Re: empire & globalization, was... Re: AUT: Re: autonomistcrisis theory

[commie zero zero <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

hello chris & all...

another day work work workin'... hope everyone is
well. i'm in a good mood...

gonna try to scale this down a bit to what i see as
the essential points of disagreement, or maybe expand
on certain points of agreement...

> I do think there is a difference between a national
> capital, a national
> ruling class, and a national state, however, I put
> it crudely.  I believe
> that capitals compete, obviously, but I think that
> capitals compete over the
> exploitation of labor and surplus value in certain
> ways.  Capitals compete
> to gain access to labor power, for example, but they
> also compete over
> "total social capital", as Marx called it.  In other
> words, they compete
> over who gets what chunk of the whole pie, of all
> surplus value.  They do
> not simply get surplus value from the labor they
> directly exploit, but also
> from having more efficient exploitation, which
> offers the chance to
> super-exploit labor by being more efficient than the
> socially necessary
> labor time.  The capitals that produce/exploit more
> efficiently than the
> socially necessary labor time actually draw surplus
> value away from sections
> of capital that produce at or below the socially
> necessary labor time.  Part
> of the drive to expand the domination of dead over
> living labor, which
> drives the revolutionizing of the means of
> production, flows from the desire
> to get this advantage.  That is an example of
> competition between capitals.

and this is, in many ways, basically what i was trying
to say when you get on me below thinking i'm taking on
a capital-logic perspective.

anyway... i don't see this as undermining a notion of
empire since i don't mean "empire" to be a homogonous
entity.

the ruling class has, for a long time, had this
fascination with republicanism... for a sort of vulgar
inclusion of differences. thus we get nation states
made up of smaller nation states with open borders.
this republicanism, i think, is mostly about finding a
way to compete while maintaining a unified force
against us. it grew out of a need to try to control
us, and as such must find a way of unifying the ruling
class, while not undermining capital.

with globalization, i think the ruling class is being
forced to find a way to do this on a worldw-wide scale
since they know as well that we do that, ultimately,
this globalization means the globalization of our
class as well. and the most effective state weapon
against the working class, thus far, has been the
republican form. (we have a nasty habit of
overthrowing fascist and totalitarian forms. but the
spectacular nature of the republican form seems to do
okay at keeping us a little bit in check.)

> States generally do not compete at that level, as
> producers (though that is
> not always true).  They generally compete to attract
> capital, to provide the
> most attractive conditions for exploitation.  In a
> sense, they want to say
> either: a) we can provide the best conditions for
> achieving that level of
> super-exploitation or b) we provide labor and
> materials so cheap that you
> can produce profitably even without being ahead of
> the curve in efficient
> exploitation of labor power.  Again, this is a bit
> off the cuff, but it does
> mark out different kinds of competition.

here in wv we laugh about that kind of competition, as
it is a clear scam. it is not so much states competing
to attract capital, as it is a way for one group of
capitalists (do ya think those politicians, many of
whom have ties to corporations, don't make loads of
money of the deals?) to let other groups know what the
situation is in their area.

> Finally, any given country does not even need a
> coherent capitalist class,
> as such.  In China, Russia, Cuba and many other
> places, anything we would
> associate with a capitalist class was either
> destroyed or fled.

is totally disagree...

> The state
> took over the task of exploiting labor (separating
> the producers from the
> means of producing, and alienating their labor into
> commodities for sale),
> but it would be hard to call those states capitalist
> classes.

nah... in the case of state-capitalism what happens is
this: a (new) ruling class consolidates its power
enitrely into the state. instead of the state being a
general council of capitalists (who all have their own
businesses or whatnot), the state is the totality of
the ruling class. the buearucrats, etc. in the
state-capitalists countries are/were the ruling class.
 it's important to remember that the state is also not
a anthropomorphized entity, but the conscious activity
of diverse individuals and groups.

the state (that is: the buearucrats, etc.)
collectively owns and controls the means of
production, etc.

of course, this was/is a problem for the ruling class
tactically, as recent history has shown...

> What
> matters is capital on a world scale, the attatchment
> of those states to a
> set of social relations defined as capitalist, and
> therefore those states
> existence as a part of a set of international
> relations.  In certain
> situations, a capitalist class, a body of capitalist
> property owners,
> becomes irrelevant.

i find this notion of a capitalist class to be a bit
dated. the ruling class is not just defined by what it
owns, but also what it controls. which, i suppose, is
why ya don't think of the ruling class in
state-capitalist areas as being capitalists...

