OPEN MARXISM. - Werner Bonefeld

What is Marxism? Is there anything existing which could be regarded as the truthful identification of Marxism? Was Marx himself a Marxist, a notion he strongly rejected?

Is Marxism a system of answers, analyses, academical records and party politics?

Regarding the last decades of marxist discussion, it seems more than obvious that Marxism was/is identified with structuralism: Althusserian over and superdetermination and Poulantzarian sociologism. Class struggle was/is identified as a dysfunctionality of structures, whose essence was truth-the truthful identification of politics in itself as a matter of academical analysis light years away from the question: On which side are you standing?.

Thus, the crisis of structuralism is necessarily regarded as the crisis of Marxism (Althusser).

In this paper I argue that, conversely to structuralist presupposition, the crisis of structuralist Marxism shows the strength of Marxism. It bears the chance to recognise once more the force of history, which was somehow veiled in previous marxist discussion: class struggle.

Marxism is a revolutionary theory, which inherently unites theory and practice. The politics of Marxism thus consist necessarily of the unity of critique and destruction, denunciation and decomposition, demystification and destabilisation. This mutual interplay of critique and destruction emphasises the revolutionary project of social emancipation: the abolishing of all forms of oppression, political power and exploitation. It thus aims to substitute for bourgeois society in all its ramifications “an association, which will exclude classes and their antagonism” (Marx a). With reference to Bloch, this association names the future goal of nonalienated existence whose final word is 'homeland'. Homeland inherently excludes political power, since political power “is precisely the official expression of antagonism in civil society” (Marx b).

Marx explicitly insists on the structurally given crisis-ridden transformation of the historical forms of capitalist relations, by which an ever changing pattern of social composition within capitalist society and the conditions of struggle are constituted. The permanent decomposition and recomposition of the 'enchanted and perverted world' (Marx) of bourgeois society is thus inherent within capitalism, due to the presence of labour within capital.

The permanent and dynamic effort of capital to restructure its control over labour is the precondition of the stability of the capitalist system and vice versa. As for labour, it is the action of destabilisation of capital, which immediately leads to the action of destruction (see Negri, 1979). The historical form within which the transformation of this antagonism is promoted is crisis.

Referring back to Marx, it is possible to work out an history of the inventions which are made solely for the reason of 'supplying capital with weapons against the revolts of the working class' (Marx c). The whole story about the so-called historical obstacles to the increase of the productive forces and the crisis-ridden transformation of these relations promotes a profound theoretically illuminated account of the changes within capitalism. Thus, the 'state, as the concentrated and organised force of society' (Marx d). is developed by defending property, freedom and equality against social unrest. It is precisely this freedom of resistance which is as productive for the development of the forms of state power as strikes are for the invention of machinery (see Marx e). The process of decomposition and recomposition appears to be a historically changing form of primitive accumulation, by which capital permanently transforms the social preconditions of control (see Negt/Kluge 1981).

Despite these general characteristics, the state, the bourgeois society, the historical pattern of capitalist relations never did, don't and never will exist. Although it should be a commonplace that “it is always the direct relationship of the owners of the conditions of production to the direct producers ... which reveals the innermost secret, the hidden basis of the entire social structure, and with it the political forms of the relations of sovereignty and dependence, in short, the corresponding specific form of state”. But, as Marx continues, “this does not prevent the same economic basis - the same from the standpoint of its main conditions - due to innumerable different empirical circumstances, natural environment, racial relations, external historical influences, etc., from showing infinite variations and graduations in appearance, which can be ascertained only by analysis of the empirically given circumstances” (Marx f).

Within the context of persisting national development patterns, the permanent revolution of the relations of production alters the capital relations, profoundly, towards a 'higher state of social production' (Marx) and thus reproduction, although the basic pattern remains: the capitalist relation of necessary and surplus labour.

Considering this structurally given permanence of change, the marxist concepts have to be open to the changes in the composition of the social relations which occur during the process of transformation. This is ever more obvious, since it is marxism that analyses the permanent decomposition and recomposition of bourgeois society as a structurally given mediation of its social antagonism and thus as a means of its existence. Further, marxism's concepts have to be dynamically open in order to add to the critique of political economy new social phenomena which for their part inevitably relate to the historically asserted forms of struggle.

