Communitariness

When we consider the concept of "communication", we generally think of a process of exteriorisation through which an interior content is made manifest. On this account, communication is an e-mission beginning from a being, the e-mitter, and taking place between the e-mitter as a terminus a quo and another being (the receiver) as an terminus ad quem. Communication is what happens between one being in its role as an emitter and another being in its role as a receiver. There is a being that communicates, that first is and then communicates and is ordinarily supposed to exist prior to and independently of its acts of communication.

This conception of communication is not only widespread at the level of ordinary opinion, but is also shared by otherwise quite different theoretical positions (e.g., innatism and empiricism, mentalism and behaviourism). We may analyze communiction as exteriorisation without questioning either the exteriorising or receptive being in this process; or we may interrogate either one of these beings, analyzing the interior externalised in communication as well as the being of the receiver. In other words, there are two beings entering into communication and we may either limit ourselves to considering communication by looking at what these communicants do or interrogate their being and, therefore, try to ascertain what they are like and how they are constituted. In either case, the conception of communication as the e-mission of a being which another being receives remains true.

This way of conceiving communication is obviously connected to a certain conception of being, to a certain ontology. Just as communication in general is considered as a process beginning from being, as its e-mission, being in general is considered as the presupposition and foundation of communication. Communication theory and ontology are in general closely connected: all communication theories have their ontologies, apart from whether they are explicated or only impicit; conversely, all ontologies have a theory of communication, even if this theory is not articulated.

No matter what the theories, philosophies and ideologies of communication are, today a different conception of the communication/being relationship is asserting itself. We may summarise this by the statement that "communication is being". This assertion can be turned round by saying that, on the contrary, "being is communication". But unlike the first statement, "communication is being", which concerns communication theory and which therefore concerns us here directly, the second statement, "being is communication", regards general ontology. This does not mean that we can ignore it, even though we can in this context only briefly mention it as part of the inevitable connection between communication theory and ontology. Considered in reference only to the regional ontology relative to communication theory (in other words, as being that communicates, as communicating being), the first statement ("communication is being") can be converted into the second ("being is communication").

What currently results from the two main sectors of knowledge and praxis, the scientific and the economic, is that communication is being and vice versa that being that communicates is communication.

As far as scientific investigation is concerned, the range of disciplines concerning communication is particularly important in this regard insofar as they focus on the organic world in its multiple aspects, from the great kingdoms to micro-organisms, collectively identifiable under the heading of biosemiotics. In this sphere of scientific investigation, life and communication have come to be identified with each other. Communication is not only the condition of life but also the criteria of its very identification: a living being is only identifiable as a communicating being (the inheritor of a genetic code, the respondent to environmental stimuli, etc.). Life = semiosis, that is, a process in which signs are manifest or detectable (to be precise, "signs of life"). Obviously communication in this connection is not at all the externalisation of the living being, from bacteria or prokaryotes to cells with a membrane and nucleus or eukaryotes, from micro-organisms to organisms belonging to the three (or four) great kingdoms, but rather is the living being itself. In the organic world, communicating is being and vice versa. To communicate is to persist in one's own being, to maintain one's being, to confirm oneself as being, conatus essendi.

Regarding the economy as well, communication is identified as being and persistence in being. We are no longer in the vast sphere of biosemiosis alone, nor are we in the more restricted but still general sphere of zoosemiosis, both of which man is obviously a part. We are now in the more specific sphere of anthroposemiosis where being, understood as the human being, is not only a living being but also a historical-social being. This is where language comes into play (speech or verbal language being only one of its many expressions). Language implies that the human being is not only a semiosic being, like all living beings insofar as they communicate, but also a semiotic animal, one capable of semiotics, that is, of meta-semiosis, of reflection and thus of consciousness. Language is the characteristic prerogative of hominids, making their past and ongoing evolution possible; the evolution of the semiotic animal is, accordingly, not just biological evolution, but also historical-social evolution.

