Re: AUT: Re: autonomist crisis theory

[Sean Fenley <satellitecrash@xxxxxxxxx>]

Hello Chris and all,
I think you've done a good job here Chris, but I don't
know how many people actually subscribe to the first
view that you've laid out. It's not hard to realize
that not every crisis has a definite struggle or
revolt that one can point to and say "that caused the
crisis"... perhaps I'm wrong, but maybe a number of
people actually do take this view i haven't see any...

secondly i just want to ask, how do we get people to
realize that these micro resistances you refer to our
part of the need to bring about a new system? that
they are a syptom of the capitalist class's need to
accumulate. you can be the most anti-work person ever
but it doesn't mean you're a communist. i think the
retreat from class in academic institutions has
horrible consequences for this; people are no longer
studying political economy, and for this reason many
of the current struggles going on today are organized
around reforming culture, or institutions and don't
focus on overthrowing the economic system... i think
these struggles need to complement each other not be
self-indulgent or exclusive, to a have a chance of
overthrowing capitalism.

 i guess this relates to distribution of propaganda or
the way we get our ideas out to the public; or how we
confront the spectacle as well. i have been excited by
all the independent media projects which have popped
up all over the u.s. (i think refer to themselves as
IMC's). The danger with these projects is that i feel
that they are already under control of progressives
who tend to organize in very top-down ways, and report
news in a very nice ways and suggest things like
progressive taxation, affirmative action, in general
purport that reformist agendas are the fix we need...
our means of propaganda need to forward radical
agendas, left libertarian ones; i think if the pirate
radio movement could grow in the same way it could be
a good radical alternative to these independent media
centers... but at the same time i am excited about the
media centers b/c they are a positive alternative to
the bourgeois press...
later on,
-Sean

--- Chris Wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx> wrote:
> Sorry about the delay.  There are some people on
> this list better able to
> answer this than I am but I will give it a swing.
>
> As I understand autonomist theory (and I have only
> read small chunks to
> date, so I may be off), it is the class struggle,
> the labor-capital
> relation, which causes crises.  However, this can be
> understood in one of
> two ways.
>
> 1)  the class struggle brings on crisis through mass
> working class
> struggles.  For example, at the end of the
> post-World War II boom, in the
> 1960's, the crisis develops due to a large number of
> mass working class
> struggles (or even not so working class, but which
> definitely qualify as
> mass struggles), e.g. the Civil Rights and Black
> Power movements and the
> revolts in the cities in the U.S., the wildcat
> strikes of the late
> 1960's-early 1970's in the U.S., May-June 68 in
> France, the Hot Autumn in
> Italy in 1969, Czechoslovakia in 68, the Vietnam
> War, the wave of struggles
> in Northern Ireland, etc, etc.
>
> This seems all good and well, and I have no doubt
> that those struggles
> played a part in the downturn.  But as you rightly
> ask, what about the last
> ten years?  If we stick to this level of obvious
> mass struggles as the class
> struggle, then we have problems, don't we?  And a
> section of autonomist
> Marxism holds to this point of view.  As a result,
> explanatory power goes
> out the window, but also a misunderstanding of
> Marx's approach to capital.
> Another option exists, however.
>
> 2)  Some autonomist Marxists take a different view
> of class struggle.  What
> if we do not just mean the big, obvious struggles
> and outbursts?  What if
> every category Marx lays out in Capital is suffused
> with struggle?  What if
> every relation is negative, hostile, conflicted?
> What if people simply make
> it difficult for capital to squeeze more labor from
> them?  This does not
> just happen in mass struggles.  It happens everyday,
> in a thousand
> micro-sized ways that we do not see beyond who we
> know.  The refusal of
> another speed-up, the refusal of more work,
> abseteeism, getting on
> unemployment/the dole/whatever, black market
> economic activity that does not
> benefit capital, etc.  All of this, which happens
> everyday alongside the
> bigger mass struggles, makes up the antagonism that
> drives the functioning
> and breakdown of capital.
>
> Without this understanding of class struggle as
> infusing every conflict
> between capital and labor, no matter how small,
> Marx's Capital seems like an
> objectivist account that has no place for class
> struggle.  In my opinion,
> every page of Capital should be seen as carrying
> class struggle in this
> sense: that every category of capital relies on
> antagonism, conflict,
> resistance, insubordination and non-subordination
> from the molecular to the
> mass level.  If we understand the 'laws' of
> capitalist crisis to be
> determined by class struggle in this sense, then we
> not only have a much
> richer understanding of class struggle (and one
> which is much less
> spectacular), we also have an approach to capital
> that can stay away from
> the problems of structuralism and the loss of
> subjectivity and agency on the
> part of the working class.
>
> Just my thoughts.
>
> Cheers
> Chris
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Peter Jovanovic" <peterzoran@xxxxxxxxxxx>
> To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
> Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 10:29 PM
> Subject: AUT: autonomist crisis theory
>
>
> > hi all
> >
> > I was hoping someone on this list might clarify a
> few things about the
> > autonomist view of capitalist crisis for me. Do
> autonomists claim that
> > capitalist crisis has been and can only be caused
> by working class
> struggle
> > or is the claim that crises may be caused by
> working class struggle as
> well
> > as other things? Given that there is now
> widespread talk in the bourgeois
> > press about imminent recession do they know
> something about the prospects
> > for large scale revolt that we don't or is there
> another explanation for
> the
> > allegedly looming crisis? What class struggle has
> caused Japan's ten years
> > of very low economic growth?
> >
> > peter
> >
> >
>
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>
>
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