Re: working-class subjectivity (fwd)

[glevy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx]

Bryan wrote:

> So can we hypothesize that a theory of working-class subjectivity would
> be identical (or homologous?) to the development of the logic of wage labor?

I'm not so sure I agree with the word "identical" above. It would
certainly be an essential component of addressing the question of the
logic of wage-labor as distinct from the logic of capital. Of course, we
don't *know* what Marx intended originally to include in the proposed
book on "Wage-Labour", although, Rosdolsky, Negri, Lebowitz, and others
have speculated. The question, though, isn't so much what Marx wrote in
Capital, but what he did not write and why. Did he still plan to write
the book on Wage-Labour? Based on the documentary evidence, we don't
know. See Allen Oakley _The Making of Marx's Critical Theory: A
Bibliographical Analysis_ (London, Routledge, 1983) for more details.

> > Both Negri and Lebowitz took Marx as the starting point.
>
> As have we, so far.

True enough, although one could argue that the starting point for Negri
and Lebowitz was not Marx but capitalism (i.e. the subject under
investigation). This is important to recall so that we don't slip into
becoming "Marxologists."

>       We would also do well to recall the lengthy presence of
> working-class accounts within CAPITAL (as within capital :)  ).  There we
> read narratives of horror accumulated like a grim doppelganger of stock.
>       Interestingly, in the GRUNDRISSE we find a story of West Indies?
> resistance to capital based wholly on a different and opposition
> construction of the subject and labor...

Capital (the book) certainly does include sections on workers resistance.
Was that an essential component of the text or peripheral to Marx's
purpose in that work? That is an issue that some have  debated before.

Jerry



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