In the current phase of capitalistic production, the economy confirms the identification of being with communication. In this phase, characterised by the industrial revolution of automation, the processes of the globalisation of communication, and the universalisation of the market (a universalisation consisting not simply in the quantitative fact of expansion, but also and above all in qualitative alterations, represented both by the translatability of anything into goods and by the production of new goods-things), communication is no longer just an intermediate phase in the production cycle (production, exchange, consumption) but has become the constitutive modality of production and consumption processes themselves. Not only is exchange communication, but production and consumption are also communication. So the whole productive cycle is communication. This phase in capitalistic production can be characterised as the "communication-production" phase.

Communication-production is the communication of the world as it is today. It is global communication, not only in the sense that it has expanded over the whole planet but also in the sense that it sticks to and relates to the world, it accomodates the world. It may be better to say that it is communication of this world. Communication and reality, communication and being, coincide. Realistic politics (but only a realistic politics truly counts as politics) is the only appropriate politics for global communication, for the being of communication-production. The relationship between politics and ontology (politics proper being as such pre-disposed for war, the crudest and most brutally realistic face of being) is nowadays specified as the relation with the ontology of being communication, which is world communication, communication-production.

Therefore, on this side of the connection in the heavens of theories and philosophies, there is another which is earthly and materially given, the connection between communication and ontology characteristic of the current forms of production.

Communication-production means persevering in being, insisting on being, persisting, conatus essendi.

Social reproduction in general, the process through which human society materially and culturally reproduces itself, is certainly (as the expression "reproduction" clearly indicates) regeneration, maintenance, conservation. But precisely because of the insistence on the being of the human community, social reproduction assumes, and has historically assumed, different forms of production passing from forms that hindered it — due to the discrepancy between the system of social relationships and the level of growth of human intellectual, transformation and inventive capacities — to more appropriate and favourable ones. Therefore, social reproduction is achieved through the possibility of escaping from being-communication as established by a given social form. Such escape is possible through the re-invention and reorganization of social relations thanks to the human ability to interpret and respond otherwise to being-communication, to take one's distance from actuality, to evade from and go beyond the limits of the world that has produced being-communcation, and from the vision of the world it fits in with. In social reproduction, identification between communication and being, characteristic of life generally, the living being and being communication, is overcome insofar as we are dealing with the semiotic animal, that is, the animal that not only has communicative relations (like the other animals which, therefore, as Marx says, do not properly have relations), but is also capable of evaluative relations, of becoming aware, responsible, deliberative and, in particular, disposed to planning communication relations. In other words, the semiotic animal is, by virtue of these capacities, capable of escaping being-communication.

In contrast, persistence of communication-reproduction is persistence of the same social form, the capitalistic. Capitalistic society with its continual adjustments and metamorphoses functional to its own maintainance has not yet ceased to set, has not yet finished finishing, in spite of its only having emerged at sunset (already at Hegel's dusk), in spite of the signs of its finishing. Only the ideology functional to maintaining capitalism can identify its being, that is, communication-production, with the being-communication of social reproduction in general, to the point of making this particular social form corresponding to capitalism look natural to the human being, a part of the human beings' own nature. In other words, being-communication as it emerges in this particular phase in social reproduction is passed off as being a necessary and unchangeable way of being for humans, once a high level of economic growth, cultural perfection and scientific-technological progress has been achieved according to a process of linear development.

Apart from such a mystification, the viewpoint of current ideology — the ideo-logic of globalisation, an ideology in line with communication-production logic — is no different from the viewpoint of the disciplines that go to form what may be considered, as said above, sectors of research in "biosemiotics". What they share is what we can call the ontology of being-communication.