This openness of categories is very much insisted on by Marx. Capital is the 'general illumination which bathes all the other colours and modifies their particularity' (Marx g). Marx's concept of abstract and concrete is thus the methodological metaphor for the continuity of the discontinuous development of the concrete within the abstract and vice versa (see Marx Grundrisse).

In short, the politics of critique and destruction has to be reconsidered and has to be readjusted to the changing forms taken by political power within capitalism, to different forms of extracting surplus labour, to changing forms of obscuring exploitation and to the changing composition of capitalist relations themselves.

In this sense capitalist reality constitutes a permeant challenge for the marxist concept of politics. The dynamic decomposition and crisis-ridden recomposition of social relations and conditions adds new social phenomena to its existence throughout the history of capitalism. 'The heresy of reality' (see Agnoli in M/A 1980), thus implies the incompleteness of categories insofar as the basic pattern of the social structure appears in various forms and within changing empirical circumstances.

Open Marxism thus applies the concept of abstract and concrete mentioned above to the decomposing reality of the enchanted and perverted world of capitalism. It necessarily contains, and is founded on, the principle of doubt: instead of the certainty of the orthodox manner of making use of concepts, it reclaims the incompletness of the process of thinking, it readopts the unpredictability of the 'legitimacy of chance' (Marx) and it reconsiders the historically adequate policy of critique and destruction.

The principle of doubt is a prerequisite of the politics of Marxism as well as for its explicit historical target of 'homeland'. It is an explosive force which challenges the orthodox preservation of classical politics in a world of permanent change.

The orthodox explanation of the changes having taken place since the form of capitalist relation which Marx envisaged is partly concerned with the fear 'that empirical evidence might occur, that wasn't discussed by the classics' (Agnoli, in M/A 80). Instead, open Marxism regards the appearance of new empirical evidence as a necessary development which has to be analysed as a dynamic transformation of the concrete totality of the perverted world within the 'general illumination' of 'the all-determining power of capital' (Marx-Grundrisse). This should be common sense since capital is a dynamic relation of antagonism.

Open Marxism contrasts with a 'purely contemplative knowledge' (Bloch), adopted by dogmatism which relates the present to an isolated past and which entirely loses the connection with the process of history. It thus challenges the relevance of referring, with profound knowledge, to certain hitherto somehow hidden or minor interesting arguments of marxist classics, in order to analyse new forms of capitalism purely by quoting from their work. It challenges the exposition of a certain type of understanding of capitalism, which substitutes for the concrete application of a marxist analysis a recollection of quotes.

The principle of doubt inherently forms part of the concept of an open Marxism which reconsiders the open and contingent process of class struggle, its changing forms and conditions. It thus reconstitutes Marx's understanding of politics and undermines the certainty of orthodox Marxism which seems to possess a profound analysis of the course of transformation of society under the effect of class struggle while also sharing in the knowledge of its unpredictability. Hence - a matter of quoting.

Taking into account the changing forms of the presence of labour within capital, the project of marxist politics has to be reconsidered as continuously as the the decomposition of society itself takes place. Both the concept of an open Marxism and its principle of doubt promote the vitality of Marxism, corresponding to its object of critique and destruction, by avoiding pure contemplation and its inability to cope with the process of change.

Open Marxism analyses the continuous discontinuity of capitalist development, that is, the dialectic of the relation between abstract and concrete. By doing so it reflects on the reality of change within, or as a means of existence of, the abstract structure of capitalism. As such, open Marxism is densely interwoven with the process of past-present-future. Although it doesn't share the (arrogant) certainty of (and thus the complacent politics of conservation adopted by) dogmatism, it promotes the politics of Marxism through the 'militant optimism' (Bloch) whereby 'homeland' is to be achieved. Hence its practical strength.

The explosive force of the principle of doubt, which contributes to open Marxism, challenges the widely shared assumption of a crisis of Marxism. This reoccurring assumption seems to be fashionable in times of capitalist restructuring and offense. Despite Marxism's allegedly final exhaustion, it should be clear from what has been said so far, that Marxism is not in crisis as long as it provokes and produces crises of historically developed 'schools' or of Marxists themselves.

Metaphorically, Marxism is the theoretical concept of practice and the practical concept of theory which provokes crises of itself as a matter of its inherent strength and validity.

Literature:
Marx a The Poverty of Philosophy, in Collected Works, Vol. I, p. 121

Marx b ibid.

