AUT: Debate: Wildcat (Germany) and John Holloway (3/4)

[C.FRINGS@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Christian Frings)]

Wildcat (Germany) reads John Holloway - an ongoing debate
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(3/4)

(Wildcat-Zirkular, No. 39, Sept. 1997)

*Open Letter to John Holloway*

Dear John,

In the last two years we have translated various texts of yours and
published them in the Wildcat-Zirkular (1). In the spring you sent us
your paper on 'Dignity's Revolt' and asked if we wanted to translate
it and publish it (2). We would now like to explain why we are not
satisfied with this text, with the aim of starting an open discussion.
Your inquiry about 'Dignity's Revolt' stimulated us to formulate in
writing some critical reflections on your theoretical approach. The
letter consists of three parts: first we shall explain the background
of our group, in so far as this is important for understanding our
objections (A). Then we want to focus on a central critical point of
the paper 'Dignity's Revolt', without discussing the whole text, and
without getting into a debate about the EZLN itself (B). Finally we
want to explain through the concept of work what direction we think a
further discussion might take (C).

A. How Wildcat arose and what our Problems are

>From Jobbing to Militant Inquiry

In the beginning of the 1980s the cycle of factory worker struggles
was over, but for many young people it was inconceivable to adjust to
wage labour and to work away at a job until reaching pension age.
Additionally, we ourselves refused to strive individually through a
professional career for a better place in the capitalist hierarchy.
Out of this grew the practice of jobbing: to do any old shitty job for
a short time, in order then to have time for ourselves, for political
struggle and for pleasure. In formal terms, we worked under conditions
that would later be characterised by the sociologists as 'precarious'
in the sense of being vulnerable to one-sided measures by capital. But
it was even easier then to use the regulations of labour law and the
welfare state for our own needs.

Out of the attempt to politicise these practices and to bring them
into play intentionally as struggle against work and for a
revolutionary perspective, there arose 'jobber groups'. They were a
form of self-organisation aimed at mutual support, solidarity against
the bosses and the spreading of experiences. A group in Karlsruhe
picked up on Italian theoretical discussions in which this 'figure' of
the jobber was seen as a rising proletarian subject: through the
refusal of work and the gradual spread of these practices, this figure
is seen as being at the centre of a process of class composition.
Jobbers are seen as embodying the tendency to communism through their
mobility on the labour market and their high level of qualification
combined with their rejection of capitalist command. Because of their
mobility, it is argued that they do not develop any sort of
identification with capital and thus get involved to a high degree in
such forms of struggle as sabotage and wildcat strikes.

That corresponded to the experiences that we had in factories,
building sites and temporary work agencies. But we also observed that
'jobbers' remained a very heterogeneous and marginal group within the
working class, and that many just practised an individualised
rejection of work. While some jobber groups decided to
institutionalise themselves and to become advice centres for welfare
state benefits (and this was then referred to as the 'unemployed
workers' movement'), the group in Karlsruhe - from which the 'Wildcat'
journal later arose - proposed a comprehensive discussion on the
working class as a whole. For our theoretical understanding of
capitalism and class struggle, the Italian 'operaismo' was
particularly important (3). Especially the early texts of this current
(by Romano Alquati and others) helped us to decipher the
mystifications of capital in the immediate process of production. The
operaist critique offered not just the basis for a theoretically
revolutionary understanding of the world, but also a practical set of
instruments. Basing ourselves on the operaist ideas of inquiry, we
proposed to the undogmatic and non-Leninist left a broad 'militant
inquiry' within the working class. But the proposal remained a
minority affair. The only people who were still interested in the
working class were Leninist and Stalinist 'parties' with whom we did
not want to have anything to do.

Through the 'militant inquiry' project we wanted to develop a
revolutionary critique of capitalism out of the critique of the
production process as contradictory unity of labour process and
valorisation process. In discussions, surveys and common struggles
together with our co-workers we tried to demystify the fetishised
power of capital which confronts us hostilely in production as
technology, division of labour and alienated cooperation. We wanted to
see where and how the workers break through these mystifications
themselves in their struggles and thus recognise their productive
cooperation as power against capitalism and as possibility of
communism.

