Re: John Holloway debate/McLaren

[MARIPOWER716@xxxxxxx]

>I have not read the Holloway book, although I imagine I will in a year
when I have the time.  Does his conception of power and the idea of
resisting classification ever get connected to unions in the text?  As a
union organizer, and elected representative of the union, if I told
other workers that being late to work (the refusal to work) was a
significant strike against capital, or even some sort of progressively
growing component of the struggle against capital, I would be greeted
with skepticism and anger.  In Holloway's conception, is unionization a
sort of tacit acceptance of capitalism, engaging in capitalist planning, that
kind of thing?

Dave <


Comment

Upon reading your comment a broad grin flashed across my face. Actually any
elected union rep with an ounce of sense would never advocate being late for
work as a policy. Those who elected you would not view you simply as childish
but a fool and ensured that you were never reelected.

>"Our struggle is clearly a constant struggle to get away from capital, a
struggle for space, for autonomy, a struggle to lengthen the leash, to intensify
the dis-articulation of domination. This takes a million different forms:
throwing the  alarm clock at the wall, arriving late for 'work', back pain and
other  forms of absenteeism, sabotage, struggles over tea breaks..."<

I would suppose that everyone strives to find a certain comfort zone in life
and in the workforce a billion and one different social acts take place, which
one could identify as "resistance" to "capital" but is hardly the meaning of
class struggle. The actual fight against speed-up and the lengthening of the
workday contains a history onto itself, although I would include in the place
of "throwing the alarm clock at the wall," something about police violence,
criminalization of the population, colonial oppression and the internal conflict
within the working class itself.

The point is that presentation like the quoted passage tends to proceed from
what has been a certain approach to Marx writings that lays heavy stress on
the ideological modes of thinking. These ideological modes of thinking have
curious names amongst Western Marxist that wed their theory to an alleged 
superior
insight into the dialectic of Marx conception of capital - as abstract labor,
producing fetishized social relations, mediated forms of social intercourse
and resistance to reification. There is of course a section of academic Marxist
that helped to pioneer a "radical" approach to the ideological forms of "the
superstructure" and how these forms of thinking/action takes on a life of
their own and reinforce themselves or become "thick."  Some call this cultural
mystification - a complex system of creating a view of the world and life 
"inside
out."  What causes this is the inner working of capital itself and not just
bad thinking.

Because capital is driven by exchange of products for profit and the labor of
the individual, as class, is no longer self-activity but sold to another, a
fetish is created. Being compelled to sell to another your labor/life activity
as a means to live and reproduce causes problems and restructure human
relations. Once you believe this domination compels you to sell yourself - labor
power, to another as a natural law of human existence, you are caught up in a
fetishized world. Even when you do not believe it is a natural law the act of
having to do - sell your ass to live, creates and recreates the fetishized 
world.
This fetish means that our ordinary social relations appear, become and are
expressed in real life as a relationship between things. The things society
exchange express and become the social relationship and this whole process
expresses the fact that the labor of the worker is alienated from their self.

Well brother, reification basically means domination and control of the
cultural, intellectual and artistic aspects of life by capitalism or as the 
result
of the power of capital as a specific system of social/production relations.
Capitalism objectifies, - turns into or reconfigure human relations and their
class shape, or reifies, all human relationships, including culture and art.
Capital turns life activity into structures we interact with and within as a way
of life. It encases and enslaves all aspects of cultural production,
transforming all such products into "instruments" of wealth creation and 
reproduction.
Capitalism is like a huge society prison and art and literature generated
within this prison is by definition ideologically imprisoned in the service of
capitalism. At any rate this is how I understand the bourgeois theorists within
Marxism, once one throws in the words dialectical connection and Hegel.

>From their point of view I guess throwing an alarm clock against the wall has
great significance. Destroying too many alarm clocks imposes an economic cost
against the destroyer but what the hell do I know! Absenteeism will get one
fired and the societal levels of absenteeism are always contained on the basis
of competition within the working class for wages and work. Struggling for
"space" and certain "autonomy" within mediated forms as one live out their life
within the system has revolutionary importance as transformation of the system
and is not understood as the spontaneous movement of labor.

