taylor price
Aqua Utopia｜海の底で記憶を紡ぐ
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DEAR READER
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Alisa U Zemlji Chuda
Origami Around
JVL
will byers stan first human second
occasionally subtle
if i look back, i am lost
Andulka
★
Cosmic Funnies
Xuebing Du
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❣ Chile in a Photography ❣
Love Begins
Kiana Khansmith
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@operaismomanchester
Next Week's Reading
Readings for next session - Falafel, 9th May at 5:30
The State as Planner and the Rise of the Crisis State * Key: (1967)Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State (in L/D and Revolution Retrieved) - Antonio Negri * Recommended: Surplus Value and Planning - Raniero Panzieri * Optional: Crisis of the Planner-State: Communism and Revolutionary Organization (in Books for Burning) - Antonio Negri
The mass worker and the social factory
For the next session 9/4/13 the readings are as follows.
Key text: Federici and Montano - Theses on the mass worker and social capital
Negri - Archaelogy and project... The mass worker and the social worker
Palazzo (not a contemporary of the autonomists but the paper looks pretty straightforward) - Re-examining the Social Factory
Meeting will be at 5:30, location TBC.
Barricades in Paris during the Paris Commune, 1871. Pierre-Ambrose Richebourg
Feedback from last session
On Tuesday we met to discuss the ‘Wages for Housework’ campaign of the 1970s. Actually, the title of Silvia Federici’s pamphlet (the text which received much of our attention) was ‘Wages Against Housework’ and, whilst this was raised as a technical point, it sheds light on much of our conversation. We saw the campaign as more than a reform proposal. It was not a demand for a lump sum of money or (worse) an argument for women as just as capable of working in a ‘man’s world.’ Rather, our attention focused on the campaign as a political perspective that was able to show the wage as that which hides all of the unpaid work that goes into creating profit.
‘Wages for Housework’ created an autonomous political framework that did not rely on male dominated socialist movements. This feminism, we generally agreed, was a particular strength of the struggle: able to show how uncompensated labour shapes what it is to be female, but without subordinating class to feminism or vice versa. Our discussion of ‘Women and the Subversion of Community’ helped to clarify an understanding of the family unit as the backbone of capitalism and, in turn, the way in which it continues to be women that are expected to take on austerity today. We also touched briefly on the pressures to ‘enjoy your job’ as well as debt and wagelessness as defining features of existence today. Amidst these topics there was a brief foray into the murky depths of ‘false consciousness’.
Tomorrow (Tuesday 26th March) we will be meeting in room N1.4 in the Samuel Alexander building at 17:30. See below for info on the theme and texts - and see you there!
Next session will be on the Tuesday 26th March (Venue TBC!) on the topic of the Wages for Housework campaign and feminist interventions in Operaismo. Here are the readings:
* Key (and short) Wages for housework - Silvia Federici - http://caringlabor.wordpress.com/2010/09/15/silvia-federici-wages-against-housework/
* Women and the Subversion of Community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James - Just the first article (Women and the Subversion of the community)
* (contemporary and short) The interview with Silvia Federici done in Mute recently - http://www.metamute.org/editorial/articles/permanent-reproductive-crisis-interview-silvia-federici
This tuesday we met to discuss the central operaismo theme of 'The Refusal of Work'. Although Tronti's 'The Strategy of Refusal' was supposed to be the key text, most of us seemed to get more from the other two texts - the Porto Maghera Workers' text 'The Refusal of Work' and a different Tronti piece 'The Struggle Against Labour'. Topics of conversation included, but were not limited to, the following: work and the wage-relation - as opposed to capital - as the bedrock of capitalism; labour, automation and unemployment in '70s and today; Tronti's post-humanism (!), humanist marxism, alienation, workers' control and the contestation of Power (so quiiite a lot in there...).
Next session we'll be looking at the 'Wages For Housework' struggle and feminist interventions in operaismo politics. Details to follow on time and place!
Next Session is in ROOM N1.4 IN SAMUEL ALEXANDER BUILDING 0n Tuesday March 12th at 5:30 . Readings are:
The Refusal of Work * Key text: The Strategy of Refusal - Mario Tronti. * Optional but short and provides a very different perspective: The Refusal of Work - Porto Maghera Workers. * Optional: The Struggle Against Labor - Mario Tronti
Last week we discussed one of the core texts of Operaismo. Mario Tronti’s Lenin in England introduces some of the key themes, questions and interests of Operaismo and stands in between the initial work done by Panzieri and Quaderni Rossi and the later work of Antonio Negri.
The article is most famous for it's Copernican inversio, stating:
"We too have worked with a concept that puts capitalist development first, and workers second. This is a mistake. And now we have to turn the problem on its head, reverse the polarity, and start again from the beginning: and the beginning is the class struggle of the working class. At’ the level of socially developed capital, capitalist development becomes subordinated to working class struggles; it follows behind them, and they set the pace to which the political mechanisms of capital’s own reproduction must be tuned"
This new methodology, put forward in the editorial of the paper of the new organisation – Classe Operai is a move away from the mechanistic, vanguardist politics of the official Marxist-Leninism of the time. It asks us to begin from the desires and struggles of the working class and work outward from there. We discussed the difference between militant enquiry and a broader, more structural understanding of class composition. Whilst we don’t appear to be in a position to undertake militant enquiry we can begin to uncover the contours of the broader composition of class society. Perhaps we need to be reading the papers and reports with a "rigorously one-sided class logic".
