Cleaver's response to Aufheben review
Apr 8 2004 17:11
Here is a link to Harry Cleaver's very detailed response to the review of his book 'Reading Capital Politically' in a copy of the journal 'Aufheben';
http://www.eco.utexas.edu/facstaff/Cleaver/AufhebenResponse2.pdf
I read Aufheben's review a while back and whilst it led me to read Cleaver's book(as well as Steve wright's book on Italian Autonomist Maxism-which is also covered in the same 'review') there were a number of things written in their article that I was not impressed by eg.their discussion of class. Cleaver's response is extremely detailed -with comments made almost paragraph by paragraph- and is well worth reading for anyone interested in autonomist marxism.
Apr 19 2004 11:39
#2
From my limited understanding of autonomous Marxism (have only read a couple of very short articles and have only just started "Reading Capital Politically"), it appears that they take a very different view of what constitutes the working class from traditional Marxism. For traditional Marxism the "working class" was defined, in part, by the fact they received a wage for the work they produced. Autonomous Marxism developed to understand the "working class" as the "social worker", including those who did not receive a wage. This included the likes of students, housewives/husbands etc, with the rationale being that all these groups helped, in their own way, to reproduce labour as they are all integral parts of the "social factory". For example, autonomous Marxists would argue for wages for housework as housewives/husbands help bring up children (thus reproducing labour), ensure that their partners can relax when they return home from work etc.
I'm not an expert on this viewpoint at all, but I think one of the main criticisms of this approach is that it ends up defining loads of people as "workers" and, hence, tends to lose the ability to diferentiate between what are different groups. I'm sure most Autonomous Marxists would say that this criticism is rubbish, and that each group will still need to develop different, but often complementary, approaches (hence the "autonomous" in their title) to act against capital.
Anyone have any thoughts on this?
Redmist - is Steve Wright's book worth reading?
Apr 19 2004 11:52
#3
It is supposed to be very good. Check www.abebooks.com fo it. I'll be buying it as soon as I make my way through the current mountain that I have!
Butchers is your man on autonomism, by the way.
I have just finished that article above, and was a bit dissapointed with Aufheben's review. I found Reading Capital Politically to be a very useful book, one that was articulating a positive development of marxist thought in a direction that is very useful to anarchists.
Aufheben confused me as they constantly referred to "autonomism" as a bad development, when I was under the impression that they were the foermweost autonomist marxist journal in the UK? TheCommoner is as well, but I think that Aufheben is better respected.
Cleaver's criticisms of their review were on the whole fair, although he did seem to personalise the whole issue a little too much for me.
Has anyone on here read much more by Negri? What about the impenetrable "Empire"?
Apr 19 2004 11:54
#4
It is supposed to be very good. Check www.abebooks.com fo it. I'll be buying it as soon as I make my way through the current mountain that I have!
Butchers is your man on autonomism, by the way.
I have just finished that article above, and was a bit dissapointed with Aufheben's review. I found Reading Capital Politically to be a very useful book, one that was articulating a positive development of marxist thought in a direction that is very useful to anarchists.
Aufheben confused me as they constantly referred to "autonomism" as a bad development, when I was under the impression that they were the foermweost autonomist marxist journal in the UK? TheCommoner is as well, but I think that Aufheben is better respected.
Cleaver's criticisms of their review were on the whole fair, although he did seem to personalise the whole issue a little too much for me.
Has anyone on here read much more by Negri? What about the impenetrable "Empire"?
Apr 19 2004 15:32
#5
pingtiao wrote:
Has anyone on here read much more by Negri? What about the impenetrable "Empire"?
These is a long anarchist review of it at http://struggle.ws/andrew/empirereview.html also in Swedish at http://www.yelah.net/articles/analys020319
Apr 22 2004 17:26
#6
empire has some good points in it but they are hidden in dense academic references to spinoza and machiavelli (spelling??), then u realise that any useful points he has got to say have been said before in much more concrete terms.
Negri just seems to be a academic poster boy for poseurs and ivory tower intellectuals, like Cleaver he is not very critical of national liberation struggles (bar a few superficial comments on the state being the poisined chalice of national liberation).
anyways Cleaver is much more accesible than Negri, and much more concrete in terms of relating to working class struggles (or if ur Negri struggles of the multitude, what a tosser!), wanting to get my hands of a copy of torming Heaven as it looks like it is better than Reading Capital Politicaly.
P.S. anyonelse read On Fire! (the book of accounts about Genoa) its great but anyway I read it before i had heard all the hype regarding Negri, well the other day i just reread it and realised Negri's contribution was complete toss perhaps the worst piece in it besides that Venus 'love will conquer all' twat.
What problems did you have with their discussion of class?