Open marxism
Apr 9 2006 19:06
Hi, Ive just finished "change the world without taking power" by John Holloway and I was wondering if anyone had any recomendations for other books along a similar line.
Has anyone read it themselves? Did you rate it?
I read "reading capital politically" just before this and thought that was pretty good. I havent read empire or multitude and was maybe thinking of delving into some SouB stuff
Thanks for any thoughts
Apr 9 2006 19:48
#2
I've got Aufheben 13 on order from Akpress. I should really subscribe tho as I like reading their stuff. Find it hard to work through sometimes but enjoy it all the same!
Apr 10 2006 00:48
#3
Hi there firstly i really like Empire & Multitude but Holloway is a different kettle of fish - i like hime even more!
I would recommend Revolutionary Writing : Common Sense Essays in Post-Political Politics edited by W. Bonefeld. A fantastic work.
Oh if you have not yet read Caliban & the Witch by Federici, go do it , and the Midnight Notes Collective works too!
Apr 10 2006 05:11
#4
if you liked Harry Cleaver's reading capital politically, i wonder if you've read Nick Dyer-Witherford's 'Cyber-Marx'. Its online as a PDF somewhere.
i really really enjoyed Peter Linebaugh's and Marcus Rediker's book "The Many Headed Hydra". If you like history that is not dry and boring its great. Linebaugh is an autonomist Marxist who is or was in the Midnight Notes collective.
Apr 10 2006 08:40
#5
Skraeling wrote:
i wonder if you've read Nick Dyer-Witherford's 'Cyber-Marx'. Its online as a PDF somewhere.
Apr 10 2006 10:03
#6
multitude and empire are alright but it just baffles me that Negri and Hardt act dumb to so much. I mean the concept of the multitude they put forward is really nothing more than the proletariat the more advanced sections of marxism and anarchism had theorised decades ago. Where it stretches beyond that it just becomes a hinderance for analysis, pasting over cracks and antagonism like humanism polyfilla.
Apr 10 2006 10:21
#7
Skraeling wrote:
Peter Linebaugh's and Marcus Rediker's book "The Many Headed Hydra".
Just picked up the London Hanged, in a normal bookshop as well (but one that's about to be taken over and asset stripped by HMV 
)
Apr 10 2006 14:41
#8
revol68 wrote:
multitude and empire are alright but it just baffles me that Negri and Hardt act dumb to so much. I mean the concept of the multitude they put forward is really nothing more than the proletariat the more advanced sections of marxism and anarchism had theorised decades ago. Where it stretches beyond that it just becomes a hinderance for analysis, pasting over cracks and antagonism like humanism polyfilla.
Can you expand on this?
iirc holloway criticised negri for concieving of the multitude as autonomous but external to capital. Essentially a positivist conception that reversed the leninist outlook and attributed all power to the working class struggle with any movement of capital determined only by the actions of the working class.
Holloway seemed to be saying this was a mistake as there is no objective working class as such, only the contadictory lives of those who live within capital. The contradiction being between the inherent "power to" of humans and its coversion into its fetishised form "power over". He theorised that this contradiction was present in not just those are in direct employed labour but in all who are distanced from social self determination ie housewives, students etc and that the challenge to capitalism was these people coming together to create a society on their terms not capitals.
Havent read empire or multitude yet so I cant comment too much on negri's outlook.
All the other reccomendations sound good tho
Cheers
Apr 10 2006 17:09
#9
Yeah the comcept of the mulitude wasn't negri and hardt invention. It was developed in and around the italian post-autonomia left and through the journals 'futur anterieur' and 'multitudes' in france.
The idea is a bit wobbly. For example Virno uses it as a replacement to the concept of 'the people', because he says that there no longer are peoples of the world but a multitude of the world. He says that it doesn't really affect the essential idea of the proletariat that much rather it helps us understand class composition better.
Which is different but also extremely similar to Negri and Hardt's idea of the multitude. It is particularly similar when you consider how Negri and Hardt present and develop the idea of the multitude in Empire.
Apr 12 2006 13:58
#10
There is a host of material by the Open Marxism folks.
The 3 vol Open Marxism set has a lot of good stuff. Werner Bonefeld did an interesting book with Sergio Tischler called 'What Is To Be Done?'. Bonefeld and Holloway have a good set of essays called Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money. Bonefeld also has two excellent books on English politics, one on the Thatcher years and one on Major.