Bound up with this approach was an understanding of 'class' and 'class
struggle' which stood in complete contrast to the traditional
understanding in Marxist theory and in the labour movement. We
criticised the reduction of class struggle to an economic question of
distribution and wages as the ideology of the labour movement, which
we saw as an essential moment in the mediation and political weakening
of class antagonism. In all this, it was important that since the
1970s a whole series of groups had turned to operaismo and had carried
out their own inquiries (see, for example, the book by Karl Heinz Roth
on the The 'Other' Labour Movement, published in 1974).

Our experience in the early and mid-1980s in factories, temporary
employment agencies and building sites made it clear to us that
everyday class antagonism had in no way disappeared, as many on the
left maintained. We came across many forms of underground conflict and
saw what enormous problems capital had in introducing new technologies
of production or new models of work organisation - exactly as you
observe at the end of your analysis of Keynesianism: 'The social
forces that had imposed the recognition of the power of labour upon
capital still existed, stronger than ever, and could not be abolished
simply by the declarations of the politicians' (Bonefeld and Holloway
(1995), 33).

>From the middle of the 1980s there arose new class conflicts in Europe
which escaped from the traditional grip of the trade unions. Workers
rose as subjects of their own struggles and their radicality embodied
a new offensive moment. These conflicts took place especially in 'new'
sectors (public service, transport, hospitals, schools, banks, but
also in some 'modernised' factories) and seemed to represent a new
class composition. We thought that a revolutionary perspective could
again become practical in these struggles. In contrast to the trade
union struggles for peaceful accommodation with exploitation, a
comprehensive hostility to capitalist society could be seen here. We
were actively involved in the nurses' movement of 1989 and saw what
sort of initiatives were possible without the obstructive influence of
the trade unions.

For this reason we paid little attention to the theoretical debates of
the 1980s. We observed the change-over of most of the intellectual
left to the side of capital, but thought that in the context of the
new class struggles the theoretical questions could be approached from
within the struggles. In other words, we considered our theoretical
basis quite adequate in order to develop a revolutionary project from
the working class itself.

The Radical Change of '89 and its consequences

At the beginning of the '90s we proposed to a group of the
revolutionary left in Europe the idea of undertaking a common research
project on the situation of the working class. (This proposal was
later taken up once again in your journal, Common Sense: see Ed Emery,
'No Politics without Inquiry: A Proposal for a Class Composition
Inquiry Project 1996-97', Common Sense no. 18). Some comrades from
other countries, however, thought that, in view of the world-
historical change, it was more urgent to examine our theoretical
concepts. At that time we ourselves still approached the collapse of
really existing socialism very optimistically.

In 1988/89 there were the beginnings of an instensification of class
conflict in West Germany. In the course of the change in the GDR it
came to - now long forgotten - mass discussions in the factories there
about a social perspective beyond capitalism and GDR-socialism, and
with the economic ruin of the former GDR there developed there a broad
movement of struggle against factory closures and the deterioration of
social conditions. In spite of that, we were no longer able to read a
communist perspective in these quantitatively increasing struggles.
With the massacre of the Gulf War in 1991 and the economic crisis,
which broke rather late in Germany (in 1993, after the unification
boom) and which led to the acceptance of the intensification of labour
and deteriorating social conditions on a broad scale, we were no
longer convinced by our original optimism.

Previous revolutionary concepts and certainties were thoroughly
shaken. Struggles in the factories had now only a defensive character,
even stooping to begging for jobs. The left was concentrating on
racism, fascism and nationalism, without either wanting to or being
able to connect these with the class character of capitalism and the
question of its revolutionary overcoming. That is why more and more
influence in political discussion was gained by those theories which
had already in the 1980s departed from the radical critique of class
society (as you (pl.) have shown in detail and criticised in relation
to Hirsch's theories). We did not wish to become supporters of these
theories and to forget the class character of this society. A large
part of the work in the journal Wildcat consisted in presenting and
analysing the class struggles in the world, which had by no means
disappeared after 1989. But struggles and wars were breaking out (Gulf
War, Yugoslavia, Chechenya, Somalia, Rwanda...) which seemed to
indicate the tendency towards barbarism rather than towards liberation
from capitalist domination.

