Monthly Archives: February 2011
Autonomia Reading Group Session 3: The Refusal of Work
This week’s reading for the Bingham Autonomia series consisted of Tronti’s “The strategy of Refusal” and Selma James’s and Mariarosa Dalla Costa’s “The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community”. The Bingham group have posted up some notes here, whilst Hilary Malatino has further explored the genealogy of the refusal of work and the ways in which these currents exist in the contemporary politics of the left.
As these two commentaries have already highlighted, from our position now, the two articles which we have read for this session dovetail neatly. The social relations of capital rely upon unwaged reproductive labour in the social factory as much as in the industrial factory. The refusal to “collaborate actively in capitalist development, the refusal to put forward positive programs of demands”. Both look to move beyond the party and examine social relations, and social conflict, through the eyes of its producers in both their waged and unwaged forms. Indeed, as Michael Denning argues in a recent article what unites us is not the wage (indeed a guaranteed wage is fast becoming the exception rather than the norm throughout the world) but rather our precaritisation and dispossession from the means of subsistence and production. In recognising that ‘there is a class even in the absence of the party” (Marx, in Tronti), previous forms of organising such as the labour movement and the ‘party’ are challenged. The task now is to recognise the new forms in which our struggles are articulated and the terrain upon which they are inscribed.
Precarity, Social Labour and the Refusal of Work
Under capitalism, the only thing worse than being exploited is not being exploited
Michael Denning, NLR
I’d agree that the refusal of work is one of the key “Autonomist gestures” but how is this translated into political action? Tronti is dismissive of the general strike as a “romantic naivete” and develops this to critique the official labour movements endorsement of the dignity of labour and demands for its “fair share” of the produce (written at a time when many of the ledt wing parties in Italy were endorsing the “historic compromise” between capital and labour). Looking towards future readings this scepticism of the general strike as means to take power, rather than create crisis, is echoed in the invisible committee’s concept of the “human strike”. In a time of mass unemployment and precarious labour what does the refusal of work look like? Where are the (as Tronti so poetically puts it) “New Barbarians of the proletariat”?
Dalla Costa and James analysis of unwaged labour which occurs in the household resonates with some of the reading I have been doing regarding precarity and immaterial labour in the past week. As well as household work we help to (re)produce society, produce immaterial commodities and invest them with meaning in our everyday life. From helping make parts of cities “cool” (See the Berlin Left’s intensification of its anti-gentrification campaigns) to developing new niche scenes (the “hipster” scene in Shoreditch perhaps?) or micro-musical genres (witch house anyone?) we are involved in producing unwaged cultural capital in many different ways. Even our facebook data is mined and sold as marketing information, returning to us in the form of personally targeted ads. In the 21rst century of more widespread immaterial labour surrounding the production of signs, meanings and emotional affects the refusal of work seems broader than downing tools at the sight. Anti-gentrification struggles, internet piracy and counter-cultural trends all seem to suggest partial connections to the refusal of work yet, ultimately, are prone to recuperation and commodification. Leading us back to Tronti and his (sometimes unconvincing) argument that our struggles are the real motor of capitalist development.
A Lenin for 2011?
Finally it’s worth highlighting the leninist roots of some of the currents which came together within autonomia. Tronti is clearly pro-leninist arguing the “subjective leap forward” for the capitalist driven by a Keynes inspired fusion of state planning and economic development is as important as Lenin has been for the working class. What is the Leninist legacy? can anything be salvaged from it? Slavoj Zizek clearly thinks there is, and I’d be tempted to say that there are some important things we can take from him (a theory inspired by the belief we can win and a willingness to analyse the political context strategically) but other parts of is theory e.g. the party and the vanguard must be assigned to the political graveyard. As we progress it is clear that Autonomia has some roots which may seem alien to the predominately anarchist and autonomous Marxist positions which find inspiration in it.
Sunday Papers #13: Sunday, February 20th
This week’s links are all linked to the theme of precarity. Given my current state of under-employment I’ve been thinking about this a little. Expect some development of these thoughts in a future article.
