et al - so I am searching for ways to make the abstract concepts come alive in a way that makes sense to me personally. Recently I found Moll Flanders in an op shop, and took her away on a 2 week camping holiday, where she made an excellent bedtime companion, along with the other creatures of the night out in the Aussie bush. So I was inspired to weave her into the really dry stuff I had been having my own cycles of struggles with. I don't know if she works or not, this is just the first draft, written over a few days. I also have been watching *a lot* of british TV courtesy of thebox.bz (why read empire when u can just D/L another ep of something), and so my next plan is to use the scenarios from 2 series about the machinations of politics+spin (1 a comedy, "The Thick of It", and the other a dramedy, "Party Animals") to further talk about communicative labour, affective labour and circuits of power. I've also managed to gain access, legally, to viewing a transcript of the interrogation of someone at one of the worlds most notorious prisons, and i want to weave some of this material in somehow, because its certainly about information, and how it connects in with circuits of power, but it's about really old forms of information. Can't say much more about this till I finish the process of working through the documents. Anyway, writing a PhD is really arduous I am finding, so i have recently decided to treat it like art-making, how i immersed myself in the internet labyrinths i have made in the past with gashgirl at lambdaMOO, dollspace, or los dias y las noches de los muertos, or with harwood's brilliant netmonster, and see what comes out of these loose driftzones of associations). It's clear to me I don't have a very rational mind, and so need to return to the irrational, intuitive, spooky paths.

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Moll Flanders is the protagonist of Daniel Defoe's 1722 epynonymous novel,(1) set in Enlightenment England, some decades before the Industrial Revolution. It is over a hundred years since “England's late entry into the European scramble for New world colonies.” Thus trade was already semi-global in nature, with commerce in slave and enforced labour, raw materials and processed merchandise criss-crossing the Old and New Worlds. Enclosures of common lands by Parliamentary Acts had been in play for centuries, resulting in increased wealth accumulation for a small elite, the emergence of a bourgeoise, and the influx of dispossessed peasants to towns and cities, forming a huge, disaggregated underclass.(2) This destruction of the subsistence economy, the resultant systemic poverty and its criminalisation produced new political subjects, reluctant acceptors and defiant refusers, from proletarians to vagabonds.

Economic survival for some depended on their communicative capacities and imagination, and Moll Flanders is one such subject. She combines wit, ingenuity and problem-solving abilities, to create an affective relational plane. Building on the theories generated by the Italian autonomia movement, Sylvère Lotringer describes “abstract intelligence and immaterial signs” as being “the major productive force” in today's post-Fordist economy.(3) He depicts a new class composition of workers whose “entire life is live labor, an invisible and indivisible commodity.”(4)“Linguistic competence, knowledge, imagination” are the productive forces animating contemporary work processes, argues Paolo Virno (2004: 60).(5) As I will argue, Moll prefigures one of the evolutionary embodiments of creative labour in the 21st century, subjects who shape and challenge informational capitalism, the shape-shifting immaterial worker, one of Spinoza's multitude.(6)

Employing the lens of one of English literature's most notorious and irrepressible women, I will initiate a discussion about cognitive and affective labour, crucial dynamics of production that animate contemporary informational capitalism, Chapter Four's core subject. A brief historical overview of this phase of capitalism will follow, from which its eight defining features —communication, co-operation, computation, commodification, concentration, global exchange, networks, and flexibility—will be derived.

These elements of capitalism provide vital keys to its potential for transformation from within, an immanent counter-power that exploits capital's infrastructure and processes to build new social imaginaries leading to what some theorists conceive of as 'radical democracy'. Capitalism is inherently revolutionary “because it keeps fomenting inequality and provoking unrest,” asserts Lotringer (2004: 18). A “liberatory politics” that for Hardt and Negri, following Marx, must come from within the belly of the beast (2000: 204). New forms of communality comprising groups and networks are tooling up—creatively and technologically— to collectively build “a new social body...a project that goes well beyond refusal” of “voluntary servitude.”(7)The chapter will conclude by linking the defining features back to the three case studies of this thesis, introducing these projects' relevance to the theme of new subjectivities, creativity, social change and info-capitalism.