The significance of your (pl.) theoretical efforts for our discussion
(4)

In this situation, we felt it was necessary to examine (and, if
necessary, to develop anew) our theoretical basis. A reckoning with
the 'new' left theory, which had departed from its radical hostility
to capitalism, was more necessary than we had thought. They offered
plausible explanations for the new developments, and we had nothing to
offer in their place. The operaist thesis that 'the workers produce
the crisis' became meaningless, since the open crisis of capitalism
bore no direct relation to offensive struggles by workers. Then how
could we understand this crisis without seeking refuge in the
'objective laws of development' of the Marxist textbooks or the then
fashionable regulation theory? How can we explain that the working
class is forced to accept a serious deterioration in their conditions
without any radical struggles developing? And why, in spite of this
apparent weakness of the working class, does capital not come out of
its crisis?

We therefore began with an intensive theoretical discussion of these
questions and looked at all sorts of theories about the present crisis
(from the regulationists to Wallerstein's world system theory). It was
a special piece of good luck that in this process we came across your
texts, which, unlike most other theories, start out from the same
question as ourselves. You criticise radically the theories of the new
left as a capitulation in the face of the tasks of revolutionary
theory. Against the apparent all-powerfulness of capital, you stick to
the point that it is not a question of autonomous 'things' or
'structures', but of a social relation, in which antagonism is
inscribed. Starting from the social constitution of the social
relations you try to sketch a different explanation of current
development.

Precisely because we agree with you on the way the question is posed,
we consider that a more precise discussion of your theses would be
important and productive. For us it is a question of coming to a
revolutionary theory which has practical meaning. The theory must
relate to the reality of the present-day working class. We can imagine
such a project only as a collective one, as one of many people
discussing and working together. For us it is not a question of
getting immediate answers, but of starting up a process of asking and
exploring. To anticipate: the main problem that we have with your
texts is that in many points they do not follow through the
revolutionary and de-mystifying approach radically enough. This may be
because you often want to give general solutions too quickly, where
today it would be more important to leave questions and problems open
in order to lead into a collective theoretical process.

B. 'Dignity' and 'Humanism' - a flight into the unhistorical?

In the paper on 'Dignity's Revolt' you want to protect the EZLN and
the uprising in Chiapas against criticism from the left. To do that,
you develop a comprehensive concept of 'dignity', which keeps on
cropping up in the texts of the Zapatistas.

The uprising in Chiapas was for us too one of the most important
movements after 1989 and the Gulf War. It put world revolution back on
the agenda. Here, and everywhere in the world, it embodied a new
feeling of revolt, courage and revolutionary hope. It set something up
against the feeling that capitalism had finally triumphed and that
revolution had become impossible. We hoped that with the uprising in
Chiapas a new revolutionary debate could start up. All the more so
since the Zapatistas themselves seemed to stimulate such a debate by
their invitation to the international gatherings 'against
neoliberalism'.

However, we soon became aware of three things:

1. The movement of support for the Zapatistas remained limited to the
classical form of solidarity work. In this context it was not possible
to hold a comprehensive revolutionary discussion. The uprising in
Chiapas was 'cool' and 'important', but it was a long way away and had
nothing to do with conditions here.

2. Behind the slogan 'against neo-liberalism' there quickly gathered a
broad spectrum of political currents, of which the majority was in no
sense revolutionary. There is a strong bourgeois critique of neo-
liberalism (for example under the slogan of turbo-capitalism, which
was coined by the rightwing conservative military strategist Edward
Luttwak in the United States), which is concerned not with
overthrowing capitalist relations, but with saving them. 'Unbridled
capitalism' must, in this view, be protected from destroying itself.
The age of 'Keynesianism' is characterised as a 'golden age'.
Precisely because of this argument, which is shared by many on the
left, we found your criticism of Keynesianism important and helpful.

3. From the EZLN itself came no indications that they would criticise
this development. Their position - both on questions of development in
Mexico and in the world - was thus questioned not only by the orthodox-
Marxist groups to which you refer in 'Dignity's Revolt'. It was
criticised also by people who expressly consider themselves to be part
of the anti-Leninist and undogmatic tendency. (5)

For us it is not enough to read a new model of revolution out of the
declarations of the Zapatistas and to use this to interpret away all
problems. It is also not enough just to take the declarations of the
Zapatistas and on that basis to say something about the character of
the struggle and the uprising, rather we have to deal with the way in
which the people there live, produce and struggle; how their struggle
fits materially into the international class struggle. Precisely on
this point there is hardly anything at all in the paper on 'Dignity's
Revolt'. In its unhistorical generality, it might just as well be a
defence of the liberation struggle of the Sandinistas or any other
movement of liberation in any other time.

