Re: ruling class subjectivity, was: Re: AUT: a rejuvenated communist

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Okay, this may be a bit cryptic...

I think the point for me is that capital (and as a result, the capitalist
class) has no existence except as the product and dominator of working class
labor power.  Capitalists exist as individual subjects, but their existence
as a class has no meaning separate from alienated labor.  In fact, their
more real existence is as a class, since as individuals they can be nice or
mean or cruel or compassionate, but as a class they are always exploiters
and we get to the kernel of who they are.  If we stay at the level of
capitalists as individual subjects, we lapse into 'good and bad
capitalists'.  If we move to the level of capitalists as a class, then they
have no meaningful existence as subjects (rather, they are subjected to
their perpetual attempt to dominate and exploit labor and exist therefore as
totally unfree because without labor, they perish.  That is the state of
being of an object, not a subject, in my reading.)

However, i agree that capital appears in a reified form as a subject
(reified both as a social relation appearing independent of labor and as
commodities which appear as 'things' separate from labor.)  In neither case
can we lose sight of that point.  But how do we understand the idea of a
class as a subject?  One example of a problem with understanding capital as
subject is that it tends to lead us down the path of 'Marxist economics', in
which the cause of crisis and the motion of capital becomes the competition
between capitals, rather than the class struggle.  The 'horizontal' notion
that capital's 'laws of motion' exist independently of class struggle (a
'vertical' relation) has a toe-hold in the notion of capital as Subject.
Capital does not have an existence or motion separate from the disruptive
power of labor (for example, Marx's provocative notion that one could
probably write the history of technology from the 1830's forward as the
history of trying to defuse/decompose the power of labor, NOT as the product
of capitalist competition, even though that is its form of appearance, the
fetishization of technology and competition as independent actors.)

Labor, on the other hand, will not cease to exist with the end of capital.
It will throw off its exploitative and oppressive character and become 'the
free association of laborers', with a resulting reorganization of every
aspect of human life.  In that sense, capital is not a real subject, but an
object posing as a subject, a reified object.

Now that I have "cleared" that up...
Chris

p.s.  The multitude word.  It begs the question of a multi-linear versus a
unilinear conception of revolution, doesn't it?  I am ambivalent about this
term in part because I understand the clarity of Marx's notion of the
working class as revolutionary Subject.  However, 'multitude' seems to imply
that all our 'identities' offer revolutionary possibilities without really
drawing out the relationship of different forms of human social relations
(race, gender, etc.)  I think that anti-racist struggle, the good old
fashioned Black Liberation struggle, has radically anti-capitalist
possibilities because of the way in which race is interwoven with class.
However, I also tend to think of race in terms of a particular fetishization
of human relations that does not exist separately from class, but is
grounded in class, both historically and theoretically.  In that sense, i
view race as a class problem, without denying that race takes on a life ot
its own in capitalist society.  Race may not exist biologically, but it does
exist politically and socially, and it cannot be reduced to class.  Racism
does not just effect working class African Americans, but cuts across
classes (not equally or evenly, however.)  At the same time, whiteness is a
form of class collaboration based on the extension of psychological, social
and material privilege (which ultimately damages whiteness as a whole.)  I
do not see much in Negri's multitude that offers an incisive understanding
the relationship of race and class, but again a bit of a multiculturalist
tendency.  The points of heterogeneity are not clear, nor are the points of
unity.  In fact, I feel they get  smothered in a praising of 'diversity' (my
word, not Negri's) or complexity as simply an advantage.

As for why I am harping on this... well, I think Negri has a lot of
influence and some good things to say, but from an increasingly weak and
abstract theoretical basis.  Also, this is the only list I am on where
anyone has read Negri besides me :)  The Leninists hate his stuff, as much
as they in truth hate Hegel or council communism or anarchism.  Sometimes I
think we are more the enemy to them than capital.  Maybe they can smell
their future in bureaucratic capitalism already!  Maybe their attachment to
statism, hierarchy and authoritarianism has bitten too deep.  Anyway, so i
am bugging the good comrades on this list.

Ok, I stop now.  I hope to read more later, but I am cooking a huge turkey
dinner for Thanksgiving.  This year we are giving thanks for two women's
liberation from bad marriages and my liberation from my old job!  May you
have good things to be thankful for, and please, shoot a pilgrim on
Thursday, it's the right thing to do!
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "commie zero zero" <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Tuesday, November 21, 2000 3:54 PM
Subject: ruling class subjectivity, was: Re: AUT: a rejuvenated communist


> > For example, I
> > don't think capital exists as subject, but as
> > object.  Labor is the subject
> > because capital is nothing other than labor
> > alienated from itself
> > (objectified), or labor in and against itself.
> > Capital has no existence
> > outside labor power.  Negri tends to pose labor and
> > capital as separate
> > subjects, as labor against capital, but labor is
> > also the source of capital.
> > Labor, in the process of becoming alienated, creates
> > capital.  That is what
> > makes it possible to destroy capital.
>
> this has bothered me a bit too (as have their
> regression from hegal and marx)... but i think it's a
> common mistake. because, the fact is, the *ruling
> class* is a subject (i.e. it is made up of people who
> often make subjective decisions in relation to capital
> and class struggle [as organizations such as the tabd
> show] -- they exist in a crazy dialectic with
> capital... that is: they partially control it, and are
> partially controled by it). and often it seems people
> say "capital" when they mean "ruling class", which is
> an easy enough mistake to make, since it is, in some
> senses, true... the ruling class is the human
> embodiment of capital, and capital is (in part) the
> movement of their decisions.
>
> hmmm... not being very articulate today... hope this
> makes sense...
>
>
> =====
> commie00
> ---------------------------------
> http://www.geocities.com/commie00
> ---------------------------------
>
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