AUT: Re: more middle class Re: ruling class subjectivity, was:

["Tahir Wood" <twood@xxxxxxxxx>]

Could someone point me to the best references on formal and real subsumption? I think I need a better understanding of this.
Tahir

>>> haraldba@xxxxxxxxx 11/30 7:21 AM >>>
Commie00 writes in a reply to Chris Wright:

>hmmm... i guess my major problem with a lot of what
>you have said in this area is that it all comes down
>to who is and is not working in the interest of
>capital. but the problem is: everyone who works is
>working in the interest of capital. period.
>
>and that's what i mean by my example of the prof and
>the auto worker the other day. one produces capitalist
>ideology, one produces capitalist wealth; one
>reinforces capitalist standards, on reinforces
>capitalist economic power (both reinforce capitalist
>power). ultimately i see no difference....

As I do not consider myself a marxist (nor an anti-
marxist) it does not bother me that much, but does
not the above effectively do away with anything that
could meaningfully be defined as marxism? Apart from
this, I must admit finding it pretty absurd to define
those who derive their income from the business of
law as working class. They may or may not be nice
people, may or may not be communists, but that is
another question altogether.

As for old Karl, he surely did not see the working
class as being composed of everybody who worked for
capitalists in one way or the other, or not even
everyone who was a waged/salaried worker (even the
king might be a wage worker) but those whose labour
valorise capital, and according to the old man,
(right or wrong) only apologists of capital
relations could claim that lawyers did that.

Further, it has always puzzled me how far the under-
standing of Negri, as well as of autonomist marxists
in general, for better or worse, appear to differ
from that of Marx's own treatmentof the subvject of
the real subsumtion, of labour under capital.
What is more, Marx (right or wrong) seem to have reached
almost the precise opposite conclusion of the consequences
or the process of real subsumption of labour under
capital for the overall class composition.

Marx's own point of view, is - as far as I can see -
pretty well summed up in what what he writes in Part 2,
Chapter XVIII of "Theories of Surplus-Value): "For the
worker it is equally consoling that because of the
growth in net product, more spheres are opened up for
unproductive workers, who live on his product and whose
interest in his exploitation coincides more or less
with that of the directly exploiting class." Two pages
later, he writes: "What he [Ricardo] forgets to emphasise
is the constantly growing number of the middle classes,
those who stand between the workman on the one hand
and the capitalist and the landlord on the other: The
middle classes maintain themselves to an ever increasing
extent directly out of revenue, they are a burden
weighing heavily on the working base and increase the
social security and power of the upper ten thousand."

Now, I belong to those who find term "middle class"
quite useless. It becomes somewhat more meaningful to
talk in terms of middle classes, in plural, even if I
find the notion of (diverse) meditary layers far more
useful. (Though, as pointed out by among others, Paul
Bowman, layers (strata) is neither the best of metaphors,
relying as it does on a notion of social relations as
layers in a pyramid. Applied to feudal socities such a
metaphor might be somewhat more adequate.) Still, I
find some of the distinctions contained in Marx's
analysis are not at all irrelevant today, even if they
don't say everything, and Marx in my opinion at times
makes too much out of valid points seen in isolation.
On the other hand these distinctions often tend to be
- at least that is how it rightly or wrongly appears
to me - almost completely lost in the autonomist marxist
"discourse" about class relations. At times its working
class concept becomes so inclusive to become almost
meaningless. With all distictions of class position just
about done away with, it becomes almost impossibly to
understand how capitalist relations could be maintained
and reproduced at all.

It could also be asked if what has taken place the last
decades within the OECD countries is not in paradoxical
way a return of large groups of workers from a state of
real subsumption under capital to a more formal subsumption?
I'm thinking here maybe foremost of the growth of the ser-
vice industries, where labour now none the less, through
the means of information techonology, too a larger or greater
extent is undergoing what might be called a new process of
real subsumption under capital. Still the work of a hotel
and restaurant worker for instance, has not changed that
much during the last centuries.

This said, I am quite aware that Negri et Co adresses
the question of real subsumption on another level - on
the level of the "social factory". I do find this both
valid and interesting line of thought, just that it too
often is taken so far as to become almost meaningless,
and we end up with a formless mulitude. It might
be that I have missed something - it is even almost
certain that I have - still, I think the question I am
addressing is real enough. Though grossly unfair, I at
times also get the feeling that it all comes down to
being able to define all ones friends as "working class,"
(to align subjective to "objective" social positions)
almost as if class was a simply dividing line between
the good and the bad. This is crude "critique," I know,
as they are foremost engaged in adressing real changes
within contemporary capotalism. But I am far from sure
that this is best addressed by categorising each and
everyone as working class. Sean for instance, seem to
have gone far in making class into a simple moral category.
This has its interesting points. But it tendentially also
tends to turn the most "classless" segments into the
"vanguard," to give a privileged postion to the propa-
gandist of all the "good causes," those with the longest
laundry list of -isms they oppose, and with the most
time on their hand to do protest and pose questions in
relative abstract, moral(ist) terms.

On a another, more general line, I have never seen the
point of placing every single living soul within some
clear-cut schema of classes. Nor do I believe it can
be done. And as a final note. I think something essential
is missing in the above comments of mine. But at the
present moment, I cannot pinpoint it.

Harald



  in solidarity,
  Harald Beyer-Arnesen
  haraldba@xxxxxxxxx



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