Date: Mon, 30 Jun 2003 15:48:16 -0500 (CDT)
From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
Subject: Re: AUT: class comp. (response to John on "starting")


On Sun, 29 Jun 2003, John Holloway wrote:

<snip>
>     There is just one point that I want to mention. I was struck by the fact
> that you say several times (at least twice) that "Marx starts CAPITAL with
> abstract labor". But I don't think that he does. For Marx the pivot is
> surely, as he says, the dual existence of labour as concrete and abstract
> labour.

John, textually Marx starts neither with abstract labor nor with labor as
concrete and abstract labor, he starts with the commodity that has, he
points out, use value and exchange value, use value being the product of
useful labor and exchange value having substance (abstract labor), measure
and form.  When I said he starts with abstract labor, I mean in his
exposition of his theory, the formal layout, abstract labor as the
substance of value is the "beginning". It is only after identifying the
substance of value that he moves on to talk about its measure and form.

When you say concrete/abstract labor is "the pivot" that is something
else all together. It is fairly well known that Marx himself - in a
letter to Engels - pointed to his formulation of this dual character of
labor as his most important theoretical contribution. I would agree. But
I suspect that the reasons we might all have for agreeing with this
assertion are quite different. Certainly many interpretations have been
offered over time.

> For me that antagonistic dualism is absolutely central and I think
> it is present in practically every sentence of Capital. I think that is the
> key to understanding fetishism and form and criticism and dialectics, and I
> think it is probably the key to our differences. Thank you, that is very
> helpful.

What you mean in the above when you say the dualism is "the key" to
fetishism, form, criticism and dialects remains, unfortunately, obscure.
So too are the reasons why you think it is "the key" to our differences. I
can guess about the former; I have no idea about the latter. Oh well.

H.