Our principal problem with your text on 'Dignity's Revolt' can be
illustrated by the heading of the sixth section: 'Dignity is the
revolutionary subject. Dignity is a class concept and not a humanistic
one.' (This and all following quotations not specifically referring to
other texts are taken from 'Dignity's Revolt'.) We would agree with
the assumption contained in the statement: there is an insuperable
division between revolutionary and humanistic concepts. While
humanistic approaches refer to an ideal, philosophical concept of
being a person and an abstract, unhistorical 'humanity', revolutionary
theory starts from the historically real person. It does not see 'the
person' as the revolutionary subject, but real people, who in all
previous societies have been split into antagonistic classes. The
subject of revolutionary change is thus the class of producers, who
are exploited by the ruling class. The particular historical forms of
domination and class struggle are the result of the 'specific ... form
in which unpaid surplus-labour is pumped out of the direct producers'
(as, quoting Marx, you emphasise in your essay 'Crisis, Fetishism,
Class Composition').

The Zapatistas speak not of class but of 'civil society'. You justify
that by saying that the 'old words' are so 'worn out' that they bring
more harm than clarity. The class concept, you say, has been used in
orthodox Marxism as a 'definitional concept, in which it is just a
question of defining class membership. Usually class is defined in
terms of 'those who sell their labour power in order to survive', or
'those who produce surplus value and are directly exploited'. The
working class has thus become a question of definition and indeed of a
defintion which starts from 'subjection to capital'. People's
struggles are then judged, you say, according to the way that they are
classified. This has led, for example to the argument that, in view of
the shrinking of the urban factory proletariat, class struggle is not
important for social change; or it has been impossible to relate to
new forms of struggle like the student movement, feminism or
ecologism. For this reason you want to oppose to this definitional,
classificational concept of class another which starts not from class
membership (classification) but from antagonism.

We see the problem of a definitional class concept in just the same
way. It is a problem of subject and object. To define the class in
terms of membership on the basis of certain objective characteristics
leads to political concepts that turn the class into the object of
politics. It is then not a question of the self-liberation or self-
change of the class, instead the class becomes the object of a
political party (as is the case in Leninism). In the 'revolutionary
process' it is then not the class that is the subject but a party
which leads or represents it. Against this notion of party communism
we too have objected that the liberation of the working class can only
be the deed of the working class itself.

You then explain the character of the anatgonism between the classes
in terms of the theory of fetishism. 'Although this antagonism appears
as a vast multiplicity of conflicts, it can be argued (and was argued
by Marx) that the key to understanding this antagonism and its
development is the fact that present society is built upon an
antagonism in the way that the distinctive character of humanity,
namely creative activity (work in its broadest sense) is organised. In
capitalist society, work is turned against itself, alienated from
itself; we lose control over our creative activity.' This
contradiction between creativity and its own negation is, you say, the
antagonism between labour and capital. So it is not a conflict between
two external forces, 'but between work (human creativity) and work
alienated'. In a moment we shall return to the concept of work that
you use. Here we just want to observe that for us too it is important
to see class conflict as a dialectical and not an external relation.
People themselves produce the conditions in which they live, and yet
are dominated by them. It is by no means easy to make this deranged
relation clear.

The question immediatley arises of why we produce our own world in
this deranged manner. To say that this negation 'takes place through
the subjection of human activity to the market' does not explain it,
but merely indicates the form. And this form must be explained from
the specific content, the specific historic character of labour. You
avoid this problem by making subjectivity, which creates over and
against itself an alienated objectivity, into an ever thinner, more
abstract and unhistorical residue: 'humanity (dignity repressed and in
struggle) against neoliberalism (the current, savagely destructive
phase of capitalism)' (6). The subject of struggle becomes an
anthropolgical category: 'the indestructable (or maybe just the not
yet destroyed) NO that makes us human'. In other texts you have
characterised this residue, referring to Hegel, as the 'sheer unrest
of life'. Here there is no longer anything that is specific to the
antagonistic struggle in capitalist society. We could apply such
statements to all historical periods and use them as a general
characterisation of all struggles against oppression that have ever
existed. You arrive in this way to precisely to that humanism which
you wanted to reject in your heading: 'humanity against
neoliberalism'. This is not just a theoretical but a political
problem. This slogan can be accepted by any representative of the
Socialist International, or it could be used as an advertising slogan
by the socialist government in France.

