Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 10:22:57 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: AUT: RE:  


On Thu, 17 Sep 1998, Thano Maceo Paris wrote:
> 
> In "The Subversion of Politics: European Autonomous Movements And The
> Decolonization of Everyday Life" George Kastaficas makes a number of
> criticisms of Negri, as well as Harry Cleaver and Michael Ryan. 

Thano: Could you give the complete reference here, I've never even heard
of the article? book?

> The basic
> thrust of his criticism of Negri is that Negri's thought subsumes or
> characterizes a range of social relations under the category of
> work/production. Kastaficas favors a view that would hold class, race &
> gender relations as seperate, without one determining the others, or as
> primary, or (*it seems*) as tying them together (e.g concepts of "work" or
> "reproduction"). 
> 
Thano: Obviously I haven't read the piece but the view which you describe
is pretty standard post-modernist stuff that holds these various forms of
domination separate. It is not Negri --or the rest of us-- who privilege
work in capitalist society; it is capital. It is not we who "tieL them
together; it is capital which has appropriated every kind of domination 
to its basic purpose of organizing society around work. Many
post-modernists, by pigeon-holing work as just one more form of domination
among many undercut their ability to deal even with those aspects of
domination that interest them the most. If you don't see the way these
forms have been integrated into capitalism you are crippled in finding
ways to confront them effectively.

> Kastaficas seems to be articulating a position similar to that of Chomsky,
> Cagan, Albert et al. in "Liberating Theory", where they draw on the new
> physics associated with the thought of Ilya Prigogine, Stengers and others
> to elaborate a political theory that derides a one-exclusive central
> dynamic driving social relations. Is anyone out there aware of any
> responses to Kastaficas on this?

Thano: I know of no responses to this particular piece, but here ARE
responses to the general line of argument, some in Negri, some, if I
remember right, in Caffentzis' work, perhaps his contributions to the book
edited by Silvia Federici --whose title I can't remember and which I can't
lay my hands on at the moment. I have also touched on this --in a piece
that was presented to a conference Toni organized in Paris, later 
to Rethinking Marxism conf and later published in Common Sense on "Marxian
Categories, the Crisis of Capital and the constitution of social
subjectivity today". There is stuff out there. 

> 
> On another note I'll also say that I'm an activist here in Binghamton
> involved locally with Food Not Bombs (FNB), the local youth section of the
> Democratic Socialists of America (the only left organization here that
> will take me), and a left-student paper. Binghamton is a relatively small 
> heavily post-industrial city in upstate New York, largely working class,
> and also politically right wing & anti-union (this used to be the east
> coast headquarters of the KKK!). Those politics come out of a sort of
> Keynsianism & fordism in city government & industry. (Binghamton used to
> be called "the home of the square deal"in refrence to good jobs, housing 
> etc). More recently IBM has downsized, Kodak which was also based here has
> recently left, Endicott-Johnson Shoes is long since gone and there ahs
> been a steady increase in underemployment, as well as an influx out of the
> city to larger metropolitan centers. There's been some inflow here from
> southeast asians (the INS apparently favors this as an area for refugees
> to settle), but overall the flow has been out. I'm not going to bore you
> with more gory details because you can probably "connect the dots" and
> "fill in the blanks" (e.g the rise of contigent work and temp agencies,
> strip mall development etc). 
> 
> I'm really interested in people's comments, criticism and suggestions. 

Thano: About what in particular. Food not Bombs has done good work in a
lot of places, including here in Austin.

> I'm
> also interested in hearing what projects others are engaged in towards
> the realization of libertarian socialism. Some of the things that  
> I'm trying to working around right now are:
> 
> *Developing an autonomous community center with a kitchen that FNB can
> prepare meals out of*, as well as hold performances & punk shows in,
> possibly have an info-shop space. As you can imagine there are alot of
> empty buildings here, (but no squats), right now the rent for these places
> are way out of our range so our only real option for this sort of thing in
> the near future is squatting.*  
> 

Thano: I think there is a "squatters list" but I don't have the direction.
But you could probably pick up a few ideas by checking out the squatting -
social center movement in Europe which is quite developed.