>
>     John
>
>
> ----------
> >From: "Harry M. Cleaver" <hmcleave-AT-eco.utexas.edu>
> >To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu
> >Subject: Re: AUT: class comp. (response to John's "more radical than thou")
> >Date: Mon, Jun 23, 2003, 5:04 PM
> >
>
> >On Sun, 22 Jun 2003, John Holloway wrote:
> >
> ><snip>
> >>     Nate's idea of focussing on the question of class composition is already
> >> proving very fruitful and I am all in favour of carrying on. When Harry says
> >> (a while ago) that it would be better just to launch into the discussion of
> >> the texts and leave the criticism till later, I don't really agree. I think
> >> it is good to have criticisms to the approach in mind when reading the
> >> texts.
> >
> >John,
> >I never said "leave the criticism till later" so you can't disagree. What
> >I said was, and I quote,: "I too would welcome a discussion of class
> >composition and would suggest that it might be well to discuss material
> >more or less in the order of its writing so as to see the development and
> >circulation of the concept." I know you want to emphasize your
> >disagreements with me, but at least stick to real ones.
> >
> >>     The main criticism that we (Werner Bonefeld and I) have of the
> >> autonomist approach is simply that it does not go far enough, that it does
> >> not pursue its starting point to its radical conclusions. By "autonomism" in
> >> this case, I mean those approaches that insist that an understanding of
> >> capitalism must start not from capital but from working class struggle. When
> >> Tronti makes this point so clearly in Lenin in England, it is a brilliant
> >> attack on orthodoxy. But what does "working class struggle" mean and, in
> >> relation to Marx's writings, what do we focus on? Is working class struggle
> >> to be understood as overt struggle, or do we understand struggle as inherent
> >> in the condition of being dominated?
> >
> >These rhetorical questions have plenty of answers in the writings and
> >actions of those who have recognized and appreciated working class
> >autonomy - before Tronti and since. In those writings, "working class
> >struggle" has meant more than "overt struggle" (assuming that means
> >things like strikes) - although what has been included has varied - and
> >given the very concept of working class autonomy against capital(ist
> >domination), then many have thought it "inherent" in the class
> >relationship (the very notion of domination after all assumes imposition
> >and imposition implies anatagonism and therefore resistance/struggle).
> >
> >> Can we really take "working class" as our starting point
> >
> >What Tronti says in Lenin in England, and others have said elsewhere, is
> >that we must begin from ourselves in struggle. To take the working class
> >as "starting point" is not some theoretical mandate to rewrite capital
> >beginning with chapter 7 on the labor process as implied below! Tronti's
> >"brillant attack on orthodoxy" was to call for a fundamental paradigm
> >shift in political perspective - from that of the PCI who sought to
> >subordinate working class demands to capitalist development (and thus to
> >not challenge that development and thus block workers struggle) to the
> >workers point of view which was precisely to question their subordination
> >and challenge that development. His rereading of Marx gave a theoretical
> >interpretation of the emerging conflict between rank and file workers and
> >their so-called official organizations and the relationhips of both to
> >capital. Steve has a nice discussion of this in his book.
> >
> >> or do we not have to go deeper, to work itself (since
> >> presumably working class can be understood only on the basis of work)?
> >
> >We know where Marx begins the exposition of his theory in CAPITAL, after
> >analyzing the commodity to get there: abstract labor, or work under
> >captitalism, or the common attribute of human activity under capitalism
> >subjected to commodity production. In many "autonomist" texts - including
> >my own - work is at the center of discussion. So... of course.
> >
> >> And
> >> if we start from work, do we start from alienated labour, wage labour, or do
> >> we start from the "dual existence of labour" under capitalism, as the
> >> self-antagonistic form in which human creativity (doing) exists under
> >> capitalism?
> >
> >Marx starts CAPITAL with abstract labor, but we already know from the 1844
> >Manuscripts that that labor is alienated labor whose predominant form is
> >wage labor. There is no great mystery about this. The "dual existence of
> >labor" under capitalism appears in CAPITAL as useful labor and
> >abstract labor. Or, as in Chapter 7, generic labor defined in terms of
> >people using tools to transform nature and abstract labor and surplus
> >labor imposed and commanded by capital as the fundamental form of
> >capitalist command over society. All of this is familiar. To call this
> >the "self-antagonistic form in which human creativity (doing) exists
> >under capitalism" is fine if you assume "under capitalism" means subsumed
> >to capitalist rules and that "human creativity" can usefully be thought
> >of only in terms of "doing". Unfortunately, "doing" - human activity -
> >may not involved creativity at all, either under capitalism or outside
> >it, so the two cannot be equated.
> >
> >> And does this not take us back to the question of human
> >> creativity and the FORM (not to shout, but to emphasise, a Chris says) in
> >> which it exists?  In which case understanding the world in terms of
> >> working  class struggle means not only looking at struggles in the
> >> factory and on the streets, but thinking the world from the perspective
> >> of the self-antagonistic existence of doing.
> >
> >Marx's preoccupation with human creativity and human "doing" was
> >overwhelming with work under capitalism, with the subordination of what he
