{"id":4357,"date":"2019-01-09T09:20:49","date_gmt":"2019-01-09T14:20:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/?p=4357"},"modified":"2019-01-09T09:20:49","modified_gmt":"2019-01-09T14:20:49","slug":"jeff-stein-rights-talk-in-the-commons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/jeff-stein-rights-talk-in-the-commons\/","title":{"rendered":"Jeff Stein | Rights Talk in The Commons"},"content":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Stein<\/strong><\/p>\n

In this brief response to Hardt & Negri (H&N), I wish to explore their repeated use of one key phrase: \u201cthe rights of the common.\u201d[1]<\/a>\u00a0 I aim to isolate those \u201crights\u201d and subject them to the kind of critique that became the hallmark of the Critical Legal Studies (CLS) movement (albeit in the context of individual American constitutional rights).[2]<\/a>\u00a0 Indeed, while H&N engage with Duncan Kennedy and the CLS literature, their focus is on CLS \u201cpractical projects\u201d that aim to \u201creform property from the inside.\u201d[3]<\/a>\u00a0 However, H&N\u2019s invocation of \u201crights\u201d invites the kind of rights skepticism that CLS scholars explored.<\/p>\n

For H&N, the common, or the \u201cmultitude,\u201d has a \u201cright\u201d to engage in democratic decisionmaking procedures when collectively managing objects of social wealth, including \u201cideas, code, images, and cultural products,\u201d as well as \u201ccultural circuits\u201d and \u201csocial institutions.\u201d[4]<\/a>\u00a0 Precisely, they speak of \u201ca right to decide together democratically about the access, use, and distribution of social wealth.\u201d[5]<\/a>\u00a0 This right is meant to serve their first order goal of \u201cestablish[ing] modes of sharing wealth that are equal and open,\u201d thus serving their larger project of developing a system of \u201cnonproperty.\u201d[6]<\/a><\/p>\n

Following Mark Tushnet, we can consider the extent to which this \u201cright\u201d suffers from \u201cfundamental indeterminacy.\u201d[7]<\/a>\u00a0 Indeed, as Tushnet famously noted, \u201cfundamental indeterminacy makes it impossible to connect [an] abstract right \u2026 to any particular outcome without fully specifying a wide range of social arrangements that the proponents of the right take for granted but that another person \u2026 might reject.\u201d[8]<\/a>\u00a0 Given this malleability, rights talk is either \u201can act of political rhetoric or a commitment to social transformation,\u201d but the articulation of the right itself bears little fruit.[9]<\/a><\/p>\n

Here, the concept of democracy does all of the work for H&N.\u00a0 They speak of a \u201cneed for governance and institution[s] \u2026 in which the rules have been devised and modified by the participants themselves and also are monitored and enforced by them.\u201d[10]<\/a>\u00a0 But this cursory nod to institutional design does little to counter the indeterminacy critique.\u00a0 In fact, H&N\u2019s formulation is premised on rather consequential assumptions.\u00a0 For example, the guarantee of a process that allows for rule creation, modification, and enforcement by participants does not, in and of itself, guarantee that currently vulnerable individuals or groups within \u201cthe multitude\u201d will, in fact, introduce and enact rules influencing the collective management of social wealth.\u00a0 And more broadly, the guarantee of a \u201cmore democratic\u201d process\u2014which could take many different forms, ranging from majority rule to lottery voting[11]<\/a>\u2014does little to guarantee that egalitarian modes of sharing social wealth will necessarily result from the process.\u00a0 Thus, H&N\u2019s rights guarantee seems premised on the pre-existence of political equality and open access, as well as a certain amount of magical thinking about the fruits of democracy.<\/p>\n

On this front, Camille Robcis\u2019 exploration of institutional psychotherapy strikes me as the most generative. \u00a0Indeed, Robcis suggests that communities might \u201cconstantly imagine and reimagine institutions that would produce new vectors of transference, different forms of identifications, and alternative social relations.\u201d[12]<\/a>\u00a0 And yet, Robcis\u2019 intervention does little to support H&N\u2019s contention that institutional (re)imaginations of the order that would be necessary to support the nonproperty project could be achieved in \u201cmore expansive democratic experiences.\u201d[13]<\/a><\/p>\n

This leads us to another paradox in H&N\u2019s formulation.\u00a0 They wish to move us beyond legal mediations, and yet the social transformation that they seek seems largely dependent on the specific nature of institutions that govern objects of social wealth.\u00a0 In turn, the structure and rhetoric of these institutions could ultimately lead to the kind of \u201closs of faith\u201d that plagued 20th<\/sup> century American legal reasoning, and constitutional rights themselves, that Duncan Kennedy and others chronicled.[14]<\/a>\u00a0 Of course, Kennedy notes that commitments to \u201coutside rights\u201d (rights that preexist legal reasoning) can defensibly exist alongside critiques of implementing modes of governance (and their attendant rhetoric and reasoning).[15]<\/a>\u00a0 But Kennedy reminds us that \u201cthere may be trouble\u201d if the critical spirit jumps the outside\/inside line, thus threatening the viability of first order egalitarian commitments.[16]<\/a><\/p>\n

Given the force of these critiques, my hunch is that H&N\u2019s project is better served by focus on institutional design rather than imprecise articulations of collective rights.\u00a0 If democratic decisionmaking is to be our saving grace, then it is imperative that we develop sufficiently concrete (yet fluid) practices of social production that can be scaled up to match the scope of H&N\u2019s egalitarian vision.<\/p>\n

[1]<\/a> Assembly, passim<\/em>.<\/p>\n

[2]<\/a> See, e.g.<\/em>, Mark Tushnet, An Essay on Rights<\/em>, 62 Tex. L. Rev. 1363 (1984).<\/p>\n

[3]<\/a> Assembly, p. 88.<\/p>\n

[4]<\/a> Id<\/em>. at 98.<\/p>\n

[5]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[6]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 97.<\/p>\n

[7]<\/a> Tushnet, supra<\/em> note 2, at 1375.<\/p>\n

[8]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[9]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 1380.<\/p>\n

[10]<\/a> Assembly, p. 99.<\/p>\n

[11]<\/a> See, e.g.<\/em>, Ben Saunders, Democracy, Political Equality, and Majority Rule<\/em>, 121 Ethics 148, 149 (2010).<\/p>\n

[12]<\/a> Camille Robcis, Radical Psychiatry, Institutional Analysis, and the Commons<\/em>, Praxis 13\/13 (Dec. 4, 2018), https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/camille-robcis-radical-psychiatry-institutional-analysis-and-the-commons\/.<\/p>\n

[13]<\/a> Assembly, p. 99.<\/p>\n

[14]<\/a> Duncan Kennedy, The Critique of Rights in Critical Legal Studies<\/em>, in<\/em> Left Legalism\/Left Critique 209 (Wendy Brown & Janet Halley eds., 2002).<\/p>\n

[15]<\/a> Id.<\/em><\/p>\n

[16]<\/a> Id.<\/em> at 210.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Jeff Stein In this brief response to Hardt & Negri (H&N), I wish to explore their repeated use of one key phrase: \u201cthe rights of the common.\u201d[1]\u00a0 I aim to isolate those \u201crights\u201d and subject them to the kind… Continue Reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2166,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[38965],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4357","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-resources-5-13"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2166"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4357"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4357\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4357"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4357"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.law.columbia.edu\/praxis1313\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4357"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}