Date: Fri, 1 Jun 2001 13:11:57 +0100 (BST)
From: =?iso-8859-1?q?Scott=20Hamilton?= <s_h_hamilton-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: introduction



Harry wrote:
> The theory, in my reading, argues that capital is a
> social relationship  that is antagonistic because
the endlessness of work   must be imposed and
> that work is alienated.  People and their lives are
> constrained from being  all they can be and as a
general rule they resist.  This is a testable
> argument. 

Harry also wrote:
Has the working  class suffered such a defeat that it
is quiescent?  Possiblly, I don't  know. Surely there
are cases where overt defeat has  led to only the most
> covert forms of passive resistance. You tell us.


For me, the gap between these two statements, or
rather the gap between the  implications of these two
statements,  highlights the problem I perceive with
autonomism and tried to express in my 'introduction'
posting.

The first statement seems quite straightforward - the
only thing I would say about it here is that it seems
like it might contradict Chris W's attempt (btw thanks
heaps for the response and all the references Chris)
to disengage Marx from epistemological quandries by
way of an appeal to 'struggle' as the only true test
of a theory's validity.

The second statement is a little ambiguous, to me at
least, but the implication I get from it is that
quiescence is to be equated with "only the most covert
forms of passive resistance". If this is so, then it
appears that quiescence cannot really be quiescence - 
that class struggle can never truly be 'in
suspension'.
If this is so, then it seems that it would be
difficult to regard autonomism as a testable doctrine.

It's not a matter of complaining about autonomists
always seeing class struggle, always identifying it in
their studies - it's a matter of the *possibility* of
not seeing it. If there is no such possibility, then
it seems that autonomism is not falsifiable (and, yes,
I know that is a very slippery concept, and the last
thing I want to do is use it like a naive Popperian).

I'll leave it there for now, in case I have skidded
over any banana peels and gone off course. I'll try in
later posts to show what I imagine might be some
negative real-life consequences of the truthfulness of
the argument I've made here.

Cheers
Scott 





====For "a ruthless criticism of every existing idea":
THR-AT-LL, NZ's class struggle anarchist paper http://www.freespeech.org/thrall/
THIRD EYE, a Kiwi lib left project, at http://www.geocities.com/the_third_eye_website/
and 'REVOLUTION' magazine, a Frankfurt-Christchurch production, http://cantua.canterbury.ac.nz/%7Ejho32/

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