> >called living labor (one form of our "doing" - creative or not) to dead
> >labor, and thus with the antagonism between the two. There is nothing new
> >here. So beginning with the working class obviously involves beginning
> >with their work and their struggle against it - which is why so much
> >effort was devoted by those in what I have called the "autonomist
> >Marxist" tradition to studying empirically both of those things, e.g.,
> >Paul Romano in the US, Daniel Mothe in France, Alquati in Italy).
> >
> >> And this is precisely what Marx sets
> >> out to do in Capital, starting not in the chapters on the labour process
> >> (very important, of course), but starting from the opening lines of Chapter
> >> 1.
> >
> >Although his analysis began from workers and their struggles in the world,
> >and in CAPITAL from abstract labor, that abstract labor is the substance
> >of living human labor subordinated to capital so "class struggle" is
> >present from the beginning (to the end) and not something we come to
> >eventually.
> >
> >>     If we start from there, from trying to think the world from the
> >> perspective of the self-antagonistic existence of doing, then the only
> >> thing we can do is criticise. Why? Because the form in which doing exists
> >> (as commodity-producing labour) means necessarily that the world presents
> >> itself to us as a world of things, in other words as a world of being (since
> >> human doing is eliminated, put out of sight).  Criticism (or critique) is the
> >> attempt to recover the centrality of doing (genetic critique, as Rubin calls
> >> it), in other words the attempt to put doing, and therefore working class
> >> struggle, in the centre of our understanding of the world.
> >
> >Even if it were true that "the world presents itself to us as a world of
> >things, in other words as a world of being (since human doing is
> >eliminated, put out of sight)" that hardly means that "the only thing we
> >can do is criticise". If criticism by this definition "recovers" for us
> >the centrality of "doing", then obviously we can act upon that
> >understanding and struggle against any constraint on our "doing" -
> >including those of capital.
> >
> >However, I think that the "world" does NOT "present itself to us as a
> >world of things", but rather as a world in which we "do", we work, day
> >after day, year after year. What is hidden is not our "doing" but the
> >constraints on our "doing" - and a great many of them are not very hidden
> >either, which is why people struggle against them regardless of whether
> >they have read Marx. Moreover, the fact that we must work hour after
> >hours, long hours of the day, day after day, most days of
> >the week, week after week, most weeks of the year, and most of the years
> >of our lives makes most people acutely aware of the "centrality" of work
> >and "doing." Our "doing" is not out of sight at all, we are constantly
> >having our faces rubbed in it. The problem is not that "human
> >activity/doing" is hidden but that it is commanded, alienated, the means
> >for the limitation and subordination of our lives. All this Marxist
> >theory reveals.
> >
> >> But to think in
> >> terms of doing is neither more nor less than dialectics (to which Harry and
> >> Negri both declare themselves hostile).
> >
> >This is pure assertion. It doesn't take a survey of philosophy to
> >recognize that it is quite possible to think about "doing" in
> >"non-dialectical" ways - unless you are a Hegelian who sees all of human
> >thought as moments of  THE cosmological DIALECTIC. All this statement says
> >is that for John "to think in terms of doing is neither more nor less
> >than dialectics". Not so for some of us. By the way, the "dialectic" to
> >which I "declare myself hostile" is two fold: first "dialectic" as
> >cosmology (as in Hegel or orthodox dialectical matrialism), second,
> >"dialectic" as the movement of capital (I think that is real and I oppose
> >it).
> >
> >> Criticising (understood in this
> >> sense) is infinitely destructive, endlessly destroying all fixed categories.
> >
> >"The critique of all that exists." For sure, now where have I heard that
> >before?
> >
> >> The autonomist inversion of Marxism, very important as a critique of
> >> orthodoxy, is of course present in Marx, but in a much more radical form.
> >> Which does not mean that it is not important to develop it in relation to
> >> contemporary struggles, but without watering down the radical nature of
> >> Marx's critique.
> >
> >Frankly, in all of the above I see neither anything "more radial" nor
> >anything new. I don't even see a criticism. I see the rhetoric of "more -
> >radical - than - thou'ism" but I don't see anything here new. I see a
> >somewhat different choice of words: a love of "form", an affection for
> >philsophical ways of putting things, e.g., "self-antagonistic existence of
> >doing", an attachment to "criticism" but when it comes to the line of
> >thought that runs from working class autonomy to working class to work and
> >back again, I see no substantive critique of "autonomist Marxism" -
> >certainly not any substantive critique of any actual text. Substantive
> >critique, of course, requires actually dealing with texts - which is what
> >I suggested at the beginning of this thread. In all of the above we have
> >only one cursory reference to Tronti; the rest consists of a loose
> >broadside against an amorphous target. Broadsides fired into smoke rarely
> >hit their targets.
> >
> >> To put it in different terms: autonomism, taken seriously,
> >> must lead on to critical theory, just as critical theory, taken seriously,
> >> must lead on to autonomism.
> >
> >Please. "Critical theory" is a term that has meaning, historical referents
> >such as the Frankfort School, Adorno, Marcuse, Horkheimer, etc. As I have
> >argued in Reading Capital Politically, critical theory - which has been
