From: "Laura Fiocco" <fiocco-AT-unical.it>
Subject: Re: AUT: class composition (responce to Harry)
Date: Tue, 24 Jun 2003 13:48:14 +0200


So the main problem is the meaning of tendency and its methodological use.
The other is state-form
I shall try to explain my interpretation of the first though the second, but
this imply to deal with  "capital cycle" or better "the inner mechanism of
the process of accumulation of capital" (Marx, Capital, I, section VII)

I picked up from your responce to Cris this sentence, that can be usefull,
since I agree with it:

"I guess I prefer to emphasize the contingency of who we are as we "come to
capital". You say we "come to capital" as "workers". While that may be
true in pathological cases, I think in general people come, first to the
labor market, and then - once hired - to the job as people selling their
labor power and then giving up its use value, to some degree or another,
as they work. But at every point, from forcing them into the labor market
to getting them to actually work, capital is faced with the problem of
the reduction of our being to worker, and in general people resist this -
which is why it is an endless problem - not one settled once and for all
in the period of primitive accumulation" (Harry)

I agree, "forcing them into the labor market" is an endless precondition of
production, and therefore it is part of "capital cycle". The problem is that
those preconditions are realised in the form of a social order (rational and
impersonal), whose main instruments are the state (through economic,
repressive and social policy) + disciplinary powers (through dispositifs
embedded into social institutions). Those instrument appear as relatively
autonomous (to use Althusser terms) from "economy", in the form of,
respectively,  political and social instances.
Now, if it is true that the social order that forces people into the labor
market is the product of class struggle, it implies:
- political and disciplinary powers are responces to the disorder immanent
to "private power"  (individual capitals) of inclusion|esclusion to (from)
waged labor;
- political and disciplinary powers are not a superstructure (and the
relative autonomia of the state is a mere form of appearance), they are a
part of the inner mechanism of capital cycle: they (re)produce the
"unification of objectives and subjectives conditions of production" (Marx)
against the emergency of irriducible singularities of people, that appear
(this emergency) as a resistance to a rational order. By the way, here, I
think, lays John's problem of nagative and positive dilemma. If one think at
the order as a given phenomena, instead of as a dinamic process whose
*tendency* is to reduce irreducible lives to productive forces (moreover:
rational), he can't but give for granted the alienation;
- the specific form of political and disciplinary powers (state-form and
disciplinary diagam) have to be *conform* to a given class composition (and
not incompatible each other), since class composition says "who"are the
singularities to be lead to the labor market and to be controlled into the
labor process. Here I think John is right: the goal at stake in the class
struggle is the production of subjectivity;
- in this "have to be conform" lays the specific tendency of the form of
power in a given period. For instance, during fordism to deal with
mass-worker : new deal-keynesian state + factory-home-school as disciplinary
diagram (plus ghettos and colonialism for overpopulation). Both have the
workers family's comsumption, way of life, ideology, as weapon. Now the
tendency is neoliberism (which state form ?, Balibar suggests *evanescent*),
the disciplinary diagram is not clear (from discipline to control, suggested
Deleuze, but it is still not clear). Anyway, the common weapon seams  (to
me) to be the labor market , ie the inclusion\esclusion power, where the
inclusion is posed as common responsibility of local community and local
nations to create the conditions for capital valorisation. In this I think
lays the importance of "local", not because there is no global tendency.

Now maybe it is possible to confront with the *tendency* . I am using it, or
try to do it, to grasp the peculiarity of what is going on, not just the big
"inner laws of capital" with their theorical "countertendency".
Neoliberalism is one of that peculiarity, on which it seams there is a
common agreement, not only among marxists. Multitude is the other, I
personally agree with. Anyway, I think it is impossible to talk about class
composition in the present, but also in the past, without using the
methodical instrument of tendency.
For an explanation of the concept, my reference is Negri "Marx beyond Marx",
but I think it is impossible to grasp it unless it is not learned through
the reading of Marx own application of it.
concerning the distinction between determined abstraction and real
abstraction, the reference can be Althusser, but I do not remember where,
maybe in "Pour Marx"

Sorry for that "capital political composition". You are right, I was
inventing a way to say something in short: thinking in English is for me a
real effort, so I try to go trough as I can.

ciao laura



----- Original Message -----
From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Friday, June 20, 2003 10:12 PM
Subject: Re: AUT: class composition (responce to Harry)