Marx c Capital, Vol. I p. 411

Marx d Capital, Vol. I p. 703

Marx e Theorien über den Mehrwert, in MEW 26.1 p.363

Marx f Capital, Vol III p. 791-2

Marx g Grundrisse, p. 107.

Other Literature:

Bloch Das Prinzip Hoffnung, Frankf., Vol I.

M/A 80 Mandel/Agnoli, Offener Marxismus, Campus Frankfurt-New York 1980

Negt/Kluge 1981 Geschichte und Eigensinn, 2001 Verlag, Frankfurt 1981

Negri 1979 Sabotage, Trinkont Verlag, München 1979.

The aim of the present paper is to elucidate Marx's understanding of the relation between theory and practice. No claim is entered to the effect that Marx's conception of the theory/practice relation is original to him: rather – although space prevents a defence of this view here – I would argue that it originates with Hegel, who urges that true theory and free (or mutually recognitive) practice are internally linked.1 If this is so, then Marx's reading of Hegel as an idealist who severs theory from practice, preparatory to reducing the latter to the former,2 wholly misses its mark. So too does Marx's polemic against the Young Hegelians3 who, it may be argued, carry forward Hegel's understanding of theory's relation to practice rather than succumbing to “idealism”, as Marx thinks. My concern in what follows is not, however, with the fairness or unfairness of Marx's criticisms but with the substantive view of the relation between theory and practice which Marx defends. To this view I turn.

I

Marx develops his characteristic understanding of the relation between theory and practice in the course of polemics which, in the 1840s, mark successive stages in his break with his erstwhile Young Hegelian allies.4 From his scattered comments and assertions both then and later, a rich and systematic conception of the relation between theory and practice emerges. The task of the present section is to make this conception clear.

Marx's anti-Young Hegelian polemics argue for both a distinction between and a unity of theory and practice. A key point of interest is how, in his view, the distinction and the unity are combined.

The thesis of the distinction between theory and practice is urged by Marx against Young Hegelianism which had, in his estimation, denied it. The Young Hegelians are said to postulate a 'mystical identity of practice and theory' which conflates the former with the latter: 'The act of transforming society is reduced to the cerebral activity of critical criticism' (CW, 4, pp. 193, 86; cf. 5, pp. 4, 30-1, 91, 379). 'Ideas can never lead beyond an old world order but only beyond the ideas of the old world order. In order to carry out ideas men are needed who can exert practical force' (CW, 4, p. 119). Marx's relatively straightforward distinction is, thus, between theory, which can change only ones own interpretation of the world, and practice, which is alone capable of changing the world itself: 'The real subject retains its autonomous existence outside the head just as before; namely as long as the head's conduct is merely speculative, merely theoretical.'5 Of course, a simple theory/practice distinction of this sort is not sufficient to establish what sort of practice is necessary to change social relations – this latter, of course, being Marx's central concern. For example, even if social relations are practical in the sense of constituting, at any given time, a distinctive 'mode of life [Lebensweise]' (CW, 5, p. 31), it might still be possible to change them not through the threat or exercise of force but through a practice of rational persuasion. (Insofar as rational persuasion effects changes in the world, it counts as 'practice' in terms of Marx's distinction.) For Marx, there is a presumption that in changing social relations force is directly or indirectly involved, theory itself becoming force (Gewalt) 'as soon as it has gripped the masses' (CW, 3, p. 182). This, however, is a function not of the theory/practice distinction as such but of an understanding of existing social relations as ones where issues of domination are at stake. Marx's view of his Young Hegelian erstwhile allies might be summarised by saying that Young Hegelianism is impotent as propaganda, and retreats into the idealist illusion, because existing power relations are such as to undermine the possibility of an effective public sphere. The suppression of the Rheinische Zeitung, edited by Marx in 1842-43, signals for him the end of the illusion that merely publicistic activity (as distinct from political organisation) is a sufficient lever of social change.

