Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 10:04:24 -0500 (CDT)
Subject: Re: AUT: padovani on rupture of dialectic


Folks: A few comments interspersed below.

On Sat, 12 Sep 1998, Profit Margin wrote:

<snip> 
> 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
> 

Steve: I'd like to hear, also, from Massimo who is familiar with recent
inter-autonomist disputes in Italy. One of the divisions which I think
still lives is between those who echo Toni's work and those still too
pissed over the "disassociation" events to use him overtly --everyone, it
seems, reads his stuff. Anyway Hobo and Massimo are closer to these issues
than most of us so it would be good to hear from them.

<snip> ______________________
> ______________________
> 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 . . .

Steve: I have no problem with the appropriation/use of Deleuze/Guattari
language and concepts. It is not clear however, just how much these
concepts (in the above paragraph) add to earlier discussions of class
compositionm, the circulation of struggle and self-valorization. The
*autonomous network of social self-organisation* used to be discussed in
terms of the circulation of struggle among various nodes of struggle. An
autonomous network is, by definition, one of self-organization. Much of
the analysis of the struggles that produced the capitalist crisis in the
late 1960s and 1970s involved analysing such interconnections.

> 
> 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.
> 
Steve: I've always been amazed that Althusser is seen by so many as the
father of "theoretical practice" when all he did was give a name to much
of Marx's (and many others') political efforts. I didn't know that the
practice had been lost.


> 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.
> 
STeve: Within the context of Italy perhapas this should be seen as an
embrace, relegitimazation of autonomist theory of the 1960s --which, I
gather, has not always been explicit in the current generation. Either
that, or its the reinvention of the wheel.


> 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.
> 
STeve: Ditto. I remember talking about this with Toni back in 1978 when we
first met.

> 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.
> 
Steve:Basic, ditto.


> 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.
> 
Steve: Ditto.

> 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.
> `
STeve: True, ditto.
> ______________________
> 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.
> 
STeve: I think some clarification is required. We should, but do not
always, distinguish between Marx's "real subsumption of labor" and Toni's
"real subsumption of society". For Marx, as is quite explicit in CAPITAL,
"real" subsumption replaced "formal" subsumption when the capitalists
began reorganizing production for better control. Toni's real subsumption
of "society" extends that notion throughout society in a way reminiscent
of both Critical Theory and of Tronti's work on the social factory --both
of which predate Toni's. Also it should be emphasized that "subsumption"
is always an effort, never automatically realized, and generative of
resistance in every site. What it really suggests as Tronti (and others
like James) understood is the generalization of the class struggle. But
that dates back to worker success in hammering down the formal working day
and capitalist attempts to colonize free time/space, etc.

> 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.

Steve: All this contributes to an agenda for research and understanding
which few are attempting but which is very much required.
> 
> 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.
> 

Steve: I would never use the word "exhaustion" here --it smacks of Offe
and regulation theory-- better to talk about a shift in capitalist
strategy from mediation to direct repression.

> 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.
> 
Steve: One of the weaknesses of this kind of analysis is the failure any
measure/justification for the view that post-Fordist modes of labor
control are actually rapidly reducing the role of the fordist-taylorist
factory. With information/communication industries seemingly on the
cutting edge of capitalist development, one has to sympathize with the
view, but 1) those industries also include T/F modes and 2) one wishes for
some effort to quantify these things. The perception is perhaps correct
but just because a hypothesis matches one's own perceptions is no reason
to accept it.

> *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.*

Steve: This business of "situating ourselves on the terrain" of the
cutting edge of capitalist development seems to repeat the old injunction
that the industrial working class was the vanguard of the class struggle.
It sounds like a call for organizational focus on a particular sector of
the class. A privileged one. When what the earlier (above) global view
suggests is rather the need for organization/mobilization of ALL sectors
and moreover that as rhizomatic networks are being elaborated, that is in
fact happening.

> 
> 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.
> 
Steve: Understood in this manner "bio-political" reduces to Dalla Costa et
al's argument about the work of reducing life to labor power and the need
to struggle in the opposite direction. I haven't finished Marazzi's book
yet, so I'll refrain from any further comment on this concept --which was
raised once before and to which we should return. I will do so as soon as
I can.

> 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?

Steve: Clearly the object of class struggle is to rupture this dialectic,
to prevent capital's synthesis and the instrumentalization of working
class subjectivity. No problem. What "recognition" involves is vague.
There is "recognition" in the sense of the Welfare state - Keynesian state
that cuts formal deals, and then there is "recognition" in the sense of a
clearly defined subject of attack, as is more recently the case.

> 
> 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.

Steve: If I were a capitalist ideologist, say an ex-autonomist who had
gone over to the other side (as Tronti did when he rejoined the PCI) I'd
say "rubish". History has only ended in the sense that (virtually) all
social systems are now explicitly capitalistist. But the dialectic will
live forever as we perfect the mechanisms for internalizing and
instrumentalizing working class subjectivity. The ideologies mentioned
which have collapsed are various Leftist ones, not ours. Progress will go
on, we will continue to develop technogies (taping people's creativity)
forever. We will fulfil our destiny and extend accumulation outward to the
planets and then the stars --as so many pro-capitalists science fiction
writers have projected. 

