Farhad

To software engineers 👨‍💻 👩🏻‍💻 😝 Capital today is Extraction, Logistics, and Financialization. But it is not an all-powerful monster; It is vulnerable because it depends entirely on its opposite: the Social Individual … Today's worker operates in an "immaterial network" (internet, data, communication). The more the worker cooperates and uses these networks, the more autonomous and productive they become. They don't need a boss to tell them how to communicate or think. However, this very autonomy is what capital exploits. The more efficiently we "cooperate" (e.g., using Google Docs, coding open-source software, organizing on WhatsApp), the more value capital can extract from us. We effectively "organize the extraction of [our] own productive energy." In the past ("formal subsumption"), an artisan had autonomy because they used their own old tools. Today, the worker has autonomy not because they are outside the system, but because they are deep inside it, running the "cooperative processes." Negri calls this a mutation: The actual work of producing (coding, caring, communicating) is now totally in the hands of the workers' "autonomous productive initiative." The capitalist doesn't do anything anymore except "pure command"; and just skimming off the profit at the end. The Algorithm is OURS; This is a brilliant example. Bosses praise the "algorithm" as if it were a magical alien god that runs everything. Negri counters; The algorithm is just a machine made of OUR cooperation. It's frozen "mass intellectuality." In Marx's time, the boss brought the machine into the factory and forced workers to use it ("from outside"). Today, workers create the machines (software, social networks, AI models) through their own shared knowledge ("from within"). Workers have effectively "appropriated fixed capital" (we carry the "machines" in our brains and laptops). We own the "languages" and the "keys" to the system. The boss is just a parasite on top of this self-organizing system. Negri adds a crucial reality check: Just because workers technically run everything doesn't mean they are politically ready to take over tomorrow. transforming this "technical composition" (the fact that we run the networks) into a "political composition" (a revolutionary movement) is difficult, unpredictable, and "discontinuous." But we must recognize the "dignity" of this new labor power. We are not helpless victims; we are the immensely powerful creators of the very system that enslaves us.