From: "Nate Holdren" <nateholdren-AT-hotmail.com>
Subject: RE: AUT: More on Fascism
Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 11:03:41 -0400


Hi Angela-

The Vaneigem book is _A Declaration of the Rights of Human Beings_, 
translated by Liz Heron.

I'm snowed under with work (and working to find more work) so I haven't been 
able to keep up with this thread or to read your piece. I will do the latter 
when time allows. Briefly, though, on rights - certainly rights are only 
interesting from a strategic perspective, but can you say briefly why you 
think that rights are exhausted for strategic purposes? (My apologies if I'm 
asking you to paraphrase your article, I just don't have the time at the 
moment to read it.) Is it for reasons of power - we just won't/can't win 
rights fights - or for something about the inadequacy of rights to our 
demands/desires or something else? I'm quite pessimistically sympathetic to 
the first, don't know about the rest...

The reason I ask is because of experiences I had with a unionization attempt 
at my last job from August to November. It was an affective type of labor 
with flexible hours (fifty to seventy to week) for fixed salary. A group of 
ten of us who were new on the job found that many of our more senior 
coworkers simply didn't do the work expected - skiving off here and there as 
able to, the old strategy of refusal. Some of us did this as well but it was 
risky, there were sanctions and so forth if you were caught, especially for 
new hires, so we tried to form a union to make the actual quantity of hours 
worked be codified into the general expectation, in order to remove the 
inequalities of time worked (bosses' favorites had a blind eye turned to 
their less hours worked while those on the outs got extra scrutiny and 
accusations of not working enough regardless of quantity of time worked).

In the end we got our heads handed to us and all of us left the job (either 
'voluntarily' or chucked out). Had we won though, the right to more time off 
and to some kind of regular discipline procedure (instead of caprice of 
supervisor) would have served us quite well (provided of course that the 
right was animated/backed up by our organized power in the workplace).

take care,
Nate



All we ever wanted was just everything.
All we ever needed was just everyone.
-The (International) Noise Conspiracy, "A Small Demand"


>From: ".: s0metim3s :." <s0metim3s-AT-optusnet.com.au>
>Reply-To: aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU
>To: <aut-op-sy-AT-lists.village.Virginia.EDU>
>Subject: RE: AUT:  More on Fascism
>Date: Wed, 21 Apr 2004 16:54:43 +1000
>
>(snip)
>But what's at stake here? I've a sense that the
>distinction works, for instance, in order to make
>a case for the strategic rather than philosophical
>use of rights claims; but I'm not sure how
>feasible (even strategically) this actually is
>anymore. At most, I'm prepared to talk about the
>promise contained in human rights discourses (with
>a nod to Derrida); but I do think that, especially
>but not exclusively because of the current
>historical conjuncture, a critique of rights
>doctrines is crucial.  I go on about this at
>length:
>http://www.borderlandsejournal.adelaide.edu.au/vol
>2no1_2003/mitropoulos_barbed.html
>
>(snip)
>Nate, do you recall the title of the Vaneigem
>book?
>
>PS. Yeah, the Saints were very cool; but the only
>time I saw them live was at their last gig at a
>crappy pub in Dee Why where I had to argue for an
>hour with the bouncer to let me through sans id.
>
>Angela
>_______________

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