- The Really Open University have posted up an article on free labour which is a good place to start.
- Found a link to this group, the precarious workers brigade. Nice name, not too sure about what they’re doing however. They also have an interesting collection of articles which can be browsed through here.
- only skimmed this article, it seems slightly old but still very relevant. Preparing ourselves for the labour market requires large periods of self-investment (CV building etc.) which this article, referring to post-operaismo theory is termed immaterial labour.
- Finally, Mute on precarity. Lots of interesting articles discussing and problematising the concept of precarity.
R
Autonomia Reading Group Session 2: The Changing Language of Politics
The movement of 1977 was not only a totally different way of conceiving of the relation between life and politics, but a series of contents and values that had never been placed on the agenda of the political project. Despite having apparently left a void in its wake, despite having apparently only laid bare the crisis of political forms, including the crisis of the party-form, 1977 has to be considered one of the greatest anticipations of the forms and contents of political and social life seen in recent years. After 1977 there is no turning back, despite all the errors committed, and for which many are still paying in an atrocious manner. 1977 was a year in which the wealth and complexity of problems was such that the political form able to contain and organise them all adequately could not be found.
(Sergio Bologna, 1980)
Here are some of my thoughts on the reading for week 2 of the Bingham University Autonomia reading group.
The Personal is Political
The pamphlet “Lets spit on Hegel” by an Autonomist feminist group Rivolta Femminile is interesting and I’d pretty much agree with the analysis put forward by the Bingham group. Although having no familiarity with Hegel at all the article made some interesting points, namely:
- A rejection of contemporaneous Marxist-Leninist politics which sought to subsume gender struggles within the class struggle, interpreted within Hegel’s Master-Slave dialectic.
- A very interesting critique of the liberal and juridical conception of equality.
- A recognition of the political nature of the everyday experiences of people.
This pamphlet marks some interesting changes within radical thought during this period. The rejection of Leninist politics, the emegrence of new spheres and forms of struggle marked an extremely productive and creative flowering of political antagonism towards which most of the old leftist forms of organising were simply no longer relevant. Whether these organisations moved down a parliamentary road (see next section on the PCI and PSI), dwindled to small isolated groups or disbanded such as Lotta Continua (see the Free Associations great article on Autonomia and Punk here), the changing nature of society, its class composition i.e. how work was organised, the aspirations of people, the political struggles which were apparent or deemed necessary – was changing beyond the abilities of the workerist organisations to adapt.
The langauage and co-ordinates of politics were changing. Politics moved into the social factory and struggles were fought over access to culture, the role of gender in society, and housing. The terrain of political conflict moved beyond production to social (re)production. These two markedly different forms of organisation with different lexicons of desire struggled to be legible to one another.
New forms of organising such as Radio ALice in Bologna proliferated
Class (Re)Composition
The underlying economic and political changes which laid the foundations for new forms of Leftist politics are made clearer through a reading of the two chapters from Steve Wright’s “Storming Heaven”. This book has been sitting on my bookshelf for about a year now and I was glad to finally get the incentive to start reading it (although it felt a little like cheating skipping to the final chapter).
Wright’s first chapter focuses on the major leftist organisations in 1950’s and 1960’s Italy, the Communist party (PCI) and the socialist party (PSI) and their gradual incorporation into the world of formal politics with both parties aiming for centre coalitions using the political capital gained by fighting the fascists during the endgame of the second world war and an economic boom brought about by productivity bargains and the Marshall plan. This economic boom occurred between 1948 and 1962 and exacerbated an uneven geographical development of Northern and Southern Italy. For a brief but interesting analysis of this see Ernest Dowson’s “The Italian Background” over at libcom. The increasingly dogmatic reformist politics of the PCI and the PSI led to many radical leftists leaving these groups and beginning to develop their own ideas. Particularly around the concept of class composition and attempting to develop a parallel sociology to that of bourgeois sociology and develop it as an analytical tool for radical social change. These militant workers enquiries revealed lots about changing forms of production and the increasing irrelevance of the unions and leftist parties to ordinary workers struggles.
