German journal/discussion group Krisis
Jun 29 2008 10:57
Does anyone (Angelus Novus most likely) know anything about the German journal and discussion group Krisis? While my German is pretty poor, from what I've managed to understand, their articles seem pretty interesting.
Does any of their stuff get translated into English (or Norwegian)?
Jun 29 2008 14:01
#2
There is a discussion about their piece 'Manifesto Against Labour' in the new issue of Letters. There's a link to the original Krisis article on www.lettersjournal.org
Jun 29 2008 16:17
#3
Cheers georgestapleton and yoshomon!
Jan 11 2009 18:38
#4
Khawaga,
Krisis came to public prominence in the 1990s through their famous member Robert Kurz, and his books _Der Kollaps der Modernisierung_ (the collapse of modernization) and _Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus_ (the black book of capitalism).
Like Postone, they emphasize the centrality of Marx's fetish theory and the analysis of the form of value instead of class struggle and wealth distribution. Unlike Postone, they also advocate a sort of theory of automatic collapse of capitalism on the basis of an incorrect (IMHO) reading of a specific passage in the Grundrisse, incidentally, the same passage that Negri claims proves that the law of value is no longer operating!
Kurz and his partner Roswitha Scholz split off to form the group Exit!, and their website is at http://www.exit-online.org
The grounds for the split are obscure to outsiders. The remaining Krisis members claim it was mainly personal and that Kurz and Scholz are merely rude and overbearing , whereas Kurz and Scholz claim that the remaining Krisis members are sexists for not really accepting Scholz's "Wertabspaltungstheorie" (which claims that modern society is structurally split into a gendered "male" sphere of value production and a gendered "female" sphere of reproductive activity not mediated by value).
Both Exit! and Krisis would probably describe themselves as something like co-thinkers of Postone, although they arrived at their respective theories in complete isolation.
Anselm Jappe has written an introductory book on the "Wertkritik" of Krisis and Exit! that has been published in German and French, according to Principia Dialectica, Verso turned down the idea of publishing an English version.
Jun 29 2008 23:01
#5
P.S.
In the 1990s, when "Anti-German" was still a relatively uncontroversial and respectable part of the radical left in Germany, both Krisis and the Anti-Germans around the group Initiative Sozialistisches Forum Freiburg and the journal Bahamas were subsumed under the same broad label of Wertkritik (the critique of value).
Back then, to distinguish between Krisis and the ISF/Bahamas, the label "fundamentale Wertkritik" was applied to the former and "Antideutsche Wertkritik" to the latter.
The main difference was that Krisis placed a greater emphasis upon analysis of economic developments, whereas the ISF and Bahamas were occupied primarily with the critique of ideology. Also, the latter did not really accept the economic fatalism of Krisis.
Generally, the two tendencies were friendly towards each other, and sometimes even published in each others journals (Gerhard Scheit, now a completely insane Anti-Muslim racist, published a decent article back in the day after Haider first came to power).
It was not until 11.09.01 that the tendencies became irreconcilable. Kurz published a book-length polemic against the ISF/Bahamas brand of Anti-German thought (a really good book, by the way, showing them up where they completely get Marx and Adorno wrong).
Interestingly enough, Kurz and Krisis remain pro-Israel from an otherwise anti-statist perspective. Kurz maintains that Israel is the only nation-state on the planet with a right to exist, and "solely as a result of the Shoah".
Kurz also did quite a bit in the 1990s to popularize the phrase "structural Anti-semitism" in the leftist scene, a term used to describe any anti-capitalist sentiment limited to the criticism of financial markets.
Jun 30 2008 08:12
#6
Cheers Angelus Novus! I thought you might know quite a bit about them.
What is the gist of Krisis's Wertkritik?
Quote:
they also advocate a sort of theory of automatic collapse of capitalism on the basis of an incorrect (IMHO) reading of a specific passage in the Grundrisse, incidentally, the same passage that Negri claims proves that the law of value is no longer operating!
I take it that this is the (in)famous fragment on the machines?
Quote:
"Wertabspaltungstheorie"
This is interesting. Does it draw on or is similar to social factory thinking? Dalla Costa is kind of similar, though she refers to the homosexuality of the division of labour (and that reproductive work is productive - which I believe is incorrect).
