Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 10:47:26 +1000
From: sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Steve Wright)
Subject: Re: discussing neo-liberalism & utopia


I've been following the discussions between Harald, Massimo and Franco with
interest. Here,a s usual, are some randomly ordered reactions.

I tend to agree with what I *think* is Franco's position on organsiation by
comrades: namely, that it is necessary to facilitate the circulation of
struggle from various subjectivities to others. How different, though, is
this from the position set out by _Echanges et Mouvement_ in their
presentation pamphlet - a position which I think is *too* minimalist (but
also a healthy antidote to vanguardist pretensions)?

Franco adds:

>Well, what you write is not entirely clear to me. I am quite
>suspicious too of the notion of "mass intellectuality", particularly
>because it is often used in quite an unspecified way. From one side,

Can anyone on this list offer examples of the use of "mass intellectuality"
in a manner that *isn't* unspecified?

>it seems to indicate the development of a new anthropology of work,
>where the worker is required a new, holistic and synthetic vision of
>the labour process. This should enable him to exercise functions of
>delegated control in correction of defects and changes in product
>outline which are required in the age of Just-in-Time. Fine. What the

Just how widespread is the tendency towards this encouragement by capital
of 'a new, holistic and synthetic vision of the labour process'? How does
workplace *practice* square with the rhetoric of management *literature*?
And what is the story in the world of services? Didn't fordist production
techniques only work because workers DIDN'T simply follow the technical
specifications, but rather used their own creativity in capital's service
(hence the damaging consequences for capital when they DID 'work to rule'
and follow those  technical specifications).

>mass intellectual theory fails usually omits, instead, is the
>explanation of the ways in which such new attitudes in relation to
>the labour process translate into the sphere of the political
>composition of the class, how they define intellectual and political
>*antagonistic* practices on the shopfloor. That is to say: how the
>potentiality implicit in the mass intellectual gives shape to new
>subjectivities. However, for what weight we can recognize to the mass
>intellectual argument, I don't think we can confuse this theory wuth
>that according to which "everything is immaterial". I don't even
>think Negri states that: it would be really a fairy tale deprived of
>any foundation. What usefulness can be in the theory of the mass

I've been rereading the final part of Michael Hardt and Toni Negri's
Dionysus book - in particular, the section which discusses 'the
prerequisities of communism' (pp.275-83), and how some of these are already
latent within mass intellectuality. Without putting Michael on the spot,
I'd be very interested to know what he thinks of both this discussion
between Franco and Harald, and that between Harald and Massimo, since the
discourse of 'the prerequisities of communism' seems an attempt to bridge
the two.

Regarding communication between workers as raised by Franco: One of the
most intriguing passages in Negri's _Dall'operaio massa all'operaio
sociale_ (still his best publication, IMHO) concerns sabotage as practiced
in certain Italian workplaces of the 60s:

We began to follow a whole series of dynamics of sabotage: in fact no-one
had set out to commit sabotage, yet there existed a continuity of imperfect
operations such that by the end the product was completely useless . . .
What is spontaneity? In reality it is my inability to establish an
organisational, i.e. voluntary, precise, determinate relationship with
another worker. In these conditions spontaneity acts through the very
communication which the labour process as such, as a machine foreign to me,
determines (Negri 1979: 64-5).

How different is this from the process that Franco described as occuring NOW?

Harald wrote:

>> The globalization of the economy opens up to enormous opportunities. But at
>> the same moment it presents us with obstacles that makes it more difficult
>> both to imagine communism as a real opportunity, and to realize it. This
>> difficulty of imagining communism in other than in an abstract form, makes
>> it less of an possibilty. Most workers are practical people in search of
>> practical ways to actualize their dreams.

Massimo and Franco made, I think, broadly similar replies. Here is Franco's:

>I agree on that. But why should we "imagine" communism, where
>imagining could be an activity separate from everyday social
>practices, when the practical ways to actualize dreams and satisfying
>needs are short-circuiting with new forms of work organization and
>new forms of struggles, relativizing old referents for that
>staisfaction and actualization (ie. welfare state) and valorizing new
>ones (social communication and solidarity, new forms of labour
>community activism, etc.)? What can be make explicit as *elements of
>communism* from those dynamics of struggle?

While I'm sympathetic to the notion here of trying to grasp 'the future in
the present', as C.L.R. James put it, and having long agreed with Marx'
warnings about avoiding 'Comtist cookbooks about the future', which Massimo
states in terms of the need to avoid PLANS which human beings must then be
marshalled INTO, I still think Harald's concerns are extremely valid. I too
am reminded of conversations that I have had with people who are genuinely
interested in what 'I'd like to see' and how practicable it might be. Of
late, I have sometimes pointed them towards pm's _bolo'bolo_ - not because
I think that is the 'finally discovered' blueprint, but rather that it
offers a humorous and  readable attempt to tackle such concerns. In a
different way, maybe some of the comrades involved in running a social
centre in Italy are able to say: what we are doing here is a pale
anticipation, but an anticipation nonetheless, of how we think society as a
whole could be (self)organised. Or maybe not . . .

Steve




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