Date:          Sat, 12 Sep 1998 15:46:25 GMT + 2:00
Subject:       Re: AUT: Grundrisse/MBM


Steve wrote:
>  
> > Certainly one question I hope we can address is one raised in a phone
> > conversation a few days ago by a friend here in Melbourne: how useful (and
> > how verifiable) is the workerist/autonomist notion that capital's action
> > can be understood as *responses/reflexes* to working class initiative -
> > both on the micro level, and in terms of broad historical sweep (e.g. the
> > struggles of the sixties/seventies evoke the crisis/restructuring of the
> > seventies onwards)?

Jerry replied:

> 
> 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?
> 

I agree with this. It seems to me, however, that the crucial issue to
be focused in this regard concerns the different nature of capitalist
vs working class responses. It is on the background of such
difference that we should put the whole question of the oft-quoted
"autonomists'" "rejection" of Marxian dialectics, as in Negri's "Marx
beyond Marx" (I would prefer to say, rather than "rejection":
locating dialectics at the level of illustration of capitalists'
tactics of reproduction, and overcoming it in order to develop class
strategies of subversion of capitalist command). In fact, Negri's
point is, to put it shortly, that dialectics can show how capitalists
have "responded" to worker struggles developing mechanisms
(collective bargaining, social citizenship, productivity-linked
wages, Keynesian-managed internal demand and other forms of
mediation) which have not only "integrated" worker struggles inside
capitalist development, but have made worker struggles an engine for
the reproduction of capitalist accumulation at higher levels
(therefore "dialectically") of profits, consumption and social
consent. As Harry wrote in "Reading Capital Politically", Marx used
dialectics as a tool for understanding and counter-strategy in
relation to the enemy's moves, in the same way as Clausewitz's
abstractions in "On War" served the purpose of outlining possible
tactics and moves of an enemy army. On the other hand, the crisis of
social mediation, in various countries and to various degrees, from
the 1970s in the context of rising working class radicalization,
showed the limitations of such forms of social mediation and
consent. But this also showed the capacity of worker struggles to
overcome dialectics *as the "dynamics of motion" of capital*, and to
articulate their demands on different, separated levels of
subjectivity and self-organization, not mechanically determied by
the development of the forces of production in relation to the
oppressive nature of social relations of production (for which, I
think, Deleuze and Guattari's notion of "plateaux" is pertinent),
which rejected productivity bargaining and translated wage struggles
and struggles over redistribution of time and non- payment of
services into a direct, conscious worker attack on levels of
capitalist profits in the form of refusal of the logic of waged 
labour, and for an immediate control of factories, quality of life 
and territories. The innovations determined by these worker practices
were, on the other hand, confirmed by the fact that, far from
resorting to previous forms of mediation and compromise, capital
tried to enforce, in its "neoliberal" phase, new forms of domination
and worker compliance based on the generalized fear and insecurity
due to downward labour market competition, undermining of stable
forms of employment and generalized precarisation.

> 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.
> 

I think we should make a distinction between the defensiveness of 
formal working class organizations, and the development of new 
patterns of movement, identity and subjectivity in resistance to 
free-market global capitalism. "Autonomists'" debates have tried to 
explain the defensive nature of so large a part of working class 
politics in terms of changing working-class composition, the 
emergence of plural subjects of exploitation and exclusion, the 
articulation of non-capitalist and non-factory based process of 
valorization inside previously existing "Fordist" cores and so on. 
This determined both a general crisis of representation of forms of 
worker organization still anchored to the "old" class composition, 
and the lack of global connections and adequate forms of anti-
capitalist articulation by many of the "new" social subjects. I 
generally agree with such analysis, even if I think some of its 
assumptions are sometimes presented in a bit simplistic way (as for 
some pictures of a too clear-cut "Fordism" vs "post-Fordism" 
divide). However, if we read the whole question of "defensiveness" vs 
"offensiveness" in proletarian responses in terms of changes in 
working class composition, I think that the struggle against 
neoliberalism cannot be easily defined as "defensive", at least 
because such a struggle is providing forms of common sense, discourse 
and languages that are defining relevant commonalities in processes 
of resistance that are taking place in different national and social 
context. I think this is one of the crucial impacts of the Zapatista 
movement; on the other hand, very little exists, in terms of 
research and analysis, of how the anti-neoliberal motif generates 
such convergence of meanings and programs, what are the conditions 
for such a convergence, how local diversity relates to it, and what 
are the political potentials of such convergence.

Franco

Franco Barchiesi
Sociology of Work Unit
Dept of Sociology
University of the Witwatersrand
Private Bag 3
PO Wits 2050
Johannesburg
South Africa
Tel. (++27 11) 716.3290
Fax  (++27 11) 339.8163
E-Mail 029frb-AT-muse.arts.wits.ac.za
http://jefferson.village.virginia.edu/~spoons/aut_html
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Home:
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