The problem you (and we) started from was a different one: you wanted
to criticise the left currents that put the activity and seizure of
power by a political party in place of the self-emancipation of the
working class. But in attempting to oppose the objectivist,
definitional and classificatory concept of class, you throw the baby
out with the bathwater. If we reduce the concept of class to a general
human contradiction present in every person between alienation and non-
alienation, between creativity and its subordination to the market,
between humanity and the negation of humanity, then the class concept
loses all meaning. It then only has the value of a moral
characterisation which we can apply to all possible movements, without
saying anything at all about them, their character and their
importance for the worldwide revolutionary process. The antagonism is
accordingly timeless in your work: it exists all the time, sometimes
weaker, sometimes stronger - there is no end in sight. 'Revolution is
simply the constant, uncompromising struggle for that which cannot be
achieved under capitalism: dignity, control over our own lives.'

Revolutionary theory must work out how a concrete perspective of
emancipation and liberation is contained in struggles in spite of
their fragmentation, and bring this perspective into them. Showing
that there is a general human content in all these single struggles
does not create this bond, but runs away from the real political
problems to a philosophical level. We have come to the conclusion in
our discussions that we need a theoretical precision of the class
concept, but to do that we must stick with the question, instead of
avoiding it with philosophical answers.

In operaist theory 'class composition' was a category and an
analytical instrument that was opposed both to the fetishised and
objectivist class concept of party Marxism and to the sociological
concept of class. After the defeat of class struggles in Italy, there
was a discussion about how and whether this concept could be
maintained as an abstract framework in separation from the concrete
historical conditions in which it arose. The generalisation of 'class
composition' from the mass worker to the 'social worker', which Negri
undertook, never convinced us, neither then nor now (7). Just like the
'sheer unrest of life' the 'social worker' is a sort of universal key,
which fits everything and thus becomes meaningless for practice.
Precisely because the question of the understanding and meaning of the
concept of class is important for us, we must pose it correctly. (8)

C. Work is central - but what does that mean?

The different conflicts within society are today generally juxtaposed
without any relation being established between them. The result is an
image of a multiplicity of conflicts, in which the 'totality' of
capitalist society and hence a revolutionary goal no longer appear. In
your essay, 'From Scream of Refusal to Scream of Power: the Centrality
of Work', you therefore emphasise the role of 'totality' for a 'theory
against society'. You criticise the mystifying separation off of the
struggle over exploitation into an 'economic' sphere. This struggle,
you say, stands in the centre of social reproduction and its change,
because in it is contained the basic dialectic and instability of the
social cohesion.

Capital depends on work, it is nothing other than the fetishised form
of appearance of past work. 'No matter how absolute and terroristic
the domination of capital is, there is no way it can free itself from
its dependence on labour. The dependence of capital on labour exists
within capital as contradiction' (Open Marxism III, p. 178). That
means that the domination of capital is the domination of our own
products over us. And thus it is a relation that is capable of being
revolutionised, capable of being overcome, because it is constituted
by us ourselves. It seems to us extremely important to insist on this
basic dialectic of fetishisation and to make it the starting point of
every investigation.

However, as we have said already, this raises the question of why we
put ourselves in this historically specific relation to the products
of our work. Marx criticises the classical political economists for
never having posed the question, for accepting the fetishised forms of
our products - commodities, money, capital - as normal and
historically unchangeable. They never asked the question why this
content (human work) takes that form (commodity). Marx traces the
commodity character of our products back to the specific historical
shape of work: abstract labour. With that he does not mean an
abstraction in thought, but the really abstract character that work
has for us in capitalism: we do not work to produce a particular
product; the product that we produce is not for us, but for others; we
are not bound by particular personal qualities with this or that
activity; an employer can employ these hundred workers today, those
hundred tomorrow and in both cases will have the same average quantity
of work. This abstraction is tied to the capitalist mode of production
and first develops historically with the establishment of a factory-
type organisation of work, whether it now take place in the hospital,
the office, in a lorry, in agriculture or in the factory. The
commodity character of our products rests on this 'specifically
capitalist mode of production'. Work in this mode of production is
daily alienation, which confronts us in the commodity and in private
property as a thing.

