AUT: Re: Re: Re: Class and other social divisions

["commie00" <commie00@xxxxxxxxx>]

this is not so much a reply... i'm just going to try to lay out my
understanding of this relationship in a very truncated form... maybe it will
help...

in class societies prior to capitalism (and in early stages of capitalism)
it seems to me that xenophobia and patriarchy existed as manifestations of
the class compositions inherent to whatever "era". and sense most class
societies prior to capitalism had many classes (and not just 2 or 3),
xenophobia and patriarchy reflected that complexity, and maybe can even be
understood as representing specific classes.

as capitalism developed tho, xenophobia and patriarchy got subsummed into
capitalism (into the class dialectic that had developed) as racism and
sexism when xenophobia and patriarchy were "realized and supressed". this
essentially means the reduction of womyn to reproductive workers, and the
reduction of specfic races (depending on where you are in the world) to use
as a means to maintain seperation / pools of cheep labor / etc.

now a pomo-feminist (who was more or less an autonomist, but didn't know it
until i started pointing her in that direction) i talked to recently told me
that the reason many folks are left feeling uncomfortable with this
formulation is because they (mistakenly) feel like it is the radicals making
these assertions who are reducing these forms of oppression into what they
view as a narrow catagory (class).

however, she said, the reverse is true: capital is making this reduction of
human beings. and the impulse to reject this reduction is actually a form of
self-valorization (she didn't use this term, but since i'm paraphrasing...)
directed against the wrong people.

> I understand class in the same way.  However, I am wondering if race and
> patriarchy cannot also be understood in a similar way, if we want to be
> historically precise.

they can be, which is why they are class whatevers. (more on this below)

>  Slavery comes to mind as a separation which does not
> match the dual-freedom of the working class Marx talks about.  I think
that
> I have been gnawing on the argument between myself and Jamal.  Maybe we
were
> both wrong.

i don't really recall this discussion, but i've always viewed slavery as
waged... in terms of housing, food, etc.

> Woman's labor was typically separated from the means of producing in so
far
> as the necessary goods to reproduction can only be acquired with money,
but
> money can only be acquired by wage labor, and women's labor is not waged
> labor.

but this form of labor is waged, either indirectly thru the "bread winner"
of the household (which is often the same person doing the reproductive
work), or (more-or-less) directly thru welfare.

> > on top of this, i've always understood the labor / capital split as the
> > class split. that is: if something manifests as "labor" it is "working
> > class" in terms struggle, etc.
>
> Well, that's what I am calling into question.

but you have to be careful here becuase it could easily turn into a
semantical discussion which might be unnecessary...

that is: if all of these forms manifest as "labor" in the dialectic, then
they all clearly have some kind of common denominator. what do you call this
common denominator, if not "working class"?

negri calls it "multitude" (& empire)... i've not seen any others lately,
but i'm sure we could come up with some.



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