Dave's recommendation is a good one though, nice overview.
Check the list of articles in the library here by Werner Bonefeld and Holloway, of course. Cyril Smith and Paresh Chattopadhyay have a similar orientation, though not directly connected. Ana Dinerstein, Richard Gunn, Simon Clarke, Kosmas Psychopedis and Justin Rosenberg (sic) all move in this milieu too.
cheers,
chris
Apr 12 2006 14:26
#11
Btw, this may seem odd, but I think there is a greater affinity theoretically between Slavoj Zizek and the Open Marxism folks that between them and the autonomists.
I am working on making this more explicit in essay form, and it involves a kind of interrogation of each by the other. My thought is that they are linked closely by the questions they ask and how they answer them, although their political impulses are often radically different. The Open Marxism folks are politically much closer to the autonomists, and Zizek likes to prate on about being a Leninist, but I do not think that decides the issue and a common political ground exists insofar as the working together of their theoretical work leads in a different direction altogether.
chris
Apr 12 2006 14:41
#12
twister,
what your saying about Zizek seems interesting, I mean much of Zizeks theory is about creating a place, or rather non place to be lacanian about it, for a critical intervention.
I've seen little in his work that proposes the concrete manner of this intervention, and that which I have is a terrible rehashing of euro communsm.
Apr 13 2006 04:18
#13
damn wrote a really good bit on the concept of the multitude but it seems to have disappeared.
Negri identifies multitude as three things ( in Negri on Negri)
1) a transhistorical catagory of political analysis taken from Spinoza conterposed to the more dominant one of the people from Hobbes
2) the contemporary class composition of Empire
3) the term for the subject and political program of communism in the here and now
cheers
Dave
Apr 20 2006 18:31
#14
revol68 wrote:
twister,what your saying about Zizek seems interesting, I mean much of Zizeks theory is about creating a place, or rather non place to be lacanian about it, for a critical intervention.
I've seen little in his work that proposes the concrete manner of this intervention, and that which I have is a terrible rehashing of euro communsm.
Well, that's part of what is interesting. His formal politics often kind of suck. then again, he is an awful Leninist. He is in fact closer to the various Bordiga-Left Communists in reality, IMO, but he seems to have no familiarity with that set of ideas.
Then again, I have problems with the Open Marxism folks politics too. Zizek's critique of Beautiful Souls hits home at times.
The new-ish book Human Dignity is a good example of the best and worst of their stuff. The 2nd and 3rd chapters are brilliant, but the next 3 are, to me, hopeless. Not finished yet though, so...
But the similarities theoretically are really there and have jumped out at me. They really fill in gaps in each other's work, emphasizing one or another aspect. Compare Ch. 4 of Zizek's Tarrying with the Negative with Richard Gunn's 'Marxism and Philosophy', CJ Arthur's ch. 2 of his last book on historical versus systematic dialectic and parts of Helmut Dubiel's excellent book on the Frankfurters. Its one long discussion of dialectic that totally avoids the weird historicism of typical orthodox Marxism.
Chris
Apr 26 2006 02:31
#15
Dave Antagonism wrote:
Quote:
damn wrote a really good bit on the concept of the multitude but it seems to have disappeared.Negri identifies multitude as three things ( in Negri on Negri)
1) a transhistorical catagory of political analysis taken from Spinoza conterposed to the more dominant one of the people from Hobbes
2) the contemporary class composition of Empire
3) the term for the subject and political program of communism in the here and now
agamben has a good short piece called 'what is the people?' or somfink like that. the thing is, notions such as 'people' and 'multitude' maybe 'transhistorical' (wow!) but having said that they are historical too. i'm not sure exactly what you're getting at re: transhistorical. i take it you mean they have a usage that differs over time (ie. agamben looks at the roots of the term 'the people' in the ancient roman world), and therefore they are historically contingent before they are 'transhistorical.' however i seem to think that the term 'transhistorical' is doing service for 'ahistorical.' spinoza's attack on hobbes is most certainly historical, and is related to their differing notions of sovereignity and what constitutes this (ie. i seem to remember that a people is constituted by sovereignity in hobbes...?).