Besides social relations, ideological forms (which are, of course, bound up with social relations) fall, for Marx, on the side of what is changeable only through practice ('Theses on Feuerbach', IV: CW, 5, p. 4). Thus, for example, Marx criticizes Max Stirner for destroying, not an ideological category 'itself' (which is to say, in its public or social existence), but only 'his emotional personal relation to it' (CW, 5, p. 36). There is, to be sure, an evident distinction between destroying a category's hold on oneself and destroying its hold on others; but there is, in addition, a further sense in which a turn to practice may be relevant here. For it may be the case that even for oneself the grip of a specific ideological category or form can be broken only through a practical change in social relations: ones 'emotional personal relation' to the category, or in other words the grip upon one of the category as “obvious common sense”,6 may survive a “scientific” refutation of it. A passage in Capital appears to be to this effect: Marx's contention is, apparently, that even a category which has been seen through by means of 'scientific discovery' may retain its grip upon someone who knows it to be misleading.7 So to say, once the “scientist” leaves his or her study, and functions not as a theorist but as a family member or citizen, the ideological “hermeneutical atmosphere” of the society concerned asserts itself (or re-asserts itself) with full force.

According to Marx, it seems, ideological categories are not merely added to social reality like icing on a cake: they are rooted in social existence. Patterns of thinking are not, for Marx, merely bound up with social relations but form an essential part of what, in a given instance, “society” is. In order to follow through this line of thought, we may turn from Marx's thesis of a distinction between theory and practice to his thesis that theory and practice form a unity.

Marx urges the thesis of a unity of theory and practice by affirming both the necessity of theory to practice and the necessity of practice to theory. The necessity of theory to practice is implied in his 1844 view of revolutionary practice as involving a unity of philosophy and the proletariat and his 1845 view of revolutionary practice as ‘“practical-critical” activity' (CW, 3, p 187; 5, p. 3).8 It is implied also in his characterisation of human as opposed to animal production both in the 1844 Manuscripts – 'Man makes his life activity the object of his will and consciousness. He has conscious life activity' (CW, 3, p. 276) – and in Capital.9 The necessity of practice to theory, on the other hand, is affirmed directly: 'Consciousness can never be anything else than conscious being, and the being of man is their natural life-process' (CW, 5, p. 36). The necessity of practice to theory is likewise implied when Marx tells us that 'scientific' activity is 'social' activity (CW, 3, p. 298) and also that 'All social life is essentially practical' ('Theses on Feuerbach', VIII: CW, 5, p. 5). For Marx, neither thoughts nor language form a 'realm of their own' but are, rather, 'only manifestations of actual life' (CW, 5, p. 447).10 But, if theory and practice are thus mutually necessary and so form a unity, it remains to determine what form this unity has and how it is to be understood.

An answer to this question is suggested by two further passages. In one, Marx rejects the view – its exponents are unspecified – which 'does not include philosophy in the circle of German reality' (CW, 3, p. 180). In the other, he urges his point in the form of a rhetorical question: ‘“Can the [Young Hegelian] critic live in the society he criticises?” It should be asked instead: must he not live in that society? Must he not be a manifestation of the life of that society?' (CW, 4, p. 160). In short, theory is socially real – it is located in society – but at the same time 'All social life is essentially practical' (CW, 5, p. 5). Thus it can be suggested that the best way to characterise Marx's view of the distinction between, and unity of, theory and practice is to say that, for him, theory is a real and necessary moment (or aspect) of society as a totality (or whole). Thus practice is theory-inclusive just as theory, for its part, is practice-related and subsists only on a practical terrain. Just such a view of theory as a moment of practice is expressed in the already-quoted phrase ‘“practical-critical” activity', 'critical' being understood here as indicating the theoretical moment in practice, or 'activity', taken as a theory-inclusive whole. Seen in this way, theory is neither external to practice (a 'realm' of its own: CW, 5. p. 447; cf. 'Theses on Feuerbach', IV) nor yet – as in Marx's view it was for the Young Hegelians – the sole and true form of practice, nor yet again something socially and practically in essential or unreal. Theory is distinct from practice in that it forms a moment (rather than the whole) of practice: there are things practice can do – e.g. 'changing the world' – which theory on its own cannot. And theory is in unity with practice since that of which it is a moment is a practical whole.

Thus the theses of the distinction between and unity of theory and practice – which at first sight might seem mutually exclusive – elegantly and lucidly combine. Moreover, the view of theory as a moment in, and of, practice provides clarification of the sense in which the destruction even for oneself of an ideological practice may be accomplished only in social and practical terms. Borrowing Wittgenstein's terminology11 one might say that, for Marx, changing (again, even for oneself) a form of language – or “theory” – involves changing, in practice, a form of social life.

