File spoon-archives/aut-op-sy.archive/aut-op-sy_2001/aut-op-sy.0106, message 88


Date: Fri, 08 Jun 2001 20:19:24 -0700
Subject: Re: AUT: back to crisis theory
From: Sharon Vance <canito3-AT-earthlink.net>


Thank you!
I read Gramsci (Prison Notebooks, Selections from Cultural Writings - some
of which is hard to follow because I am not proficient or even a novice at
Italian history, and some one of the collections I have of 'pre-prison
writings'). I think his detailed analysis of culture and its relations to
politics economics and class is very helpful, as are his discussions on the
national question. I am having problems understanding what he was advocating
politically. A more populist Leninism? Even if that is true, his analyses on
these questions can still be helpful, even if one doesn't share his
conception of the party, or the role of leaders and intellectuals. (And
given my plebian prose I have a kind of instinctual aversion, but not one I
can really articulate very well.)
I read Fanon's A Dying Colonialism. It was very helpful, especially for my
topic. Is his "the Pitfalls of the National Consciousness" a book or an
article? Is it still in print? Do you know where I can get it?
Sharon

> From: Tahir Wood <twood-AT-uwc.ac.za>
> Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Date: 4 Jun 2001 11:54:55 +0200
> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> Subject: Re: AUT: back to crisis theory
> 
> Sharon's question is huge, since it is the question about subjectivity itself.
> It was brought to the forefront of various academic disciplines in the 1970s,
> but mostly within a 'poststructuralist' framework. Of some relevance also is
> the Gramscian notion of 'hegemony'. One could also do worse than reading Fanon
> on the Pitfalls of the National Consciousness. On the question of how archaic
> modes of thought dominate the thinking of the working class, one should take
> as a starting point, I think, the wonderful opening paragraphs of the
> Eighteenth Brumaire. Religion is only one aspect of this - nationalism,
> tribalism, ethnicity, race consciousness, the ideology of the family,
> motherhood, etc. are all part of it. I agree fully that these subjective
> elements are massive impediments to revolutionary activity and anyone who
> fails to recognise this is really dealing with the working class as an
> abstraction rather than a living reality. There is often a wariness on the
> left now to acknowledge this problem fully, because it sometimes appears as an
> argument for a vanguard party to direct the revolution. But in fact
> Marxism-Leninism itself has turned into a culture very much like the others
> that have been mentioned.
> Tahir
> 
>>>> canito3-AT-earthlink.net 06/02/01 01:57PM >>>
> Here is another question, and one I have to deal with in my dissertation.
> What can you say about the actions, beliefs and deeds of working class
> people, who are aware of class inequality and differences (as the working
> class Jews, especially those from Essaouira that I interviewed), but who do
> not define themselves as working class, but as Moroccan and as Jews?
> 
> I suppose that an economist can read the signs of working class resistance
> is stats on employee theft and absenteeism. But that does not mean that
> there is a conscious movement or an organized resistance. And wouldn't it
> take such a movement to overthrow capitalism? So the issue of people's
> consciousness and the way they identify themselves, and their beliefs,
> including their religious beliefs, are issues that we need to consider, are
> they not?
> Sharon
> 
>> From: cwright <cwright-AT-21stcentury.net>
>> Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>> Date: Thu, 31 May 2001 21:13:08 -0500
>> To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
>> Subject: Re: AUT: back to crisis theory
>> 
>> On another topic...
>> 
>>> Thanks for the reply.
>>> So if people have been refusing work or trying to minimize work, which is
>>> understandable, since the inception of capitalism, and we still have
>>> capitalism today... I can see how this is a necessary first step, because
>> it
>>> frees up time for other things, but I don't see it as a strategy that
>> brings
>>> us closer to an end to capitalism.
>> 
>> The refusal of work is not so much a strategy, IMO, as it is part of the
>> constant undercurrent of struggle that make capital's rule breakable.
>> Without that constant tension, that constant struggle, we would only see
>> episodes of upheval followed by long periods of quiessence.  The problem is
>> then to find ways to "organize the revolution", "build the union movement",
>> etc.  The failure to see the daily struggles that go on leads to voluntarist
>> activism, such as the various Leninisms, trade unionism, etc.
>> 
>> The undercurrent of struggle also shows us how capital's laws are really the
>> modes of existence of the class struggle.  It places class struggle at the
>> center of capital's dynamics, rather than relegating it to a "there's
>> capital's logic, but also class conflict" position.  This is the position of
>> the vanguardists, structuralists and fatalists.  For them, the problem is
>> always a problem of leadership, of showing the workers how to fight, showing
>> them what is in their own best interests.  It is a basically elitist
>> impulse.
>> 
>> However, those daily struggles are not the be all and end all of struggle.
>> 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.
>> 
>>> And here's another big question.
>>> And what would a post-Capitalist economy look like? Would it still have
>>> markets and world trade? How could we have the same level of technological
>>> development in a post-capitalist world (eg computers without
>> super-exploited
>>> 'women on the integrated circuit' making the microchips)?
>> 
>> First, I don;t think that there is such a thing as a post-capitalist
>> economy.  The idea separation of the economic and the political is a
>> particular expression of the fetishization of life under capital's rule,
>> which thrives on the separation of exploitation (the realm of production)
>> from the means of enforcing the dominant social relations (the state),
>> itself based on the separation, IMO, of production from exchange.  In
>> exchange, we appear as free individuals buying and selling our wares (or our
>> votes or our campaign time, etc.).  In production, there is no democracy,
>> but only the autocracy of capital.  So "economics", "politics", etc. will
