Date: Thu, 17 Sep 1998 14:52:54 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: AUT: MBM/shortall/rubin?


On Fri, 18 Sep 1998, rc&am wrote:

> 
> here is negri on rubin: "the theory of surplus value - as isaac rubin
> has already shown - thus becomes the dynamic centre, the dynamic
> synthesis of marx's thought, the point where the objective analysis of
> capital and the subjective analysis of class behaviour come
> together...but even this is insufficient" (MBM, p9)  negri goes on to
> argue the relation between crisis and subjectivity, elaborating on a
> previous statement: "the unity of the constitution and the strategic
> project of the working class" (p8).
> 
> this is where i part company with negri's analyses.  the notion of a
> "strategic project of the working class" is the projection of destiny, a
> form of identity politics indeed writ large onto a collective figure,

Angela: I think you are reading something you don't like into Negri's
text, something that is not there. The Italians came to use terms like
"working class strategy" in contraposition to capitalist strategy --which
in orthodox circles was the only subject with anything you might
caracterize as such. When you read Negri's treatments of various moments
of struggle in Italy you see that the "strategic project" has nothing to
do with "distiny" or the realization of "identity". The term refers to the
content of workers struggles --that content which can be seen as striking
most profoundly at the heart of capital, i.e., that content which goes
beyond particular battles by being moments of the basic class conflict.

> and relies for its coherence on the assumption that the working class
> and a certain political trajectory are indissoluble or that they are not
> truly working class.

Angela: I think you have hardly demonstrated this.  I don't think
this argument is in the little piece of text which you cite. What Negri
says "relies for its coherence" it seems to me on an analysis of the
character/nature of capitalism as class struggle that evolves around
certain fundamental antagonisms between capital's efforts to impose its
own logic/ways on the world and workers efforts to resist that and do
something else. In MBM Toni discusses that doing of something else in
terms of self valorization most of the time, but will eventually speak
more in terms of constitution or constituent power or power to constitute.

> 
> harry: this would then be a partial response to your insistence upon
> references.  though i was also trying to talk about negri in ways which
> made the reception of such positions a matter for discussion.
> 
Angela: Thank you for the explicit cites, it does make discussions easier.

> i'll get round to responding at greater length on this and other issues
> you raised later, though i think i have already said what my problems
> with subjectivism are.  i was asking if you had any problems with such a
> position.
> 
> angela
> 
Angela: Without going back and culling all of our exchanges, I think I
have commented on the problems you have raised. Most of them, as I
remember, seemed to me to originate outside the autonomist literature, in
other debates. But perhaps you, and certainly I, would benefit from a
listing 1) 2) 3) of the problems you perceive that have not yet been
addressed adequately in your mind.

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 ---