The story of Moll Flanders depicts an English, and by association Western European and trans-Atlantic, landscape in the early stages of pre-industrial capitalist development, as experienced from the perspective of the urban underclass. England in the 18th century was a space of entrepreneurs and proto-capitalists, reapers of the Old World and rapers of the New. A “financial revolution” tailed England's constitutional revolution, and as the economy diversified, so did the financial instruments to facilitate its expansion. (8)The Bank of England, established in 1694, issued hand-scribed bank notes as symbols of monetary exchange. Labour-intensive hand-worked silk brocades and laces also functioned also as units of exchange, along with silver and gold plate. A National Debt was instituted, the Stock Market established, and London “swam with bureaucrats.” (9) Informational capitalism was in the process of being born. Speculation drove investment, with the first market crash occurring in 1720, the South Sea Bubble. (10) The social terrain was changing rapidly as “money... counted now as much as land”. (11)

Slavery, servitude and colonisation underpinned European financial and political dominance, and with its grip on the trans-Atlantic slave trade, England was Capitalism's thumping heart. Debt was a serious crime as was petty property theft, with debtors' prison, transportation or execution its consequences. However, high-level theft of lands and resources continued to be legally sanctioned and extended by Acts of Parliament. From a contemporary viewpoint it appears that acts of resistance from below to the new regime of production and power were punished disproportionately. Is this because the perpetrators not only challenged the underlying inequities that create social privilege, but also post-feudal modernity itself?

Born in London's Newgate Prison to a criminal mother who “pleads her belly” to delay sentencing and transportation, Moll's early life is one of abandonment, kidnap by Gypsies, informal adoption by a Nurse, and later inclusion in a genteel family. Here she learnt “to dance and speak French as well as any of them, and to sing much better...” and played the harpsichord or spinet “tolerably well too...” (12) This experience cements her taste for material fineries, desire for class mobility, and the social context for beginning this process.

Moll's beauty, intelligence and enterprising nature both help shift her social station and land her in various troubles. The spectre of poverty dogs Moll, and although as a child she has acquired skills in embroidery, linen and lace-making, and spinning, that could support low-waged cottage industry work, she chooses other forms of survival, mostly outside of the law. She rejects servile lapour, as she has “a thorough aversion to going to service.” (13) And as for sovereign obedience, this kind of submission doesn't enter the picture—Moll appears subject to no-one, although never articulating a radical political position as such.

More useful to Moll was her own suite of mental resources: her capacity to communicate, to assess a social situation, to leverage it to her advantage, to beguile, charm, seduce and rob. At the dawn of the Age of Enterprise, information was a vital commodity to be acquired, traded, and capitalised upon. Moll gleans information both opportunistically and strategically, and puts it to work for her. Being a skilful communicator, she tempers her words and mode of address to suit the occasion. Like philosophers, writers and scientists, she creates mental artefacts from a personal sensorium fed by interconnected histories of ideas. Like a consumate spook, she fabricates new identities and their legends. And like a successful courtesan, she fosters and maintains intimate social relationships for material gain, although she undoubtedly enjoys the pleasant companionship of some of her men. But ultimately head rules heart, always, for Moll Flanders.

