Re: (Eng) Note di discussione

[sjwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Steve Wright)]

What follow are some thoughts on the Padova document to which Mauro has
also responded. While there are aspects of the piece which I found useful
and suggestive, the broader framework is one with which I have a number of
problems.

To begin with, the text speaks of 'that great marxist and philosopher
Althusser'. I find this description just a wee bit far-fetched. Philosopher
he may well have been, but then Richard Gunn of _Common Sense_ has (for me)
ably summed up the limits of philosophy as a 'practice':

'By the 'form' of philosophy I understand (a) its conceptual status and (b)
its position as a discipline within an intellectual division of labour,
which inheres within a broader social division of labour. The conceptual
status of philosophy can be defined by saying that philosophy deals solely
with, and reserves to itself, all rights concerning metatheory [which Gunn
defines in a footnote as 'such theory as reflects upon theory' - SW]. The
status of philosophy as a discipline can be defined by saying that, *qua*
metatheory, it reflects on the first-order truth claims raised by the
natural sciences, the social sciences and everyday (untutored) judgement.

'This apparently laborious definition has its point. I shall argue that
philosophy as a mode of discourse is deficient inasmuch as it is unable to
acknowledge, or reflect upon, its form as above defined. Hence, in so far
as we seek to think rigorously, we should cease to think philosophically.
Ceasing to think philosophically does not, I shall argue, entail ceasing to
think about the questions philosophy reserves to itself as its own.'

- Richard Gunn (1991) 'Reclaiming Experience', _Science *As* Culture_11, p.271

All in all, I find the text's reappropriation of Althusser to be *very
strange*. For me he will always be the stalinist so ably unmasked by E. P.
Thompson, Jacques Ranciere and Simon Clarke, amongst others (Harry has some
very pertinent remarks on the subject in _Reading Capital Politically_).
While I don't think I have a quarrel with what *the document calls*
'theoretical practice' (in fact its authors seem to be talking about what
Gunn has called 'practical reflexivity'), I think this has little to do
with Althusser's understanding of that phrase. For me at least, the phrase
'theoretical practice' will always conjure up one of the ugliest and
elitist left journals of the seventies, edited by Paul Hirst and Barry
Hindess (remember their argument that 'Marxism, as a theoretical and a
political practice, gains nothing from its association with historical
writing and historical research. The study of history is not only
scientifically but also politically valueless'? Never mind if you don't -
it's pretty forgettable).

Moving on, I find it less than useful to describe the current period as one
of 'post-fordism'. Clearly fordism is in crisis within the metropoles of
the world system - but that doesn't mean that what is commonly called
'post-fordism' has yet taken its place. For that reason I tend to agree
with those who argue that while capital is doing all it can to accumulate,
it hasn't yet hit upon a formula for a new *cycle* of accumulation.

The text also speaks of 'real subsumption'. If I remember correctly,
capital was said by many workerists to be 'really subsuming' society when
it first produced the mass worker. Then, in the seventies, when the
socialised worker [operaio sociale]  allegedly appeared in Italy, capital
was also/again/still 'really subsuming' society. Now it's happening again.
What does all this mean? Did capital fail in its earlier attempts?

Much of the text also shows the influence of Negri's more recent thinking.
Sometimes the language is almost identical to that of the Dionysus book -
for example, in the argument about the simultaneous growth of labour's
social importance and the loss of (the factory) working class centrality.
And anyone who has looked at _Riff Raff_ will know that this is not some
passing fancy, but an importance political influence upon the Padovan
comrades. As an aside, then, I am curious as to how this rapprochement has
come about, and in Padova of all places.

The document's talk of 'The Rupture of the Dialectic' seems to be more the
consequence of conceptual juggling than any real encounter with the
dynamics of social conflict. Unlike Mauro, I think the sequence
'struggles-crisis-restructuring' has considerable explanatory power. It is
evoked to great effect in Marco Revelli's book on the class struggle at
FIAT, to give one good example. And since I doubt the dialectic can be
dismissed as easily as the document attempts to do, I also have my doubts
that 'struggles-crisis-restructuring' should likewise be jettisoned.

Thus, while I like the notion of a *network of diffuse counterpowers*, I
can't see how its constitution can't already be grasped in terms of a
social dialectic. For this reason, there seems to be no need for the sort
of agonising that one finds in the text (e.g. as in the following passage -
'could not a *network of diffuse counterpowers* - a term which seems to us
more adequate than that of 'counterpower', given the transformations
discussed above - perhaps still posit itself as a conflictual relationship,
as a still dialectical figure, as the reciprocal recognition of two sides
in struggles?').

I *do* agree with the document's evocation of 'an image of time as
*discontinuity*', and the argument that 'the possibilities of communism and
liberation coexist with the maximum of barbarism, destruction and death'.
This is in large part what Massimo and Harald have been discussing, and
their exchange has led me back to Walter Benjamin's arguments about
'blast[ing] open the continuity of the epoch'. There is a fine essay by
Adrian Wilding on this very theme ('The Complicity of Posthistory') to be
found in W. Bonefeld et al (1995) _Emancipating Marx. Open Marxism_ Volume
3. Pluto Press, London, where he offers the following quote from Benjamin:

'Marx says that revolutions are the locomotives of world-history. But
perhaps it is completely different. Perhaps revolutions are the people on
these trains reaching for the emergency brake'.

I also agree with the text's emphasis upon 'pessimism' as a necessary
mindset for communist politics today. What does this tell us, however,
about those who continue to talk in the triumphalist manner which
characterised so much of the Italian autonomist movement in the seventies?
People like Negri, for example, who I doubt very much would agree with the
following conclusions:

'2. Apart from some unexpected explosions, the current scenario lacks
significant mass struggles that allude to a process of liberation.

'3. From the antagonistic point of view, there has not emerged for the
moment that diffuse social intelligence of living labour which could be the
constituent subject of a new society-wide [societaria] dimension (and when
it does emerge, it will certainly not be because of us).'

Finally, the passage about 'complex social organisms' is intriguing, but
again, I'd like to know what these fractal entities are *in practice*. Do
any exist today? How do they relate to the earlier project to construct
organisational forms [consulte] intended to bring together a range of
different subjectivities?

I hope these comments don't sound too irritable, as they're not meant to
be. But I think a document like the one discussed requires considerable
clarification, which is another reason why I'm keen to hear how the
discussion of this document unfolded amongst the Padova comrades themselves
last month.

Steve





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