Tronti’s article is a break from the economism of much of the Marxism of the time and a re-assertion of the centrality of the political, that society is decided through the outcomes of political struggles (between, in Tronti’s scheme, class and capital) not the unfolding of economic laws. This political struggle can, and does, take place through what are often called reformist politics (Lenin’s “trade union consciousness” springs to mind here). Here Tronti distinguishes between two kinds of reformism, one forced through by the working class and one pushed through by capital. Whereas the former destabilises capitalism, the latter (if not contested) helps to stabilise it into new regimes of accumulation.
Our discussions turned towards how useful this perspective is for understanding (and acting) in the here and now. The emerging forms of struggle which Tronti noticed in the early 1960’s (sabotage, absenteeism, wildcat strikes) are no longer visible or a large factor in struggles in the Global North. The current forms of working class struggle are even harder to see today. Clearly, the situation looks very different in 2012: New patterns of (precarious) work, the collapse of the Left and the move towards a post-political society and a global crisis in perpetual flux all shape a very different situation. Whilst we see less days of strike action and the radical left is far from visible struggle still continues. Internet piracy, riots, Occupy and the turn to crime by large portions of a now “surplus” population all represent different, problematic and contradictory, responses to the current regime of capitalism.
Next Session (Tuesday March 12th) we will be meeting at 5:30 (room TBC). Readings are: The Refusal of Work * Key text: The Strategy of Refusal - Mario Tronti. * Optional but short and provides a very different perspective: The Refusal of Work - Porto Maghera Workers. * Optional: The Struggle Against Labor - Mario Tronti
2ND MEETING TOMORROW (TUESDAY 26TH FEB) AT 5PM IN ROOM A114, SAMUEL ALEXANDER BUILDING, MANCHESTER UNIVERSITY. The text is 'Lenin in England' by Mario Tronti.
We met for the first time this week. 12 of us discussed the first chapter from Steve Wright's book Storming Heaven. We are a mix of students, post-grads and people that live and work in Manchester. We bring a variety of experiences, knowledges and interests to the group.
The first chapter discussed the 1950's in Italy, the state of the largest socialist parties at the time (The Communist Party - PCI and the Socialist Party - PSI) and the socio-economic context they were operating in. Some of the key areas raised by Operaismo emerged today; the role of technology, the nature of work, workers autonomy, how to create political strategy, the meaning of revolution. Hopefull we will return to these themes in the next few weeks. We now have an email list set up. Contact us at [email protected]
Next session: The Copernican Inversion: Struggle is the Motor * Lenin in England - Mario Tronti * The Capitalist Use of Machinery - Raniero Panzieri * Socialist Uses of Workers’ Inquiry - Raniero Panzieri * Domination and Sabotage - Antonio Negri
Key text: Lenin in England
Meeting: 5:30 Tuesday 26th February. Room TBC, get in touch for details.
OPERAISMO READING GROUP STARTS ON 12TH FEB, 5PM, SAMUEL ALEXANDER BUILDING NORTH WING, STUDIO 5. WOOPEEE!
What is Operaismo?
Operaismo is many things to many people.Here is the briefest of introductions on Wikipedia.
Operaismo - A Reading Group!
All Welcome!
Fortnightly sessions exploring dissident marxist theory and practice from '60s/'70s Italy - the rowdy sibling of France's May '68.
This reading group will be takling place in Manchester in the UK. If you get inspired and do something similair elsewhere then let us know.
The First session will be on Tuesday 12th February - room TBC.
Below is an outline of the kind of things we'll be reading (Maybe not all of it and certainyl not too quickly!).
Check this tumblr soon for more details as to the room and the first reading!
The Curtain Rises: Introduction to Italy in the 1960's and 1970's * When two sevens clash: punk and autonomia - Free Association * The Italian background - Ernest Dowson * Introduction to the revolutionary left in Italy - Jim Kaplan * The Renascence of Operaismo - Wildcat * Storming Heaven chapter 1 - Steve Wright
The Copernican Inversion: Struggle is the Motor * Lenin in England - Mario Tronti * The Capitalist Use of Machinery - Raniero Panzieri * Socialist Uses of Workers' Inquiry - Raniero Panzieri * Domination and Sabotage - Antonio Negri
The Refusal of Work * The Strategy of Refusal - Mario Tronti. * The Refusal of Work - Porto Maghera Workers. * The Struggle Against Labor - Mario Tronti The Social Factory: New subjects and the rise of Post-Fordism * Women and the Subversion of Community - Mariarosa Dalla Costa and Selma James * Theses on the Mass Worker and Social Capital - Silvia Federici and Mario Montano * (1982) Archaelogy and Project: The Mass Worker and the Social Worker - Antonio Negri
The State as Planner and the Rise of the Crisis State * (1967)Keynes and the Capitalist Theory of the State (in L/D and Revolution Retrieved) - Antonio Negri * Crisis of the Planner-State: Communism and Revolutionary Organization (in Books for Burning) - Antonio Negri * Surplus Value and Planning - Raniero Panzieri Class and Party * Tribe of Moles - Sergio Bologna * Worker’s Party Against Work - Antonio Negri * Class Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origin of the Workers' Council Movement - Sergio Bologna.
The Legacy of Operaismo * Defeat at Fiat - Marco Revelli * Our Operaismo - Mario Tronti * On Italian Workerism - Riccardo Bellofiore & Massimiliano Tomba * Between Panzieri and Negri: Mario Tronti and the workerism of the 1960s and 1970s - Riccardo Bellofiore
