t’s from Deleuze and Guattari’s theory of capitalism.

Roughly speaking, capitalism is in an ambiguous position in relation to creative forces (flows, flux, deterritorialisation) – it needs such forces as the engine of its own expansion and profit-generation (as the production it exploits), but it is threatened by them because they ultimately exceed constraint and hence representation (capitalism as axiomatic is a representational system – Deleuze and Guattari insist that it is an axiomatic composed of axioms, rather than a “code”). It can thus seek to manage the flows in two ways, by adding axioms for each flow which escapes – including, exploiting, recuperating – for instance by adding state support, niche markets, anti-discrimination provisions – hence gaining value from what would otherwise be excessive; or it can subtract axioms, refusing to recognise the flows because of the threat they pose, and taking from them by decomposing, accumulation-by-dispossession, prohibition, repression, etc. Hence it does not add the axioms but rather adds a prohibition on certain excesses over the axiomatic.

Here’s the passage from my Deleuze notes, which might be in my forthcoming co-authored book.

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Andy

Axiomatisation, or the creation of axioms, is a more subtle process associated with capitalism, defined in opposition to codes (AOe 250), in which numbers, names and values are mapped onto existing flows so as to bring them into a countable, representable schema – for instance, by creating niche markets, minority representations and so on (ATP 462). It invents codes for decoded flows (AOe 221), and instead of blocking desire, tries to master its flows by adding new axioms for them (ATP 462, AOe 246). Capitalism operates mainly by adding axioms (AOe 253). Despite its affinities with emancipatory deterritorialisation, the capitalist deterritorialisation through axioms is not the same; capitalism requires that the flows remain ‘in a bound state’, that the non-salable be excluded, and that flows be flattened and put in the service of an overall social order (AOe 246). Hence, axiomatisation functions as the “radicle” reinscription of escaping rhizomes as the systems of roots and branches of an arborescent system (ATP 13-14).

This leads to a situation of political ambiguity. The issue of adding or subtracting axioms is not simply about ‘recuperation’ since it is a matter of struggles beyond the technocracy (ATP 463). Axioms are always distinct from the living forces they contain, but it is necessary to struggle within as well as against the field of axioms, to fight the totalitarian subtraction of axioms and prevent technocratic control (ATP 464). Struggles at the level of axioms are important, but as an expression of underlying forces of another order – the difference between positing one’s own demands and the axiomatic which cannot tolerate this (470-1). Ultimately, however, the point is not to add axioms but to challenge axiomatisation. Capitalism deterritorialises only in order to reterritorialise in the alienated form of private property (AOe 303). ‘What condemns the capitalist value system is that it is characterized by general equivalence, which flattens out all other forms of value, alienating them in its hegemony’ (3Ecologies 65)