> *A worker's center*-I first heard about workers' centers two years ago at
> a talk given by Howie Hawkins, a Greens activist, at the Socialist Forum
> in Syracuse on temp work. I also had a chance to actually see a Latino
> workers' center in Manhattan's lower east side. The DSA local I've
> worked with has had frustrating experiences with established unions and
> also trying to use a "living wage" strategy. Esspecially with the
> dispersal of work many of us here have become interested in "organizing by
> community" & social unionism. We also would like to bring in an
> aletrnative union like the IWW, but are not very close, geographically, to
> any locals-still this is something we're-actually more just myself- 
> am interested in. 
> 

Thano: Here too there is fairly extensive work done in Europe on
precarious labor and the organization of such workers, but I don't know
any sources in English, only French. But they are bound to exist.

> *An urban Earth First! Earth First! is a direct action oriented radical
> ecology group based on autonomous local that are usually involved in using
> militant tactics in protecting forests etc. Some city based earth 1sts!
> are involved in solidarity work with the work of other locals in non-urban
> areas. There are a number of EF! activists here and since last year some
> of us have talked about the possibility for forming an EF! specifically
> oriented towards urban working class issues (e.g toxic waste sites in low
> income neighborhoods here) & trying to bring to bear some of the direct
> action tactics used against clear cutting &extraction in this situation.
> Another possibility to try adopt a more positive constructive approach  to
> ecological issues as opposed to one that is fundamentally reactive and
> defensive-& work around those issues.

Thano: I'm going to forward this part of your post to a local list which
counts among its subscribers some people who have been active in these
issues for quite some time now. Anti-toxic waste in East Austin has been 
a hot political issue for some time, because of their work. Devon Pena has
also written some things about the brown and the green based on his work
in Colorado. 

> 
> *Food Not Bombs is basically known for operating on the basis of serving
> vegan meals to homeless and poor people using food that's either been
> discarded, or donated (but never bought). We've also begun to
> distribute donated and discarded clothes. At the university-particulraly
> with construction taking place here- there's also alot of waste involving
> throwing out older model computers that are basically still functional, as
> well as other miscellaneous items (bookshelves, lamps, storage dressers
> etc). I'm interested in distributing these in a similar fashion
> (particularly the computers-once we work on them a bit).The other
> possibility would be to set up a "free store" such as those that Emile
> Grogan's Diggers had on the west coast in the 60's (we really have enough
> stuff). In Charles Jencks' book  "Heteropolis: LA, the riots and the
> strange beauty of hetero-architecture", he includes an appendix with a
> program by California Greens that calls for the creation of neighborhood
> based computer centers (like the various pods and computer clusters on
> college campuses) & micro power radio stations. There's also a
> possibility that we could try to do something similar in a working class
> neighborhood in Binghamton with the computers. Although I question the
> potential for these types of efforts to increase the tension of "what is
> and what could be" tapping into the potential of post scarcity society to
> make the leap into "the realm of freedom", I do think that it potentially
> puts important tools into the hands of the working class-& is a way of
> approaching the project of "building the new society within the shell of
> the old"
> 
Thano: There's a recent book on "Cyberdemocracy" which sketches case
studies in several cities of such efforts to create and use public assess
to computers. I don't think there is any doubt that properly used computer
communications can dramatically speed up the circulation of experience and
struggle.

Harry
............................................................................
Harry Cleaver
Department of Economics
University of Texas at Austin
Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
Phone Numbers: (hm)  (512) 478-8427
               (off) (512) 475-8535   Fax:(512) 471-3510
E-mail: hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu
Cleaver homepage: 
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index.html
Chiapas95 homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
............................................................................



     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---