A roaming citizen, Moll travels freely around England, from north to south, east and west, to both pursue opportunity and evade unwelcome recognition by past punters or the law. Early on she takes refuge in the Mint, a unique liminal zone in central London which, like the Clink, exists completely outside juridicial law. It is a temporary autonomous space of debtors and drifters, providing them with a haven, albeit a squalid, dangerous one. Moll also spends some years in Virginia, a place populated by the kidnapped poor, and convicted “thieves and rogues” from Newgate prison, the “cursed place... that half peopled this colony.” (14)

Moll's labour has a manual side, as it takes dexterity and skill to lift a gold watch from a lady's dress, or a bolt of Flemish lace from the mercer's counter. But her capacity to perform mental and affective labour is the quality driving her life forward, if not always upwards. Moll is both labourer and the dynamically shifting product of her own labour. Living labour, not dead machine—these Marxian conceptual figures may be over a century away, but Moll is nothing if not alive, and vital. This exceptional hustler creates, reproduces and sells herself, within a demographically-defined trans-Atlantic marketplace. (15)

And so we can consider Moll Flanders as a pre-political prototype of the first stage of flexi-worker, a singular member of the multitude, a down-market yet aspirational unit of the cognitariat. She is ready and able to learn new things, to temporarily relocate into regional centres of financial opportunity, to move on at a moment's notice when situations change. No contracts, no security, but also no sense of bondage, drudgery or alienation. She is an improvisor, performing her life on her own terms wherever possible. Precarity becomes her, even as she strives to permanently escape financial insecurity through her various schemes.

The labour performed by Moll Flanders is relational in essence. Firstly, in terms of her affective labour, that is, her work to secure benefactors, lovers and husbands, for this she must interweave material and immaterial substances. She needs to present una bella figura as she spins a good yarn, bait to net her own living source of capital. A younger Moll “had been tricked once by that cheat called love, but the game was over.” Pragmatic rather than cynical, all future relationships would be a matter of business. Sometimes Moll the consumate player is played herself, her wealthy widow's guise working a tad too effectively, by men who are in fact similarly rogueish, seeking their own pathway to easy street.

Secondly, this affective labour is amplified through her development of co-operative communications with others in her milieu of thieves, abortionists, bawds and whores, and assisted by the gullibility and naivety of both the subordinate and the dominant classes whom she encounters. On occasion she has a colleague with whom she shares the bounty. At other times she manipulates innocent acquaintances in order that they promote a certain image of her circumstances within their networks of power and privilege. Today we could consider this as 'viral marketing.' In fact, Moll is keenly aware that for all intents and purposes she is a bastard orphan, and hence has no permament social networks to draw upon. Consequently her life has a parasitic quality to it.

Moll Flanders understands capital's workings: money begets money. (16) Perhaps because of her experiences in the Mint, it becomes a point of principle for Moll to keep a portion of money squirreled away, in the form of bank bills held in trust, or stashed coinage. This is her baseline capital which she doesn't intend to divest, for she realises that this will ultimately make more money, and thus expand her life choices. Whereas alternative sources of capital such as husbands and benefactors are likelier to come and go (always the problem with living labour!), and indeed they do.

In her youthful prime Moll also exploits her physical being as capital, investing in items of quality clothing and jewelry to give the illusion of wealth, in order to raise her prospects of a good match. As she ages, Moll accedes increasingly to a life of petty crime, despite her awareness that eventually she must be caught out. She continues to work with her physical being and communicative skills, playing with disguises and costumes, artfully sliding in and out of situations which could be to her material advantage.

_______________--stuff to keep writing ..................

ADD Paragraph with the conclusion of Molls story

ADD Paragraph on defoe..Depending which biographer you read, Daniel Defoe was a conservative, puritan, or a gay dissenter. (17) A revisionist biographer by John Martin depicts him as a cross-dresser who had on occasion sold himself sexually. If this was the case, then it added to his ability to invent such a believable character as Moll. Defoe is described as “an economist, historian, political scientist, sociologist, journalist, religious controversialist, poet, and novelist.” (18)

Find out about Marx's analysis of Robinson Crusoe in Das Kapital.

Novak on Defoe (in the Preface) - “his tendency to look at human beings and their environment from the viewpoint of a mercantilist economicist. [....] Mercantalism..was not merely a theory of trade ; it included an entire way of looking at the world and the ppl in it.