In this sense we agree with you that work is central. Because the form
of value constituted by work is 'the thread that binds the world
together, that makes apparently quite separate processes of production
mutually interdependent, that creates a link between the coal miners
of Britain and working conditions of car workers in Mexico, and vice
versa' (as you put it in 'Crisis, Fetishism, Class Composition', Open
Marxism II, p.155). We could also put it in this way: in value our
social connection in production confronts us as a thing because we do
not constitute it self-consciously and freely. We do not choose the
people for whom and with whom we produce, rather this seems pre-
ordained by the command of capital. In capital the social connection
which is reified in value becomes autonomous and commands us.

That does not mean, however, that all riches and all social
appearances are the product of work, as you seem to say ('Work is all-
constitutive,' or 'since work is the only creative force in society
(any society)...' in 'From Scream...', Open Marxism III, p. 172).
There are any amount of activities that nobody would describe as
'work': free artistic activities, games or struggles within society.
And there are plenty of riches that are not the product of work,
starting with air and sunshine. To lead everything back to work easily
comes close to the glorification of work by the workers' parties (Marx
criticised this as long ago as the first draft programme of the German
Social Democratic Party). If wealth depends only on work - work as it
is commonly understood today - then the biblical curse of 'you shall
eat bread by the sweat of your brow' is our inescapable destiny. Marx
said in Capital that the 'realm of freedom' could begin only beyond
work (9).

We know that for you it is not a question of glorifying work, but of
criticising the reified world. In all your texts you emphasise that it
is a question of forms that are constituted by us ourselves, and not
of eternally valid 'structures' or 'laws'. But to use 'work, creation
and practice' as 'interchangeable concepts' ('From Scream...', Open
Marxism III, p. 172) deprives the demystifying critique of the
commodity, money and capital forms of its explosive force. The
demystification cannot consist just in relating these forms simply to
human activity, but to a historically specific and changing way of
producing. But to do this, there must be an investigation of the
change in form and the transformations in the process of production.
If 'work' is defined simply as human activity, statements about the
centrality of work become tautological, because by defintion all
practice has already been declared to be work. The centrality of work,
that is, of the process of production and exploitation, for a
revolutionary perspective is thus asserted, but the demonstration is
lacking. Besides, the perspective of real liberation is dismantled.
Communism as the overcoming of socialisation through work is then no
longer conceivable.

We think that a reason for the over-historical generality of the
concept of work in your texts is that the 'immediate production
process' rarely appears and, when it does, it is abridged. In the
article on 'Crisis, Fetishism, Class Composition' you emphasise: 'The
core of the matter is the form "in which unpaid surplus-labour is
pumped out of direct producers"'. The specifically capitalist
character of this form is related to commodity exchange: 'What
distinguishes capitalist exploitation from other forms of exploitation
is that it is mediated through exchange' (Open Marxism II, p. 153).
But then we are caught in a circle, for it is the exchange and
commodity character that needs to be explained. We think that this can
be done only through the analysis of the specifically capitalist
production process. The essential characteristic of this mode of
production consists in the fact that it is possible only as social
production, as the working together of millions of people. But since
this socialisation exists as cooperation, division of labour and
machinery which are forced upon us and pre-given, it appears as an
alien power. This material, real shape of the production process is
the hard core of the capitalist command over our life.

The material shape of the production process, and therefore machinery
and technology, are indissolubly linked with the social relation of
domination, the command of capital. In your texts you stress that the
antagonism exists not on the level of distribution and the wage
question but in the immediate process of production, in the conflict
over the 'pumping out of surplus value'. But what is missing is the
analysis and determination of the specific forms of this pumping out.
Only when we decipher the basis of capitalist command in the concrete
structures of the production process can we understand why this
deranged capital relation of alienation and reification continues to
exist - and how the working class develops in it as an antagonistic
subject.

