Re: AUT: Re: Immeasurable value

["Nate Holdren" <nateholdren@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Hi Harry, hi Chris,

I'm not sure what I think of the omnipresence of (value productive) labor
either - I ran across a line once somewhere in a text of Okupas in Spain
saying something to the effect that the unemployed worker in front of the
television produces value. I'm not opposed to that idea, but making that
case would involve a more in depth teasing out of how that is so than any
presentation of the idea that I've run across. I tend to read 'multitude' as
interchangeable with 'socialized worker', another concept I'm still just
beginning to get my head around. In both cases I'm fuzzy on how the idea
actually works, how that could be so, but I like the political conclusions
(the valorization of struggle and disruptive possibility throughout
society), not least because I'm frequently still jousting with old
vanguardist former comrades in my head.

One question for you though - where's the point about liberated labor come
from? I'm not always the most careful of readers so maybe I missed it
somewhere, but I don't recall Negri ever talking about labor being
liberated. Is there a textual reference you can point to on this? As I
understand it, the point is less that labor is liberated than that the labor
process is changed which changes the terrain of struggle. This may well be
my own selective reading. I know there's stuff in Labour of Dionysus about
labour as production of values - whether Value under capital and of values
(as in ethical values, priorities connected with ways of being) that may be
antithetical to capital. It's been a while since I looked at that, but I
don't recall the point being that labor under capital is any better or more
free.

Virno talks (though not in these exact terms) about how there's been a
growth of labor that takes social relations as its direct object/raw
material and product. Of course, capitalist production has always been in
part about producing the capital relation, but I don't think that this
argument about immaterial labor means that labor is liberated already, I
think its more that the control over labor is more volatile and harder to
manage (at least in the old ways, through old managerial means, I'd guess
that some of the new ways are precisely part of some of the forms of labor
that Virno and others talk about).

all the best,
Nate


We will teach our twisted speech to the young believers.
-The Clash, "Working For The Clampdown"





>From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
>To: aut-op-sy <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
>Subject: Re: AUT: Re: Immeasurable value
>Date: Tue, 30 Mar 2004 08:26:08 -0600 (CST)
>
>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 ---

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