> In my opinion, one
> world ruling class or one world state only makes
> sense if the uneven
> development of capital can be done away with.

i disagree. uneven devlopment within a nation state,
as you pointed out, is normal. thus, uneven
development within a global state would also be
normal. nation-states exist as a "fractured totality",
so does empire.

> Unfortunately for capital, since we constitute
> capital as our alienated
> labor, since we struggle unevenly, at different
> moments, and in different
> ways, capital will never get that even world.

it never got it in nation states either, and yet...

> Ok, first, i agree with Karl on his point, but there
> is even more.  The idea
> that the state and the capitalist class are equal
> means that postal workers
> are capitalists or cops or every nickle and dime
> politician.  I don;t think
> that makes sense at all.

of course it doesn't make sense. but this is because
you are confusing the state with its employees. postal
workers and whatnot are not the state. they are hired
by the state, just like in a coporation.

((tho i would argue that any and all cops are prolly
ruling class, due to their position in class struggle,
their function in the class war.))

as for nickel and dime politicians... it is very clear
to me that they are small capitalists. on a local
level they are almost always from local rich families.
when they are not they become ruling class due to
their function in the class war.

composition, not consciousness, is the most important
thing for understanding class, methinks.

> Democracy makes sense in the free
> market: bourgeois democracy
> is the free market in politics.

yup... this is exactly what i'm trying to get at with
my notion of empire. and free market on a world scale
requires, methinks, republican forms of control on a
world scale.

my momma once told me that its important to remember
that "democracy" means that "its democratic for the
rich" (and she not really political, just observant).
in order to create a global republican system, some
form of democracy must exist for the ruling class as a
whole. which is what i'm trying to get at...

> The attempt to establish the identity of the state
> and the capitalist class
> does not even work empirically, since few
> capitalists are politicians.

i think i was to short in my explination of this. the
state is necessarily part of the ruling class... it
makes up its executive arm over a given area, so to
speak. but the ruling class is not enitrely contained
with in it.

> Most
> of them are lawyers (who you have claimed as
> workers.)  But we cannot claim
> lawyers outside the state (which makes no sense,
> since lawyers exists only
> in relation to law and courts) are workers while
> lawyers inside the state
> are capitalists.

refer to my statement on employees above. the ruling
class memebers of a state are those who actually make
decisions, not necessarily those who are ordered to
carry them out.

as to lawyers inside or outside the state: that would
actually be better put, methinks, as: lawyers employed
by the state, or lawyers not employed by the state.

> Where is their change of relation
> to exploitation?  Do
> they suddenly becomes exploiters of labor power by
> becoming politicians or
> bureaucrats?

politicians and upper/middle level buearucrats: yes.

CHRIS: Of course.  And we have seen serious changes.
Capitalists are less
tied to
a national state than ever before in so far as they
keep the bulk of
their
capital in the "home" country.  But we also should not
overstate a
tendency.
The vast bulk of capital remains in the "home" country
of the
capitalists
who own that capital.  Simply look at repatriation of
profits, patents,
and
where companies keep boards of directors:
overhwelmingly still in the
capitalst's or corporation country of origin.

ME: actually, many companies now move around their
bases of operations. that's what a lot of the things
like nafta have been about. so, you have formerly
"american" companies now based in mexico, etc.

and this leaves aside the fact that moany coporations
are hardly composed of one "nationality" at the
highest levels anymore. tho i know you don't like it,
if you look into the national/racial composition of
the board of directors of many of the fortune 500
companies you will find that it is increasingly
non-white / non-western (and non-male), regardless of
where their base of operations is (which would be
wherever it is most cost effective to be, and less and
less in the "home" country).

I SAID: > i don't see this being so much anymore. as
john cusak
> put it in the monologue he wrote for grosse point
> blank, states and borders and such are basically
> "public relations theory at this point". that is:
> simply a way to discipline and control a certain
group
> of workers which can be contained within imaginary
> lines.

CHRIS: To the people of Iraq, it is not PR; to a
middle class, conscously
anti-class struggle "intellectual", it may be.

ME: it is pr. the international ruling class uses the
us military as a police force. the people in iraq
might be duped into thinking its the us that is
attacking (which is, again, tactically effective for a
number of reasons), but this does not mean it is true.



CHRIS: (for why I dislike John
Cusak, see his comments in that movie and in High
Fidelity about not
being a
class warrior.)