Let's try to outline its basic features by returning to what we have said so far. Communication should be considered in terms of being. But being is, as we all know so well, also becoming. Not all being is communication. But communication is being. To communicate is to persist in one's own being. It is self-preservation. Communication is not exteriorisation of something that is on its own account. It is this being on its own account. Communication is not exteriorisation of an interior being, but is interior being itself. Communication is a movement of interiorisation, of return, of self-assertion. Communication is here understood not as extroversion, but as introversion. Does everything which is communicate? We are not concerned with this question in our environment of regional ontology regarding communication. The fact with which we are concerned, for that part of being that communicates, is that communicating is being. If we wished to venture into the territory of general ontology we could risk formulae such as: being = communicating: false; communicating = being: true. Can we be without communicating? Yes, but not for those beings that communicate, that are communication. But let us limit the question of the being-communication relationship to the latter: their being consists of communicating. Being hungry, even before the act of nourishing oneself, is communication. An organism is communication. The organism is a communicating being, in itself, as an organism. An organism is a device for self-communication or self-preservation, capable therefore of persisting in its own being.

The human being is also communication, like any living being, including those of which he is made, eukaryotes, and those with which he is inhabited and covered, prokaryotes or bacteria. But the human being is also communication, like the systems which guarantee preservation and reproduction, the genetic code, the neuro-vegetal system and the immune system. He lives off internal communication and external communication, like all other living beings and all other animals, but he is endowed with a species-specific modelling device through which he constructs his own "world", his own Umwelt. The meeting zone between "external reality" (external to the "world" and thus not perceptible) and any organism is made of signs and, therefore, it is refracted and organised, formed, in accordance with the specific modelling device of the species. Our reference here is to the macro-organism and we are talking about "external reality" relative to this macro-organism. However, it is also clear that we could talk about "external reality" concerning the cell in the context of intercellular communication and between cell and virus. Such communication takes place inside the macro-organism and we could claim that this too occurs in the meeting zone made of signs between micro-organism and "external reality".

We must immediately point out that language should not be confused with speech. This confusion can be described as the "fallacy of the linguist", the language linguist who says "language" without qualification when he means "verbal language" (in other words "speech", be it oral or written) and who uses the expression "general linguistics" only to refer to the study of verbal language and the relative languages.

In contrast to the "fallacy of the linguist", we already in fact use in common language the term language to refer to what is not verbal too (e.g., "gestural language", "sign-language" of deaf-mutes, "photographic language", the "language of painting", the "language of fashion", and the "language of merchandise"). In this case common speech or common speaking says how things stand better than the linguist.

All properly human sign behaviour is language, properly human semiosis does not exist without language. Here the properly human is the human being in his specificity as a historical-social being insofar as he is biologically endowed with the specifies-specific device we call "language". As a biological organism, the human being shares communicative processes which are not (properly speaking) languages with other organisms, including the micro-organisms of which he is made or which he carries. Anthroposemiosis is not only made of languages just as human semiosis is not only semiotic, that is, semiosis or semiotics capable of meta-semiosis. The sphere of languages and within this sphere the sphere of semiotics together occupy a very small space in overall anthroposemiosis. This also incorporates part of vital endosemiosis (the part which occurs in the human organism, enabling its development, maintenance and reproduction), it is part of zoosemiotics and is involved — and such involvement is obviously vital — with overall communication as it takes place throughout the whole semiobiosphere.

In accordance with Charles Morris, we could free the expression "general linguistics" from the "fallacy of the linguist" and use it for the discipline within semiotics and anthroposemiotics, which studies verbal and non-verbal sign process known as languages.

All animals are endowed with a specific-species modelling device; they build their world with it, bridging the gap between the organism and the external environment (as noted already, this gap is made of signs). The specifically human device of language has the peculiarity of being able to produce an undetermined number of worlds because it builds syntactic constructions using just a finite number of elements. The same elements can be used again in new constructions, so that an undetermined number of worlds can in fact be created through continual deconstruction and reconstruction processes. On the evolutionary scale, hominids through to homo sapiens sapiens were in fact endowed with this device well before speech or verbal language was developed and prevailed over other forms of communication. Verbal language came on the scene through adaptation as a means of communication and is inconceivable except on the basis of the primary modelling of language and its syntactic procedure. Later, by means of exaptation, verbal languge underwent in the history of human evolution a process of interiorisation. Consequently, speech as the material of thought contributed to facilitating and enhancing primary modelling and collaborated with the latter as a "secondary modelling" device. Secondary modelling is relative to a given language and to the order of discourse which, in turn, is also connected to a given overall organisation of social relations.

