Re: AUT: Re: autonomist crisis theory

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thanks for the response, Sean.

I whole-heartedly agree that the micro-reistances do not necessarily make
one a communist or anarchist.  Rather, i tried simply to raised that the
omnipresence of resistance, of insubordination, (whether in mass struggles
or not) forms the real basis of the 'laws of motion' of capital, not some
pre-given structures outside class struggle or which class struggle merely
'mediates'.

This resistance, this insubordination, marks the fragility of capital, but I
also think those struggles must become mass struggles that challenge the
power of capital directly.  These struggles have to be both destructive and
reconstructive - in other words, we should not just see our struggles as
against something, we should also try to think through how we can organize a
different way of living within those struggles.  The best of the old labor
struggles often pointed to this (I think of Seattle in 1919, Minneapolis in
1934, etc.), as did the best of the civil rights and women's rights
struggles.  They organized in a different way to get things done, in
relations that aspired to be radically different.

I agree that the retreat from class (and it is not just among the academics)
marks a bad move.  At the same time, I see a lot of openings towards a 'new'
understanding of class that in my opinion moves back towards Marx and away
from the distortions of Lassallean 'Marxism' (most of Post-Marx Marxism,
such as Kautsky, Bebel, Liebknecht, Lenin, Trotsky, but even damaging
Luxemburg, Pannekoek, Mattick, etc.).  We do need to understand class in a
refreshed way, which understands Capital not as an objectivist,
structuralist piece of political economy, but as a text where every category
is imbued with class struggle, is constituted by class struggle, is a
critique of political economy aimed right at the heart of capital.

As for autonomists who believe that mass struggles cause crisis, I think
that it is more a contradiction in their work (again, what little i have
read) that keeps haunting me.  They want to move in a different direction,
but ultimately, because I think they see BOTH capital and labor as
autonomous, as externally connected rather than as internally connected,
that they see mass struggles (seen here as 'external' struggles) as the
locus of crisis.  They understand labor against capital, but often fail to
grasp labor as in-AND-against capital.  But that is my take and I would have
to really refine that to be more helpful.  As I said, there are people
better able to articulate an autonomist theory of crisis here than I am (for
example, I have left out questions of decomposition-recomposition of the
capital-labor relation, i have left out any periodisation such as
professional worker/mass worker/social worker, and so on.)  I just felt that
the question never really got a response and it deserved one (maybe people
sent personal responses, i don't know.)

Anyway, back to other stuff.

Cheers,
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Sean Fenley" <satellitecrash@xxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Sunday, February 18, 2001 3:11 PM
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: autonomist crisis theory


> 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
> > >
> > >
> >
> _________________________________________________________________________
> > > Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at
> > http://www.hotmail.com.
> > >
> > >
> > >
> > >      --- from list
> > aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
> > >
> >
> >
> >
> >      --- from list
> > aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>
>
> __________________________________________________
> Do You Yahoo!?
> Get personalized email addresses from Yahoo! Mail - only $35
> a year!  http://personal.mail.yahoo.com/
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---