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a model and its copy" Let us try to see mor clearly into . 1
this distnction which seems so odd to us, given that we 1
are so used to thinking of labor a the main source of
value. ,
If capital is the model and labor it" copy it is
frst of all because Tarde understands work in its most
basic sense, in order to clearly detach what falls into the
categor of rpetition from what falls into that of
invention. Work is a raw force, an inertia without
specifc qualities and incapable of efecting diferences
in its own movement. Any change afectng it comes
from the outide. Thus, the work of invention praised
by labor sociologists as a trademark of the irreducibility
of the human is already of a diferent order: it already
contains myriad operators of diferentation that mold
this raw force to it environment and adjust it so as to
maintain it habit. Even the most repetitive labor, we
know, requires a contnuous production of small inno
vations that circulate and that are, in fact, small, prelim
inar resolutions of opposition. Labor alone can never
diverge and efect diferences in adversity: alone, it can
only rpeat and ehaust itelf. Equipped with a model,
it bends and lengthens its trajectory in order to get
around obstacles. Tarde has the audacity to not take the
work of invention-which is to say the stock in trade of
labor sociologist-for a pure trend but rather to see in
it a web and an intertinng of a raw force with active
models mobilized according to oppositions. He pays
very close attention to these models.
[ . . . ] If he dos not have any tools, the worker in the felds
will manufacture them using simpler tools, or een using
his fingers; deprived of colours or brushes, the painter will
also manage to make them; but on one condition, which
is the only necessar one: that both worker and painter
will have already seen tools and their making, which they
will take as moels, unless, having never seen them, or
never seen them being made, they invent them.
W
Labor as raw force, then, stongly resembles
"cotyledon capital"-secondary capital. These two
species share the characteristic of not being able to
defect their trajectory autonomously What is the
reason for their lack of autonomy? Paradoxically it is
bcause they are tends which are too pure, which means
that they are incapable of changing course. Autonomy
comes onl t compound, only to those entities which are
the result of unstable interferences. When the raw
force of bare work consist of an example of a previous
solution to a similar opposition, a diference can be
efected. When inen matter fnds itelf plugged into a
production technique, a process of animatn is carried
out, which brings us into the work of capitl in the
stict sense. Just like raw labor, cotyledon capital is an
exercise in thought, a borderline case that is indeed
di cult to fmd in the feld of economic anthropology
In practice, it is always a compound which is encou
tered. But it is once again Tarde's analytical stength to
point to the large conceptual tends that the notion of
capital-and, as we shall see, that of capitalsm-too
quickly confate.
In difcult but illuminating passages, Tarde
comes t liken individuation, oscillation and germina
tion. To be a genius and to be a germ are ofen
confsed. It is as much a redefnition of a germ as oscil
lation as it is a redefmition of genius as the intersection
of lines of infuence and imitaton. Tarde even, at times,
identfes the spirit with the germ, such as when he uses