Jul 1 2008 03:49
#7
Quote:
I think it is fair to say that Exit! is something of a sect around Kurz and Scholz, but the journal is still worth reading, even if Kurz has a loutish quality seemingly possessed by all sect leaders. The Krisis people are more sympathetic, but there is no question they lost their theoeretical heavy-hitters through the split, but they are more open to the broader radical left milieu. Ernst Lohoff and Norbert Trenkle regularly publish in papers and magazines like Jungle World and Phase 2.
I thought both of these were also Anti-German. Are they not? (I should probably also add I don't have a word of german. And basically all my knowledge of the anti-german scene comes from aut-op-sy. i.e. you if I remember correctly.)
Jan 11 2009 18:39
#8
.
Jul 1 2008 14:03
#9
georgestapleton wrote:
I thought both of these were also Anti-German. Are they not?
Yes and no. Jungle World is derided as such by its opponents, but it's not a very apt description. They publish everything from Sergio Bologna to French Trotskyists to god knows what. In their most recent issue, they published a long dossier excerpting the first ever German translation of Pannekoek's "Workers Councils", which has just been issued in book form. "Left-pluralist" would be a better description, but they annoy the traditional Leninist left by criticizing Anti-Zionism and also publishing hardcore ADs (although the worst of the worst, like Uli Krug of Bahamas, are limited to writing music reviews, thank god).
Phase 2 is more "Anti-German", but not at all in the sense of ISF/Bahamas. For one thing, they are heavily into Foucault and biopolitics, which in the eyes of ISF/Bahamas ADs is tantamount to taking a shit on the carpet.
Phase 2 was originally intended to be a regroupment journal coming out of the collapse of the AA/BO (Antifascist Action national organization). It sort of got taken over by the Leipzig and Berlin editorial groups and no longer serves this purpose. It's a pretty good magazine, but reflects all the weaknesses and shortcomings of the scene it comes out of.
Jul 1 2008 15:47
#10
Quote:
For another thing, the contention of Scholz is precisely that capitalist society is split into a sphere mediated by value, and a sphere of reproductive activity that can not be effectively valorized. Whereas if I've understood my operaismo correctly, people like Cleaver and other "social worker" theorists basically argue that everything is value-producing labor.
Does Scholz argue that the sphere of reproductive activity is exclusively woman, or just gendered as female? Also, does this rely on the productive/unproductive distinction of labour? Cleaver and the like have rejected that distinction - basically collapsed all labour into being productive. So yeah, when I wash my clothes or make myself a cup of tea alone at home I am creating value for capital. Go figure, I've never really been able to figure out how that can be so. Functional to capital it is, but not productive.
Jul 1 2008 15:49
#11
I haven't read anything by Heinrich. I don't suppose you'd be interested in getting whatever is online by him and other wertkritik people and put them in the libcom library?
Jul 1 2008 15:53
#12
Jul 1 2008 17:52
#13
georgestapleton wrote:
I haven't read anything by Heinrich. I don't suppose you'd be interested in getting whatever is online by him and other wertkritik people and put them in the libcom library?
Just leave libcom and go here: http://www.oekonomiekritik.de/English.htm
Jan 11 2009 18:40
#14
Khawaga wrote:
Does Scholz argue that the sphere of reproductive activity is exclusively woman, or just gendered as female?
Scholz's actual claim is far more specific, namely that modern gender roles as such result from this splitting off into valued and non-value spheres.
Quote:
Also, does this rely on the productive/unproductive distinction of labour?
Strictly speaking, both "productive" and "unproductive" labour in Marx's account are mediated by value.
Cleaver and other "social worker" types, on the other hand, totally misuse Marx's value theory by attempting to apply it to spheres of social life that it by definition is not concerned with.
georgestapleton wrote:
him and other wertkritik people
One should be careful about subsuming too many schools of thought under the label of wertkritik. Strictly speaking, it only applies to Krisis/Exit and with some qualifications to ISF/Bahamas.
There is a longer tradition of form-analytical readings of the critique of poltiical economy, with a prehistory in figures like Rubin and Paschukanis and extending to the so-called neue Marx-Lektüre (new reading of Marx) of the 1970s (Backhaus, Reichelt) and contemporary thinkers in this lineage (Heinrich, Dieter Wolf, Nadja Rakowitz, Postone, even Holloway). Wertkritik proper should be understood as a subset of this broader lineage.