> >taken quite seriously by a great many folks, myself included - has rarely
> >led to anywhere near "autonomism" - "those approaches that insist that an
> >understanding of capitalism must start not from capital but from working
> >class struggle". On the contrary they have mostly led to elaborations on
> >the power of capital to manipulate culture to control and dominate
> >society. I, for one, have no desire to go there, and I rather doubt John
> >has either.
> >
> >> This must also push us into new language, new
> >> attempts to formulate a world newly understood (what Vaneigem calls working
> >> class poetry, and practised above all by Bloch). I am suspicious, therefore,
> >> of Harry's constant insistence on pushing everything back into the
> >> "vernacular".
> >
> >John can only be "suspicious" because he never read, or has forgotten, the
> >piece I wrote on the "inversion of class perspective" that he published in
> >the second volume of "Open Marxism" or because he has never read, or has
> >forgotten, my piece on "Work is STILL the Issue! New Words for New Worlds"
> >published in "The Labor Debate." In both pieces I discuss recently
> >invented words and their adequacy for grasping various aspects of our
> >struggles. The second piece's subtitle makes this most explicit and the
> >text itself more so. My insistence on the "vernacular" is simply an
> >insistence on being able to explain what you are talking about in plain
> >language. I have no problem with jargon - jeez, I teach Marx don't I - but
> >I scorn discourses in which jargon is defined in terms of jargon, in which
> >the discourse folds back upon itself and while it may be consistent in its
> >folding is quite incapable of explaining itself.
> >
> >>     While it is clearly wrong to put all autonomism into a neatly labelled
> >> package,
> >
> >John, why then do you do it? I am quite explicit about using the term
> >"autonomist Marxism" to denote a thread running through a multiplicity of
> >texts, most quite different from one another. I do not offer
> >generalizations about "autonomist Marxism" beyond the identification of
> >that thread but rather discuss the evolution, differences and
> >contradictions among those texts. As in this case, you, however, have
> >repeatedly blasted "autonomist Marxism" as if it were some homogeneous
> >body of thought.
> >
> >> there has been a tendency not to push autonomism that far, but
> >> rather to adopt certain categories and try to apply them. Often, the lines
> >> between autonomist analysis and sociology have got blurred (as Harry seems
> >> to accept),
> >
> >"Harry seems to accept"? On the basis of what do you make this statement?
> >As for the relationship between SOME autonomist analysis and sociology,
> >Steve's book is quite good on how some of the former grew out of some of
> >the latter. He doesn't "blur" but tries to make clear what the evolution
> >was. You claim the distinction is "often" blurred. Then where are your
> >plethora of examples that would justify such a claim? And where in my own
> >writings can you point to my "accepting" the blurring of the distinction
> >between autonomist analysis and sociology?
> >
> >> which is dreadful, since sociology, like economics or any other
> >> discipline, is an active process of fragmenting opposition to capitalism.
> >
> >Oh, it is far more than that. It provides the tools and ideology of
> >fragmentation but it also provides all kinds of other input into
> >capitalist policy making aimed the control and continued exploitation of
> >the working class - just as economics provides not only ideological
> >justification for capitalism but strategies for its propagation. Any
> >attempt on your part to associate me with an "acceptance" of economics
> >must deal not only with my piece "Karl Marx: Economist or Revolutionary?"
> >but with all that I have written. I wouldn't waste your time trying to do
> >so.
> >
> >> This was certainly the fate of the labour process discussion in Britain,
> >> which started off in the mid-70's very much inspired by Italian autonomism
> >> and finished up, in large measure, as just another specialisation in
> >> sociology.
> >
> >The history of the "labor process" debate is a fine example of the process
> >of co-optation or instrumentalization of Marxist theory. There are many,
> >many examples, including among others the sociological appropriation
> >of the very notion of class, Leontief's appropriation of Marx's
> >reproduction schemes to construct input-outpust tables, regulation theory
> >and so on. This was an issue that I addressed explicitly in the piece
> >"Karl Marx: Economist or Revolutionary?" calling for efforts to formulate
> >theory in ways that made it less amenable to such appropriation.
> >
> >> That apart, I think it would be important to ask in any
> >> discussion of the class composition texts whether there is not a tendency
> >> for the approach to become more positivist over time.
> >
> >Examining the evolution of the theory of class composition was what I
> >suggested at the outset and the reason was not just because texts build on
> >texts and the understanding one text is sometimes helped by understanding
> >what came before (and sometimes what came afterwards) but because the
> >texts I identify as containing the "autonomist" thread often have serious
> >problems and limitations that need to be recognized - any tendency toward
> >"positivism" is only one of those.
> >
> >>     One aspect of this positivisation has been perhaps the tendency to
> >> project observations from the analysis of Italian (or US or British or
> >> German) on to a characterisation of capitalism as a whole, so that it comes
> >> to be treated as an ideal type (mass worker, social mass worker, immaterial
> >> labour etc).
> >
> >I can't think of any time in which "capitalism" has been treated as "mass
> >worker" etc. Those categories have been thought to be characteristic of