> 
> 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.
> 

Steve: Socialisme ou Barbarie. I like the poetry, the Velekovskian
vision, but it is NOT new. Only new against a stupid Stalinist historical
materialism. Natura facit saltum.

> 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 . . .
> 
Steve: It is not at all clear to me that such efforts were trapped within
"a dialectical prison". These two visions/projects both existed and were
sometimes in conflict in the Italy of the 1960s. Those involved in the
sphere of autonomedia built extensive networks of "counterpower"; some,
e.g., Toni, the BR, PL, thought the time had come to overthrow the state
and seize power -to stop capitalism and for the networks. Nor is it clear
that such efforts "followed" in the footsteps of capital. Such a view
contradicts the earlier understanding that it was a emergence of a new
subjectivity which brought on the crisis of capital.


> 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*.
> 
Steve: This "logic of separation" or "logic of antagonism" as Toni earlier
called it is precisely what leads to the rupture, not just the other way
around. We have a couple of pieces on "constitution" but Toni's book Le
POUVOIR CONSTITUANT is still only in French and Italian as far as I know.
His work on Spinoza IS available in English as well and it was an earlier
step on the path to these notions which are worth discussion. The way the
idea is formulated above could be read as a suggestion that we need to
create a new consitution and I don't think that is Toni's idea at all.


> 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?
> 

STeve: I like the notion of a *network of diffuse counterpowers* --even if
it's not new, but I would never want to conceptualize it as "a still
dialectical figure" which suggests its likely instrumentalization. Better
to think/work in terms of a counterpower which constructs new alternatives
as it resists exploitation and instrumentalization which would bring it
back into the dialectic.

> This too is *inevitable* within the concreteness of the class struggle.
> 
Steve: I wish people would stop using the term "inevitable".


> 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.s
> 
> 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*.
> 
Steve: Like I say, this issue of "constitution" should be taken up at some
point. But it is a recent way of talking about these things, MBM is still
couched mainly in the language of self-valorization --which is at the
heart of "constituant power".


> 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.
> 
STeve: Personally, while recognition of "barbarism" is obviously
necessary, I really fail to see the need for an embrace of "pessimism"
which in general is demobilizing and disempowering.

> 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.

Steve: Here you see why the distinctions I mentioned earlier are
necessary. MARX never discussed the "real subsumption of society" but
rather the "real subsumption of labor" in production. "Real subsumption"
for Marx was NOT the passage to the first stage of communism but to the
second, mature stage of capitalism. What is true, however, is that Marx
perceived how workers responded to this passage with struggle which held
the promise of rupture/revolution/communism and so too does Toni's
perception of more recent passages to the "real subsumption of society".
It is all to unfortunately true that we have had too few "glimpses" of 
the mass subjectivity capable of rupturing this new phase of class
relations. Toni and friends at Futur Anterieur have been dedicated to
piecing those glimpse together into at least a snapshot, but so far the
snapshot grasps only part of the larger situation.

> 
> 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.
> 
Steve: Appreciating their value involves optimism.

> 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!

Steve: I don't see much new here, frankly, considering how much of Marxism
has involved the virtually celebration of the power of capital, the
lamentation and fury at its injuries as a goad for action. 

> 
> 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*.

Steve: exactly, unfortunately.
> 
> 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.
> 
STeve: Personally, I can also do without the repeated references to
"materialism" which gives the discourse an antiquated, orthodox flavor.;
At any rate I agree with the view that revolutionary politics must be
rooted in both fury at the meanness of capitalism and the constraints it
imposes on our being AND a perception and understanding of how that being
ceaselessly strives to break through the constraint and liberate itself.

> 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.
> 
Steve: much of the above analysis suggests that the rupture has already
been closed.

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

Steve:I disagree with this and so, I believe, do the editors of Futur
Anterieur who have published article after article on struggles which they
view as providing just such allusions. My work on the Zapatistas is
grounded in this as well as sympathy. Their struggles not only AGAINST
neoliberalism but FOR the elaboration of their own alternative social
arrangements are MORE than an allusion, they ARE a moment of constituent
power that the Mexican state, with no idea how to co-opt it, is trying to
crush.
 
> > 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).

Steve: This formulation sounds a lot like the traditional socialist vision
of not only unite and fight but of a unique project of post-capitalism. As
Guattari's influence in COMMUNISTS LIKE US suggested, there is not ONE
"constituent subject" but many. 
> 
> 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'.
> 
Steve: ah, some of the formulations here are aimed at satisfying some
post-modernist objections to orthodox Marxist thought. No problem there.

> ______________________
> 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.
> 
STeve: Grosso modo I agree, once the plural dimension of these processes
are accepted.

> 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'.]
> 
> 
Steve: The only possible problem I see here is an echo of the one raised
above: the notion of a "general" point of view that transcends
multiplicity to impose some kind of unity.

At any rate, thanks for reposting this. I'm glad that I have made the time
to work through it, which I didn't do the first time around.

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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