Jul 2 2008 01:27
#15
BillJ wrote:
georgestapleton wrote:
I haven't read anything by Heinrich. I don't suppose you'd be interested in getting whatever is online by him and other wertkritik people and put them in the libcom library?Just leave libcom and go here: http://www.oekonomiekritik.de/English.htm
Cool cheers
Jul 2 2008 11:14
#16
Khawaga wrote:
[Cleaver and the like have rejected that distinction - basically collapsed all labour into being productive. So yeah, when I wash my clothes or make myself a cup of tea alone at home I am creating value for capital. Go figure, I've never really been able to figure out how that can be so. Functional to capital it is, but not productive.
I would say that the point is to see what reproduce capitalist relations, and what does not. to make oneself a cup of tea obviously does not. but housewives work can, depends of how it relates to social production. for exemple what reproduce oppression, hierarchical relations, etc...could be seen as a part of the production of capitalist relations. if you remember that what capitalism produce is above all capitalists relations, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, labour power as a commodity, a specific kind of division of labour, etc...
seems to me that Michael A.Lebowitz wrote some interesting things about productive/unproductive labour in "Beyond capital: Marx's political economy of the working class."
Jul 2 2008 11:22
#17
Quote:
I would say that the point is to see what reproduce capitalist relations, and what does not. to make oneself a cup of tea obviously does not. but housewives work can, depends of how it relates to social production. for exemple what reproduce oppression, hierarchical relations, etc...could be seen as a part of the production of capitalist relations. if you remember that what capitalism produce is above all capitalists relations, the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, labour power as a commodity, a specific kind of division of labour, etc...
I do agree with you that capitalism is mainly reproducing itself, and it is in this that housework and all that come in. But some autonomists argue that housework produces value for capital, and this is what I have problems understanding. Why is the housewife (or stay home father) producing value for capital when s/he makes a cup of tea for their better half while when the bachelor worker does the same it is not productive?
Jul 2 2008 12:06
#18
Quote:
I do agree with you that capitalism is mainly reproducing itself, and it is in this that housework and all that come in. But some autonomists argue that housework produces value for capital, and this is what I have problems understanding. Why is the housewife (or stay home father) producing value for capital when s/he makes a cup of tea for their better half while when the bachelor worker does the same it is not productive?
maybe that just show that an analysis in term of class relations, class struggle, is more relevant than an analysis based on value , refering everything to value?
but, I'm not sure of that, maybe those autonomist, like let's say Cleaver mean that value is a socail, relation, a class relation, is related to class struggle?
for me that's the only way to make sense of it...
Jul 2 2008 12:11
#19
Quote:
maybe that just show that an analysis in term of class relations, class struggle, is more relevant than an analysis based on value , refering everything to value?
I think both are important. Just because I believe that some labour is unproductive (accounting, housework e.g.) doesn't mean that they haven't got revolutionary agency.
Jul 2 2008 12:56
#20
yeah both are important, the point is to combine both and not just stick to value analysis even when it's irrelevant. maybe a way to combine both analysis is to link them by thinking value in term of social relation.
and of course if productive labour is labour that produce capital, unproductive labour do have a revolutionnary agency. indeed in that way it is the revolutionnary agency...
Jul 2 2008 14:43
#21
Khawaga wrote:
But some autonomists argue that housework produces value for capital, and this is what I have problems understanding. Why is the housewife (or stay home father) producing value for capital when s/he makes a cup of tea for their better half while when the bachelor worker does the same it is not productive?
I don't either agree with this or disagree with it. It something I'm not sure on but to answer your question because its productive of labour power. The value of labour power is of cost of reprodcuing labour power which is where reproductive labour comes in. So a woman is receiving payment via her husbancd for the reproductive labour she engages in to produce her husband and their children. The value of this payment is a site of struggle which is mediated by the family. i.e. the woman demands more money from her husband instead of both demanding more money from the capitalist. This location of a struggle over the value of labour power (or the wage) outside of the 'factory' facilitates the under-compensation of the worker for his labour power. Of course it is the fact that a worker is paid the price of his labour power and not the price of the products of his labour that enables the capitalist to acrue surplus value. And the magnitude of this surplus value is determined by both the value of the products of the workers labour and the value of his labour power. What is clear is that the under/non-compensation of the housewife for her labour ensure a reduction in the value of labour power thus enabling the capitalist to acrue more surplus value. Dalla Costa would argue that this is the housewife producing surplus value, I'm not sure. But it is clear that the housewife's undercompensation enables the value of labour power to remain artificially low and her demands for hot water, creches, better food, electricity, against the poll tax/water tax/bin tax etc. (this struggles have generally been led by women in the home) have seen the increase in the 'moral-historical' component of the value of labour power. i.e. class struggle increases the social wage and reduces the amount of surplus value acrued to capital. So although I'm not sure that housewives produce surplus value their struggles are struggles over surplus value and the distribution of value.
