Date: Fri, 19 Apr 1996 18:04:30 +1000
From: sjwright-AT-vaxc.cc.monash.edu.au (Steve Wright)
Subject: Re: steve's note di discussione


Thanks, Michael, for responding in such a reasonable way to my
irritable/irritating post. In turn, you've raised a number of important
points.

>1. It doesn't seem to me justified (or useful) that you criticize anyone
>for admiring Althusser as philosopher, nor that you pose the definition of
>philosophy so narrowly.  So many philosophers, even the most abstract, even
>the most reactionary ones (even Hegel or Plato), can be used in interesting
>and productive ways.  You seem to close that down so quickly.  And, by the
>way, some of Althusser's late essays that are being published now, such as
>the one on aleatory materialism, are extremely beautiful.

I'm not at all familiar with Althusser's later essays, and would be happy
for some pointers. On the other hand, I don't think my comments about the
Althusser of the 60s and 70s and his conception of 'theoretical practice'
were unfair, even if my tone may have been unreasonable. Since the Padova
document suggests that 'theoretical practice' a la Althusser *is*
fundamental for us today, then the point may be worth arguing over further.

As to the worth of philosophers in general: I didn't mean to imply that
anything said by anyone who could be deemed a philosopher was useless; the
point you make about learning from Hegel or Plato is crucial (and here, for
example, Negri's insistence in the 60s as to what could be learned about
the class enemy from studying Keynes and Schumpeter was very valuable). But
what I do still hold to is that philosophy has profound limits as a
discipline. And without suggesting that just because Marx did something it
must be valid, I do think his decision to abandon philosophy (or philosphy
as defined by Gunn) for the critique of political economy was well-founded.
Of course, I could simply be flaunting my own ignorance along with my
prejudices . . .

>2. There seems to be some confusion regarding the dialectic and the real
>subsumption.  It might be helpful to distinguish among at least three
>conceptions of the dialectic: one that is used casually as a mere
>relatedness; a second that is a two-part and open structure where the basis
>of each term is its opposition to the last (this seems to me what you are
>refering to with the cycle of struggles and restructuring a la Tronti of
>Operai e capitale); and a third that is a three-part structure in which the
>third moment is a subsumption of the first two.  The question of real
>versus formal subsumption is posed within this third conception.  Now, what
>exactly do you mean when you say that the dialectic has not ended and that
>this is not the society of the real subsumption?  I, for one, have found it
>useful to think a rupture of the dialectic in thinking a kind of struggle
>that is not directly oppositional (and supportive of power in a negative
>way) but rather more autonomous.  And for me the difference between the
>real and formal subsumptions have been a way to think what postmodernism
>might mean through Marx's texts, particularly in relation to the change in
>the form of the State.  (I know this is cryptic but I don't know how much
>to go into it.)

Once again, I wasn't clear in my expression. What I was *thinking* when
criticising the Padovan comrades' document was that the dialectic has not
ended AND that this IS the society of the real subsumption. Indeed, it has
probably been so since at least the emergence of the mass worker within a
capitalist cycle of accumulation based upon the attempt to engender a
virtuous circle  between mass production and mass consumption, i.e. for
much of this century (and thus since the rise of modernity).

Your comments about different ways of understanding the dialectic were
interesting. Let me try to sketch out how I understand the question. I'm of
the belief that the dialectic has *not* ended as a social dynamic because
our possibilities for individual development continue to be circumscribed
by capital's structural dependence upon labour - and conversely, the
continued acceptance as common sense by those of us with nothing to sell
but our ability to work that we 'need' capital to 'provide' employment. In
methodological terms, this means that I think that the relationship between
capital and labour continues to be one whose peculiar nuances are best
captured by dialectical categories (e.g. the forced unity of the
non-identical, as in the relationship between use value and exchange
value). I certainly *want* to see this dialectic ruptured, I just don't
think it can happen without destroying capital from within.

>3. Well, leave all that aside, because what seems interesting to me to
>discuss is the question of post-fordism you raise.  You seem to be charging
>those who speak of post-fordism with Eurocentrism: that is, maybe the
>factory has declined in Europe and the US but in the rest of the world ....
> Well, I find that interesting and I wonder if that is true.  It is

Massimo's recent piece in _Vis-a-Vis_ is about precisely this point.
Perhaps I'll wait and see whether he or others chime in with some thoughts
on the matter. And I should be careful myself with charging others of
Eurocentrism, since I am (unfortunately) about as Eurocentric as a 'dinkum
Aussie' of British extraction can get.

>certainly the case that several of the characteristics of fordist
>production continue to exist throughout the world (maybe more elsewhere but
>also certainly in Europe and the US--in this regard I found Lipietz's ideas
>on central and peripheral fordism interesting).  The question is to
>recognize the wage relation and mode of accumulation that defines fordism
>and post.  Hilferding wrote that when European imperialism exported capital
>it exported it always in its highest form.  That does not mean that it
>always exported the most advanced productive processes or wage relations,
>but that the highest form of capital (even if it occupies a very small
>fraction of the production of a region) is dominant over the other forms of
>capital.  That seems to me an argument for recognizing post-fordism on a
>global scale.  It may be worth entertaining the idea, in other words, that
>the immaterial labor that characterizes postfordism and today defines the
>highest form of capitalist production (at least according to Robert Reich)
>exerts a force of domination over the whole of production.  Does that make
>any sense?

