The Labor of Job: The Biblical Text as a Parable of Human Labor (review)

Negri began to work on The Labor of Job while still in prison. As he explains in the preface, his confinement concentrated his attention on the inescapability of suffering. His careful reading of the Book of Job does not bemoan, in a clichéd existential manner, the necessary link between human finitude and suffering. Instead, he sees in the struggle of Job against God a metaphorical foundation for human sociality and solidarity. "It is not the divinity ... that descends from above, but suffering and pain, which come from below, that construct the very being of the world."(93) Suffering is not borne in isolation, but is always witnessed. To witness suffering is to feel compassion, and to feel compassion is to stand with the sufferer against its cause. Negri thus claims to find in the Book of Job the core values for a new ethical foundation for the communist project.

Negri's argument proceeds from two assumptions: that the labour theory of value can no longer explain the functioning of the capitalist economy and that, as a consequence, the contemporary world lacks a universal measure of value, economic and moral. We exist in a world which is without measure, where only Power rules to maintain the given social structure. "Value has become immeasurable at the same time that all measure fails ... the fact that the criterion of measure is lacking does not remove the measured phenomenon. The suffering of the man who labours, who is sacrificed himself to wealth, remains."(10)

The truth or falsity of these assumptions directly affect the overall acceptability of Negri's argument. Yet, he does not provide empirical support for either, but proceeds straightaway to unpack their ethical implications through his commentary on Job. A wide-ranging interpretation it is, linking Job with Spinoza, with existing Jewish and Christian readings, with liberation theology, and with the future of communism. However, as a political and philosophical argument the book is only partially satisfactory.

There is no doubt that Negri's argument is bold, original, and worthy of careful consideration. It is often strikingly insightful and philosophically profound. As one works through the text one sees more and more clearly what Negri thinks is the "materialist" centre of Job's struggle. God is the faceless and nameless power that rules arbitrarily over human life ("The Lord giveth, and the lord taketh away"). The mortal human being stands mute beneath this power, executing its commands and hoping for the best, but always in the knowledge that the way things actually turn out is beyond his or her control. This relation to a faceless power does resemble the relation between the individual labourer and capital: market forces are known through their effects, but are unpredictable, and can consign millions to unemployment and misery without warning or ethical justification. The destitute worker does indeed stand like Job, dumbfounded, with no face to pin the blame on.

But Job does not stand silent; he revolts. He demands to see God; he demands an accounting from God. What is more, God appears. This moment of the book is crucial for Negri. When Job's revolt forces God to abandon his transcendence and account for himself, God becomes a face, matter, and thus ceases to be God, that is, ungraspable arbitrary Power. As soon as Power ceases to be arbitrary, it ceases to be Power. To make the real causes of suffering appear, in other words, is already a victory over them, because once out in the open, they can be overcome. "I have seen God, thus God is torn from the absolute transcendence that constitutes the idea of him. God justifies himself, thus God is dead."(97)

With the death of God, i.e., the appearance of the cause of suffering, a new basis to human society becomes possible — the positive basis of the creativity of collective labour as the real secret of world-constitution and happiness. Creativity is the real...