One measure of an artwork's resonance within the public imagination is its capacity to inspire other creators. Defoe's portrayal of Moll Flanders did just this, including notably one of his younger contemporaries. William Hogarth (1697-1764), was a painter and engraver of evocative and ironic depictions of English urban life, whose characters spanned the class spectrum. (19) A Harlot's Progress, a series of six engravings (1732), depicts moments in the life of Moll (or Mary) Hackabout, a fetching rural lass who arrives in London and enters the world of prostitution. Inspired in part by Defoe's Moll, Miss Hackabout lack's Flander's determination and brains, and dies young of the pox. Hogarth's whore was a hit, and he sold a rather large 'limited edition' of the engravings to subscribers. Before long pirate copies were circulating, leading Hogarth to procure an 1735 Act of Parliament to prohibit the practice.(20) In one of Hogarth's later series Industry and Idleness (1747), an etching entitled The Fellow Apprentices at their Looms depicts two workers, one industrious and one lazy. Whilst the 'good' apprentice has pages from inspirational texts behind his loom, the layabout has a page from Moll Flanders pinned to machine, directly above his dozing head. Yet given how hard-working Moll was, perhaps this page is misplaced.

Paragraph on immaterial labour, past and present. And politicisation through collective imagination.
- The emerging collective awareness
- she is a prepolitical figure, ammoral, anarchic? But never seeking to change or challenge the status quo, she wants to be part of it, in order to materially benefit
- her co-operation is motivated by self-interest...altho she does fulfil some obligations like the maintenance of one of her many chldren
- would Moll be a perfect Nigerian email scammer if born today, pulling in dem suckers, or whom she has no compassion, yet really no malice either, she is indifferent.

Endnotes
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1. The full title of Defoe's novel gives reveals its basic plot: The Fortunes & Misfortunes of the Famous Moll Flanders &c. Who was Born in Newgate, and during a Life of continu'd Variety for Threescore Years, besides her Childhood, was Twelve Year a Whore, five times a Wife (whereof once to her own Brother), Twelve Year a Thief, Eight Year a Transported Felon in Virginia, at last grew Rich, liv'd Honest, and dies a Penitent. Written from her own Memorandums . . . In fact, “Moll Flanders” is just one of false names used by protagonist, who never reveals her true identity to the reader. Her adoption of different names is one of the ways in which Moll protects herself from both unwelcome attention by fellow criminals, fraudsters and the law.

2. Federici (2004), Caliban and the Witch; Linebaugh & Rediker, The Many-Headed Hydra.
In her compelling analysis of the pauperization and criminalisation of vast numbers of dispossessed peoples throughout Western Europe as subsistence economies were violently replaced with capitalist systems, Silvia Federici (2004: 74) notes that the impact of the Enclosures and the dominance of monetary relations were particularly harsh on women as their avenues of survival were “increasingly confined to reproductive labour at the very time when this work was being completely devalued.” Waged work was also skewed against women who by the mid-16th century only received one-third of a now also reduced male wage. They “could no longer support themselves by wage-work, neither in agriculture nor manufacturing, a fact undoubtedly responsible for the massive spread of prostitution in this period” (77). Women had also been forced out of the craft workshops (5-6). Thus, not surprisingly, women featured prominently in the riots and other acts of refusal and protest across Europe against the emerging economic-political order.

3. Sylvère Lotringer, FOREWORD: We, the Multitude, p 7, in Paolo Virno, 2004, A Grammar of the Multitude.

4. Lotringer, p12.

5. Virno, P. 2004, A Grammar of the Multitude: For an analysis of contemporary forms of life, Semiotext(e), Los Angeles/New York, p 60.

6. Add References on the concept of immaterial labour: Hardt & Negri, Virno, Lazzarato, Marazzi.
And ..Virno makes an important distinction between Hobbes' obedient people, and Spinoza's pluralistic multitude.

