From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: a new thread
Date: Mon, 11 Mar 2002 15:49:46 -0500


Steve-
Sounds interesting. I haven't read the whole interview yet, it's hard to 
make time and keep up w/ all the email. I'm not sure I follow all you've 
said here, (perhaps because I've not read all the aut-op-sy recommended 
texts on class composition), I'm not totally clear on what class composition 
means. I take you to say let's base our conversations a little more on 
organizing on the ground. is this right or am i misunderstanding you? If so, 
then I second the idea. I'm particularly interested in discussing the issue 
of workplace organizing and knowledge workers as I think it is still 
possible, I know people who are doing this with knowledge workers or 
knowledge workers themselves who are organizing in their work places.
Nate

>
>Thanks, David and Aileen, for drawing attention to the Bologna interview.
>
>I'm hoping that others on the list would like to discuss some of the
>matters raised there.
>
>Like Dan, I'm also a bit frustrated with the discussion of the WSF -
>apart from anything else, the formal counterposition of political
>stances seems very abstract in the absence of any sustained exploration
>of class composition. After all, what I consider to have been the best
>discussions on this list, such as those prompted by Gra's involvement in
>the Liverpool dockers' struggle, or Monty and others' reflections on the
>encuentros, were grounded in that way.
>
>Likewise, if we are going to have a discussion of "what is communism?",
>then it would be more useful to bear in mind something Bologna wrote a
>long time ago, in the essay The Tribe of Moles: "organisation is obliged
>to measure itself day by day against the new composition of the class;
>and must find its political programme only in the behaviour of the class
>and not in some set of statutes".
>
>As for the more recent interview, Bologna is fairly glum as usual:
>
>"I do not yearn for the good old days. They have gone for ever. We
>should rather be worried about our inability to depict the present. That
>is the real disintegration, the disintegration of a culture that is no
>longer in a position to illustrate present-day labor or to give an
>account of it, as people like Studs Terkel or Martin Glabermann have
>done in their writings on the multinational working class in the USA."
>
>While I'm hardly convinced by some of his latest assertions - eg
>workplace organising is no longer possible as before; those who might be
>called "knowledge workers" are now a privileged point of reference - I
>do think some of the questions he raises are worth exploring.
>
>Any takers?
>
>Steve
>
>
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