i tend to think that 'multitude' is more confusing than clarifying. negri, in rejecting the dialectic, wants to emphasise one term, labour, over another, capital. it seems amazing to me that he fails to recognize these determinations as moments in a process - ie. there is no 'capital' thing or 'labour' thing. i think there is a 'subject' of communism insofar as their is a collective subject that constitutes itself negatively in regards to the wage relation, i.e. the capital relation - a working class for itself in old skool parlance. negri seems to be arguing for the constitution of multitude *despite* the capital relation, rather than against it. i just can't dig this at all. we've tried this before - its called social democracy.
man, i gotta stop procrastinating and get back to this essay. how else am i going to valorize the capital relation?
shamass
Apr 26 2006 04:42
#16
By transhistorical i did not mean ahistorical. But rather Negri and Virno use the term multitude in reference to a debate at the dawn of modernity ( Hobbes in one corner, Spinoza in the other) and in context of today. One could suppose, and they DO NOT SAY THIS that this conflict could be posed in any time in between as well be that 1917. 1968 or 1867 ( i have no idea if anything "interesting" happened in that year, i just picked it randomly.)
mad love
Dave
Apr 26 2006 05:57
#17
Quote:
By transhistorical i did not mean ahistorical. But rather Negri and Virno use the term multitude in reference to a debate at the dawn of modernity ( Hobbes in one corner, Spinoza in the other) and in context of today. One could suppose, and they DO NOT SAY THIS that this conflict could be posed in any time in between as well be that 1917. 1968 or 1867 ( i have no idea if anything "interesting" happened in that year, i just picked it randomly.)
hey dude, i didn't accuse you of being ahistorical, however i did point to "the term 'transhistorical'... doing service for 'ahistorical.'" really, all negri is trying to get at is an a struggle that either is constituted by a sovereign/state/from above or is self-constituting. no biggie, really. however one wonders why he uses 'multitude.' is it in order to return to a notion of self-constitution *despite* the wage relation? i still cannot see how his terminololgy is any real advance. it appears that critical theory is a victim of fashion too. but of course, of course.
its cool you picked 1867 at random. one "interesting" thing that happened was that this dude called Karl Marx had the first volume of his opus, Das Kapital, published...
shamass
Apr 26 2006 06:19
#18
just briefly on the problem of multitude. i reckon the people/multitude dialectic is interesting. however, multitude is used as a superior analytic category to working class (in all of its senses eg wc in itself, for itself, etc). multitude's necessary correlate in negri's thought is "immaterial labour." this, at least, should be a warning to not get too lost in the misty spinozaian origins of the term as coopted by toni n. however, immaterial labour for negri operates insofar as value is no longer the measure of the commodity. that is, immaterial labour in all of its guises (ie. the multitude) are productice (of the social totality - ie. the social factory). but what happened to the imposition of value? it seems to have disappeared. maybe i just don't get negri, but with the multitude facing off against empire, what exactly is constitutive of capital anymore? the imposition of value through the wage relation - well, of course not! just sometype of diffuse "domination" it would appear.
shamass
Apr 27 2006 00:57
#19
For the sake of being a nerd it is worth pointing out that immaterial labour is one of the difference between Negri and Virno - Virno rejects it as he does the the idea of "Empire".
A more serious point about the difference between class for/in itself. I think the autonomist idea of the ontology ( is that the term i am looking for) of capitalism - that it is driven by struggle means that when class relations reach a new composition they kind of embodied the victories of the previous composition....hm lost me train of thought
Apr 29 2006 12:42
#20
shamass wrote:
Quote:
For the sake of being a nerd it is worth pointing out that immaterial labour is one of the difference between Negri and Virno - Virno rejects it as he does the the idea of "Empire".A more serious point about the difference between class for/in itself. I think the autonomist idea of the ontology ( is that the term i am looking for) of capitalism - that it is driven by struggle means that when class relations reach a new composition they kind of embodied the victories of the previous composition....hm lost me train of thought
yeah, i really should read 'grammar of the multitude.' even now its spine is glowering (?) at me from the bookshelf...
