From: "myk zeitlin" <myk-AT-zeitlin.freeserve.co.uk>
Subject: AUT: Re: new thread: nomads
Date: Thu, 14 Mar 2002 11:56:29 -0000


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I'm told that a major London hospital recently lost nearly all its radiologists because a load of them, all kiwis, met another load of kiwi radiologists in a pub and realised they were being screwed. As with absenteeism the border between isolated and collective can be fluid.

I'd also suggest that the desperately immaginative struggles of groups/individuals trying to migrate, like those trying to find their way into the Channel Tunnel to enrich this pathetic backwater, is a tip of the iceberg of exodus as struggle. Not without contradiction of course.
  ----- Original Message -----
  From: Aileen
  To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
  Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 5:09 PM
  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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----- Original Message -----

From: Aileen

To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu

Sent: Tuesday, March 12, 2002 5:09 PM

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