Jul 2 2008 15:27
#22
Georgestapleton wrote:
So although I'm not sure that housewives produce surplus value their struggles are struggles over surplus value and the distribution of value.
yes, or otherwise said it is stuggle to impose the needs ot the workers against those of capital, human needs against capitalist accumulation.
Jul 14 2008 13:12
#23
Hi All.
I think the classic autonomist argument made by people like Fortunati and Dalla Costa is that reproductive labour does not produce value per se but <i>labour power</i>: the source of value
Those like Negri and Virno argue that the critical productive force is excessive of the factory proper as is its space of exploitation: it is now social life on whole. Thus they would include in it 'housework' as well as everything else .
rebel love
Dave
Jul 16 2008 10:40
#24
Quote:
Those like Negri and Virno argue that the critical productive force is excessive of the factory proper as is its space of exploitation: it is now social life on whole.
What a fucking banality. The reproduction of society, as well as of labor-power, has always been dependent upon processes not subsumed to the logic of value.
The point is that Marx's value theory is by definition only concerned with those processes mediated by money and exchange.
Negri's whole theoretical apparatus is based upon a non-sequiter.
Die, post-operaismo, die!
Jul 22 2008 10:51
#25
Does anyone know how Robert Kurz's or Roswitha Scholz's writings got to Brazil? I'm in the midst of research on the Union of Cearense Women (Ceará is in the northeastern region of Brazil) and they are followers of both Kurz and Scholz. Kurz has been published quite a bit in Brazil, especially in the Folha de São Paulo. I am just wondering how this connection started? I read something recently that indicated that there has been a connection between Germany and Brazil for some time. Anyone know anything else about this?
I wanted to thank all the contributors to this discussion because you have really helped me understand more about Kurz, Scholz, Krisis and Exit!
Why haven't there been more translations into English? Mostly I find Portuguese (which I can read) and of course German, which, unfortunately, I cannot read at all.
Jul 22 2008 11:33
#26
abfab wrote:
Why haven't there been more translations into English?
Until Principia Dialectica came along, Krisis/Exit didn't really have anything like co-thinkers in the English-speaking world.
I'd like to help out the Principia folks with some translations, but I've got to get further with my current translation load first...
Feb 5 2009 03:59
#27
The critical dialogue about 'Manifesto Against Labour' that appeared in the Letters #2 is now online:
Feb 8 2009 19:35
#28
yoshomon wrote:
The critical dialogue about 'Manifesto Against Labour' that appeared in the Letters #2 is now online:
Quote:
The service industry now makes up some 75% of the labour force. Anyone who has worked in the past 30 years knows that there is a significant difference in working today. How could there not be? Work and its ethic have been dismantled, yet somehow labour becomes an ideology stronger than ever. This is counter-intuitive and poses many problems. From an anti-political perspective I think there is much needed here. In the way of depatterning our working lives, how we think about work and exploring what is possible away from work creation. GK do not answer this, but they are right to poke at the changing labour idol.
The first sentence here is pure neo-liberal dotcom era fantasy. The composition of the job market in "western" states is pretty transparent as a consequence and dynamic of class-war. In the mainstream media and for people who want us to see the world in terms of "national interest", this is called "outsourcing". States where much of this production has been "outsourced" to, China for one example, has a small service sector at still less than 3% of GDP.
While manufacturing has indeed become somewhat more capital intensive than it was 50 years ago, and this has in turn effected capitalists' ability to extract surplus value, this v/c ratio stuff is on a way smaller scale than what you are talking about and does not change anything fundamental about the capital relation.
Feb 8 2009 19:49
#29
tsi wrote:
While manufacturing has indeed become somewhat more capital intensive than it was 50 years ago, and this has in turn effected capitalists' ability to extract surplus value, this v/c ratio stuff is on a way smaller scale than what you are talking about and does not change anything fundamental about the capital relation.
The text is a dialogue/debate between two people, one of whom moreorless says exactly what you say above.
yeah it does. By these guys http://www.principiadialectica.co.uk/
Some stuff by them in english is here http://www.balzix.de/nav_94.html