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
