From: "cwright" <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Back to Crisis theory
Date: Sun, 3 Jun 2001 17:18:08 -0500


I am posting to this comment Peter because I think it is interesting.  Don't
be disheartened if we ask to have posts clearly reference the original
sender.  I was not chiding you, but as I explained to Angela, when a really
good discussion gets going, it gets hard to remember what was said by who!

Also, I take every reply as a challenge, not to me personally, but as a
means to think through and work out our collective politics together.  In
other words, I have no 'authority' which I feel anyone challenges, rather, i
enjoy the give and take that good discussions on this list (and it is one of
the best lists) engenders.  Glad you have posted something and I hope you
continue to do so.

That said... ;)
> " Snip"
> "Obviously, struggles have to go beyond that.  Workers do need to engage
in
> > colective struggles that at some point directly confront capital with
its
> > own conscious negation.  And you are right, we have not seen a lot of
> that."
>
> Why is this obvious?
> If the dynamics of Constituent power emanate from outside the system in
which
> the class structure is defined, and the object of struggle is the
> perpetuation of constituent power, itself diluted through the creation of
> government, it stands to reason class struggle as such is futile.
> It is the Marxian dialectic which becomes self negating in this instance
not
> Capital, as the class issue itself is subsumed once the objective of
united
> struggle is attained.

The first sentence is where I sense Negri's influence (maybe as well as
Deleuze and Guattari), and it is exactly this aspect of things which I
disagree with.  I do not think that the dynamics of constituent power
emanate from outside the system.  I think that constituent power very much
is an internal product of class struggle.  There may be societies outside
the capital-labor relation (many fewer today than even 30 years ago), but
for those of us within the capital-labor relation, there is no outside that
does not emanate from within the antagonistic relation of capital to labor.
If I wanted to approach this idea ad hominem, I would say that it is the
theoretical reflection of people who consider themselves outside the
capital-labor relation, ie the middle class (that should start an argument
:)

The outside is not something already there.  To the extent that an outside
exists (and that is debatable), it exists as a space created by struggle.
And again, I would like to carefully avoid fetishizing class struggle and
remind all of us that Marx posed the question correctly first in 1844, when
he said that alienated labor gives rise to class, and the specific form of
alienated labor, the specific mode of existence of alienated labor, gives
rise to the specific form of social relations of exploitation (generally
referred to as 'mode of production'.)  Most so-called Marxism starts from
the incorrect idea that class gives rise to alienated labor.  This is one of
Marx's famous moments of inversion where the premise becomes the conclusion
and vice versa.

Why is this important?  Because the destruction of capital does not come
from outside the capital-labor relation.  If capital and labor were two
autonomous entities in conflict, then how could we understand capital?  It
would then be an autonomous subject separated from labor, on which labor had
no special purchase.  On the other hand if we conceive of capital as
alienated labor, as labor's subjectivity turned against itself, then we can
see the contradiction within capital which makes it vulnerable and fragile,
and therefore defeatable.

At the same time, if we separate labor from capital, then labor becomes a
pristine subject, rather than the generator of its own antagonist.  At that
point, labor becomes the good guy and capital the bad guy in a kind of Left
morality play.  Labor becomes only that which seeks autonomy and liberation,
rather than a contradictory, dialectical subject which often exists only in
the mode of being denied: labor as producing its opposite, its oppressor.
Labor is only beyond (or outside) the capital-labor relation in so far as it
destroys the capital-labor relation from within.

Class struggle therefore is not only not futile, it is the means through
which both capital and labor are constituted as power and possible
(emphasis) counter-power.  If you think class struggle is futile, please
imagine a world without class struggle.  Then we reach Orwellian plateaus
and 'ends of history'.