That is why it is particularly important to discuss what you have to
say about the production process in your texts. In the presentation of
'Fordist production' in your articles on 'The Red Rose of Nissan'
(Capital & Class no. 32, summer 1987) and in 'The Abyss Opens ...', it
struck us that the specific character of labour is established there
only in terms of its monotony, boredom, de-skilling etc. These are all
characterisations that are assumed in the general left criticism of
Taylorism (e.g. Bravermann) and that always start out from the
individualised, atomised worker. They make that which is the result
and form of appearance of the capitalist mode of production - namely
the fragmentation and atomisation of the working class - into their
theoretical point of departure. In that sense they stand in direct
contradiction to your demystification approach. In left sociological
criticism, the contradictory unity of atomisation and socialisation in
the capitalist production process is suppressed. It is not only that
capital is always dependent on living labour, but this labour develops
an increasingly social character. The sociality of work, that is, the
productive cooperation of the workers, is a historical process.
Capital flees from the 'insubordinate power of labour', but it can
only flee in the direction of its further socialisation, which it must
build up against the workers as a new 'social power', just as Ford's
River Rouge complex was a 'social power'. A principal problem of the
revolutionary politics consists in our view today in its inability to
criticise, theoretically and practically, the worldwide production
process in such a radical, demystifying fashion.

So far for the moment our remarks, as a start in the process of
theoretical clarification, of which we hope that it will open the way
to practice.


                                        Your translators

1) We have translated the following texts of John Holloway and
published them in the Wildcat-Zirkular: 'Capital Moves' in no. 21
(originally in Capital & Class no. 57); 'The Abyss Opens: The Rise and
Fall of Keynesianism' and 'Global Capital and the National State' in
no. 28/29 (both originally in W. Bonefeld and J. Holloway (eds),
Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money, Macmillan,
London, 1995); 'Introduction' and 'Conclusion: Money and Class
Struggle' (both with Werner Bonefeld) from the same book in no. 30/31;
'From Scream of Refusal to Scream of Power: The Centrality of Work'
(from W. Bonefeld et al., eds, Open Marxism III, Pluto, London, 1995)
and 'Crisis, Fetishsim, Class Composition' (from W. Bonefeld et al.,
eds, Open Marxism III, Pluto, London, 1992) in no. 34/35.

2) The article is published in John Holloway and Eloina Pelaez (eds),
Zapatista! Reinventing Revolution in Mexico, Pluto, London, 1998.

3) Important texts were re-published by us or translated for the first
time in Thekla 5, 6, 7, 9; on the origin of 'operaismo' see the
article 'Renaissance of Operaismo' in Wildcat no. 64/65.

4) Translator's note: The 'you' in this section of the letter refers
to texts by Werner Bonefeld, John Holloway, Richard Gunn and others
connected with Common Sense and Open Marxism.

5) In Wildcat-Zirkular no. 22 we translated, for example, texts by
Sylvie Deneuve/ Charles Reeve from France and by Katerina from Greece.

6) Did you not want to show in 'The Abyss Opens', that Keynesianism
was no less destructive, but could only 'blossom' after the murder of
millions of people by world war and fascism?

7) See 'Mass worker and social worker - some remarks' by Roberto
Battaggia, Primo Maggio No. 14, 1980/81, translated in Wildcat-
Zirkular no. 36/37.

8) As a complement to 'Dignity's Revolt' you recommended to us the
article by Luis Lorenzano, 'Zapatismo: Recomposition of Labour,
Radical Democracy and revolutionary Project'. It is an extreme example
of this 'new' operaismo, which uses 'class composition' as a sort of
universal key, without even devoting a sentence to going into what the
material conditions of production and the social relations in Chiapas
look like. (The article is also published in Zapatista! Reinventing
Revolution in Mexico).

9) "In fact, the realm of freedom actually begins only where labour
which is determined by necessity and mundane considerations ceases,
thus in the very nature of things it lies beyond the sphere of actual
material production ... Freedom in this field can only consist in
socialised man, the associated producers, rationally regulating their
interchange with Nature, bringing it under their common control... But
it nonetheless still remains a realm of necessity. Beyond it begins
that development of human energy which is an end in itslef, the true
realm of freedom, which, however, can blossom forth only with this
realm of necessity as its basis" (Marx, Capital, III, p. 820, Lawrence
& Wishart, London, 1959). Thus Marx contradicts conventional wisdom of
the Left which implies, that "humanizing" of labour or a "liberation
within labour" were at stake. As labour is in itself the active
alienation it follows that the aim cannot be liberated labour but only
liberation by getting rid of labour. As a result it is also a mistake
to confront "alienated" labour with "non alienated" labour as is
hinted at in "Dignity's Revolt".



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