In the human being, being communication is achieved, as for other animals, on the basis of the construction of the world through a species-specific modelling device. However, in other animals, as long as the species remains as it is, except for variations of subspecies (insignificant here) and modifications due to exaptation, a relation of mutual correspondence, symmetry and saturation is established between modelling and the being of communication. On the contrary, when it is a question of human being-communication, the modelling device that produced it, language (in particular, language with its syntactic function and its capacity for deconstruction and reconstruction and thus of production of numerous possible worlds), does not identify with being-communication: language is not exhausted in it, nor does it fit being-communication. Here, the particular modelling device allows interpretations, evaluations and responses relatively to the the being of communication, which as such require a point of view that is external to the latter, which goes beyond it.

We have called the specifically human capacity of meta-semiosis "semiotics". We can now add that it depends on the specific human modelling device we have indicated as language. Syntax, deconstruction and reconstruction, production of several possible worlds, semiotics, with the consequent capacities for evaluation, responsabilization, inventiveness, planning are all prerogatives of language. In language the being of communication finds its own otherwise. Insofar as man is endowed with language, insofar as he is a semiotic animal, human behaviour cannot be circumscribed within communication, being, ontology. From this point of view man reveals his capacity for otherness. He may present himself as other and propose other possibilities beyond the alternatives forseeen by the being of the world of communication. We are not simply alluding here to the capacity of being otherwise with respect to being, but to the capacity, specific to man, of otherwise than being, that is, otherwise than being-communication. The capacity for otherwise than being in fact subtends all possibilities of being otherwise. This capacity is characteristic of the semiotic animal and consists of the capacity to transcend being and the communication world, rendering this animal completely responsible not only for social reproduction, but also for life over the whole planet, the two things of course being inseparable. This capacity for otherwise than being denies the semiotic animal all the possible alibis he could have had if his capacity for interpretation, response, action were limited solely to the being-communication of the world as it is, if his choices were limited to alternatives made available by the world as it is, and if he had not been endowed with the capacity for otherness which, instead, characterizes him.

We shall now return to the communication-ontology relationship in the current form of global communication-production. As already noted, global conveys the sense not only that communication expands over the whole planet, but also that it fits in with the world and makes itself adequate for this world, so that communication is reality, and, also, so that communication and being coincide. Realism in politics must keep faith with ontology thus described, to the very point of accepting the extrema ratio of war, as dictated by the strict law of the force of things. World planning for the increase in communication and its control continues and develops the being of communication-production. This project is based on awareness of the productive character of communication and, therefore, of the identification process between communication and being as it occurs in today's capitalistic production society. But this project is also based on the clear awareness that the command of capital can only be achieved by controling communication. This is the program of communication-production ideology. It is so realistic, so consistent with the being of things as they are presented to us, flaunting the good news of the end of ideologies, that, in fact, it appears more like its logic than like its ideology. We choose to call it the "ideologic" of global communication-production. Indeed, the ideology functional to maintaining this particular social form ends, in good and bad faith, by passing off this particular social form as that corresponding to social reproduction in general. On the contrary, social reproduction needs to be able to escape from the established being-communication order, it needs to be able to reinvent and to reorganize social relationships in order to free itself of social organizations like the current one which obstacle and endanger it.

The preservation of the being of communication-production has a destructive character.

The being of communication-production, its persistence in preservation and reproduction puts social reproduction into serious danger and blocks it, stopping communication of the human historical-social being from reorganizing itself into new social forms:

Communication-reproduction exalts communication, of itself, to the detriment of invention, innovation, re-planning and re-construction which are specific modalities of the human being thanks to the language modelling device:

Moreover, the reproduction of communication-production endangers the bare existence of man, not only his existence as an intelligent being, the preservation and expansion of his intellectual faculties, his semiotic capability, but also his existence as a living being, vital semiosis, health and survival:

Taken together, the preservation, reinforcing and expansion of the current social form, that is, communication-production, at any cost pose a lethal threat for life over the whole planet: ozone hole, ecological disasters caused by normal reproduction cycles and overwhelming disasters (normal disasters include those connected with the communication-production of war); nuclear destruction and relevant experiments, etc.:

communication-production versus being communication (semiosis) of life over the whole planet.