ditch this 'ontology of capitalism' schtick. it makes you sound the right 'radical academic.' how about just capitalism? presumably the present being of capital (chortle) (roar! ohmigod the being of capital is outta control! it will destroy us all... erm, i couldn't resist that) embodies the victories *and* defeats of the class struggle. immaterial labour seems to expound a one directionality to class recomposition ie. it always gets better for us, the working class is becoming progressively more the class for itself etc. i don't buy this. it seems as if the leninist concept of the revolutionary party as the collective repository of the class (or suppository methinks) is just diffuse throughout the social factory and hey presto! we have the whole social factory lead by the vanguard of those clever-dick immaterial labourers.
shamass
Quote:
Quote:
hey presto! we have the whole social factory lead by the vanguard of those clever-dick immaterial labourers.Who just happen to be university lecturers
Apr 29 2006 15:31
#21
is there a post missing here?...it makes mudy waters a shade of extra mud
mad love
dave
the difference between Virno and Negri are more evident in the smaller pieces on the www.generation-online.org website
Apr 29 2006 15:33
#22
Dave Antagonism wrote:
is there a post missing here?...it makes mudy waters a shade of extra mudmad love
dave
the difference between Virno and Negri are more evident in the smaller pieces on the www.generation-online.org website
shamass's post was lost - but was restored in my quote.
Apr 29 2006 15:37
#23
Quote:
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
shamass wrote:
Quote:
For the sake of being a nerd it is worth pointing out that immaterial labour is one of the difference between Negri and Virno - Virno rejects it as he does the the idea of "Empire".
A more serious point about the difference between class for/in itself. I think the autonomist idea of the ontology ( is that the term i am looking for) of capitalism - that it is driven by struggle means that when class relations reach a new composition they kind of embodied the victories of the previous composition....hm lost me train of thought
yeah, i really should read 'grammar of the multitude.' even now its spine is glowering (?) at me from the bookshelf...
ditch this 'ontology of capitalism' schtick. it makes you sound the right 'radical academic.' how about just capitalism? presumably the present being of capital (chortle) (roar! ohmigod the being of capital is outta control! it will destroy us all... erm, i couldn't resist that) embodies the victories *and* defeats of the class struggle. immaterial labour seems to expound a one directionality to class recomposition ie. it always gets better for us, the working class is becoming progressively more the class for itself etc. i don't buy this. it seems as if the leninist concept of the revolutionary party as the collective repository of the class (or suppository methinks) is just diffuse throughout the social factory and hey presto! we have the whole social factory lead by the vanguard of those clever-dick immaterial labourers.
shamass
Quote:
Quote:
hey presto! we have the whole social factory lead by the vanguard of those clever-dick immaterial labourers.
Who just happen to be university lecturers
immaterial laboures does not refer to just university lecturers -to quote Nate Holdren
"Immaterial labor : Immaterial labor refers to the production of the immaterial content of commodities such as media and art as well as the role of information and communication in sectors of material production and the production of affect in service work and elsewhere. Immaterial labor produces and/or manipulates signs and symbols, data, information, knowledges, affects and biological life. Teachers, graphic designers, computer programmers, translators, retail clerks, prostitutes, nurses, nannies, and housewives are all examples of immaterial laborers. This labor occurs in and out of recognized workplaces in remunerated and unremunerated modes. Oftentimes immaterial labor, particularly its more traditionally feminine forms, occurs in conditions of precarity. See precarity. "
Apr 29 2006 15:42
#24
actually want to reaffirm the point about ontology.I think Tronti's "Copernican Inversion" has a certain direction that makes capitalism appear a certain way and gives (post) operismo/autonomism a certain flavour....
mad love
Dave
Apr 30 2006 00:46
#25
hey, i don't like this "shamass's post was lost" schtick. what's the deal? it was there when i posted it yesterday...
Quote:
Who just happen to be university lecturers
obviously a quip/cheap shot/whatever
Quote:
immaterial laboures does not refer to just university lecturers -to quote Nate Holdren"Immaterial labor : Immaterial labor refers to the production of the immaterial content of commodities such as media and art as well as the role of information and communication in sectors of material production and the production of affect in service work and elsewhere. Immaterial labor produces and/or manipulates signs and symbols, data, information, knowledges, affects and biological life. Teachers, graphic designers, computer programmers, translators, retail clerks, prostitutes, nurses, nannies, and housewives are all examples of immaterial laborers. This labor occurs in and out of recognized workplaces in remunerated and unremunerated modes. Oftentimes immaterial labor, particularly its more traditionally feminine forms, occurs in conditions of precarity. See precarity. "
there has been an "immaterial content" to commodites for a long time: Marx called it value. Having said that, I do agree that 'immaterial labour' as described above has developed somewhat, particularly in the last 50 years. however, to distinguish it from so-called 'material labour' appears to be a variation on the vulgar marxist's notion of consciousness being *merely* a reflection of material relaity, ie. the distinction is problematic. material production has always been "immaterial" if we are talking about "social *relations* of production" etc.