Yes, it makes sense, and it is an interesting position. For me the key part
of your argument is the final phrase 'exerts a force of domination over the
whole of production'. This may well be true of what you call immaterial
labour; we need to explore further through some form of militant research
whether it is, as you suggest, hegemonic within capitalist planning (maybe
as a consequence of the privileged space given to speculation as a strategy
for accumulation?). I have my doubts, however, about the arguments that
'immaterial labour' in the sense you use it also runs through *all*
elements of today's class composition - a position that Lazzarato, for
example, has advanced. What I *do* think we're finding, though, both in the
metropoles and elsewhere, is that more and more people who have been
prepared for some form of 'intellectual labour' find themselves forced into
employment that formally offers no space for them to express their
creativity. Of course, things can get interesting at this point, when their
creativity finds 'other' outlets . . .

Re postfordism: again, I'm not denying that fordism is in crisis, or that
capital is trying to replace it with some other 'mode of regulation', as
Lipietz et al would put it. I just think it's mistaken when the term
'postfordism' is used as if a new capitalist mode of regulation was already
in place. As far as I can see, we still seem to be in some sort of
interregnum, the result of which will be decided by social conflict. Two
writers who have stated this much better than I are John Holloway and Jamie
Peck. For the latter, the best that can be hoped for is what he and Adam
Tickell have called 'a new (admittedly capitalist) compromise' - a new
social compact between capital and labour that is more caring and sharing
(see their article 'Social regulation *after* Fordism: regulation theory,
neo-liberalism and the global-local nexus', _Economy & Society_ 24/3,
August 1995). Holloway, by contrast, still aspires to a social system
beyond capital and the state, but he too has argued that we remain between
regimes of accumulation:

'The violent restlessness of capital is the clearest indication of the
inadequacy (for capital) of the existing relations of exploitation, of
capital's incapacity to subordinate the power of the in-subordination of
labour. It is not the breaking of old patterns of money, not the "reform of
the state", which holds the key to the recovery of capitalist health, but
the reorganisation of exploitation, the restructured subjection the power
of labour to capital; and despite all the changes in the organisation of
production, and despite all the aggressive politics of capital over the
last ten or fifteen years, it is not clear that capital has yet succeeded
in achieving this end' - ('Global Capital and the National State', _Capital
& Class_ 52, Spring 1994, p.43).

Someone famous (I don't remember who it was) once coined a phrase about
being in a world where the old order is dying, while the new is not yet
able to assert itself. Maybe that's what's happening today. Now, perhaps
you don't use the term 'postfordism' to characterise that which I have
tried to criticise above - in which case, it would be useful to explore its
other possible connotations.

>there is one other thing I would like to talk about that I didn't have
>energy for earlier, and that is the question of optimism and pessimism.
>I'm not sure these terms have any meaning for us, and they should certainly
>not be used to mean optimism=naive and pessimism=cynical.  In any case,
>what I think important is that whatever meanings they are given, the two
>are not in opposition.  For example, Gramsci uses them in the 30s to say
>our situation has gotten really bad (pessimism of the intellect) but let's
>try to do something anyway (optimism of the will).  Negri reverses them in
>the 80s to say stop this struggle that has become futile and suicidal
>(pessimism of the will) but let's try to seek out the elements that might
>lead to a new struggle (optimism of the intellect).  Each of these are
>merely rhetorical devises, but in neither case do the terms oppose one
>another (nor for that matter do gramsci's and negri's dictums really oppose
>one another).
>
>Now, why is pessimism important to you, and moreover important for
>communism today?  I realize that the society we live in sucks (is that the
>pessimism you want?), but nonetheless I and you too want to look for the
>elements in this society that exist and that carry already the potential
>for future struggles and a future society.  Isn't that optimism, and isn't
>that optimism proper to communism?

Here again is part of the Padovans' document:

>>Far from debilitating us, pessimism enriches our point of view,
>>pushing us towards political action and transformative praxis,
>>but now without the veils of ideology, with a greater awareness
>>of the contingency, finitude, misery and sadness of the human
>>condition - in order to establish a deeper *ethical sense* of
>>responsibility and militancy!

What I liked about this passage was that it conjured up a sobriety of
judgement, a certain realism about the short term consequences of what we
can accomplish, and the fear, as Walter Benjamin once put it, that '*even
the dead* will not be safe from the enemy if he wins'. Perhaps 'pessimism'
is the wrong word to use here after all, though - I really don't know. Any
suggestions? And is the sentiment that this passage sought to capture
adequate in any case?

>ps: sorry for the tone of irritation in these notes.  I've tried to curb
>it.  I'll do better next time.

Sorry for all the elaborate quotations; it's just that I had a few of these
texts to hand, and they expressed some of my feelings far better than I
could have myself.

And as I said before, I don't think your tone was unreasonable at all,
Michael - I'm the really grumpy one around here! I will try to curb my own
outbursts of gloominess.

Steve




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