Only behaviour towards the othern that is dis-interested allows escape from the being of communication-production. On the contrary, the interestedness of identity is part of communication-production. The opening towards otherness replaces limited responsibility, safeguarded by alibis functional to identity and its roles, with responsibility beyond roles, responsibility without the possibility of escape, responsibility that cannot be delegated, it is characterized by the tendency to be involved and exposed completely. We have claimed that communication is a movement of interiorisation, of return, of self-assertion, that communication should not be understood as extroversion, but as introversion. Otherness is the outside of communication, the otherwise of being. This movement towards otherness without return, also without any demand for any gain, is a meta-semiosic movement and, therefore, a semiotic movement. And this is the properly human. Language which renders human behaviour non circumscribable within communication, being, ontology, not closed within the context of alternatives as they are foreseen in the being of the world of communication, implies responsibility understood as having to respond, to the other, of having to answer to/for, not only to/for oneself as I, but also to/for the other. The fact that the being of communication finds its own otherwise in language means that language is for the other, is for otherness. So the state of desperately not wanting to lose the being oneself of communication (conatus essendi; faithfulness to communication which is essential infidelity towards the other) can be replaced by that of desperately not wanting to lose the otherwise of the being oneself of communication, the desperate struggle against losing the other, the other of self and from self.

Insofar as the single being is not differentiated from the other single being because he carries out the same work, and therefore refers to a given type of labour, a given type of use value, that single undifferentiated being is an individual. The appearance of the individual, with his identity, his separation from other individuals, is closely connected to the appearance of different forms of useful labour, that is, with the division of labour. When the division of labour gives rise to the production of goods, sociality among these individuals is given by the character of equality, interchangeability of the same type of labour, comparability of all different types of labour which are presented as specifications of simple labour, of labour without qualities, of labour in general, of generically human labour. Sociality is determined by the fact that the labour of separate individuals presents itself in the abstract form of generality and that the product of their labour takes on the form of a general equivalent. The work of the individual viewed separately, in isolation, takes on a social character in the abstraction of value, and becomes social as it takes the form of its direct opposite, that of abstract generality (cf. Marx 1843, It. trans.: 16).

We may call this type of sociality community. Community is communication among separate individuals, which reproduces its own being, its own generic, indifferent difference, through the interest of undifferentiated individuals in their difference and in their mutual indifference to each other. When labour itself in the form of capitalist production becomes merchandise, the community identifies the measure of its wealth in labour-time.

In Towards a critique of Hegel's philosophy of law (1843) (Per la critica della filosofia del diritto di Hegel, 1843), Marx sees in the concrete abstraction represented by the proletariat class the partial collective subject. The latter is concretely interested in his own disappearance as a partial collective subject and, therefore, in overcoming the net division between partial interests and the interests of man in general, of man as such, of "man himself".

To single out the subject looking for emancipation in a partial generic subject, the proletarian, means to search for liberation from the logic of purchase and sale of labour force and therefore from commodification of human labour in labour understood as an abstraction, free labour sold as labour force. Marx identifies in the collective subject, and therefore in indifferent labour, a form of difference that is not indifferent to other differences, which therefore by liberating itself liberates the other differences, the other partial generic subjects. Abstraction, as much as it may be concrete, abstraction of the partial type, abstraction concerning class, interested as it may be to see the end of class society and of human exploitation, together with the other concrete abstraction, indifferent labour, labour sold as merchandise and paid by the hour, should both be capable of social renewal, of transforming the community, the society of indifferent differences, in communitariness, in sociality as being for the other.

