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

["Rowan Wilson" <wilson_rowan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi
My name's Rowan - I use to be on the list about a year ago, and have
recently returned due to access to a computer (oh happy day) via a job (oh
hateful day).

I'd just like to dive in on the capital as subject question.

This focus on capital as subject does not preclude seeing its relationship
with the working class as an exploitative one. Negri's very clear on this,
saying that capital needs labour, but labour does not need capital. Thus I
don't think that this concentration on capital as subject, as long as it is
grounded in the notion of labour as subject, leads down the path of marxist
economics - Negri emphasises the conflict between them, arguing that the
resistance and affirmation of labour forces capital to develop new
strategies of accumulation and control.

One of the major benefits of Negri's formulation of labour and capital as
two subjects is that it takes us away from the problematic distinctions of
'capitalist' and 'worker', with the former being a 100% bad guy and the
latter being 100% good guy/woman. We've all seen some on the left agonising
as to who's in which gang, particularly those perceived as higher up the
hierarchy of the division of labour (working class policemen? teachers?).

With Negri's formulation 'capital' and 'labour' become identities that we
both occupy to a greater or lesser extent. For instance, in my job I am a
part of labour when I'm writing e-mails to a left discussion list, but I am
a part of capital when I chase a customer for payment. This is not to say
I'm on a par with the WTO but it keeps in focus the layout of the social
forces. Capitalism is a social relation, after all, not one group of people
versus another. That is to say, the subjects that we concentrate on in
analysis is not that of the human but of labour and capital.

(With these definitions one also develops the problem of humanism, where
it's believed that the working class people are somehow  fundamentally
'good', it carries the ethical qualities of communism within itself as an
essence, qualities that are alienated by capitalism.)

Loads more to say on this but better get back to work - sorry if i've
misunderstood anything you said Chris, writing under pressure here!

Cheers
Rowan




>From: Chris Wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: ruling class subjectivity, was: Re: AUT: a rejuvenated
>communist
>Date: Tue, 21 Nov 2000 23:37:14 -0600
>
>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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>
>
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