By the final chapter, set almost two decades after the first, Wright paints an image of an organised Left in chaos with the Autonomia movement facing a choice between self-conscious political ghettoisation or combattentismo, the cult of machismo and political violence which occurred in several places throughtout Europe and North America during this period (presumably as a response to the petering out of the radical potential of the New Left, though I’m certainly no expert). Wright argues that a political disconnect has occurred between the Operaist (Workerist) current and the movements of Autonomia, whose politics emphasised “needs over duty, difference over homogeneity, the localised and personal over class struggle”. This new political language marks a clear break from political ideas and forms of organising which were becoming increasingly irrelevant. The Rivolta Femminile article is one clear example of this rupture with traditional forms of worker based politics. The worker as the privileged political subject was undermined.
As the quote I chose to start this post with highlights the autonomous politics of 1970’s Italy mark a clear break with previous modes of organising. However, some of the concepts of tools of operaismo, and the workers tradition in general, still have purchase today. As I’ve mentioned in a few other posts the concept of class composition, is useful for those of us organising beyond the capital relation. The political laboratory of Italy in the 1970’s speaks to those of us involved, yet demand a critical analysis, whilst the impotence of the unions and the failure of workerist politics are still clearly evident, so to are many forms of political activism which have been associated with Leftist politics in the past twenty years. Ultimately what I’ve taken from this week’s reading has been an analysis of political change in a political situation not too far removed from our own yet still with enough distance that it’s political contours can be fairly clearly sketched out. What we witness when we place these three chapters in a chronological order is a story of political experimentation, successes (even if at first they don’t appear as such) and also failures. Hopefully future reading will beign to untangle the move towards analysing the “Social factory” and the move towards extra-parliamentary politics.
Finally, I’d like to end with a few questions which I may perhaps take up at some other time: What might an analysis of the class composition of our given situation reveal today? Could a workers or a students or an unemployed workers enquiry reveal important hints about possible future forms of organisation? What is the relevance of Autonomia to our current struggles, what political resonance exists between these very different time/spaces?
Class Composition 2011
Paul Mason, BBC analyst and regular guest at the London anarchist bookfair, puts forward some theses about the recent waves of unrest and tries to draw out the connections between Egypt, Tunisia, UK and the almost certain wave of protests to come.
Very interesting argument that a new sociological, and also political, subject is coming into the limelight – enter the disenfranchised graduate. Often students and young people are key to new social movements (historically less to lose, ideas often at odds with established societal rules) but what is different now is the new materiality of hope (as a really open university article argues here). The old promises of society are now seen for what they were, lies, whilst the emerging political arguments from the political centre seem laughable – big society, austerity for some, belt tightening… This certainly promotes the development of conditions of social conflict.
Not sure I’d agree with the emphasis on technology and perhaps Mason is a bit light on the economics and political side of this, but still an interesting attempt. Also, not sure about arguing that the 1910’s and ’20’s were much more radical in many ways. Whilst I’m definitely not that clues up on the history of the workers movement we shouldn’t fool ourselves that all the demands of the workers movements were radical. Many of the workers movements were composed of specific strata’s of specialised, skilled workers and I’m doubtful of the universally emancipatory nature of all of there politics. Lots of the protests here in the UK are fairly radical in deed/content if not word, struggles over the nature of education, access to woodlands and corporate tax evasion move beyond fairly self-interested politics. However, Mason clearly states these are notes and they are a very good start. Maybe some time in the future I’ll try and develop on these ideas and write about the UK in particular.
R
Comments on Autonomia Session 1 – The Society of the Spectacle
Situationist ideas are still used all over the place; in texts, articles and agit-prop by radical groups as well as by an ever increasing army of academics, commentators and ‘theorists’ who demonstrably have nothing useful to say, but have nevertheless created a minor publishing industry which feeds on the SI (and has done so ever since its disbanding in 1972). They have sought to reduce the SI and its principal theorists to the status of cultural or artistic avant-gardists, precursors of punk or proto-post modernists; conveniently forgetting that the central point of their project was nothing less than total social revolution.