returning to value as "immaterial." this is the sticking point for negri, fortunati and the notion of the production of value for, eg., housewifes. there is an excellent article in a recent aufheben that clearly demonstrates that value prodution, and its realization through exchange, is *not* an aspect of particular labours such as housework (i might add that this is not to denigrate these labours in terms of the reproduction of labour power, but only to point out that value, as in capitalist value, is an imposed category to be destroyed rather than embraced as a category to be extended a la fortunati).
Quote:
actually want to reaffirm the point about ontology.I think Tronti's "Copernican Inversion" has a certain direction that makes capitalism appear a certain way and gives (post) operismo/autonomism a certain flavour....
how about you "affirm it" in a slightly more coherent way. what the hell does this mean?
shamass
Apr 30 2006 08:14
#26
shamass wrote:
hey, i don't like this "shamass's post was lost" schtick. what's the deal? it was there when i posted it yesterday...
We did a forums upgrade, which was a little messy - took a snapshot, got it running elsewhere, then archived the old forum. This meant I had to cut and paste a couple of dozen posts into here from the backup. Not ideal, but we've had worse!
Quote:
obviously a quip/cheap shot/whatever
Yeah it was a joke, but Nate's shopping list gives us the other side:
Quote:
Teachers, graphic designers, computer programmers, translators, retail clerks, prostitutes, nurses, nannies, and housewives are all examples of immaterial laborers.
Well that's everyone then isn't it? The 'role of communication' in manufacture, is as I understand it, anyone having a chat on the production line, or having a chat at home. Everything simultaneously becomes labour and not labour, making it not very helpful as a term. I don't like 'precarity' either - but that's for another discussion.
Quote:
the distinction is problematic. material production has always been "immaterial" if we are talking about "social *relations* of production" etc.
In the same way that the condition of the working class under capitalism has always been precarious.
Quote:
returning to value as "immaterial." this is the sticking point for negri, fortunati and the notion of the production of value for, eg., housewifes. there is an excellent article in a recent aufheben that clearly demonstrates that value prodution, and its realization through exchange, is *not* an aspect of particular labours such as housework
Is that the most recent one, if so yes I thought they covered it very well.
Apr 30 2006 10:00
#27
Catch wrote
Quote:
Well that's everyone then isn't it?
Virno doesn't use the term immaterial labour ( he rejects it as being silly) but use mass intellectuality. And yes by this he means everyone: that all production - which is now society wide - directly puts to work our collective intellectual/cultural/emotional abilities. In the past we could say that the capitalist production of subjectivity is neccessary for 'work' to take place, Virno argues that it is now weaved into what is 'work'
mad love
Dave[/i]
Apr 30 2006 11:50
#28
Catch did you get a copy of Dave's essay on Virno, it's very good, explains the stuff very well. I mean there are problems with Virnos ideas particularly the idea of exodus but he seems to be better than Negri and Hardt.
Apr 30 2006 12:46
#29
revol68 wrote:
Catch did you get a copy of Dave's essay on Virno, it's very good, explains the stuff very well. I mean there are problems with Virnos ideas particularly the idea of exodus but he seems to be better than Negri and Hardt.
you got a link?
Apr 30 2006 12:50
#30
Catch wrote:
revol68 wrote:
Catch did you get a copy of Dave's essay on Virno, it's very good, explains the stuff very well. I mean there are problems with Virnos ideas particularly the idea of exodus but he seems to be better than Negri and Hardt.you got a link?
nah he emailed me with it, ask him to send it to you.
Everything I've seen about Multitude and Empire has been pretty bad, and I don't myself picking them up any time soon.
Not read CTWWTP. (which is onl this site http://libcom.org/library/change-world-without-taking-power-john-holloway)
Aufheben is well worth looking at in case you've not read it - their stuff is online here: http://libcom.org/library/aufheben
http://www.geocities.com/aufheben2/