Historically things have so far not developed in this way, no doubt because of historical contingencies (and especially the cancer of real socialism, the inconsistency of proletarian internationalism in the face of two world wars, the frequent contrast between the claim to the partial rights of difference, the proletarian class, and the rights of other differences, both on a national and international level, etc.). A metamorphosis is, however, taking place concerning indifferent work which is becoming general, not in the sense of class but in a global or universal sense; there is therefore metamorphosis on a qualitative level even more than on a quantitative level. Indifferent work is work related to the market, in the form of interclass erasement even of class differences: the indifferent sociality of the community prevails over difference of the partial type as represented by class. And the tendency towards indifferent sociality is concomitant with the paroxsysmic search for other differences, other identities, no longer specific to class: nation, ethnic group, religion, language. Moreover, indifferent work with its communitary (more than class) character is now ending: automation and computerization of production expel work force, and the formation of new professions does not compensate liberation from indifferent work, which is on the increase. On the other hand, in a market society socially useful occupations able to absorb liberated indifferent labour time are not taken into account: socially useful occupations belong to the private sphere (not "private" as in "private business", "privatization", which refers to the "public private sphere", but "private" in the sense of a "private private sphere", that is, the sphere of interpersonal relations). Therefore, in the light of today’s world as it is, it cannot be ignored that indifferent work and the class to which it traditionally belongs, is in the process of being "liberated"— as anticipated, indifferent work is now interclass work, that is, it is in the process of being generalized throughout the whole community, and is on the decrease.

In the perspective of today's ideo-logic, the fundamental character of labour as such, of general, indifferent, labour is such that even when alternative social forms are planned they generally do not succeed in imagining another source of social wealth that is not labour, another optimal solution if not "work for all". As Benjamin observes, the German labourer's Gotha programme, where labour is defined as the source of all wealth and culture, already bears traces of this confusion. Confusion that ends up becoming the point of connection and of transition from socialism to nazism.

Labour is not the source of all wealth, clarifies Marx in his Critique of the Gotha Programme (1875) (Critica del programma di Gotha, 1875). And he adds that the bourgeousie has its good reasons for attributing work with a supernatural creative force. In his manuscripts of 1844, Marx criticizes vulgar and material communism (and ante litteram, ante factum, "real socialism" as well). This suppresses private property by generalizing it; and to private property he opposes general private property, physical possession, ownership extended to all. Marx here fights against the misunderstanding that subtends newly planned societies that continue to consider, as does capitalist society, work in general as the source of wealth, so that activity of labourers is not suppressed, but is extended to all mankind. For crude and vulgar communism thus understood, community is no more than a community of workers and equality no more than equal wages.

In Nazi Germany, Gemeinschaft (community) replaces Gesellschaft (society) and is the identity community, which excludes all differences and all alterities. It implies total belonging on the part of its members, absolute identification (without the excesses of alterity), full solidarity, complete allignment. It marks the end of all ideological differences; class difference is erased. Whoever is part of the community must have Gemeinschaftssin (community sense), Gemeinschaftwille (community will) and respect Gemeinschaftordnung (community order).

We cannot understand the process of total identification with the Community — Gemeinschaft —, served by the whole lexicon of Nazi Germany, if we do not begin from work in general, indifferent work. This produces value as exchange value and is a structural, constitutive element of our social system. In the lexicon of Nazi Germany not only does the term “Arbeit” signify "abstract labour", "undifferentiated labour" which is quantified and paid by the hour, but also undifferentiated labour in the interclassist sense, that is, labour liberated from all association with "class", "alienation", "exploitation".

Understood in interclass terms, the transition from indifferent work connoted in relation to class difference (it too an indifferent difference), to work as such without even that general connotation, is simple. The exclusion of otherness (one's own otherness as well as the otherness of others) from one's own identity as a communitarian, has its "primal scene" (to use an expression introduced by Freud) in the commodification of work, in paid work, in the abstract category of "labour", "labour in general". This abstraction became real and concrete for the first time in the reality of capitalist production and as part of the social structure it determines. In the current phase of capitalist production the labour's class connotation has been lost. During the Fascist period in Italy the general interclass connotation assumed by the term labour was considered as a sign among others of innovations introduced by Fascism into the Italian language. As regards the term "Labour", Giuseppe Bottai wrote the following, to his great satisfaction, in 1934: "the term has a broader meaning to concern all organizational and executive forms, of the intellectual, technical and manual order, and is not necessarily connected to the special labour of a given class"; and he praises the expression “datore di lavoro” (literally work giver, that is, employer) which replaces the term “padrone” (master, owner), at the time no longer in use. And he considered the expression "datore di lavoro" to be "consecrated by revolutionary laws..., a singular identification, in the consciousness of the people, with that giuridical equality which subtends our social order".

