AUT: Reply to Arianna

["Harald Beyer-Arnesen" <haraldba@xxxxxxxxx>]

----- Original Message -----
From: "<above@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: 16. august 2002 02.39
Subject: Re: AUT: Re: [Fwd: <nettime> Toni Negri: Social Struggles in
Italy - Creating a new Left in Italy]


> Hi Harald,
>
> sorry for taking so long to reply, but given the tone of your email, I
wasn't clear whether or not you were looking for constructive engagement.

The critique of tone is very likely valid. I also no doubt over-
reacted. Otherwise, I have been occoupied with other things
lately, so have not had the time to reply before now.

As Gra has already explained,  work-to-rule has nothing
to do with "Arbeit macht Frei", but is a form of direct-action that
probably has been around as long as the exploitation of the
labour of others has existed. You do precisely as the bosses
and/or the written instruction says, and everything turns into
chaos, followed by much good laughter. However, for instance
within a hospital setting this has to be fine-tuned so not to
hurt people you don't want to hurt.

The physical bosses have gone, you say. Where? They quite
obviously have not disappeared within the prison industry in
the U.S, in the sweat shops or in the maquiladora industry.
Even here in the "egaliltarian" and highly "computerized"
Scandinavia, they seem to be just about everywhere. Which
is not to say that there are not sectors where the claim of
their disappearance might in part be true, and where this also
always to some extent has been the case, and where the
ecomomical chains might be all the more visible.There probably
also are (and have always been) more self-employed workers
in Southern than Northern Europe. But it is far from this to
make the sissaperrance of physical bosses into the general
experience of contemporary workers, even if we keep us
strictly within the the most generally affluent part of the world.

Maybe if you could be more specific, this would also be
easier to relate to. Part of what caused my tone is all
these sweeping remarks from the school of "immaterial labour"
ideology, which as it appears to me at least, too often is
combined with an almost complete silence about what
from my experience and knowledge, however limited,
continues to be the life of majority of workers. Which is
not to say that nothing has changed. Much quite obviously
has. One of the more striking changes is that more people
spend more years in schools and universities. But I am
far from sure that the whole of this increase is very
productive from a capitalist point of view. It most certainly
is not. It seems to be driven as much by a desire to
avoid a life revolving around wage work as long as possible,
and to try to escape some types of work (and low wages)
in the future when full-time wage-work can no longer be
avoided. The problem being of course, that with the in-
creased numbers with higher education, its value on
the market also tends to decrease.

Another strikeing feature also is the expansion of the sercive
industries but I woulds say, also, and contrary to you,
the "well-fare state," the state control over increasingly more
parts of our life, a sort of de-privatization (even when not
directly run by, but only regulated by the state) in the sense
that what formerly was controlled by the family (and often
religious institutions too) no longer is. At least in the part of
the world we seem to be talking about, there are far more
social workers (I do not here use "social worker" in the sense
used by Negri. and so on), sociologists etc than there
ever was in the so-called Fordist era, and there are far more
workers employed by "the welfare state" now than then.

You write (in relation to the formal and real subsumption thread) "I
don't fully understand here you seem to be implying that we have
gone back in time."

