Date: Sat, 12 Sep 1998 14:47:24 +1000
Subject: AUT: padovani on rupture of dialectic


Hi all.

I hope I will forgiven for reposting something which appeared on this list
a couple of years ago, and then sparked a debate between myself and Michael
Hardt, amongst others. But it does illustrate the position re the rupturing
of cycles of struggles that Angie was asking about. As can be seen, the
argument below, which has been influenced by Negri, follows the broad lines
described by Harry.

Perhaps Hobo or someone else might like to say whether this document still
summarises the stance of the "Autonomous Network of Social
Self-organisation in the North East" . . .

Steve

______________________
The document which I have translated below was prepared for a day of
discussion and debate within the autonomist movement of Italy's north-east,
held in late March 1996.

I think most people on this mailing list would be interested to hear any
accounts of that meeting, as well as of the national conference held in
Bologna the same weekend.

I am happy to translate any such accounts into English, should they be
posted here in Italian.

The article in the list archives concerning 'The Recomposition of Social
Labour' (accessible via the list home page) may also prove a useful
backdrop to the discussion notes that follow.

Finally, I'm sure someone else can render the Spinoza quote towards the end
rather better than I've done.

Steve

______________________
Discussion Notes
of the Autonomous Network of Social Self-organisation in the North East
______________________



______________________
Theoretical Practice and
Contradiction as Method
______________________

When, some years ago, we began to talk of 'postfordism' as a new paradigm
through which to redefine and innovate theoretical research and
political-organisational practice, many considered us to be either
heretical crazies (a label we embrace!) or worse, as old militants fallen
victim to senile dementia, enamoured in our twilight years with
postmodernist fashions.

In the meantime, this paradigm - however partial, contradictory or sketchy
it may be - has allowed us to construct the embryos of, and to experiment
with, a new trajectory of antagonistic subjectivity. The *autonomous
network of social self-organisation*, the grounding and reappropriation of
the territorial dimension, beyond any localism or artificial national
synthesis, the concept of *transterritoriality* as the multiplicity of
organised subjective networks that traverse and redefine space beyond the
limits and confines imposed by the geography of power . . .

These and many other conquests, large and small, concrete experiences and
social projects, have enormously enriched our subjectivity and political
practice. In this sense we seek to recover the concept of theoretical
practice: a synthetic and strongly expressive concept, amongst the most
significant that we have acquired - adding some nuances of our own - from
that great marxist and philosopher Althusser.

1. Theoretical practice means above all bringing the point of view of
antagonism and class struggle into theory, always and no matter what. There
can be no 'pure theory' cut loose from the material dynamics of struggle,
of conflict, of transformative and subversive practice.

2. The development of theory is never univocal nor linear: the only
criteria for the validity of theoretical hypotheses are practice, the
results of political action, the efficacy of organisational forms.

3. If theory serves to illuminate a consequent social practice, it is also
simultaneously and constantly redefined, transformed and reshaped by the
effects which such practice has produced.

4. Against every linear, monocausal and all-encompassing thought, we
reaffirm the notion of *contradiction as method*. This means the refusal to
absolutise, fossilise or codify any insights conquered. This entails
neither skeptical doubt nor relativism, but rather grasping forcefully -
'seizing' - appropriating a reality in continuous development and
transformation.

We can summarise this concept as follows: escaping the difficulties, the
puzzles - at times the paradoxes - which the paradigm shift imposes upon
antagonistic subjectivity requires a continuous theoretical-practical
production that is open and experimental, continually renewing itself, one
that knows how to fuse the 'frontier spirit' and innovation with the force
and responsibility of militancy.

______________________
The Common Places
of Postfordism
______________________

By now, some of the categories that serve to describe the changes at
century's close seem almost too obvious for comment. We'll summarise those
we think are most relevant:

1. The transformations of the productive model, of the social organisation
of labour and the forms of exploitation on a planetary scale within the
context of the marxian concept of the 'real subsumption' of society as a
whole to capital, the new quality of *living labour*, the flexibility and
mobility of labour-power.

2. The economic globalisation and intertwining of productive networks in
the world market. International command of the flows of labour-power and
the 'new international division of labour': 'strong areas and weak areas',
the relationship between north and south, the segmentation and creation of
hierarchies within the production and distribution of wealth. Zones with
strongly differentiated conditions of pay and social services. The relation
between the *global and local* in the world-economy. The consequent crisis
of the nation-State and the redefinition of the State-form.

3. The end of the old fordist pact between capital and labour. The
exhaustion of hitherto-known models of the Welfare State, understood as the
capitalist mediation of class conflict. The crisis of the major
institutions (parties and unions) of collective bargaining and working
class representation.

4. The loss of the fordist-taylorist factory's centrality, which has
progressively become a less and less relevant part, on the road to
extinction, an archeological find by comparison with the development of the
diffuse factory and of networked social production.

