crete, direct action of the technologies, allowing the instantaneous
movement of information.Abstract Marxist values overcoded the aggregate of human labor
concretely dedicated to the production of exchange values. But the
actual movement of capitalism tends toward the point at which use
values become exchange values, and all productive labor depends
on mechanization. The poles of exchange themselves are now on the
side of mechanization since computers talk among themselves from
one continent to another and dictate to the managers the terms of
the exchange. Automatized and informatized production no longer
gains its consistency from a basic human factor, but from an
element of mechanized continuity that traverses, surrounds, dis-
perses, miniaturizes and recuperates all human functions and activ-
ities. (Piano sul pianeta, 10)When Guattari says that capital is a semiotic operator, he means
therefore that the pervasiveness of the capitalist model no longer
depends solely on an effect of abstract overcoding that manifests itself
especially in the moment of exchange, but also depends on the tech-
nologically mediated integration of different moments of manufactur-
ing: planifying moments, techno-scientific moments, informational
moments, material moments, and so forth.
Guattari did not allow himself to be distracted in the least by the
game of simulation that was taking place on the world stage at the
start of the 1980s. Rather, he pointed directly to the long-term trends,
and prefigured in this way the process that we see developing in the
1990s:
a) the imposition (or rather the infiltration, penetration, invasive pro-
liferation) of the capitalistic model understood as semiotic operator,
as rule of generalized transcodification;
b) the proliferation of the margins, both in the form of residuals,
re-emergence, reterritorializations (the identitarian obsession, national-
isms,forms of integralism, tribalisms), and in the form of minorities,
autonomies, deterritorializations (subcultures, provisional commun-
ities, cultural contaminations).
Therefore this document on integrated world capitalism impresses us
today as a visionary text and helps us understand something about
what is happening in the planetary economy and psycho-chemistry.Integrated World Capitalism 219780230_221192_04_cha03.pdf 10/3/08 11:32 AM Page 21