> On Fri, 20 Jun 2003, Laura Fiocco wrote:
>
> >
> > ----- Original Message -----
> > From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
> >
> > > Bologna, it seems to me, was making a general methodological point.
The
> > > "set of statutes" that he was refering to are the hackneyed orthodox
> > > formulae for organization that are quite independent of time, place,
or
> > > class composition.
> > >
> > > Ultimately, what is needed is precisely what you suggest: an
understanding
> > > of the global class composition, one that takes account of the vast
> > > variety of local differences and dynamics. Coming up with such an
> > > understanding is obviously a large scale undertaking - if it is based
on
> > > an understanding of what you might call the subsets of class
composition.
> > > In Chapter 14 on the division of labor, Marx talks about various of
> > > divisions, at various levels. Something similar can be discerned with
> > > respect to class composition. One of the things for which Negri (and
> > > now Hardt and Negri) has been criticized is making global
generalizations
> > > that seem to take little account of the "local" compositions of class
in
> > > much of the world. But grasping the global class composition is no
small
> > > task, just as grasping the global composition of capital is no small
task.
> >
> > Harry,
> > I do not think this is the right way to look at the essue. As I
understood
> > it, since operaism, the problem of class composition is not that of
making a
> > sociological tipology of different jobs.
>
> Laura,
>
> Certainly not. I wasn't saying that it was. Perhaps I'm not understanding
> you, but I don't see how what you say below contradicts what I say above.
>
> > The division of labor is command (power).
>
> Yes, absolutely, or at least I would say that the division of labor - the
> way tasks and jobs are divided and organized - is a key component of
> command.
>
> > Refearing to Capital, the question is to do what Marx did in
> > Chapter 15, that is,  to  understand the specific way of imposing
command
> > over labor in the "Manufacture" (Chapter 14) and in the "Large-scale
> > Industry": two different ways of command inscribed in two different
> > organisation of the labor process which implies (tendency) a different
> > worker (as a human beeing, socialy determinated) and a different way of
the
> > class recomposition the "State" have to deal with (last 2 points of
Chapter
> > 15, to which we may add the "disciplinary diagram of power relation"-
> > Foucault).
>
> Yes, manufacture and large-scale industry involve different divisions of
> labor and different structures of command, and at the same time different
> kinds of workers and different forms of class recomposition - and the
> movement from the one division of labor to the other involved the kind of
> changes discussed in the rise of the mass worker and therefore new
> problems that capital must confront.
>
> > State, at this level of analysis, stays for "capital political
composition",
> > not for "nation State" (is the problem Marx could not solve, and we are
> > dealing with: to figure out what can mean "global capital political
> > composition").
>
> I've never come across the term "capital political composition" but if I
> understand you correctly you are using the term to refer to a composition
> of class forces and power. I would just speak of the class composition and
> discuss the dynamics of its change, via the conflicting forces of working
> class political recomposition and capitalist decomposition. If you mean
> something else the perhaps you could elaborate.
>
> > Ofcourse there are factual "local" differences, because the tendency is
not
> > a projection (proiezione), it becomes true in the struggle.  But those
> > differences, in a given fase, are inscribed into a common tendency, that
is
> > a specific capital and class (re)composition. Which means that to
understand
> > "local" we must grasp this common tendency.
>
> I don't have any problem with the seeing a "tendency" being realized, by
> which I would understand becoming more and more characteristic of a wider
> and wider range of phenomena. But when you speak of differences being
> "inscribed in a common tendency" that sounds to me awfully a priori. One
> could pose an hypothesis that this is true, but one might find, upon
> investigation, that the differences are inscribed in contradictory
> tendencies and the outcome quite unpredictable. The best known, I guess,
> of Marx's use of the notion of "tendency" is his "tendency of the rate of
> profit to fall", which, as you know, is modified by offsetting
> "countertendencies" so that whether or not the rate of profit actually
> falls in any period depends on the balance of the forces at play. [We'll
> leave aside here what that particular tendency is really all about.]
>
> > And tendency here means "the specific form" (determined abstraction),
not
> > the generalisation of different factual femomena (real abstaction).
>
> This doesn't help me understand you better. Perhaps you could elaborate,
> or try explaining in the vernacular.
>
> > Negri (and Hardt and Negri) suggests that to understand the global class
> > recomposition what we have to do is to look at the tendency, and the
> > tendency is understandeble looking at the specific form of production
and
> > that of the subjects and the contents of the global struggles.
>
> Again, the suggestion points to one tendency which they think can be
> deduced from the investigation of production, subjects and struggles. I
> think that's the kind of thing the theory of class composition points to.
> But the problem I raise is the notion that there is, a priori, one
> dominant "tendency" at a point in time. It seems to me that there may or
> may not be and even if there is, there is still the question of the
> relationship between that tendency and other tendencies at play or
> between it and a great many phenomena that have not been made part of it,
> e.g., "local" class compositions that still have distributions of
> power characteristic of earlier times, or earlier tendencies.
> It seems to me that at the moment it is quite possible that the thesis of
> Empire - which is based on such an investigation - and the forces
> characteristic of it are at war, so to speak, with an older tendency of
> imperialism. I can't see that the outcome can be confidently predicted on
> the basis of the identified tendency to Empire and even if it could, it
> wouldn't spare us the labor of understanding the constellation of waring
> forces in the present period, ie., the current class composition.
>
> H.
>
> >
> > I am too tired to go on: I think this is the main point.
> > ciao laura
> >
>
>
............................................................................
> Snail-mail:
> Harry Cleaver
> Department of Economics
> University of Texas at Austin
> Austin, Texas 78712-1173  USA
>
> Phone Numbers:
> (hm)  (512) 442-5036
> (off) (512) 475-8535
> Fax:(512) 471-3510
>
> E-mail:
> hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu
> PGP Public Key:
http://certserver.pgp.com:11371/pks/lookup?op=get&search=hmcleave
>
> Cleaver homepage:
> http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index2.html
>
> Chiapas95 homepage:
> http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/chiapas95.html
>
> Accion Zapatista homepage:
> http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
>
............................................................................
>
>
>
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