The conception of the theory/practice relationship here ascribed to Marx can be summarised in the form of a diagram (the arrows indicating paths of reciprocal interaction as, over time, practice constitutes theory which in turn informs or guides practice):

The disadvantage of the diagram is that its shape derives from a logical theory of sets and subsets, and thereby fails to render clearly the notion of an internal relation – a relation of reciprocal mediation – between theory (as moment) and practice (as totality) which is central to Marx's account. In Hegel's terms, it belongs at the level of abstract 'understanding' and not at the level of dialectical 'reason'. Because of this, I should like the diagram to be seen on the model of a Zen koan rather than as a definitive version of what has been said. Once the point of the diagram has been appreciated, its form should be forgotten: the ladder should be cast away immediately it has been climbed.

II

Some implications of the account just given of the theory/practice relationship can now be made clear. From what has been said it follows that, for Marx, there can be no question of viewing the thesis of the unity of theory and practice as a simple political ought-to-be. For in Marx's view theory already just is, qua theory, a moment of practice: the only question can be whether this unity, which already exists, has an adequate form. “Adequacy”, here, refers to theory's mode of self-understanding.

Theory which understands itself as forming a practice-independent 'realm of its own' forms an inadequate unity with practice, since such a self-understanding is blind to – indeed, precludes awareness of – theory's practice-relatedness. Such relatedness obtains, although it is denied. Marx's rhetorical question – 'Must the critic not live in the society which he criticizes?' – suggests that an adequate unity exists only when theory grasps, or is at least capable of grasping, itself as a moment of a practical (“practical” in a theory-inclusive sense) whole. Marx takes the Young Hegelians to task for lacking just such a grasp of their theorising as practice-related: 'It has not occurred to any one of these philosophers to inquire into the connection between German philosophy and German reality, the connection of their criticism with their own material surroundings' (CW, 5, p. 30). This passage imposes on theorising the requirement, not merely that it looks to its own practical effectiveness, but that it takes account of its constitution in and through practice, i.e., its inherence in a practical and social totality which is present in (and hence constitutive of) each of its moments or parts.12

We can summarise this by saying that Marx requires theorising to be practically reflexive. Theory is reflexive when it reflects upon the constitution, and hence the validity, of its own categorial terms or (what is the same thing) its truth-criteria. Theory is practically reflexive when it understands the constitution of its terms and truth-criteria to be a practical and social constitution, i.e., when it understands that practice and society impinge on theory at the level of the categorial system it employs and when, accordingly, it thematizes this practical constitution (or practice-relatedness) in the course of posing to itself the question of the validity of its terms.

To be sure, theory might reflect on its own practical preconditions without, at least explicitly, raising in the course of this reflection the question of its categorical validity. For example, it might ask after the conditions of its own possibility in a purely causal or “sociological” way. However, Marx's assertion that theoretical 'mysteries... find their rational solution in human practice and in the comprehension of this practice' (CW, 5, p. 5) implies a view of theory's practice-relatedness as impinging on its substantive validity. And it is certainly theory's categorial (as distinct from its merely “empirical” or first-order) validity which he has in mind when he claims, of Young Hegelianism, that 'Not only in its answers, [but] even in its questions there was mystification' (CW, 5, p. 28): mystification at the level of questions is mystification at the level of truth-criteria and categorial terms. The thrust of his polemic is to assert that practical reflexivity is needful in order to gain purchase on the question of the validity of categories and that, converesely, practical reflexivity brings the question of category-validation into theoretical view.

For Marx, the notion of practical reflexivity passes into the mainstream of all Marxism which is “non-vulgar” or, in other words, which articulates itself in a conceptually rigorous way. Habermas summarises a lengthy tradition of Marxist and 'critical' thinking when he refers (favourably) to theories which 'incorporate reflexively the fact that they themselves remain a moment of the objective context which, in their turn, subject to analysis'.13 The theme of practical reflexivity is signalled, likewise, by Lukacs,14 Gramsci,15 Horkheimer,16 Kojeve17 and Sartre.18 The specific questions raised by these varying formulations of a common theme fall outside the bounds of this paper, which deals with the notion of practical reflexivity itself, generically, and with issues to which it gives rise. Why should practical reflexivity be needful, and what theoretical requirements does it entail?