*We can already hear the 'heavy artillery' of the rifondaroli of every
stripe pointed against us: what the fuck are you saying?! Are you denying
the existence of the factory and the working class? This is not the point:
certainly, factories and factory workers continue to exist, and how! But
here we are talking about something else: we need to situate ourselves on
the terrain of a tendency that is already reality, that structurally
modifies the productive model, labour, its relation with time and space,
life and social needs. The loss of the factory working class' centrality
does not mean the disappearance of the contradiction between **capital and
labour**, but rather its maximum extension and dislocation throughout the
entire arc of social reproduction, in every ambit of collective life.*

Against the economism of the Second and Third Internationals, a
revolutionary thought at the height of this epoch's contradictions can only
be *bio-political*; that is, it must immediately come to terms with the
forms through which men and women reproduce their lives and manage their
time.

Comprehending the tendency so as to invert its trajectory in the direction
of liberation: this has always been the problem facing social subversion .
. .

______________________
Rupture of the Dialectic
Materialism and Pessimism
______________________

The points touched upon above obviously need to be fleshed out. What
interests us here is to begin to reflect upon some nodes of great
importance . . .

1. The Rupture of the Dialectic:

This is an extremely complex problematic, since it raises not only
questions of a theoretical-political-practical nature, but also matters
that are philosophical in a more general sense.

In the first place, we can talk of the rupture of a *particular*,
historically determinate dialectic between capital and labour-power, as
logic of mediation, of the surpassing of class contradiction in a higher
synthesis. In other words the rupture of the dialectic between workers'
struggles and capitalist development (remember Marx's description of
machinery as 'the most powerful weapon for suppressing strikes'?), of the
linear sequence struggles-crisis-restructuring, followed by
struggles-crisis-etcetera in a 'bad infinity'. In real subsumption, capital
poses itself as the univocal substance of the world's fabric, as absolute
foundation, as unique subject, as self-referential totality. What can the
dialectic be, if there is no recognition of the other term of the
contradiction?

It's no coincidence that capitalism's apologists increasingly speak of the
*end of history*, of the impossibility of creating any alternative to the
existing order. The rupture of the dialectic brings with it, as the
wreckage of the old historicist ideologies (both idealist and 'socialist'),
the collapse of the idea of 'progress', of the unlimited development of the
productive forces, of the inexorable affirmation of the Reason of History.
Along with it has come the collapse of the conception of historical time as
linear, homogenous and empty time.

Against this, social complexity itself restores to us an image of time as
*discontinuity*, as the intertwining of different temporalities, as leap
and as rupture. The 'regions' of history do not form a compact continent:
they open onto vortexes and abysses, avalanches and rock falls, with sudden
steps backward and/or leaps forward. The possibilities of communism and
liberation coexist with the maximum of barbarism, destruction and death.

2. A Strategic Problem:

The considerations developed so far pose genuine theoretical-practical
puzzles which seem difficult to solve.

In earlier periods, there were at least *two* significant theories of the
relationship between class struggle, revolution and State power and
capital.

*The first* concerned the seizure of political power as the condition for
the subsequent transformation of the social relations of production. This
was a 'Jacobin' formula very popular in the Third International and beyond
it, the theory of the revolution's 'two stages', of the 'phases' of
transition.

*The second* concerned the theory of 'counterpower', a dualism that grew
and developed to the point of progressively exhausting and extinguishing
the forms of capitalist command over the process of social reproduction.

While the second is certainly more innovative in terms of the workers'
movement's traditions, both of these schema rely heavily upon the
dialectical form: the tempos and forms of class organisation follow in the
footsteps (albeit negatively) of the forms of domination. An antithetical
but mirror logic - a 'dialectical prison' - an alternative which often
becomes simulation, losing sight of its structural and qualitative
difference. But all this is part and parcel of history . . .

In the current phase, the rupture of the dialectic leads inevitably to a
logic of *separation* between the subjects of contradiction. But - aside
from the still utopian character of a *separate cooperation and
constitution*, founded positively upon itself rather than upon a mirroring
of the form of domination - can we imagine a separation without rupture,
without antagonism, without 'civil war'?

We believe *not*.

On the other hand, could not a *network of diffuse counterpowers* - a term
which seems to us more adequate than that of 'counterpower', given the
transformations discussed above - perhaps still posit itself as a
conflictual relationship, as a still dialectical figure, as the reciprocal
recognition of two sides in struggles?

This too is *inevitable* within the concreteness of the class struggle.

Does this mean that it is *impossible* to resolve this puzzle? While we
don't have a ready made, elegant solution, we think that posing the problem
represents an important start.

Between *diffuse counterpowers and constitutive separateness* lie the
problems, the strategic space, the possibility once again of reasoning,
with force and passion, a radical project to trasform the existing. Perhaps
we can attempt to follow a new path that succeeds in *fusing* the network
of diffuse counterpowers and tendential separateness, in the form of
*another constitution*.