Mediated social forms. Right here brother things get "thick" or in laymen
terms "heavy." Mediated forms of social intercourse refer to all the structures
in society by which things happen. It also means all the different ways people
think the things out that they are making happen. "I need to get up and go to
work everyday and be on time," is not just an act/action but also a thinking
that justify and drives going to work everyday - the act/action.

Now all structures in society are social because all production and
reproduction or how we live and reproduce as a species long ago became social
production once capital took root and became dominant. All that is being stated 
is that
no one can escape the system because you are born into a certain specific way
of living and producing whether you like it or not. With the emergence of
capitalism and the industrial system all of society was more than less
transformed.

Now many of these thinkers of the past century were looking to more closely
unravel the fundamental "points" in human culture as it was developing and to
explain why the working class in the imperial countries and centers behaved a
certain way. In the case of say Antonino Gramsci - imprisoned for many year and
making the ultimate sacrifice for a new world, the context - years or
historical period of his work, must be taken into account. In the case of Georg 
Lukas
- who had a substantial background in Hegelian philosophy, tended to examine
and approach the victory of socialism from its cultural impact instead of
political meaning. Here I mean culture with a big "C" and not simply as high art
and literature: culture as human/e activity. Then of course, Mr. Theodor W.
Adorno gain some attention in the 60s amongst Western Marxist with his specific
view about reification and other formulations that have never taken root in the
working class movement.

At the end of the day Adorno basically states - in a crazy language, bad
transliteration and mediocre translation that is outside my most intimate
conceptions of reality/culture, (culture big "C") and sound,  . . . that 
capitalist
engenders a system of literature, the arts and other symbolic forms that are
structures of mediation. How does one know that they have not grasped the issue
at its root and are still operating within mediated social forms seeking
solution to a problem that demands clarity of vision, thought and purpose? Here 
is
the problem that has run academic Marxism into incredible problems with
proletarian assertion and justifies why "we" call "they" academic Marxist in the
first place.

Many of them - academic Marxist, came to the conclusion that capitalism can
be transformed on the basis of a fight within the mediated forms and altering
these forms to produce a correct vision of the world.  My conclusion is that
society undergoes change and is compelled to leap forward on the basis of
political revolution. The resistance is born within capital and the widening of 
the
fight that elected representatives conduct is not so much to be understood as
a mediated form but as a side of the spontaneous movement. .

This is why - in my opinion, you asked how  "Does his conception of power and
the idea of
resisting classification ever get connected to unions in the text." You
actually asked what is the relationship between the ideological and material. If
you had not stated you were a union rep I would have not taken the time to write
this. See, I was a union rep also and retired from Daimler-Chrysler having
done my 30 and been a Marxist for a couple of decades or three.

The answer to the question is there is no direct theory relationship because
these theories that elevate the mediated forms of social intercourse higher
than the material aspects of production. Theory is generated on the basis of the
material and the material remains fundamental to the epoch of capital - and
difference end up being a class point of view. The material - physical, aspects
of production deals with those working and those who cannot work because
their labor cannot be employed and their labor power cannot find a purchaser.
Mediated forms of social intercourse found an audience as the fundamentality in
society transformation during another period of history long gone.  These
theories arose in a certain period of history where the acute features of the 
class
struggle manifested themselves outside the imperial centers on the one hand
and within the framework of the transition from one bourgeois form of rule - the
democratic Republic, to fascist forms of state authority.

The question for communist workers and trade union leaders is the communist
transformation of society and under what conditions this can take place. Today
a communist class has arisen on earth. Most of the doctrines and theories of
the past, under the name of Marxism are outdated, unsuitable if not wrong in
the first place.

How to take power without political revolution is an absurd question that can
only originate in the mind of the bourgeois and petty bourgeoisie -
degenerate, intellectual.

Melvin P.