Date: Tue, 12 Mar 2002 17:09:51 +0000
From: Aileen <aocarrol-AT-tcd.ie>
Subject: AUT: new thread: nomads



Hi

The comments about credit and work discipline are interesting. I've been 
re-looking at Empire and
I wonder what people think of the following assertion  ..

'Desertion and exodus are a powerful form of class struggle within and 
against imperial post-modernity. This mobility, however, still constitutes 
a spontaneous level of struggle, and, as we noted earlier, it most often 
leans today to a new rootless condition of poverty and misery (p213)'.

I can see how opting out is a form of resistance and of class struggle, but 
I can't see how it is a
'powerful' form of class struggle. Isn't it a form of flight? Above, 
Negri&Hardt themselves say it often
leads to nowhere. So where is the power?  I can see how people are 
motivated to
to become self-employed in-order to escape work discipline or to have more 
control over
their work process. And I can see that many information workers move jobs 
frequently in
the hope that the next job will be more interesting or so well paid they 
can escape work
altogether, but these aren't these all strategies that act on a purely 
individual level, mitigate against collective
action and fail to challenge capitalist production. Later on he cites the 
IWW and the autonomists as
positive examples of a political activity and a politics that was based on 
mobility.  Mobility, escape,
nomadism, on its own isn't a political activity and doesn't have a politics.

Aileen

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