Re: AUT: Re: Immeasurable value

["Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On 28 Mar 2004, chris wright wrote:

> Harry is really on this point, I think.  Of course, the conclusion of
> this total subsumption of life to capital is pretty conservative, if you
> work it out.  Where is the point from which revolution happens?  Where
> is the split, the opening, the fault line?

My guess is that Toni would say that there is no one fault line but that
contemporary capitalism is like a microwaved marble: shot through with
faultlines, constantly threatened with being shattered. I'm sympathetic to
this vision, this replacement of the notion of a particular vanguard with
the recognition of a thousand points of antagonism and threatened rupture.
However.... it doesn't solve the next problem: namely the dynamics of
struggle that can prevent an endless repression or reintegration of
particular ruptures.

> Much like the depressing
> Comments on the Society of the Spectacle where Debord decides that the
> Spectacle is all-encompassing, Empire poses the completeness of
> capital.  I find it very depresing, but very close to the way of looking
> at things via Lenin, where some outside force has to break the circle of
> consciousness (The Party), except that in dropping the Party, Negri opts
> for a two part solution: The Militant and treating Empire as a mere
> formal imposition over an already-liberated labor.

Yes, and all other visions of totalization unable to theorize struggle and
the dynamics of revolution. Nor, as far as I can see so far, does either
"the militant" or the assertion of the already-liberated character of
labor actually provide a solution.

> It goes hand-in-hand with the idea that 'struggle is everywhere'.  Labor
> is turned into this pure positive force which is constrained from
> outside (in the second quote).  It is my continuing contention that such
> a notion of labor and struggle is ultimately reproductive rather than
> revolutionary.

The idea that struggle is everywhere and that [living] labor is a positive
force that is harnessed and constrained is certainly present in Marx and I
don't have any particular problem with that, as far as it goes. It's a
view that recognizes the endless antagonism inherent in the imposition of
work as the fundamental form of social control and that the reproduction
of the situation requires the successful limiting and managing of that
antagonism that repeatedly threatens rupture/revolution.

>
> Of course, if Harry wants to dip in a bit more...

Dipped.

:-)

H.


>
> Cheers,
> Chris
>
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---
>

............................................................................
Snail-mail:
Harry Cleaver
University of Texas at Austin
Department of Economics
BRB 1.116
1 University Station, C3100
Austin, Texas 78712-0301  USA

Phone Numbers:
(hm)  (512) 442-5036
(off) (512) 475-8535
Fax:(512) 471-3510

E-mail:
hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx

Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/index.html

Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
............................................................................




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