From: pmargin-AT-froggy.com.au
Date: Wed, 13 Mar 2002 21:02:13 +1100
Subject: Re: AUT: a new thread


thanks Nate and Peter for taking this up. A few quick comments follow.

Nate Holdren wrote:

> I would also be very interested in seeing Bologna's new book, if a version
> in exists in english.

Not that I know of. Some of his work on the self-employed has been
*discussed* in English, but very little of the original, if any, has
been published.


> I was curious about some things in the article-
> -about Bologna's contempt for leftwing characterizations of McJobs and calls
> for a guaranteed income, why is he writing these groups off? surely the
> struggles of people in low end service and temp jobs are important. is he
> contemptuous because no one is taking up the issue of the self-employed?

good questions. I suspect part of it is based on a traditional Italian
workerist emphasis on tring to identify *the* emerging strategic layer
within the labour market/class composition - something that Monty and
others have discussed and criticised in the past.

I gather that in Italy at least the proportion of working people
classified as self-employed is quite significant, although I don't have
any recent stats to hand.

> 
> regarding workplace organizing of knowledge workers, I know that there was a
> fairly successful campaign in the US in Boston among academic laborers  and
> I believe among contingent academic laborers. These people aren't

yes, I've heard of this through the IWW.


> >
> >I read the interview, which was interesting, but brief. Has anyone
> >seen the book he has written? I think an important point that Bologna
> >made in the interview was the need to tackle the question of
> >self-employment in a detailed, thorough way, taking seriously the
> >agency and subjectivity of the self-employed. I.e. not simply falling
> >into the left myth of a golden age of collectivist mass workplaces
> >replaced by a nightmare of precarious, individualising
> >self-employment.

I think much of the 1990s debate around fordism/post-fordism has
reproduced those sort of simplistic dichotomies.

> >
> >Finally, I think the question of self-employment in a case like mine
> >(more 'First World'ish) - high wage, part time or contract work as a
> >computer programmer - needs to be linked to a study of consumer
> >credit, and the uses thereof from a workers point of view. I know

I'd be interested in hearing more about this from Peter and others ...

Steve


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