Re: Negri's Marxism

[fiastr@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (Alessandro Coricelli)]

Marcus wrote :

>Some more comments on Negri and all that sort of stuff....
>
>Alessandro,
>
>What you have written below has clarified many things to me. One
>important fact is that 'lavoro' means both work and labour in
>Italian, so perhaps it is the translators I need to criticise.

Let's be honest ;-) If it is true that both "labour" and work translate
"lavoro"in italian,it is also true that the dististinction between "labour"
and "work" exists in italian as well.In the sense you give to the word
"labour",it should be translated "lavoro salariato"(literary "waged
work",labour).
So,Negri when talks about "work",you were always right,he talks about "work" not
merely "labour"(lavoro salariato).

>However, I am not responding in a simplistic "work=good"
>"anti-work=bad" reaction. This is the tendency of the 'productivist'
>branch of what passes for marxim, namely stalinism and maoism. Rather
>than subordinate production to human wants and needs, they promote
>production as the prime signifier of 'progress'. [some trotskyists
>also do this - the Spartacists for one]. These led to all those
>stupid graphs of how much steel was being produces, how many tractors
>and how many shoes made. The fact that people were pissed making
>steel and fell into furnaces, the tractors had no reverse gears
>(joke) and the shoes fell apart before you left the shop was
>irrelevant. The human dimension was lost, therefore, relations of
>production had not been fully transformed and the ground lay open for
>counterrevolution. Labour had not been fully abolished (though its
>market had).
I,personally,agree with you.
>However, there is a tendency for these demands to 'abolish work' to
>be quite petty bourgeois and ultra-left.  I understand that to
>dramatically *alter* the nature of work is to abolish it *in a
>sense*. However, all this is is the abolition of labour and the
>labour system.
Alessandro :
let me point out that I do not find Negri's thought and "operaismo"in
general(workerism,but in a different sense of what Louis intended it in
another thread,which would be in italian "fabbrichismo",factorysm)being
flawless theories.What I'm sure of is that "operaismo" has been a
legitimate interpretation of Marxism.

Marcus:
>I point you all to the first chapter of the German Ideology. Here,
>Engels and Marx *repeatedly* call for the end of the division of
>labour and the abolition of labour. This led to the text of Marx (was
>it in the Manifesto?) where he says that we should replace the slogan
>of higher wages from the banners of the workers movement with the
>slogan abolish the wages system. That is to abolish labour.
>This is the humanisation of work, not its abolition. Work will be our
>prime want under communism (yes, the "actual movement that will
>abolish the actual state of things" or "not a state of things, but
>a movement" - these from German Ideology too).
>So, I find that the call for the abolition of work, especially from
>the ZEROwork people, the Semiotext group and some of these types to
>be profoundly wrong, profoundly anti-working class.

Unfortunately,as I stated before, I am not able to quote from any books
concerning the subject.
1)I (and Negri,and Potere Operaio) would take out the verb "will" to the
sentence,communism "the actual movement ....etc.).So,communism is not just
a static system of human social organization.It is something either dinamic
and "present" in the behaviour of the class.(This,historically was the
difference between Potere Operaio and Manifesto and Lotta Continua.All the
three major groups of the revolutionary left that came out of our 1968 and
1969 movement  believed in something that we called "maturity of
communism",or "ripeness of communism".All three were founded in the critic
reading of the realized socialism or "real socialism".BTW,I always like to
quote a funny sentence of a unions leader of the '50s;Piero Santi used to
say,"socialism when doesn't realize itself,degenerate in social
democracy;when it realize itself,degenerates,period".Anyway,il Manifesto
thought that communism was "ripe" or mature because of the
immanent/imminent collapse of capitalism,a la Luxemburg.What we were
experiencing,and what we needed,was a phase of "transition".This wery phase
was represented by the "consigli",or soviet,the way the working class was
organizing itself democratically.Potere Operaio's critic,instead, was more
radical.The  working class was already acting,disrupting the process of
Capital reproduction through,for example, sabotage and disaffection for
work.What workers want is "income",not work.So,what we were asking was "a
guaranteed salary".Not "more salary".On the other hand,this was Franco
Piperno's contribution,the very development of  society headed towards "the
end of work".Communism will free(somehow "is freeing") human kind from the
need to work.Work will become "the creative and free activity of
mankind".This very "creative activity" is already present in the
revolutinary behaviour of the class).