Not very likely. But to for instance take the examples of so-called
self-employed truck-drivers who have a contract with a company
that make them wholly depended on it, and have juridcally binded
themselves to a work-schedule no employed driver would ever
accept, this has very much in common with the formal subsumption
historians (and Marx too) call the putting-out system. To link this to
the reference to "the author" in Scarfone's article, it might  also be
relevant to know that in German the putting-out system is known as
the Verlagssystem [Verlagssystem: Produktionsorganisation, in
der die Herstellung bestimmter Güter durch (formal) selbständige
Gewerbetreibende durch einen Dritten (Verleger)]. in Norwegian,
forlagssystem etc.  Verlag (forlag) is however now more commonly
simply translated as a  publisher.
        There is absolutely no doubt that what Marx referred to as
formal subsumption of labour was 1) the putting-out system/cottage
industry that again developed into 2) manufacture. While the factory
production/modern machinery to Marx entailed the real subsumption
of labour under capital. The very concept of self-employed workers
(when not used just as reference to the petty bourgeioisie) would
tend to imply an organization of labour according to a Verllagssytem
where the workers are _formally_ independed but in all reality not,
generally juridically and economically depended on one or two
capitalist companies.
        Nike could also be said to pretty much functions as a "Verleger"
within a Verlagsystem, even if the handicraft production in the cottages
here is replaced by "third world" factories own by capitalists.Though
there is also an enormous amounts of literally handicraft and cottage
production in this world of ours linked to this or that multi-national
corporation ("Verleger"):
        It is also true that the artisans of old worked to order, that is
according to a just-in-time system. Despite the context it takes
place within is very different, there are also some striking similaities.
Technologically this "return" -- apart from the developments within
comunication and transport, is no doubt linked to that modern
machinery has gained some of the flexibility of the old handicraft
tools.

I think this discussion might prove more constructive if you
first specify which sectors you are talking about, but I still
want to comment one more thing before I end for now.

You write: "The postfordist worker as you point out is invested in
a deeper way: he/she has to posses a language, a mode of being,
so that what disciplinary factory regimes needed the welfare
state for (regulating workers' time and money out of work), now is
accomplished by the employer directly."

Stop up a bit.
Having spent much time both under what you describe as
"disciplinary factory regimes" as well as within the disciplinary
regime of the health sector, I have often have hard to discover
the great difference, apart from that the degree of subordination
might be worse in the latter, as it often is also for instance
within the hotel and restaurant sector. It might very well be
that it was easer to achieve a higher degree of workers autonomy
within a "Fordist" factory regime, also due to that the bosses
there feared what would occured if the workers started doing
exactly what they were told. The price for that might be very
high. Talylorism was always just as much a myth and ideology
as a reality anyway. It might also be said that Talylorism
proper preceded the real subsumption of labour where workers
could be more controlled by the rhytm of the machine, and that
precisly in the service industries you see a reintroduction of
Taylorist regime and an increased need for physcial bosses.
I think the ruling ideology, and when not the unescapable reality,
still remains what the owner of the California based Cypress Semiconductor
expressed to the Economist more than ten
years ago: "Something or someone that cannot be measured
cannot be managed." (I cannot find the original English text
now, so this is retranslation from Norwegian from my own
original translation from English. But the substance should
should be the same.) That the physical presence in of bosses
may be in part be mediated by eletronical control, in
similar ways as by the mechanical rhytm of machines, both
meauring speed, does not change the reality of a watching
eye. And in every workplace I know of when the reduction of
numbers of workers have been on the agenda, there has
always been much  bitterness, not only die to how they treat
workers in general but also due to the employers
unwillingness to reduce the number of the physical petty-
bosses on the same scale as others. This both within private
industry as within the realm of public services and control.

The story further goes, that the usage of a greater degree
of information technology etc  within the traditional industry
requires a more theoretically knowledgable work force.In some
specialized industries this might be partially true. More generally
I believe it is true to say that it in part demands a different kind
of knowledge, but often less, not more, than before. You do not
need to be scientist to learn to push a button or two. There has
to be somebody who knows more when something goes wrong,
but these need not necessarily to be employed. It would be
wise, but bosses often are often stupid. There are many things
that points to that we are undergoing a period of deskilling
within many traditional industries. At least I am 100 per cent
sure that this is part of the picture.

At last "I don't see why you read that forming communities and
creating sociability as such anathema."

To answer briefly, because it rather seems to me that is the
deconstruction and destruction of communities that is taking
place, whatever the ideology might be.

The above is wholly inadequate, but at least it might serve the
purpose of a critical dialogue. But I am far from sure muself
where the present deveopments wiothin capitalism are taking
us.

Harald













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