antiproduction.

"... it is not the same money that goes into the pocket of the wage earner and is entered on the balance sheet of a commercial enterprise. in the one case, there are impotent money signs of exchange value, a flow of means of payment relative to consumer goods ans use values, and a one-to-one relation between money and an imposed range of products ("which i have a right to, which are my due, so they're mine"); in the other case, signs of the power of capital, flows of financing, a system of differential quotients of production that bear witness to a prospective force or to a long-term evaluation, not realizable hic et nunc, and functioning as an axiomatic of abstract quantities... measuring the two orders of magnitude in terms of the same analytical unit is a pure fiction, a cosmic swindle, as if one were to measure intergalactic or intra-atomic distances in meters and centimeters. there is no common measure between the value of the enterprises and that of the labor capacity of wage earners. that is why the falling tendency [of the rate of profit, the rate of surplus value to total capital] has no conclusion." (deleuze & guattari, anti-oedipus, p. 248-250)

in capitalism, there are two kinds of money. because capitalism only functions by way of exploitation, and the factory owner always earns more than his workers, money tends to flow from the wage earner's pockets to the balance sheets, thereby becoming inert. roxa luxemburg concluded from this that capitalism has an inherent tendency towards imperialism - it needs to subjugate ever more territory in order to survive, or to deepen the level of exploitation of existing sublimations. d&g, on the other hand, suggest antiproduction, which is immanent in the productive machine, might help capitalism realize its surplus value - by battling the inertion of the kind of money that occupies the balance sheets. i consider antiproduction one of the most tangible and useful concepts i've encountered in d&g so far.

"on the one hand, [antiproduction] alone is capable of realizing capitalism's supreme goal, which is to produce lack in the large aggregates, to introduce lack where there is always too much, by effecting the absorption of overabundant resources. on the other hand, it alone doubles the capital and the flow of knowledge with a capital and an equivalent flow of stupidity that also effects an absorption and a realization, and that ensures the integration of groups and individuals into the system. not only lack amid overabundance, but stupidity in the midst of knowledge and science; it will be seen in particular how it is at the level of the State and the military that the most progressive sectors of scientific or technical knowledge combine with those feeble archaisms bearing the greatest burder of current functions." (deleuze & guattari, anti-oedipus, p. 256)

and here we find a perfectly rational explanation for the destruction of surpluses, for perpetual war, for religion, and for companies that invest the larger part of their budget into marketing. a horrifying thought: the system needs inefficiency and stupidity in order to absorb surplus value, to keep the wheels turning. it seems certain utopian political agendas are militant in their opposition to various types of antiproduction; by declaring religion the "opium des volkes", marx denounced two types of antiproduction: religion and opium (for the latter case, i think of the politically induced addiction of the chinese - although in order to classify this case as antiproduction, one needs to accept the premise that antiproduction need not be induced by the own state - a disputable thesis that would greatly confuse our notion of antiproduction and demands further inquiry). however, it seems communism does not function without reviving antiproduction in a different form: by installing a ubiquitous police apparatus. our efficiency creates the necessity for antiproduction. nevertheless, it is urgent to distinguish between two types of antiproduction: on the one hand, those forms in which surplus value is absorbed by institutions on behalf of the people; and on the other hand, those in which the surplus value created by the people is absorbed by institutions of the state. although this opposition is clearly a simplification, the latter type currently appears to predominate.

"If modern man’s producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, why then, in the United States to-day, are there fifteen million people who are not properly sheltered and properly fed? Why then, in the United States to-day, are there three million child laborers? It is a true indictment. The capitalist class has mismanaged. In face of the facts that modern man lives more wretchedly than the cave-man, and that his producing power is a thousand times greater than that of the cave-man, no other conclusion is possible than that the capitalist class has mismanaged, that you have mismanaged, my masters, that you have criminally and selfishly mismanaged." (jack london, the iron heel, 1908)

although the utopian fantasy of a land of abundance with an 8-hour work week is certainly a theoretical possibility, it might be impossible to get around antiproduction, especially when we assume that d&g's conception of antiproduction need not be limited to flows of capital, but can also be used to analyze flows of desire - for there is no valid ground on which to establish an unambiguous ontological separation of libidinal and financial economy. (note that this suggests an analogy between inert money and inert bodies when seen from a global perspective.) due to technological progress, we have achieved a level of efficiency that implies either antiproduction or unbearable boredom. however, with regard to the suffering global periphery, the distribution of antiproduction today seems seriously flawed.