> >the tendency of the class composition in various periods - something which
> >may or may not have been accurate or useful. But the problem may be with
> >the accuracy of the analysis, or with the accuracy of the generalization
> >or with the substitution of the generalization for a more complete
> >analysis of the class composition.
> >
> >> I think this is a very big problem with Hardt and Negri's
> >> treatment of immaterial labour. Part of this is their almost complete
> >> omission of mention of the Zapatista struggle: this is not just because they
> >> don't happen to mention them, but because the very approach of projecting a
> >> particular experience on to the world is implicitly Euro-US-centric.
> >
> >This example suggests that that what you are calling a "positivist"
> >tendency is the tendency to generalize the analysis of one tendency of the
> >class composition to the whole. I don't know why this is "positivist" but
> >it certainly is a problem.
> >
> >> One
> >> interesting question for a reading of class composition texts would be to
> >> what extent the seeds of Hardt-Negri's (in some moments brilliant, but
> >> generally awful) book are already sown.
> >
> >The same can be said of any text: where did the ideas come from, how are
> >they related to earlier formulations, etc., whether you like the text or
> >not.
> >
> ><snip>
> >
> >>     On Harry's dislike of "in-and-against": I have preferred for a long time
> >> to speak of "against-in-and-beyond". We live against-in-and-beyond capital,
> >> the beyond referring to our projections and struggles and constructions that
> >> go beyond capital, that break through and transcend capital as a social
> >> relation. But there is no outside, beyond can only be understood as
> >> movement-against, negativity. Negativity refers not to particular struggles
> >> as to the fact that our existence in capitalism, an existence-against (and
> >> therefore beyond).
> >
> >As far as I am concerned the statement that we "break through and
> >transcend capital as a social relation" but " there is no outside" is a
> >most peculiar and off-putting use of the English language. I fail to see
> >any sense to a notion of transcending capitalism that gets you "beyond"
> >it, but not "outside" of it. To define "beyond" as only "movement-against,
> >negativity" defies most people's sense of the word "beyond". To travel
> >beyond the horizon does not mean ploding toward it, it means actually
> >going farther than the point originally identified as the horizon.
> >(I suppose an Hegelian would put in that the horizon, like the dialectic,
> >constantly recedes and therefore you can never really get beyond it.)
> >A better metaphor perhaps is prison. To get "beyond" prison surely means,
> >to most inmates, getting "outside" it. "Against" is aimed at getting
> >"beyond" but conflating the two strikes me as bizarre.
> >
> >>
> >>     Enough, or too much.
> >>
> >>     John
> >>
> >> P.S. If we understand critique as genetic critique (the attempt to recover
> >> the centrality of human subjectivity), then I don't think that Harry's
> >> distinction between the critique of political economy and the analysis of
> >> capitalism makes sense.
> >
> >On the one hand, I don't think any lack of sense is demonstrated by what
> >follows, and on the other I think what follows is wrong as a
> >characterization of what Marx is "trying to do."
> >
> >> What Marx is trying to do is to criticise a theory
> >> that denies the centrality of work by showing that work is central and that
> >> it generates its own negation.
> >
> >I fail to see any evidence that Marx criticises political economy
> >because it "denies the centrality of work". The primary political economy
> >that he critiques is classical political economy that had a labor theory
> >of value at its core. Adam Smith, for example, is greatly preoccupied in
> >The Wealth of Nations with the centrality of work. He begins with the
> >division of labor and he berates the merchantilists for not seeing the
> >dependence of trade on the work of producing tradeable goods, and the
> >physiocrats for thinking that land, rather than labor, is the source of
> >all surplus. Marx doesn't have to show that work is central - that was
> >taken as given by the political economists of the time - but he did have
> >to show that because that work is imposed there is an antagonism that
> >threatens not only the stability but the future existence of that
> >imposition and that centrality.
> >
> >> If it is only if we understand criticism in
> >> the sense of measuring-against-reason that it makes sense to make the
> >> distinction that Harry makes.
> >
> >I have no idea what "criticism in the sense of measuring-against-reason"
> >means. And therefore have no idea whether the distinction between the
> >critique of political economy and the analysis of capitalism is a example
> >of it. What does seem obvious to me is that the critique of political
> >economy is an essential moment of the analysis of capitalism because
> >capitalism includes political economy as one element of its
> >self-consciousness, ideological self-justification and strategic thought.
> >
> >H.
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >
> >     --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>
>
>      --- from list aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
>

............................................................................
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

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Cleaver homepage:
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/faculty/Cleaver/index2.html

Chiapas95 homepage:
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Accion Zapatista homepage:
http://www.utexas.edu/students/nave/
............................................................................



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