From: "Karl Carlile" <dagda-AT-eircom.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: autonomist crisis theory
Date: Mon, 19 Feb 2001 18:32:53 -0000


The latter part of this posting cannot be taken seriously. Under this
perception class struggle is no longer the struggle of the class but simply
the resistance of individuals who are members of the working class. Very
petty bourgeois.

Regards
Karl Carlile

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Sorry about the delay.  There are some people on this list better able to
answer this than I am but I will give it a swing.

As I understand autonomist theory (and I have only read small chunks to
date, so I may be off), it is the class struggle, the labor-capital
relation, which causes crises.  However, this can be understood in one of
two ways.

1)  the class struggle brings on crisis through mass working class
struggles.  For example, at the end of the post-World War II boom, in the
1960's, the crisis develops due to a large number of mass working class
struggles (or even not so working class, but which definitely qualify as
mass struggles), e.g. the Civil Rights and Black Power movements and the
revolts in the cities in the U.S., the wildcat strikes of the late
1960's-early 1970's in the U.S., May-June 68 in France, the Hot Autumn in
Italy in 1969, Czechoslovakia in 68, the Vietnam War, the wave of struggles
in Northern Ireland, etc, etc.

This seems all good and well, and I have no doubt that those struggles
played a part in the downturn.  But as you rightly ask, what about the last
ten years?  If we stick to this level of obvious mass struggles as the class
struggle, then we have problems, don't we?  And a section of autonomist
Marxism holds to this point of view.  As a result, explanatory power goes
out the window, but also a misunderstanding of Marx's approach to capital.
Another option exists, however.

2)  Some autonomist Marxists take a different view of class struggle.  What
if we do not just mean the big, obvious struggles and outbursts?  What if
every category Marx lays out in Capital is suffused with struggle?  What if
every relation is negative, hostile, conflicted?  What if people simply make
it difficult for capital to squeeze more labor from them?  This does not
just happen in mass struggles.  It happens everyday, in a thousand
micro-sized ways that we do not see beyond who we know.  The refusal of
another speed-up, the refusal of more work, abseteeism, getting on
unemployment/the dole/whatever, black market economic activity that does not
benefit capital, etc.  All of this, which happens everyday alongside the
bigger mass struggles, makes up the antagonism that drives the functioning
and breakdown of capital.

Without this understanding of class struggle as infusing every conflict
between capital and labor, no matter how small, Marx's Capital seems like an
objectivist account that has no place for class struggle.  In my opinion,
every page of Capital should be seen as carrying class struggle in this
sense: that every category of capital relies on antagonism, conflict,
resistance, insubordination and non-subordination from the molecular to the
mass level.  If we understand the 'laws' of capitalist crisis to be
determined by class struggle in this sense, then we not only have a much
richer understanding of class struggle (and one which is much less
spectacular), we also have an approach to capital that can stay away from
the problems of structuralism and the loss of subjectivity and agency on the
part of the working class.

Just my thoughts.

Cheers
Chris
----- Original Message -----
From: "Peter Jovanovic" <peterzoran-AT-hotmail.com>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, February 14, 2001 10:29 PM
Subject: AUT: autonomist crisis theory


> hi all
>
> I was hoping someone on this list might clarify a few things about the
> autonomist view of capitalist crisis for me. Do autonomists claim that
> capitalist crisis has been and can only be caused by working class
struggle
> or is the claim that crises may be caused by working class struggle as
well
> as other things? Given that there is now widespread talk in the bourgeois
> press about imminent recession do they know something about the prospects
> for large scale revolt that we don't or is there another explanation for
the
> allegedly looming crisis? What class struggle has caused Japan's ten years
> of very low economic growth?
>
> peter
>
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