Gerald Levy (glevy@pratt.edu)
Thu, 21 Oct 1999 14:26:33 -0400 (EDT)
Re Paul Z's [OPE-L:1518]:
> I don't know what to make of your sentence "to the extent that class
> struggle is discussed in _Capital_, it is discussed in a one-sided
> manner". The Italian zero-work school would say that Capital is about
> what capital struggles TO IMPOSE, but labor resists at multiple levels,
> therefore, Capital is not about what capital actually ACHIEVES. To the
> extent that this is correct, I'm not convinced that what workers would
> want to achieve is understandable within the epistemological of Capital,
> "missing book" or no "missing book".
There are fundamentally different perspectives on this question in the
Italian autonomist Marxist tradition. E.g. Negri takes a position that there
is something missing related to the subject of wage-labour in _Capital_
(and even discusses the 6-book-plan in this context), whereas Cleever (who
is from the US but was heavily influenced by that movement) reads
_Capital_ as fundamentally about class struggle in _Reading Capital
Politically_.
What you say after "To the extent that this is correct", I don't follow.
If workers are treated as bodies without subjectivities in _Capital_, then
that suggests that a systematic dialectical presentation must strip
workers of their character masks and go on to not only present the
dynamic of capitalism free from workers' resistance and collective action
(i.e. from the one-sided standpoint of capital) but to incorporate workers
as a subject in the analysis. Thus, if your summary of the Italian
zerowork tradition is correct, then I think it supports the "missing
book" interpretation.
In solidarity, Jerry
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