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

[commie zero zero <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

> Hey commie00!

hi chris!!

> This is my last round on this topic,
> I think.

k... but that's alright, cause looking over this i
don't think we really disagree so much on what
constitutes class, as we are going down that dangerous
path of trying to define who is and who is not working
class...

> Even if I concede on professors (which, being a
> stubborn sod, I am not),
> that still offers nothing for landlords/slumlords,

except: what do you say about people (like here in
morgantown, wv) who work in factories for what almost
amounts to pennies AND are slumloards. i see this a
lot... tis a strange thing...

> 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.

i agree (well, except for with priests)... my point is
that power is not the only question. and that social
power divides the working class. see my ther post...

> 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.

yer right... but this is why profs are not middle
layer: they do (re)produce a capital-labour 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.

as long as it's understood that "produces" means
"reproduces", then yes.

>  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 agree, except (again) with priests. for it to be
true with priests, they would have to be an intragal
part of the capitalist system. which they are not. and
as liberation theology has shown, they can be a force
against as well. to me they are just workers in the
religion industry.

(i feel it necessary at this point to say that i'm an
atheist. i'm not defending priests because i'm
religious...)

> 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?)

well, yeah... and according to an interp of marx, you
could say that WHEN this layer is gone, capital will
be overthrown. part of what enabled the russian rev
was the proletarianization (thru struggle) of large
sections of the police and military forces. important
to keep this in mind...

> 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.

true, enough. personally i've always been kinda
partial to the iww class analysis: if you can hire and
fire, or are a cop or politician (in the state or a
part or a hierarchical union), when you can't join.
this also has it's weaknesses (such as: i know a few
people who are the managers of small retail stores who
have the ability to hire and fire, but are very much
objectively working class in all other aspects of
their lives... i'd say that many super-low level
managers would fall into a power brachet within the
working class)... but this is generally a good
starting point, i find...

> 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?

this is really interesting... and is something i could
maybe agree with... i'll have to think on it more...

> > 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.

hmmmm.... the thing is causing problems...

uhm...

CHRIS SAID:

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.)


I SAY:

yeah... i'm aware of a lot of this. and find much of
it to be true... and their critiques are a lot of what
i was refering to as the bad side of the notion of
social worker... but i was just trying to point out
the base aspect of the notion that i think is very
true... and while we should be critical of many of the
notions and uses of "social worker", there is still
something about it which SEEMS to be true... so it
can't be tossed out.

> 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,

CHRIS SAID:

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.

I SAY:

i basically agree. but i'd say that the incompleteness
of our alienation, etc. is in each of us. we each
simultaneously mediate and revolt. which is more to
the heart of what the autonomists, debord, et al.
always said AGAINST structuralism, the frankfurt
school, etc. meaning: that while, yes, we each
reproduce capital, we also each reject it and rebel.

this is importantly different than what you are
saying.

CHRIS SAID:

Nice web site, btw.  Hope the reconstruction goes
well.  I look forward
to
it being up and running all the way.

I SAY:

me too... it's work... but i enjoy it. there's a lot
to be done, and i'm currently so busy writing articles
and reviews (in addition to everything else i gotta
do) for a new anarcho-communist magazine (which i
suppose will be on the website), that i can't seem to
make time for it. uhg....

CHRIS SAID:

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.

I SAY:

thank you too =)


=====
commie00
---------------------------------
http://www.geocities.com/commie00
---------------------------------

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