3. Materialism, Pessimism and Political Action:

As always, in the face of enormous, epochal transformations, of the
collapse of certainties and points of reference, and the precipitation of
the old order into chaos, the need arises for a higher, almost
philosophical reflection upon our 'being in the world'. The most adequate
philosophical schema with which to express our 'vision of the world' in
this phase is that of *pessimism*: a quick glance across the world as a
whole, from the metropoles to the peripheries, from the North to the South,
continually presents us with tragic scenes of barbarism, of destruction, of
piles of ruins. A sort of *bellum omnium contra omnes* (Hobbes), raised to
maximum potential and transferred on the level of modernity and real
subsumption.

In Marx the passage to 'real subsumption' was visualised in a linear
fashion, as the passage to the first phase of a new society, *communism*
upon the material basis of which the real community, the collective
happiness and liberation of human society would, in time, be positively
constructed. This linear schema has been overtaken: we are in midst of real
subsumption, but we have been unable, in the face of the transformations in
the productive model, to catch a glimpse of a mass subjectivity that
forcefully wants and desires to construct a new process of social
liberation.

Clearly, this 'pessimism' of ours is *historical and relative*: it
absolutely does not mean renunciation, resignation, impotence! On the
contrary: it is precisely by virtue of this material breakthrough which
accompanies our historical period that *concrete political action* - the
small changes that we do succeed in producing, the spaces snatched from
domination, for collective freedom and self-determination - acquire an even
greater value.

Far from debilitating us, pessimism enriches our point of view, pushing us
towards political action and transformative praxis, but now without the
veils of ideology, with a greater awareness of the contingency, finitude,
misery and sadness of the human condition - in order to establish a deeper
*ethical sense* of responsibility and militancy!

Materialism, both ancient and modern, and including its revolutionary
variant, has always contained a more or less explicit pessimistic vein: it
could not be otherwise when one speaks not of the world of ideas, but of
the conditions of men and women - their passions, struggles, desires,
egoisms - and of their relationship withe forces of nature, its laws and
necessities. From *Epicurus and Lucretius* to *Spinoza*, the wild
potentiality of nature and being has flowered in an infinite variety of
modes, combinations, life forms - as does the creative and transformative
potentiality of living labour and social cooperation in *Marx*.

But this sentiment of potentiality and of freedom, this anxiety of
liberation is always grounded with distress for the human condition, with a
dramatic pessimism. This ambivalence present within materialism represents
the best antidote to any teleological conception of history, according to
which the chain of causes and effects, the succession of events follows
some pre-established plan.

To summarise:

1. The rupture of the dialectic and of the 'mechanism' of
struggles-crisis-development entails a problematic which is both new and
seemingly difficult to solve.

2. Apart from some unexpected explosions, the current scenario lacks
significant mass struggles that allude to a process of liberation.

3. From the antagonistic point of view, there has not emerged for the
moment that diffuse social intelligence of living labour which could be the
constituent subject of a new society-wide [societaria] dimension (and when
it does emerge, it will certainly not be because of us).

4. Drawing upon the sources of materialism and critical pessimism, we can
restore meaning to our political action, without the anguish of the
absolute, of the perfect society, of realised happiness: without
ideological illusions or nostalgia for 'grand narratives'.

______________________
And Yet . . .
______________________

We can identify a strategic passage: from necessary resistance to the
network of diffuse counterpowers that distends itself across the complexity
of social relations. Antagonistic separation and, at the same time, the
first autonomous mechanism of communitarian organisation, of another
constitution. It is still nothing: but it seems to us to be the only
interesting and possible framework in which to begin research and practical
experimentation.

Given this, we believe it important to introduce and deepen a concept: our
constituent force (as limited as it is), the capacity to establish and
produce new collective societies, must measure itself from the beginning in
the creation of *complex social organisms*.

______________________
Complex Social Organisms
______________________

'Since, in fact, being able to is potentiality, it follows that the greater
the reality that pertains to the nature of a thing, the greater the force
it has for its existence . . .' - Spinoza

*Organisms* - that is, conceived as genuine living *social* cells,
possessing their own innate *complexity* and *totality* [complessivita'],
without this meaning that they want to be or represent the totality.

'The macrocosm is reflected in the microcosm', N. Cusano has argued; within
the infinitely small can be found the same complexity as that in the
infinitely grand, as in the theories of contemporary physics: within the
'social cells' - established positively upon their own force, their
disposition towards cooperation, internal articulation of structure,
experimentation of direct democracy, and construction of community - there
is already affirmed a holistic principle [un principio complessivo].

In this sense, the 'general' point of view is no longer a mere mechanical
sum of parts, nor an abstract 'national' synthesis, much less the latest
version of any 'general will'.

Against any transcendence of the political moment, the development of
*complex social organisms* offers a level of total immanence and
horizontality, a constituent process that is once more reopened, ennervated
by the social networks grounded in the territory, in a relationship of
continuous communication, synergy and reciprocal empowerment.


[Translator's Note: I have rendered the word 'uomini' as 'men and women'.]




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