Date: Mon, 14 Sep 1998 01:01:53 +1000
Subject: Re: AUT: re: grundrisse etc discussion


to all: i hope i'm not boring everyone.

Forrest:

sorry, i misssed the question re: my discomfort with autonomist
positions.

maybe i already answered this, but i'll add something:

in the grunrisse, marx wrote: "to the extent that labour steps into this
relation [that of wage labour], this relation exists not for itself
[that of the relating of labour to its material being], but for capital;
labour itself has become already a moment of capital" [p364]

leaving aside for the moment the important question of the relation
between labour and the instruments of labour, i think that marx is right
to say that labour as it exists in wage labour is a moment of capital.
this would force us to insist that marxism is a committment to the
abolition of wage labour (alongside mattick, rubin and many others), but
it must also force us to question the character of the wage labourer's
autonomy.  

it may well be the case that labour is the 'extrinsic variable of
production' (i think this is aglietta's phrase, adopted by brunhoff),
that labour-power is a 'peculiar commodity' in that it must also
reproduce the conditions of its own existence (raising the issues of the
struggle over the fulflment of needs, limits to the working day, etc),
but i do not think it follows from this that the working class is
autonomous - simply that it has the potentiality for 'autonomy' so long
as this is understood without reliance on idealistic notions of
'transcendence'. 

i hope this is not too obscure.

angela


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