Date: Wed, 22 Nov 1995 07:37:38 -0800
From: Ralph Dumain <rdumain-AT-igc.apc.org>
Subject: OPEN MARXISM V. 2 -- SUMMARY (PART 2)


PART 2 -- REVIEW OF:

OPEN MARXISM.  VOLUME TWO: THEORY AND PRACTICE, edited by Werner
Bonefield, Richard Gunn and Kosmas Psychopedis.  London: Pluto
Press, 1992.  xviii, 172 pp.

Fracchia, Joseph; Ryan, Cheyney.  "Historical materialist science,
crisis and commitment", chapter 2, pp. 46-68.

Thomas Kuhn is compared to Hegel.  Is there still something
conservative in Kuhn's notion of paradigmatic change, i.e. that
normal science is never self-critical?  The authors argue for
modest in Marxian epistemological claims.  Marx places greater
value on the contingent, while Hegel dismisses it (p. 60).
According to THE GERMAN IDEOLOGY, philosophy is the summing up of
the most general results, abstractions which are of no value apart
from the study of real history.

The authors sum up the most important lessons to be learned from
CAPITAL (p. 62): (1) Marx abstracts from national variations in
capitalist evolution; (2) Marx abstracts from real human beings,
to treat categories; (3) Marx abstracts from all classes except
the bourgeoisie and proletariat; (4) Marx abstracts from the
intervention of superstructural elements.

Negri, Antonio.  "Interpretation of the class situation today:
methodological aspects", chapter 3, pp. 69-105.

Negri has evidently spent too much time in France.  His writing is
incomprehensible, so I dismiss him.  I will merely list the
section headings of this article to give the flavor: Thesis 1: By
constitution I understand the socio-political mechanism determined
by the law of value.  Thesis 2: Even though the law of value is in
crisis, labour is the basis of every constitution.  Thesis 3:
Exploitation is the production of the time of domination against
the time of liberation.  Thesis 4: The periodisation of capitalist
development shows that we are at the beginning of a new epoch.
Thesis 5: Marx's theory of value is tied to the origins of the
industrial revolution.  Thesis 6: the laws constitutive of the
form of value are the laws of its deconstruction.  Thesis 7: The
deconstruction of value is the matrix of subjectivity and _vice
versa_.  Thesis 8: The synchronic and diachronic figures of the
transformation of value lead to strategic contradictions of
development.  Thesis 9: The strategic contradictions of
development verify the laws of deconstruction.  Thesis 10: The
constitutive fabric of the present phase of capitalist development
is an enormous node of strategic contradictions.  Thesis 11: Today
the revolutionary point of contradiction is the antagonism between
social cooperation and productive command.  Thesis 12: The
Struggles precede and prefigure social production and
reproduction.  Thesis 13: The clandestine life of the masses is
ontologically creative.  Thesis 14: The sequences of proletarian
power are asymmetrical with respect to the sequences of capitalist
development.  Thesis 15: The capitalist structuration of the
social is destructive, the proletarian structuration is creative.
Thesis 16: The passage from the structure to the subject is
ontological and it excludes formalistic or dialectical solutions.
Thesis 17: The theory of the workers' party presupposed the
separation of the political from the social.  Thesis 18: Today the
political invests and radically constitutes the social.  Thesis
19: The power of the proletariat is a constituent power.  Thesis
20: Today the constitution of communism is mature.

Holloway, John.  "Crisis, fetishism, class composition",  chapter
5, pp. 145-169.

How to restore the working class from fragmentation and
fetishization (pp. 156-157)?  The first two options privilege the
intellect: (1) defeatism of the Frankfurt School -- the
intellectual understands the systems as a whole but recognizes the
hopelessness of the working class; (2) Leninism -- the
intellectual who understands the system leads the working class.
Option 3: Recognize the contradictions of the fetishizing process:
it is a two-edged sword and workers sometimes see through the
shifting fog.  Value is an antagonistic social relation.  Value
should be seen as struggle, as an open category (p. 158).

The theory of capitalist instability became instead that of
capitalist reproduction, i.e. functionalism, decked out with
relative autonomy (p. 162).  Relative surplus value is tied to
reorganization of production, instability, and class struggle.

Note that these three chapters are similar to chapter one, in that
they deal with general, overall, logical, schematic considerations
of interest to academic theoreticians with whom they debate, but
with no real substance or concreteness that would lead to real
social analysis.

Next installment: Harry Cleaver.

END OF PART TWO


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