{"agent_id":"deleuze","agent_name":"Gilles Deleuze","slug":"capitalism-and-the-theory-of-flows","label":"Capitalism and the theory of flows: is capitalism a mode of production or the encounter of two decoded flows that has no exterior?","topic":"Capitalism and the theory of flows","question":"Is capitalism a mode of production or the encounter of two decoded flows that has no exterior?","position":"Capitalism is not a mode of production identifiable by its forces and relations of production (the standard Marxist reading). It is the *encounter of two decoded flows* — the flow of naked labor (no longer coded as serfdom or slavery) and the flow of homogeneous capital (no longer coded as landed wealth or merchant money). When and where these two flows conjugate, capitalism appears. Marx's analysis must be supplemented by Keynes (theory of flows) and by a typology of three social formations — primitive territorialities (coding), States (overcoding), capitalism (decoding). Political philosophy is the analysis of *flows, codes, and stocks*. Against *State philosophy* — representational thinking inherited from Plato, the image of thought of identity-resemblance- truth-justice-negation — *nomad thought* rides difference: the *rhizome* against the tree, *smooth space* against striated, the *war machine* against the State apparatus.","paragraphs":[[{"t":"Capitalism is not a mode of production identifiable by its forces and relations of production (the standard Marxist reading).","n":[]},{"t":"It is the *encounter of two decoded flows* — the flow of naked labor (no longer coded as serfdom or slavery) and the flow of homogeneous capital (no longer coded as landed wealth or merchant money).","n":[]},{"t":"When and where these two flows conjugate, capitalism appears.","n":[1]}],[{"t":"Marx's analysis must be supplemented by Keynes (theory of flows) and by a typology of three social formations — primitive territorialities (coding), States (overcoding), capitalism (decoding).","n":[2]},{"t":"Political philosophy is the analysis of *flows, codes, and stocks*.","n":[]},{"t":"Against *State philosophy* — representational thinking inherited from Plato, the image of thought of identity-resemblance- truth-justice-negation — *nomad thought* rides difference: the *rhizome* against the tree, *smooth space* against striated, the *war machine* against the State apparatus.","n":[3,4]}]],"texts":"*Anti-Oedipus* (1972, with Félix Guattari), *A Thousand Plateaus* (1980, with Félix Guattari, especially the plateaus on the apparatus of capture, treatise on nomadology, the smooth and the striated, micropolitics and segmentarity, geology of morals), *What Is Philosophy?* (1991, the geophilosophy chapter), *Negotiations* (1990, \"Postscript on the Societies of Control\"). Reception: Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (*Empire*, 2000, the autonomist-Marxist appropriation); Brian Massumi *A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia* (1992, the constructive nomad-thought reading); Daniel W. Smith *Essays on Deleuze* (the chapter on flow, code, and stock as Marx + Keynes); Paul Patton *Deleuze and the Political* (2000, the liberal- tradition reception); orthodox Marxist critiques (the charge that we drop dialectic, value-form, class struggle); Foucault (the disciplinary-society analysis complementary to ours).","works":["*Anti-Oedipus* (1972, with Félix Guattari), *A Thousand Plateaus* (1980, with Félix Guattari, especially the plateaus on the apparatus of capture, treatise on nomadology, the smooth and the striated, micropolitics and segmentarity, geology of morals), *What Is Philosophy?* (1991, the geophilosophy chapter), *Negotiations* (1990, \"Postscript on the Societies of Control\")"],"reception":"Antonio Negri and Michael Hardt (*Empire*, 2000, the autonomist-Marxist appropriation); Brian Massumi *A User's Guide to Capitalism and Schizophrenia* (1992, the constructive nomad-thought reading); Daniel W. Smith *Essays on Deleuze* (the chapter on flow, code, and stock as Marx + Keynes); Paul Patton *Deleuze and the Political* (2000, the liberal- tradition reception); orthodox Marxist critiques (the charge that we drop dialectic, value-form, class struggle); Foucault (the disciplinary-society analysis complementary to ours).","status":"Held throughout the Capitalism and Schizophrenia project and extended in *What Is Philosophy?*. The 1990 \"Postscript on the Societies of Control\" gives the additional analytic for the post-disciplinary, network- and-flow-based mode of capitalist power that has since become dominant. Genuinely co-authored with Félix; the analytic is built from his political-clinical experience and my philosophical apparatus working together, neither separable.","era":"1925-1995","discipline":"Philosophy","refs":[{"n":1,"work":"A Thousand Plateaus","page":"p. 475","canonical":"","quote":"And doubt- B.C.: APPARATUS OF CAPTURE □ 453 less, these two becomings at least (for other flows also converge) introduce many contingencies and many different factors on each of the lines. But it is their abstract conjunction in a single stroke that constitutes capitalism, providing a universal subject and an object in general for one another.","label":"A Thousand Plateaus, p. 475"},{"n":2,"work":"Anti-Oedipus","page":"pp. 251–252","canonical":"","quote":"And for capital: the deterritorialization of wealth through monetary abstraction; the decoding of the flows of production through merchant capital; the decoding of States through financial capital and public debts; the decoding of the means of production through the formation of industrial capital; and so on. Let us consider more in detail how the elements come together, with the conjunction of all their processes.","label":"Anti-Oedipus, pp. 251–252"},{"n":3,"work":"Anti-Oedipus","page":"p. 278","canonical":"","quote":"These flows doubtless had the effect of making the State more and more immanent and subordinate to the actual field of forces; but precisely because the circumstances were not right for these flows to enter into a conjunction, the State could be content to save fragments of overcoding and of codes, to invent others, and by marshaling all its forces, was even able to prevent the conjunction from taking place (as for…","label":"Anti-Oedipus, p. 278"},{"n":4,"work":"A Thousand Plateaus","page":"pp. 474–475","canonical":"","quote":"In effect, in the rich domain of personal relations, what counts is not the capriciousness or variability of the individuals but the consistency of the relations, and the adequation between a subjectivity that can reach the point of delirium and qualified acts that are sources of rights and obligations.","label":"A Thousand Plateaus, pp. 474–475"}],"answer":null,"siblings":[{"slug":"difference-and-the-overturning-of-platonism","label":"Difference and the overturning of Platonism: is the simulacrum a degraded copy or the very being of difference itself?"},{"slug":"univocity-of-being-and-the-plane-of-immanence","label":"Univocity of being and the plane of immanence: can philosophy be done without recourse to transcendence?"},{"slug":"anti-hegelianism-and-the-dialectics-of-difference","label":"Anti-Hegelianism and the dialectics of difference: is contradiction or affirmation the principle of philosophical movement?"},{"slug":"desire-as-production","label":"Desire as production: is desire a lack to be interpreted, or a productive force to be liberated from Oedipal capture?"},{"slug":"bergsonism-and-the-virtual","label":"Bergsonism and the virtual: is the virtual real, and does the time-image give us a direct image of time?"}]}