>> cease to exist as meaningful categories with the death of capital.  So will
>> markets, in so far as markets are mechanisms for exchanging Values (roughly,
>> goods embodying exchange value, which depends on alienated labor.)  People
>> will still give and take, but it will not involve the mediation of money (or
>> any other mediation which serves to represent alienated labor.)  Give and
>> take will have to depend on choice and democratic decision making.  I think
>> this is what Marx meant by the free association of producers.
>> 
>> As for technological achievement, the terms of the process will be radically
>> altered.  Perpetual technological change is driven by capital's flight from
>> living (and therefore recalcitrant) labor to dead labor (machines).  It is
>> driven by the pressure to increase the rate and mass of profit (which of
>> course requires new and more intensive and extensive means of exploitation,
>> hence class conflict.)  We will also have to radically change out technology
>> to try to increase our efficiency, minimize environmental damage, make work
>> safer and more interesting in some areas, and maybe totally mechanize it in
>> others.  I don;t exactly see how we can compare them, therefore.  The end of
>> silicosis for women on motherboard assembly lines will be a higher priority
>> than the Pentium 4 or G6 chip and faster computers.
>> 
>>> I know Marx, and even Emma Goldman said that the details of the new
>> society
>>> will be worked out along the way. But I think that more people, at least
>> in
>>> the US, were more critical of capitalism when they were in the process of
>>> prolitarianization, and when they still had in their memories a
>>> pre-capitalist past, and a vision for an alternative economic future in
>>> their imaginations.
>> 
>> Well, Marx only lived to see the Paris Commune.  We have seen many more
>> revolutionas and struggles and so I think we must say more.  But I also
>> think that Marx said quite a bit.  we also have to be concrete in looking at
>> the transformation of the world, the new forms of exploitation capital
>> takes, etc and what that makes possible.  At the same time, there is no
>> blueprint because billions of people transforming the entirety of their
>> lives is well beyond what we can concretely lay out.  Think of all the
>> creativity that will break out, all the ideas, the inventions, etc that
>> await us.  It makes no sense to believe that we can presage that in any
>> detailed way.
>> 
>> As much as Marx made fun of the Utopian Socialists, and
>>> as unsystematic as some of their schemes, plans and theories were, some of
>>> them did have the ability to inspire people's imaginations and allow them
>> to
>>> envision an alternative economic world. You are probably more familiar
>> with
>>> some of these writings, especially from the Progressive Era, than I am. I
>>> don't see such a vision today. I was in the book store the other day,
>>> looking at some titles with the words "Post-Capitalist", can't remember
>> the
>>> exact titles and the authors names, but there were a few out. And I was
>>> struck by how they basically saw a post-capitalist society as one that
>>> simply called for people to 'end their dependence on the corporations',
>> with
>>> such advice as "invest in socially responsible stock, work for small
>>> business and non-profits, don't buy food from chain stores" etc. As if
>>> post-capitalism consisted of getting rid of the largest multi-national
>>> corporations, but keeping the basic relations of production and class
>>> relations the same. As if getting rid of capitalism was just a matter of
>>> middle class consumer choice! Those Progressive Era writers that Howard
>> Zinn
>>> quotes were so much more radical than that. And I think the reason for it
>>> was that they had a concrete idea, a vision of what an alternative
>> political
>>> economy could look like. And when Marxists and Anarcho-Communists refused
>> to
>>> engage in such 'speculation', they left a vacuum.
>> 
>> Marx did not make fun of the Utopians.  I think he respected the early
>> Utopians greatly.  But he also saw that their schemes meant that a section
>> of the ruling class wanted another section of the ruling class to "fly
>> right".  Their project was ultimately anti-democratic and hostile of mass
>> working class self-determination.  They also started from a moral critique
>> of capital, like liberals do, rather than from a critique of capital from
>> within its own terms.  Marx critiques political economy on its own terms, in
>> order to show its contradictions, its failures, and ultimately to sweep that
>> rubbish out of the way.  Marx, even in Capital, did not try to explain the
>> world (as he criticized the philosophers for doing), he criticized its
>> ideological forms as so much rubbish that hid the actual exploitative
>> relations.  On that basis alone, Marx is a million miles away from the
>> Utopians and their schemes, but also from their basic starting point.
>> 
>>> Now for the first time since the 1950s people outside the left are
>> beginning
>>> to question the benefits of capitalism. But their life experiences and
>> their
>>> historic memories don't predate capitalism, and so their vision of what an
>>> alternative could look like is limited because we have no models. And so I
>>> think that we need to start speculating, and start developing some
>>> alternatives and trying to answer some of these questions.
>>> Sharon
>>> 
>> The problem is for us to bring some of the answer, to say "Look what was
>> done here or there.  Look at what is possible."  So I agree we have to say
>> more than Marx said in his day, but we could start by saying as much as Marx
>> did and sweeping away the Leninist and social Democratic filth that
>> communism has anything to do with states, or 'electrification plus soviets'
>> or parliamentary majorities or Lenin's stultified vision in State and
>> Revolution (his best work, btw).
>> 
>> To reclaim Marx's vision would take us a long way forward.  To reclaim the
>> ideas that communism is the actual movement of the working class, the free
>> association of producers, etc is a grand step away from the authoritarian
>> tradition.  At the same time, we can recognize that in any place the
>> specific forms of the new world may be different, buttheir content will be
>> the same: non-alienated humanity, the human returned to itself as its own
>> end.
>> 
>> Cheers,
>> Chris
>> 
>> 
>> 
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