Date: Fri, 11 Sep 1998 14:36:29 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: AUT: Grundrisse/MBM


On Fri, 11 Sep 1998, Profit Margin wrote:

> 
> >Well ... but the converse could be said as well. I.e. (many) working class
> >actions can be understood as responses/reflexes to initiatives undertaken
> >by the capitalist class. Don't you agree?
> 
> Yes, I do, Jerry. It's the notion of the working class as "prime mover" or
> "original cause" (a la Tronti in "Lenin in England") which I have doubts
> about, and am hoping to provoke some discussion of. But maybe I'm jumping
> the gun, and should wait to see how that arises within a specific
> discussion of MBM.

Steve/Jerry: We can look at MBM, but we can also remember the treatment in
CAPITAL and elsewhere that privileges "living labor" over "dead labor". It
is at this level that I think the "prime mover" argument is rooted.
Capitalism is viewed less as a selfpropelled jauggernaut than as a
constraint on worker/human development. Not only is
dead-labor/capital-as-means-of-production used to control workers but more
generally their creativity and imagination, their "becoming" is limited by
the imposed requirements to work and to constrain social activity within
the capitalist framework of forms, e.g., the circuits, profit
maximization, etc. This perspective makes perfectly good sense to me, once
we recognize that the subsumption of living labor also involves the
subsumption or instrumentalization of a certain amount of human
imagination and creativity to the preservation of capital, i.e., virtually
the entirety of the economics profession.


> 
> Mind you, I think the particular spin that Werner Bonefeld and John
> Holloway put on this question, in terms of "the insubordination of labour"
> (I think that's their phrase) is useful . . .
> 

Steve/Jerry: Sometimes the phrase is nicely evocative; but on the
otherhand it retains 1) the view of working class subjectivity as that of
"labor" which is too restrictive in my view and 2) still rings a bit of
"reaction" and not initiative.

> >Indeed, if we are to examine on a case-by-case basis the
> >working-class "initiatives" in the last decade, we can see that many of
> >those  "initiatives" are "defensive" in nature. E.g. the
> >responses to the "concessions movement" of the 1980's and the struggle
> >internationally against neo-liberal austerity policies in the 1990's.
> 
> Some case-by-case accounts would be more than useful, if anyone cares to
> have a stab at it. The Hormel dispute in particular seemed to have many
> lessons in it - Peter Rachleff for one wrote a fine book about it, after
> having participated in the Twin Cities support group . . .
> 
> Steve
> 
Steve: If you look at the writings of those in the "autonomist" tradition
over the last twenty years, I think you find plenty of evidence of
recognition that these have been years of capitalist counterattack and
efforts to craft adequate responses to workers previous struggles. Look at
the material in Zerowork or Midnight Notes, or in Futur Anterieur. What
differentiates the latter from the former, however, is the more focused
effort to understand the emerging (working class) subjectivity that
capital is trying to reorganize around to hang on to its ability to
command society. Thus all the discussion of immaterial labor, the
socialized worker, etc. The problem is not that the dialectic still has
life, but to snuff it out and liberate the subjectivities struggling for
the freedom of self-elaboration.

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/
............................................................................



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