The interclass idea of "work" and "community" — community which measures its wealth in work-time — inherent in capitalist ideo-logic, has now become reality with the spread of consumerism and with the globalisation of communication-production.

However, the development of capital constitutes the condition for liberation from free work and for the end of this social system based on the purchase and sale of labour-force. It is a question of imagining new forms of social relationships beginning from liberation from work, a process that paradoxically began with the development of capital.

Communitariness means sociality that cannot be globalized, sociality open to otherness and therefore free from obsession with identity. Thus intended sociality is extracommunitarian with respect to self, it is other, without boundaries, territories, appurtenances, roots, it is sociality grounded in incommensurable, uncontainable work where wealth is measured in terms of disposable time for otherness.

Paradoxically the development of capital produces the conditions for deterritorialization and for liberation from indifferent work. So it then becomes a question of imagining new forms of social relations and new occupations where reduced labour time and production costs do not identify with development in productivity or increase in value associated with exchange. On the contrary, reduced labour-time will be considered as a sign of development in the wealth of the single individual's personality, accompanied by reduction in labour-time for whole society to a minimal degree and constantly decreasing, so that everyone's time is free for personal development (cf. Marx, Grundrisse).

Production is calculated here in the light of wealth conceived in such terms for all. It is a question of orienting reduced labour time — currently converted into alienated surplus value and into unemployment — into disposable time for the full development of single individuals and therefore of society at large, that is, of the social individual, recognizing true social wealth in the development of that individual. "So that disposable time and not work time is the measure of wealth" (Ibidem).

The time of abstract work is the time of indifference, the time of useful work is the time of difference. Instead, disposable time is the time of unindifference. Here social relationships based on identity are replaced by social relationships based on alterity, on otherness with respect to the other, beginning from one's own otherness which instead is sacrificed in the abstraction of unindifferentiated work and in the need for useful work.

On the one hand, we have time as a function of being communication, the being of use value, of need, and the abstract being of value, of productivity. On the other hand, we have the time of "otherwise than being", time available for otherness, one's own otherness and the otherness of others, time that has its own consistency, its own materiality, because it is not the time of the same, whether this same is referred to individual identity, national identity, identity of the production system, class identity, international identity of abstract, indifferent work. Rather, it is the time of the other, of what remains irreducibly other with respect to all abstractions, identities, differences-indifferences. And this time of the other is the kind of time that is developed as labour comes to an end with the exclusion of labour force by fixed capital, thereby delineating a social system, characteristic of post-colonial society, that is no longer based on the purchase and sale of quantified work.

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1875 Critica del programma di Gotha, in Marx & Engels, Opere scelte, Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1966, pp. 951-76.

l894 Il capitale, III, It. trans. by M. L. Boggeri, Editori Riuniti, Rome, 1968.

1992 Between Signs and Non-Signs, ed. by S. Petrilli, John Benjamins, Amsterdam.

l992 Umanesino ecumenico, It. trans. by G. Giannico, intro. by A. Ponzio, Adriatica, Bari, 1994.

[1] Paper delivered at the 7th International Congress of the International Association for Semiotic Studies (I.A.S.S), Sign Processes in Complex Systems, Section: "Semiosis, Community, Sociality", Technische Universität, Dresden, October 6-11, 1999. Forthcoming in Proceeding of the World Congress, CD-ROM, 2003; now in Quaderni del Dipartimento di Pratiche linguistiche e analisi di testi, PLAT. Serie annuale diretta da Augusto Ponzio, 2, 2003, pp. 367-384, Università degli Studi di Bari, Bari, Edizioni dal Sud.