But underneath this, as I see it, is Negri's appeal to Spinoza (who I am
finally reading, though the old boy is a bit thick.)  In Negri's Spinozism,
there are no mediations (as Negri reads him) and no negation (although
Spinoza cannot be blamed for that misreading of his work.)  Also, there is
no transcendence because the relation must be destroyed from the outside
(transcendence implying the subvention of the relation from within the
relation.)  This does ultimately totally break with Marx and in my opinion
it leads to a series of phenomenally conservative conclusions (as I think
the post of the Labour hack reviewing Negri shows so well.)

Therefore, your conclusion that the collective self-realization of the unity
of the class implies its total subsumption by Capital rather than capital's
negation.  I think an important aspect of Marx can be discussed around why
Marx sees the working class as the universal class and as the absolute
negation of class society, not just capital.  For Marx, the working class is
universal (or rather, potentially universal) because we are the class which
ultimately has no stake in society.  The separation of the producer from the
means of production in capitalist society is total, unlike in any other
previous society.  As such, the working class is radically free because it
is radically chained.  (I am not here going to delve into the degree to
which this relates to the development of the material productive forces, but
it does and Marx never skimps on that.  However, many Orthos use that
emphasis in Marx to push a technicist reading that does not follow.)

>From this, Marx draws the conclusion that having no stake in this society or
any class society, the working class is also radically negative.  There is
no such thing as a working class 'culture', 'community', etc.  The
achievement of 'working class culture' would have to be the negation of the
working class' own existence.  The aim of revolution is not to put the
working class in power, but the negation of capital, and, as such, the
working class.  As such, your conclusion stands completely opposite, but
from an angle which I think it not a hopeful one politically.

One conclusion Negri draws is that struggles have no ability to link around
the world, that the (what Harry calls) circulation of struggles has no
possibiltiy anymore, only volcanic, but localized, irruptions.  I hope that
in light of the struggles against the WTO, IMF/World Bank, FTAA, etc have
shown, there is very much an international circulation of struggles, which
goes back to the Zapatistas.  The Zapatista uprising was exactly the example
Negri tried to pin his localization on.

In the end, this conclusion is based on Negri's rejection of Marx's
discussion of labour power as the source of value.  Negri's point here is
rather banal, since he basis it on the crude idea that labour power is only
manual labor, but now we have the intellectual production of value, of
'immaterial labour'.  Thank you, but Marx already dealt with this objection
in the first chapter of Vol. 1 of Capital, in one of the very first
paragraphs, where he makes it clear that both manual and mental labour
produce Value (or exchange value, if you wish, but Value is, as I understand
it, the unity in contradiction of use and exchange value inherent in Values
produced from the capital-labour relation.)  Value production is the thread
that links struggles internationally and which is the base of their mutual
interconnection (not in that order, btw.)

On this question also of Multitude, Negri, basically following his rupture
with Marx on Value, breaks with the idea that the negation of capital lies
in the relations of production.  Effectively, the Multitude is a way to
escape class as constituted at the point of production.  In this sense,
Negri does not challenge capital, but takes the immediate form of capital in
crisis (his 'Empire') at its surface level, at the level of appearances.
After all, capital itself would like nothing more than to claim that it has
escaped the necesity of commodity production, the point of exploitation
through the imposition of work, and has found a means in endless
international monetary speculation to recreate itself endlessly.  Negri
mirrors capital's own claims about itself, instead of interrogating how this
appearance is the mediation of an underlying reality of the continued flight
of capital from insubordinate labour.  Negri does capital an ideological
service, in that sense.  Eliminate mediation, introduce 'immaterial labour',
deny the circulation of struggles, and <poof> we have a fully formed, in
process, new stage of global capital: Empire as accomplished fact.  What,
then, can we struggle against?  The fight is already over because capital's
reproduction of itself as a social relation is already assumed to have
succeeded.

No wonder the Labourite hack loved Negri's book.

That may seem like a lot in reply to your brief comments, but underlying
your few, brief comments are a lot of questions.  I hope this does not seem
overwhelming, but I found the way you phrased the question evocative and
worthy of a detailed reply.

Keep contributing!

Cheers,
Chris



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