Link here
On Monday the Bingham Autonomia Group met for the first time to discuss Society of the Spectacle. As already mentioned I am hoping to keep up with them on this side of the water and try and chip in frequently with responses to the discussions which the group are having. For the first meeting the Bingham group discussed The Society of the Spectacle by Guy Debord (1968) and, from the notes, attempted to use this as an historical marker for upcoming discussions on Autonomia and Italian Politics in the 1970’s.
The spectacle
The spectacle is seemingly one of the most familiar of the idea’s developed in the text. However, I’d be inclined to agree with the opening quote that “a minor publishing industry” has developed surrounding The Situationist International’s (SI) ideas and the spectacle is perhaps both the most frequently used and the most frequently misinterpreted by commentators on the SI. From the first two chapters it becomes clear that, despite what some media theorists may wish to argue, the Spectacle is not a phenomenon limited solely to the visual sphere. Rather, it is the visible outcome of a concrete mode of production i.e. capitalism. Debord himself explicitly states that the spectacle is not merely a visual phenomenon.
The spectacle is not a collection of images, rather, it is a social relationship between people that is mediated by images.
(Thesis 4)
The alienation which occurs during the production of commodities is mirrored in the alienation experienced in a world organised both socially and politically around the production of these commodities.
The text was written in the 1960’s, a moment in history when some parts of the world were (still) riding high on the Fordist mode of production and mass consumption was becoming generalised. It is at this moment in which everyday life became increasingly colonised and commodified by capital that the concept of the spectacle, a way of describing the pervasive alienation of humans within a world dominated by the commodity, was developed and gained theoretical traction. Indeed, many of the concepts in the book are as relevant, if not more, than at the time of publishing.
One of the questions which emerged from the Bingham groups discussion was “Is the unilateral function of mass media still true?”. Despite the decline of certain traditional models of mass media such as newspapers (certainly here in the UK) the structural functions of the spectacle are not tied to specific technologies but can be reproduced in different forms. Whether opinions emanate from large printing presses or the world of web 2.0 (twitter, blogs and facebook) the spectacle, the “official language of generalised separation” (Theses 3) still has the possibility of being reproduced. The spectacle is a political not a technological phenomenon. The democratisation of the media via the internet does not necessarily lead to a challenge to the ideological strength of commodity society.
scan from Breaking Free, a detournement of a classic Tin-Tin text
Contextualising Autonomia
I’d agree that chapter 4 serves as a nice “intellectual prehistory of Autonomia” and a useful thread to start unravelling the relationship between organisation and antagonism to Capital. I’d like to chip in with a few comments about Anarchism but before that it might be useful to briefly discuss those seeking to represent the working class. Debord is critical of both the USSR, which (in his eyes) is essentially a less efficient and more bureaucratic form of liberal capitalism, and the Unions those “mere brokers of labour – traders in labour power as a commodity to be bought and sold like any other” (Thesis 96). A split with both the USSR and the Unions as representatives of the workers and/or the movement towards Communism is, as far as I understand at the start of this reading series, a key facet of autonomous politics and places it clearly at a moment of departure from previous forms of political organisation. Debord’s critique of those that would seek to represent the proletariat is part of an important historical process with regards to the history of autonomous politics.
Anarchism
In thesis 92 Debord argues that the Anarchist position that the goal of the “proletarian revolution as immediately present is at once the great strength and great weakness of the real anarchist struggle”. The SI’s support for the revolution of everyday life (As Vaneigem would have it) and the critique of socialist strands of which “consciousness always comes to the scene too soon” (Thesis 84) are key parts of SI thought. Strands which will clearly emerge later in the programme as we encounter Bonnano and the Invisible committee.
