Date: Sun, 13 Sep 1998 19:47:56 -0400 (EDT)
Subject: Re: AUT: re: grundrisse etc discussion




On Mon, sept 14, Angela wrote: 
> 
> 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'. 
>

Are you scaring yourself with your own ghosts (a spanish phrase)?  As far
as I know, not even Toni in his more euphoric modes ever asserted that
proletarian autonomy was an ontological given, as opposed to a
tendency/potentiality to be realized through struggle, of the capitalist
system. Transcendence would mean revolution in all its material plentitude
.  As for the Grundrisse, on pp. 271-3 of the Penguin/Vintage edition,
Marx discusses living labor vs. dead, or accumulated, labor, and here we
have the basis for what you call the 'subjectivist' reading.

Regards,

Forrest


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