From: "dave graham" <davgraham-AT-hotmail.com> Subject: AUT: Party, Unions and Revolution or whatever this thread now is Date: Thu, 30 Oct 1997 15:48:42 PST Re: AUT: The Party, etc etc I was going to write something at greater length on this theme but I find I simply do not have the time. Instead I would just like to make two basic points, in the hope that the discussion can move on from the impasse its seems to have ended up in. Firstly, none of the ideas or conceptions that are being advanced are particularly new, indeed that is part of the problem. Endlessly going over what are essentially Second International notions of working class political and economic organisation will not get us anywhere. Simply these are notions which have already failed us. It was this realisation which spurred on Otto Ruhle [among others] whose work was quite casually dismissed in an earlier contribution. Ruhle's contribution to what was the German Left is explained / critqued by Paul Mattick in an essay which was published in the UK in 1978. Mattick deals harshly but realistically with the German Left and I would recommend anyone to consult this article [would it be breaking copyright if it were scanned in so as to circulate it wider ? I am willing to have a go at this - but don't hold your breath.] Even if the German Left failed to come up with a solution for their time, that does not mean that it should be written off. Moreover they were part of an international wave of working class struggle - as their constant reference to the experiences of the IWW in the US, and the British shop stewards movement of the immediate post First World War period, as support for their views against those of the Third International, show. But, just as today we would [I hope] not consider the shop stewards organisation at all revolutionary, then we have to be similarly critical of other conceptions from that era. The ideas and organisational forms of the IWW and De Leon for instance do deserve to be better known and studied, but we cannot simply apply them to today's reality. The second point I should like to make is that in Italy in the 1970s there arose a movement amongst the working class which did confront this question. And I for one would like to know a lot more about the decision of many working class members of 'Potere Operaio' to auto-dissolve their political movement in 1973 into what they called the 'Autonomy'. Can anyone say where English versions of some of the texts of this movement can be found ? I have just finished typing in a translation by Red Notes of London, of an article which appeared in the newspaper of Potere Operaio in 1973. It is called 'We have rejected the logic of the political group in order to be within the real movement, in order to be within organised class autonomy.¹ This gives much of the background to this movement - but I can not discover what model of organisation these workers had in mind and how they wanted to proceed. Soon afterwards the Italian State cracked down on Autonomy using the excuse of the assassination of Aldo Moro. I can make the article available to whoever wants it - I would imagine that it should go in the Italian archive, if whoever maintains it would let me know where to send it. DG PS In 1973 the workers of Potere Operaio believed there was something we could call 'social capital.' ______________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free Email at http://www.hotmail.com --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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