Before making my next point I must confess that my knowledge of the historical conflicts between those that would define themselves as Socialists/Marxists and Anarchists is not particularly abundant. However it seems that the boundaries between Socialist and anarchist organisations as distinct ways of doing appear to be breaking down. Perhaps I’m jumping the gun, but one of the interesting things about autonomous politics in the political laboratory of 1970’s Italy is the blurring of these traditions. Political immediacy, an understanding of the everyday and a commitment to extra-parliamentary politics met with class based analysis and an attempt to understand the mechanics of capitalism. From my position, involved in organisation here in the UK, both the traditional socialist and the anarchist left appear obsolete. Whilst movements critical of capital and the state exist they don’t fit easily into these traditional positions. The most interesting forms of struggle seem to internalise interesting parts of both of these traditions. I personally prefer to name these movements Communist, a term enjoying a resurge in (albeit academic) fashion at the moment, but understand arguments for resisting the urge to name it also. Communism as the “The Real Movement Which Abolishes the Present State of Things”has moved beyond what, definitely here in the UK, is labelled the radical left. The radical left in the UK is, in the most part, resigned to playing what Vaneigem and Debord’s would critique as the role of the militant. This isn’t, for the most part, a conscious role but one which derives from the unwillingness to inform theory with practice. Methods and tactics must change with society. Perhaps this will change, and there are certainly initiatives involved in trying to make this happen, but the process will bevery difficult.
Workerism and Council Communism
The final point which I feel probably should be mentioned is Debord (and the SI’s) support for workers councils. These were seen as the key transitionary vehicle by which a post-capitalist world could be realised. By giving power to the workers this would help avoid the pitfalls of the bureaucratic management of capital as seen in the USSR. However, as Gilles Dauve notes in his insightful critique of the text, Debord is stuck within a contradiction between two of his key positions. Dauve notes
There existed an historically insurmountable incompatibility between
“Down with Work”
and
“All power to the workers (Councils)”
Dauve’s Excellent Article can be found here.
One reading of the spectacle is that it is a critique of the production of value (chapters 1 and 2) and an investigation into the seeming divisions and conflicts within the political sphere of capital which are in fact mere sectors of the same unity (chapter 3). Thus leading to the slogan “Down with Work” and a complete rejection of Ebert’s understanding of Socialism as “working hard” (Thesis 97). This is a position shared by the value critique school of Marxism as emphasized by Moishe Postone, Principia Dialectica and the Krisis Gruppe amongst others.
However, this position can’t be reconciled with the other key slogan of the SI “Power to the Workers” in the form of workers councils. Dauve is insightful in recognizing this as a key contradiction and problematic within both this text and the work of the SI. This call for workers councils, and its implicit support for the production of value, is in contradiction with (admittedly what I hazily remember of) Tronti’s “refusal of work” and later autonomist work such as John Holloway’s “Stop Making Capitalism”.
Ultimately this was a great text to start with, helping to situate Italian political thought in the 1970’s and bring to the fore some of the key questions which will be discussed over the course of this reading programme. Hopefully the physical group Stateside will find these virtual comments as interesting as I found theirs.
R
P.S. If anyone in Manchester, or the UK even, wants to join in reading with me get in touch.
P.P.S. I’ve attached some of the articles that I found discussing the Society of the Spectacle in the library section of the blog. Link can be found here.
Student Struggles and Class Composition
Feb 14
Posted by Ben Lear
(Sergio Bologna, 1977)
Image from one of the student protests in London, Winter 2010
This quote really stood out and shouted at me today as I finish doing the reading for the Autonomia reading group I’m following. I’ll be writing my thoughts up later today but thought this quote was worth posting up independently. Although written in 1977 it still has relevance today, a detailed analysis of the student protests is, I imagine, likely to reveal some of the key trends, conflicts and affinities which may emerge in the coming period of struggle. The concept of class composition and workers enquiry, of using sociological methods for political purpose is proving quite appealing to me at the moment. If I can find the time I’d like to expand some of my thoughts on this idea.
R
Share this:
Posted in Comments
Leave a comment
Tags: class composition, Education struggles, Sergio Bologna