Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 01:15:51 +1000
Subject: AUT: re: grundrisse etc discussion


Re: the discussion on the Grundrisse - though perhaps it is actually a
discussion on autonomist readings of it.

I think you're both right that it is perhaps historically perverse to
say, as a matter of dogma, that the working class is the founding cause
of capitalist action.  But maybe this position results from a deeper
theoretical problem: that, in the quest to abandon lenin (and leninist
conceptions of the party), the question of the relation between
labour-power as 'original cause' of capital has been so subjectivised
that, within much autonomist politics, any differences -either
theoretical or historical - between the concepts of labour-power and the
working class is elided and, equally problematic, the differences
between capital and capitalists are obscured as well.  It is perhaps
ironic that here the autonomists share such a position with the leninist
remainders such as the trotskyists when they talk about 'the bosses',
etc.

I think also, that these issues cannot be resolved entirely through
empiric analyses - which would after all provide so much in the way of
detail, and perhaps not enough in the way of understanding.  This is not
to say those analyses are not crucial, but perhaps not sufficient.  I
think this is why those unfortunate disputes over 'class in itself/class
for itself' have occurred, also to a large extent the debates over
'base/superstructure'.  

So, I think the grundrisse (and negri) have too often been assumed as
taking one side in these kind of disputes (the subjectivist side), and
too little attention is paid to things like - things which negri does
mention - the role of credit in assuring the collectivisation of the
capitalist class around a capitalist plan at a certain period in history
(welfare state and so on).  Here bonefeld et al have been particularly
useful.  I am not sure if there is a similar appraisal of the historical
mechanisms of working class formation that is not read off the
'occupational composition' of labour.  Maybe I missed it.

Maybe I'm jumping ahead as well in raising these issues.  

I'm interested in the reasons given for why the theory of a cycle of
struggle/restructuring/accumulation has been abandoned as no longer
relevant by some.

angela mitropoulos


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