2)I'm aware of the risks involved in such interpretation(and remember that
I'm "oversimplyfying")
a)Two anecdotes concerning  possible misinterpretation :
Coming back from the national demonstration of december 12th 1971(the
anniversary of the fascist bombing of Banca Nazionale dell'Agricoltura in
Milan,1969) one of our buses' engine broke down.(Be aware that the
demonstration was very upsetting to us because 17 of our comrades were
arrested the night before and were facing long term sentences).A couple of
days later, in Rome, we
were discussing about "the meaning" and the outcome of that
demonstration.Franco Piperno,then secretary of Potere Operaio,said,"what
really upsets me is that we were hundreds witnessing the breaking down of
one of our buses and nobody had the skills to fix it".
b)Besides the objective of the "guaranteed salary",one of Potere Operaio's
proposal,and later Autonomia's,was called "reappropriation".Reappropriation
of the outcome of labour.Goods.The construction workers,for instance,were
not enjoying the houses they built.So we were organizing workers families
to go and take possess of those houses.Another example was that of the
students that instead of asking a school reform in which more space should
be provided to the history of antifascist resistence  would take over the
very schools(actually occupying them) and invite real partizans to teach
resistence.As I said there were misinterpretation of the theory of
reappropriation by the means of what we called "practice of the
objective".Once, Franco Piperno said,"let me put it clear,reappropriation
is not shoplifting"(as a matter of fact,few party members were actually
confusing the meaning of reappropriation and had been seen stealing in some
local supermarkets).

>> Alessandro : if you restrict the period of "theoritization" to the '70s,I'd
>> say that Negri has been the "only theoretician" of Autonomia.Perhaps Franco
>> Piperno helped a little bit.
Marcus :
>How about Tronti?
Alessandro :
This is exactly what I meant.Tronti wrote "Operai e Capitale"(what we
called the "bible" of operaismo)in the '60s.Tronti,Asor Rosa and Cacciari
were Negri's comrades during the expirience of the magazine "Quaderni
rossi"(of the '60s).In the '70s the three intellectuals joined (+ or
-)organically the PCI.They are still bright intellectuals(operaismo being a
"cronic illness").But they,in the '70s,choose to embrace a theory that I
call "leftist machiavellism".They were(are) convinced that an "high level"
compromise was possible and auspicable.Now Cacciari is mayor of Venice.Asor
Rosa (a literature scholar) is fighting on the matter of if it's ethical or
not hiring your girlfriend in his department of Italianistica at Rome
University.Tronti teaches Political Thought in Siena.
Negri is in exile.

Finally,this is what I think Negri's legacy is (besides his philosophical
writings , his new friends and our  political defeats,of which we're
personally suffering the effects):

1)The working class forms of struggle change while social transformations
occure.Its behaviour changes as the way the goods are produced changes.The
"factory" is no more the center of everything because the social surplus is
being produced also elsewhere.
This is the reason why "operaisti" have never been very "picky" "reading"
the class struggle.This is the reason why they always felt comfortable in
the middle of the struggle.As fishes in the water.
An example : Oreste Scalzone,one of the founder of Potere Operaio and
fellow Negri's refugee in Paris,has been one of the leaders in the recent
french movement (Scalzone,what a figure of ethernal revolutionary ! He was
hit by a desk,yes a desk,thrown by some fascist from the third floor of
law school's building at Rome University injuring his spinal cord;one of
the leader of '68;one of the leader of 1977 movement;after spending few
years in jail he's now leading another movement in another country and
taking care of the community of italian refugees there.He looks like the
man in frak suit who climbed the huge gate of the Winter Palace in
Esenstein's "October".Slim like nobody and yet tireless).

2) theories have to be verified.
The example I always make is the Sraffa's theory of Capital.In the last
appendix of his "Produzione di merci per mezzo di merci"(Production of
Commodities by means ...),Sraffa tests his thery using the actual
mathematics used by accountants to calculate the amortization of
capital.And it works.
Negri's asking income or a "guaranteed salary" is now "translated" by ,for
example,Klaus Offe,a german sociologist, as the only solution for the
incapacity of german capitalism to assure jobs.
Negri's theory on work is something which is really "happening".Why should
we cry if "work" is going to end ?

I know, there are exagerations(mine due to the necessity of simplicity + my
own limits both linguistic and intellectual).There were mistakes.But I find
more "petit burguoise" the archeological attitude of many ortodox marxists
then and now.Speculating on the "right" passages towards communism .The
train of communism passes and they always miss it.



Alessandro Coricelli
tel(212)593-2529




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