ME: actually, john cusak stated in a interview i read
(where he also talked about being an anarchist, and
how into chomsky he is) that is very much a class
warrior. ya shouldn't necessarily confuse a chacter
with an actor. john cusak always write at least one of
his monologues (check out his anti-work monologue in
say anything). i don't know if he wrote the one to
which you refer, but if he did i would wager that the
"i'm no a class warrior" bit was him staying true to
that character.

and look at it this way: in how many hollywood movies
do you get an admission that there is a class war?

at any rate: i don't think there is any such thing as
the middle class. john's working class, like most
actors... a relatively rich prole, but a prole
none-the-less. wages do not a class analysis make. =P

CHRIS: To Mexican migrants to the US, states and
borders are
not
PR.

ME: look back at my former post and see how i define
"pr"... its not just to make things look good... it is
"public relations"... that is: one way the ruling
class relates to "the public", everyone else. (in
addition to understanding pr as spectacular.)

killing mexicans on the border is pr. it is the ruling
class trying to maintain a cheap labor source in one
area.

CHRIS: The state and borders are about controlling
labor
power, a process I don't see diminishing any time
soon.

ME: i agree. but so are the individual states within
the us.

> not sure what yer getting at here... but the
CHRIS: My point is simple: the idea of a transnational
ruling class avoids the
problem of uneven development, of uneven opportunities
to exploit, of
uneven
access to capital among capitalists.

ME: i disagree, for reasons i've already stated.

> > In other words, the capitalists do have genuine
> > "national interests",
> > interests ultimately shot through with all the
> > divisions created by their
> > submission to accumulation. And the process of
> > creating a unified capitalist
> > class or capitalist state requires so much
> > bargaining and bickering,
>
> which, as far as i understand itis exactly what
> happens when the imf or world bank or wto or whatnot
> meets.

CHRIS: I am not just talking about debates at a table.
 i mean trade wars,
political and military skirmishes, etc.

ME: true enough. but those things are lessening, in
favor of debates at a table. have been for a long
time. and will continue, esp now that most capitalists
are being pulled into the imperial system.

and when those things do happen, they happen in the
context of empire now. a "police actions", or because
trade talks have broken down, or some such.

> and from what i can gather, this is exactly why the
> wto courts were created. to try to undermine such
> destruction so that certain capitalists would not
> rebel against empire.

CHRIS: But can they do it?  I think that is the rub.
I don't think they can
do it,
and the first serious crisis will cause a tremendous
set of problems to
surface.

ME: i think they can do it. and, yes, a lot of
problems will surface, but then the question becomes:
can they survive? they are gearded toward this now,
and i think will make it happen and work -- as they
have many nation states. and if it does break down, it
won't regress into imperialism, but will move forward
into something else. and then we'll have to contend
with that.

its important to know that this is all in response to
us. one of the more interesting aspects of the book
empire is the bit talking about how this is all, in
part, a response to working class internationalism.

CHRIS: Again, i would disagree, since capital is a
social relation, not a
thing.
it is one thing to say that capitalists control
'capital' in its
solidified
form as means of production and commodities, but it
would be a mistake
to
confuse that with the social relation.  When I say
that capital
controls the
capitalists, i mean that the social relation controls
them.  They
cannot
just alter the social relation anyway they please,
they must bow before
the
constant hunt for surplus value.  Also, to say that
the capitalist
class is
capital would mean saying that the capitalist class is
the entire
capital-labor relationship, either making the working
class
non-existant or
making everyone a capitalist.

ME: hrm... this is getting into a confusing semantical
discussion of what we mean by "capital"... everyone
uses it differently, and we're all guilty of using it
in different ways.

in a sense, i agree, since capital is the social
relations. this would be, in part, the laws governing
capital i refered to. i tend to refer to all of this
as "capitalism".

but we all also have a tendency to use capital as the
components which the ruling class manipulates; and as
synonymous with the ruling class itself. this makes
sense to me the components are obvious "capital" as
such, and the ruling class is "capital" in the sense
that it is the force of these components and the
defenders of the social relations.

this can get very confusing, if we're not careful...
and i think some of are disagreements might not really
be disagreements, and are due to semantical
differences.

> and the seeming control
> over the ruling class that capital has is only the
> result of the actions of other members of the ruling
> class.

CHRIS: Not so.  The domination of capital over the
capitalists really is the
sign
of the presence of labor within capital, of an
insubordinate element.
Your
approach is a capital-logic approach, not a class
struggle approach,
again,
in its logical conclusion.

ME: see above. i was basically just trying to say what
you said up there...

