Negri/Value and Affect 79 sures of labor is undone in global command. That said, however, my theme here," value and affect," has not been broached thus far except through the suggestion of a reconsideration of the problem of value" from below." In effect, when we look at things from the point of view of political economy-in other words," from above"-the theme of" value-affect" is so integrated into the macroeconomic process that it is virtually invisible. Economics ignores the problem without any recognition of difficulties. Among the numerous cases, consider two that are exemplary. The first case concerns the domestic labor of women and/or mothers/wives. Now, in the tradition of political economy, this theme can in no way be posed outside of the consideration of the direct or indirect wage of the worker (male, head of family), or rather, in more recent times, outside of the disciplinary techniques of the demographic control of populations (and of the eventual interests of the State-the collective capitalist-in the economic regulation of this demographic development). Value is thus assumed by stripping it from labor (the labor of women-in this case, mothers and wives), stripping it, in other words, from affect. A second example resides at the extreme opposite end of the spectrum. This case deals no longer with the traditional paradigms of classical economics but with a really postmodern theme: the so-called economy of attention. By this term, one refers to the interest in assuming in the economic calculation the interactivity of the user of communication services. In this case, too, even in the clear effort to absorb the production of subjectivity, economics ignores the substance of the question. As it focuses attention on the calculation of" audience," it flattens, controls, and commands the production of subjectivity on a disembodied horizon. Labor (attention) is here subsumed, stripping it from value (of the subject), that is, from affect.

To define the theme of value-affect, we have to leave behind the igno-rance of political economy. We have to understand it precisely on the basis of an apparent paradox that I would like to pose in this way: The more the measure of value becomes ineffectual, the more the value of labor-power becomes determinant in production; the more political economy masks the value of labor-power, the more the value of labor-power is extended and intervenes in a global terrain, a biopolitical terrain. In this paradoxical way, labor becomes affect, or better, labor finds its value in affect, if affect is de-fined as the" power to act"(Spinoza). The paradox can thus be reformulated in these terms: The more the theory of value loses its reference to the sub-ject (measure was this reference as a basis of mediation and command), the more the value of labor resides in affect, that is, in living labor that is