From: "Laura Fiocco" <fiocco-AT-unical.it>
Subject: Re: AUT: class composition (responce to Harry)
Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 13:23:29 +0200



----- Original Message -----
From: "chris wright" <cwright.21stcentury-AT-rcn.com>
To: "aut-op-sy" <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu>
Sent: Thursday, June 26, 2003 7:12 AM
Subject: Re: AUT: class composition (responce to Harry)


> Hi Laura,
>
> Three thoughts.
>
> >
> > "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)
>
> At first, I was thinking "True."  But looking back on it, do we come to
> the labor market at all, if we are not already seeking (sic) to sell our
> labor, ie if we are not already recognizing in practice our status as
> the bearer of a commodity?  In this whole point, we still come from
> within the capital-labor relation (unless we are coming from
> non-capitalist social relations), but that does not, IMO, make us
> pathological in Harry's sense (but in another, yes it does.)  Coming to
> the labor market is exactly part of Marx's understanding of being
> already within commodity relations.  Social labor only makes it
> appearance indirectly, through what is directly private labor.

You are right, sorry I gave it for granted. The foundation of capitalist
relation of production is the espropriation of the means of production,
which is reproduced in the form of the private appropriation of the product
of labor: the *whole* product of labor. Workers work and they are separated
from the product of their labor, that is from the means of production and
from the means of subsistence (M...P....M').  That implies that they are
continuously re-posed as proletarians (workers in potentia), while
capitalists (or firms: juridical persons) are re-posed as capitalists "in
potentia".

The fictio juris (Capital, I, section VII, ch 23) implies that the class
relation at this point is not visible, everybody seams to be *people*

The reproduction of the production process is conceptually not given. What
is conceptually posed as possible (in potentia) must become "in act": The
separation from the means of subsistence act as constraint, but it is not
"enough". The social order, in term of regulation, repression, disciplinary
norms of behaviour, values, is a constitutive condition to transform the
potentiality into "in act". The state is one of the "centre of power" that
reproduces this order, that reproduces the"civil society" (people).
Foucault gave us another field of thought to understand more about how this
order is reproduced, that is "disciplinary and biopolitical power".

>
> That we resist this is true enough and vitally important.  I never
> argued that we came happily or willingly, just that it is not
> self-evident in daily life that we come from outside, but as already
> within commodity relations as private potential labor power.  If this
> were not true, then housewives, the unemployed and students would be
> outside the capital-labor relation as a total social relation, but
> clearly that labor (even though not waged or not primarily waged within
> those 'roles') and their consumption resides wholly within the
> capital-labor relation as a total social relation, within commodity
> society.  Being within, however, requires no less forcing; it is not
> total, not because we are not within, but because being within makes us
> against.)  The contingency or uncertainty or resistance is not less
> important or powerful in my view.
>
> NOTE: I suspect Harry will dispute my taking his point as placing us
> 'outside', but I am not sure how to read it otherwise.  I would argue
> that we both see people in contradiction to capital, but this comes back
> to our 'capital and labor as two subjectivities' (my phrasing, hope it
> is not too crude) and capital as "command" versus capital as a
> non-subjectivity, as labor's alienated self-activity, and therefore
> where capital is less command over labor than a perverted form of our
> social labor.
>
> > 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.
>
> Nor do I think that State and Social Order (not sure what that means,
> but I suspect you mean what one might call non-state institutions of
> civil society, but could you clarify so I am not reading that totally
> incorrectly?) are the two "main instruments", but in fact since personal
> and social needs are largely only fulfilled through the purchase of
> commodities, it is the commodity form itself which is the main whip.
> The fact that we have to engage in exchange to fulfill our
> needs/wants/desires, in this case, the exchange of our labor power for
> money, is a major force, and even more powerful in places where real
> subsumption dominates social production AND consumption.  There does not
> seem to be anywhere else to go, although often without realizing it,
> people constantly create just such spaces and times which represent
> breaks or fissures in the seemingly seamless space and time of commodity
> relations.
>
> Even so, where you go from there is to point towards a space of greater
> agreement between all of the disputants in this discussion, that the
> state is best understood as a form of the capital-labor relation.

yes and not
yes, if the state-form is conceived as the form of one of the subjective
pole (capital power form) of the relation,
not, if the state is conceived as the sintesis of the capital-labor
relation.

What I think is that the state is the form of capital political power. This
is why the state apparatus (instrument)cannot simply be appropriated
(socialdemocracy ),
it have to be "unfilled" (svuotato) of power ( a different kind of *social
relations of production*)



But
> the retention of the notion of the state and institutions as
> 'instruments' hinders taking that point to its logical conclusion.  The
> result is to give too great a correspondence or non-contradiction
> between the state-form and a particular class composition.

see above

>
> > 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 responses 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.
>
> Maybe there is no clear 'form' yet (regime?) because we are still amidst
> the crisis of the old form/regime?  Maybe, for all its efforts, capital
> has not found a new recomposition of class relations and so is striking
> out in multiple directions, as is our resistance?  For my part, I am not
> too interested in discerning the new form/regime, as that seems to give
> rather too much credit to capital having already recomposed relations in
> its favor, provided I am correct in my appreciation of the persistance
> of the crisis of the old composition.

I do not agree, or better: I agree we are still amidst the crisis of the old
form/regime, but this crisis occurs because class composition has changed.
The whole production asset has changed: the new technical, social and assial
division of labor is the product of the struggle against the movements of
the '60-70, whose outcome is the desegregation of the old class composition.
The problem for capital is that this desegregation could be done only facing
the constraints posed by mass-worker, that is: 1) automation through
highring the general intellect, 2) deverticalisation  (juridical
de-concentration of labor force through supplies chains, spatial
de-concentration through de-localisation).
This new asset is creating a new constraint, that is a new class composition
that capital is facing. I agree that capital has not found yet, and *may not
find* a way out but reproducing crisis (economic, social, cultural,
political/wars) this doesn't mean there is not a new class composition.
>
> Now, one might ask what this has to do with class composition.  I think
> it would shift the focus of our own interventions (theoretically and
> practically) away from looking for the new composition and towards
> trying to show how the current crisis is ongoing and how the forms of
> struggle developing (including their organizational forms) reflect
> capital's continuing inability to impose a new composition in its favor,
> and how those new forms of struggle point to capital's abolition (and to
> where the old forms of struggle point, not backwards, but towards
> capital resolving its current crisis.)
>
> The difference, btw, is not absolute, but one of emphasis, and I am not
> sure how much difference in our activity it might mean.  I suspect it
> finds expression at the moment in a split between those emphasizing
> critique and those emphasizing activism, but what I mean by that would
> be a very long discussion based on my experiences in Chicago and this is
> already far more long-winded than I had hoped.
>
> Maybe that is another way out of our maybe mutual dead-end: what
> conclusions do we draw on what we should be doing?
>
> Cheers,
> Chris

I agree it is a problem. I think that class composition theory can help us
at the local level becaouse it give us the indication of where we are going,
and how to fight for that.
I hope it is not less understandable than it was.
ciao laura




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