7.“The refusal of work and authority, or really the refusal of voluntary servitude, is the beginning of liberatory politics. [...] The refusal in itself is empty. [...] What we need is to create a new social body, which is a project that goes well beyond refusal. Our lines of flight, our exodus must be constituent and create a real alternative. Beyond the simple refusal, or as part of that refusal, we need also to construct a new mode of life and above all a new community.” Hardt & Negri (2000: 204)

8. Maximillian Novak. Novak, M.E. 1976 (1962), Economics and the fiction of Daniel Defoe, Russell & Russell, pp 7-10.

9. Uglow, J. 1997, Hogarth: A life and a world, pp 40-41.

10. Malcolm Balen, A very English deceit : the secret history of the South Sea Bubble and the first great financial scandal; Richard Dale, The first crash : lessons from the South sea bubble

11. Uglow, p 8.

12. page #

13.Moll explains that at age eight, “...all I understood by being a gentlewoman was to be able to work for myself, and get enough to keep me without that terrible bugbear going to service, whereas they meant to live great, rich and high, and I know not what.” page #

14, As explained to Moll by her mother-in-law (who turns out also to be her mother also) (Defoe: Page # ). One hundred years earlier the Common Council of London had struck a deal with the Virginia Company whereby thousands of poor children had been legally kidnapped and transported to Virginia to work as hewers of wood and drawers of water. Some of the second wave of children resisted this fate, and organised a revolt at Bridewell, the orphans and paupers' prison/workhouse (Linebaugh and Rediker: 59).

15. Could weave in some ideas from Virno in this section:

p 56 The speaker alone — unlike the pianist, the dancer or the actor— can do without a script or a score. The speaker's virtuosity is twofold: not only does it not produce an end product which is distinguishable from performance, but it does not even leave behind an end product which could be actualized by means of performance. In fact, the act of parole makes use only of the potentiality of language, or better yet, of the generic faculty of language: not of a pre-established text in detail.

[...] that contemporary production becomes "virtuosic" (and thus political) precisely because it includes within itself linguistic experience as such. If this is so, the matrix of post-Fordism can be found in the industrial sectors in which there is "production of communication by means of communication"; hence, in the culture industry.

And about social learning that occurs outside the workplace...

p 84 What are the principal requirements of dependent workers today? To be accustomed to mobility, to be able to keep up with the most sudden conversions, to be able --Page 85-- to adapt to various enterprises, to be flexible in switching from one set of rules to another, to have an aptitude for a kind of linguistic interaction as banalized as it is unilateral, to be familiar with managing among a limited amount of possible alternatives. Now, these requirements are not the fruit of industrial discipline; rather, they are the result of a socialization that has its center of gravity outside of the workplace. The "professionalism" which is actually required and offered consists of the abilities one acquires during a prolonged sojourn in a pre-work, or precarious, stage. That is to say: to the period of waiting for a job, those generically social talents are developed, as is getting in the habit of not developing lasting habits, all of which, once work is found, will act as true and real "tools of the trade."

16. And, as an employer in the computer industry told me, his then young protégé in the bullish 80s, “Business is all about lying, stealing and cheating!” Capitalism's rules have changed little.

17. Add REFERENCEs Beyond belief : the real life of Daniel Defoe / John Martin; Finance and fictionality in the early eighteenth century : accounting for Defoe, Sandra Sherman

18. As described by George Trevelyan, as quoted by Maximillian Novak. Novak, M.E. 1976 (1962), Economics and the fiction of Daniel Defoe, Russell & Russell.

19. Add REFERENCEs: Jenny Uglow, Hogarth : a life and a world; Derek Jarrett, England in the age of Hogarth.

20. 1735 Act of Parliament (8 Geo. II. cap. 13) to prohibit the piracy. See Uglow, p xiv.

london/everywhere

Moll Flanders, Prefiguring the Immaterial Worker?