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

["Rowan Wilson" <wilson_rowan@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi

This debate has been really interesting ? apologies for not having the time
to respond ? but here are some harebrained thoughts.

At the risk of returning to too much abstraction, it seems to me that in
part the debate revolves around our initial definition of class. Are we
perhaps confusing the distinction between class for itself and class in
itself?

Class in itself can be defined in these ways:

Bill defines class as the relation to the means of production (which I don?t
hold with ? Harry argued about a year ago on this list that ownership is not
the issue ? i.e. the workers of the USSR were said to own their means of
prod but still had work imposed on them).

Others define it as having to sell labour-power. From both of these
perspectives there is no middle class ? i.e., lawyers, doctors, etc all sell
their labour-power.

That is the concept of the class in itself, if you like, the empirical and
theoretical understanding of what the class IS.

Then there is the class for itself, the normative and tactical understanding
of what the class does. This last involves class unity, struggling against
hierarchy, awareness of situation, etc. This is perhaps where such issues as
mediation, middle management, policing, spreading of capitalist ideology,
etc, arise. Thus the role of the middle class becomes an issue of class
solidarity ? those who mediate for capital (or, in my schema, are involved
in greater activity that furthers the existence of capital) are showing a
lack of class consciousness.

This area includes the concerns that Chris in particular was raising about
the social power that certain people have over others. Is this accurate to
define as w/c and middle class or is it the creation of a division of labour
that keeps us all divided?

(Perhaps the issue of the middle class?s social function being spread
downwards is more true now than ever before as it seems so many jobs in the
new information economy involve a police function (increasingly all areas of
the welfare state, credit control, retail, leisure, etc).?)

So perhaps with this latter strand there has been less concern with where
the class comes from and more concern with what attacks capital and creates
something other than capital. (Clearly my posts sit in this last bracket).
Of course this is problematic ? in understanding class recomp/decomp are we
assessing the political activity that might develop a new world or are we
assessing who the w/c is? I would say it?s the former that is more important
? or perhaps this leads to the danger of vanguardism, a problem with some of
the formulations of Negri?s concept of the ?social worker? as non-factory
computer workers (i.e. these are the ones seen as holding the key to the
rev).

Incidentally Bill, where I was heading with my interpretation of Negri?s
take on class ? not denying class conflict at all, but recognising that it
happens everywhere. Capital is not under the control of the capitalists ?
society (including the capitalist) is under the control of the logic of
capital. The problem with capitalism is that we allow it to control us. I
don?t see that I?m serving anyONE ? I am serving a social relation, where
some have power over others in the division of labour, but all serve the
system that requires us to sell our labour. It is capital that rules, not
capitalists ? if we got rid of figures that we might identify as
capitalists, capital would still remain. The difference between us Bill is
that you see capitalism as human masters to human slaves. I see it PRIMARILY
as: labouring activity slave to the reifying force of capital, which, as a
byproduct, creates human slaves to human masters.