CHRIS: In a certain sense, we already dominate the
capitalists, in so far as they have to constantly
react to insubrdinate
labor.  other capitalists find themselves int he same
position.  They
control each other only in so far as they compete over
the exploitation
of
labor and their share of total social capital.

ME: yup, this is what i was trying to say.

> but note how wars on any large scales have long
since
> ended. many believers in imperialism have been
waiting
> world war three for 50+ years, but it's not come
(and
> i seriously doubt it will). now you have "low
> intensity war", and "police actions". pay attention
to
> the language they use...

CHRIS: Well, low-intensity wars are what major wars
between the big powers and
the
little powers get called, but that does not make them
small.

ME: most of them are small relative to world wars, or
even wars like vietnam or korea.

CHRIS: Vietnam
defeating the US was a big war (as many US soldiers
dies there as in
the
Pacific Theatre in World War II).  Korea was a big war
(2 million
dead).
Pay attention to the people they kill...

ME: but these wars were fought within the context of
two competing empires. things are mightily different
now. now there is only one empire, and the military
conflicts since vietnam have only gotten smaller on
the whole. have come more and more to resemble large
scale police actions.

> fine. but account for the fact that venezuela was
able
> to discipline the mighty u.s. thru the wto within
this
> idea. it doesn't hold. something else is afoot. and,
> again, while empire theories are certainly wanting
in
> a lot of ways, they certainly provide a seemingly
more
> realistic account of how this is possible.

CHRIS: The relative power of even a smaller capitalist
state at one moment or
another can vary, especially depending on who opposed
the US besides
Venezuela.

ME: i'm pretty sure venezuela stood "alone", as far as
the courts were conserned.

CHRIS: Certainly, the WTO does not allow for US
hegemony like the
old
days, but the US is relatively weaker too.

ME: and why is this? supposedly, "the us won the cold
war"... why is it weaker? i think it is because it is
merely a set of borders designed to control and
discipline a group of workers for the international
ruling class, in the context of empire.

and this is rooted in something else i think is prolly
true: imperialism, as such, ended with bretton woods /
the formation of nato and the formation of the warsaw
pact. and this end is rooted in the class composing
effects of both world wars. at any rate: two imperial
bodies were formed, two internationalized ruling
classes, with two different forms of capitalism, faced
one another in competition for control of labor power.

and hell, an arguement could be made that they were
not even two imperial powers, since they were still
locked into one larger world market, and were united
in the state body of the un. maybe something else was
afoot there, as well.

> see, i disagree, i think, with negri on the idea of
> the end of the nation state. i think it is necessary
> (pr-wise) for them to exist. what i can imagine
> happening is the world becoming much like the u.s.
is
> now: a global confederation of states.

CHRIS: Again, that would require a huge set of
changes, such as open borders
as we
have between states, a unified currency, etc.

ME: yes, eventually. or maybe the system they're
trying to impliment is designed to make use of these
differences, and avoid opening borders as long as it
can.

and keep in mind: they ARE opening borders for the
flow of capital (nafta, ftaa), while maintaing the
caging of the working class. how long can this last?

> there is no equalization of wealth between different
> states in the u.s., and there is competition. hell,
> there are sections of the u.s. considered "third
> world" by the u.n. (such as appalachia). but there
are
> also no wars, etc. and there is a sense of unity.

CHRIS: There is also no one stopping you from moving
here to Chicago (see you
in
May, btw).  No passport, no seven years waiting for a
green card, no
H1-B
visas, etc...  Internal uneven development has always
existed in
countries,
but it takes place on a different level from
differences between
states.

ME: and these differences might be what could maintain
the borders for us, while opening them for the ruling
class. it might be the form that uneven development
takes in empire.

> there are certainly things which stand in the way of
> this, as you noted in your bit about history and
such,
> but i think that is precisely what the international
> bodies have been created to resolve.

CHRIS: Maybe they were created for that.  Maybe they
simply reflect the
tremendous
weakness of the capitalists in the poorer countries
relative to the
richer
ones.  Maybe it represents the failure of the national
liberation
movements
and disillusionment with "so called communism".  Many
things are
involved,
and to pose only one side seems abstract to me.

ME: but these are still aspects to the one side. why
would they need to create international bodies to
resolve issue? these would also be problems
contributing to this need in the ruling class. they
don't undermine a notion of empire, they just deepen
its necessity.

CHRIS: Makes good sense and goo stuff to think about,
even if we disagree.
But
that's the point of the dialogue, eh?

ME: agreed!! =)

=====
commie00
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