Cheers
Rowan



>From: Chris Wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>Subject: Re: more middle class Re: ruling class subjectivity, was: Re: AUT:
>a rejuvenated communist
>Date: Thu, 30 Nov 2000 01:46:35 -0600
>
>Hey commie00!  This is my last round on this topic, I think.
>
> > 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. i'd put both
> > in an upper strata of the working class, but both are
> > working class.
> >
> > etc.).
>
>Well, I think this is difference we will have to live with, but...
>
>Even if I concede on professors (which, being a stubborn sod, I am not),
>that still offers nothing for landlords/slumlords, real estate developers,
>management, stock brokers, lawyers, priests, cops, judges, government
>bureaucrats, politicians, etc.  This is a vast layer that is engaged in not
>simply ideological repression, but the material, physical, violent, daily
>repression of workers or various petty forms of direct exploitation.  I
>can't square that with working class.  I can't leave social power over
>labor
>out of the equation.
>
>Maybe the point is that I see labor as in-and-against capital, as labor's
>self-activity alienated in-and-against itself ( I think a lot of
>autonomism,
>including Negri, simply sees it as "against").   I don't see how the petty
>bourgeoisie produces the capital-labor relation.  In that sense, I don;t
>think it is a question of who 'works for' capital, but who produces the
>capital-labor relation, which is slightly different.  Does the alienated
>labor of a cop or a politician or a priest or a manager produce capital?
>Again, I would argue it mediates (projects and protects) the production of
>that relation, in the form of petty exploiters/oppressors.  I see them as
>being the human agents (ambassadors and mercenaries) of capital's power,
>the
>necessary overhead of 'doing business'.  Capital by itself, without this
>social layer, would be overthrown in a day because its power would be naked
>(and who would manage capital's daily affairs?)
>
>Hell, I don;t have a definitive answer (and I suppose if we take the class
>composition argument seriously, there isn't one definitive answer).  I know
>the big boss could never survive without the little one and I know most of
>the little bosses wield direct power over me and manage and direct my
>subordination to capital.  And as the leaseholders to a small portion of
>capital's total power, they exist as capital's representatives.  At that
>level, I am being very empirical, I suppose.  I just can't bring myself to
>call them workers.  I see them as an alien (and often hostile) class
>element, even while recognizing the precariousness of their existence as a
>petite bourgeoisie, rather than as capital itself.  That's why I think a
>large section will be pulled onto our side in the long run (and why many
>are
>pulled  towards us even in bad days like these), but not consistently.  I
>don't want to say that the middle class is absolutely reactionary because
>that would be wrong.  Sometimes being in the middle means you get run over
>first.  that can make for a strong revolutionary impulse.
>
>Anyway, I am rambling.  You may be right.  They might be working class, but
>I don't see it.
>
>Maybe it helps to think in terms of the state.  The state is one form of
>shape of the anatagonism between capital and labor, a mode of existence of
>the anatagonism of labor and capital which exists as the product of the
>separation of economic and political, but also as the means by which
>capital
>exerts its domination over labor, a historically necessary offshoot of the
>class struggle (that is a brutal reduction of the state dreivation debate
>and Holloway and Bonefeld's analysis.)  Now I am just thinking off the top
>of my head, but what if the middle class (encompassing capital's
>functionaries and the traditional petty bourgeoisie) is really the same
>sort
>of social formation.  Created by the class struggle, but also starting from
>the pre-existing small proprietors (who have become less and less of a
>factor), this layer is necessary because capital cannot run its own affairs
>directly (whether management or repression.)  Like the state, it is not
>capital as such, but an offshoot of the attempt to reign in insurgent,
>insubordinate labor and at the same time, of the reified relation between
>ownership of capital and management or economics and politics.  The
>bureaucratization of an expanding state (driven by the struggle in the
>1930's, as well as by an expanded role in the supprssion of international
>labor inthe post-WWII period) and of expanding corporations (having to meet
>needs like HR depts., multi-levels of managers, security forces, R&D
>departments, and thousands and thousands of employees all over the country
>and world) becomes the generator of this radically reconfigured social
>layer
>known as the middle class.  This might offer an explanation of why the
>middle class has become more and more managers in the corporate bureaucracy
>and in the state apparatus, and less and less small owners (though capital
>has a place for petty proprietors where the profits are too small for
>capital proper, and also in the speculation craze of the last 18 years.)
>The answer may be both historical and theoretical at the same time, which
>is
>my opinion generally, because capital's 'laws' and relations are the
>expression of particular outcomes of particular, historical class struggles
>(in this sense, structures are nothing more than the reification of the
>results of particular struggles, the fetishized form of a social relation
>of
>struggle, "the afterlife of a once living struggle", if you will.)  In a
>sense, the so-called middle class may be a social relation itself derived
>from the 'solutions' to the class conflict by capital.  Wouldn't it be
>novel
>if capital created social classes which are not directly in the
>capital-labor relationship, but a by-product of the struggle in that
>relation, and therefore an inherently unstable, amorphous social relation
>with no clear boundaries?
>
> > as far as nergri's notion of the social worker, i
> > basically agree with it on many levels. there are
> > weaknesses, but the strengths, as i see them, are the
> > opposite of what you accuse: to me the notion of the
> > social worker de-homogenizes the working class, and
> > provides the basis for understanding our real
> > composition. understanding the ways in which we are
> > different and are similar. it thus provides a basis
> > for class solidarity.
> >
>I am going to duck Negri for now because that would be another really long
>e-mail and I should stop that for a while.  I think Steve Wright, John
>Holloway, and Werner Bonefeld (and maybe Harry Cleaver, as well) have all
>made trenchant critiques of the 'social worker', and mine would simply be
>derivative of theirs.  And probably not as well done either :)  Steve
>Wright's article is at
>http://lists.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html/opsoc.html and is worth
>a
>look. (Note: Steve Wright's article is really a critique of the 'mass
>worker', but I think his argument extends to the social worker, and from
>what he wrote on this list recently, so does he.)
>
> > anyway... my basic point is that a middle layer can
> > not be defined by who does and does not in some way
> > help capital. or even who does and does not mediate
> > between the working and ruling classes. an aspect of
> > the alienation we suffer from our labour is that we
> > mediate ourselves, and each other (thru the spectacle,
>Only partially.  If we did mediate ourselves and each other completely,
>then
>what hope would there be for revolution?  What need for a state?  This is
>the point of convergence with Leninism.  That's my problem with aspects of
>Debord, Negri and autonomism: by not seeing labor as uniquely
>in-and-against
>simultaneously, as in and out at the same time, then the spectacle, our
>alienation, is total.  It paints a picture with no way to achieve
>revolutionary class consciousness except from the outside OR workers only
>exist as revolt a la Negri, et al OR we succumb to a fatalism that either
>a)
>capital will break down by itself, through its own internal contradictions,
>a la Social Democracy/structuralism or b) it is hopeless a la the Frankfurt
>School.
>
>Nice web site, btw.  Hope the reconstruction goes well.  I look forward to
>it being up and running all the way.
>
>I have been thinking about this for several hours now, and I have just
>fried my brain, as you can see.  So it is best that I go to bed.  Thanks
>for
>the stimulating ideas.
>Chris
>
>
>
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