III
There is a difference between saying that theory's terms must be compatible with a reflexive grasp of itself as a moment of practice, and saying that such a grasp must actually be present in any given theoretical case. The latter is, as I understand it, Marx's claim at least where social or “human” theory is concerned. The need for actual – and not merely, so to say, potential – practical reflexivity is clearest in the case of social theory which is intended as social critique in an explicitly oppositional or “revolutionary” sense. This is so because failure explicitly to thematize practical reflexivity means that theory lacks the distance or detachment from its object which would enable its object to be called in question. That is, theory would lack the distance which enables its object's claims about itself – the “ideologies” or, as it were, the hermeneutical and categorial “atmosphere” which forms the socially real theoretical moment of a society as a practical totality – to be bracketted or, as it were, placed in quotes.

An object-lesson is once again provided by the Young Hegelians as pilloried by Marx. Lacking practical reflexivity and thus critical distance, the Young Hegelians merely 'recognize', and hence reinforce and confirm, the existing social world by means of a seemingly different interpretation of it; as a result the Young Hegelians 'in spite of their allegedly “world-shattering” phrases, are the staunchest conservatives' (CW, 5, p. 30; cf. pp. 293, 300, 304, 415, 432). Behind Stirner's allegedly utopian alternative to existing social relations (his proposal of an anarchic 'Association of Egoists'), the outlines of existing ideological categories and social relations can be discerned (CW, 5, pp. 392, 398, 406, 409, 411; cf. Engels in CW, 4, pp. 329, 564).

The hermeneutical atmosphere of a society is functionally necessary (or at least advantageous) to the reproduction of the society through time; to breathe that atmosphere unthinkingly, and so reproduce its categories in one's allegedly oppositional works, is accordingly self-deteating because it contributes to the continuing maintenance of the social status quo. Lacking a sense of how practice constitutes theory – that is, failing to grasp 'the connection of their criticism with their own material surroundings' – the Young Hegelians are unable to address the issue of the practice to which, in its turn, their own theorising leads; these two failings go hand in hand, and 'conservatism' (a reinforcement of the status quo) is the outcome. Only if we reflect on the practical constitution of our theory's categories, or in other words on our place as critics in the society we criticize, can we make a question out of whether our theory's categories merely copy down, and thence reinforce, the social relations to which we stand opposed.

What of social theory which holds no overt brief for opposition but which aims, merely, to achieve truth? (Most “social science” is of course theory of this kind.) I propose that even theory of this non-oppositional sort must be practically reflexive, i.e., must pose to itself, explicitly, the question of the practical and social constitution of the terms which it employs.

The object-lesson, here, is supplied in Marx's critique of political economy. Marx's later work makes it clear that explicit practical reflexivity is needful in order that description of structures of social practice should not merely reproduce – as, for example, does 'vulgar' political economy19 – 'appearances', that is, the ideological claims as to its own nature which form a real part of society and which society makes about itself. Such 'appearances' are the theoretical moment of society as a practical structure or whole: in other words, a society's mode of self-presentation is, itself, a real part of that society (in the sense that practice “includes” theory).

The point is that appearances may be systematically misleading as to the character of the practice (the social structure) in which they inhere. In other words, they may mediate to itself a social reality which exists in a perverted and mystificatory form. This, in Marx's view, is the case with the way in which capitalist society presents itself, or “spontaneously” appears. The sphere of exchange gives rise to the ideologies of individualism – 'freedom, equality, property and Bentham', as Marx has it20 – and these ideologies make up a realm of appearance (a realm of functionally necessary mediation) directly contradicted by the structure of the capitalist production process – which structure is in Marx's view decisive for the character of capitalist social relations (and hence practice) taken as a whole. The sphere of exchange is for Marx a 'surface process, beneath which, however, in the depths, entirely different processes go on, in which... apparent individuality and liberty disappear'; when we explore the process of production we find that 'exchange turns into its opposite and the laws of private property – liberty, equality, property – turn into the worker's propertylessness and the dispossession of his labour'.21 The “vulgar” economist merely copies down the appearances of liberty, equality, etc, and takes them at their face value; only a critique of political economy can pose the question of the reliability of these appearances as accounts of the social practice which they mediate and help to perpetuate and within which they stand. The vulgar economist lacks the practical reflexivity which allows Marx himself to pose (and to answer in the negative) the question of whether capitalism's appearance-ideologies are indeed trustworthy theoretical guides.

Of course, Marx's stance vis-a-vis capitalism is oppositional: sarcasm, anger, mockery and vitrioloc wit are Capital's ever-recurring motifs. But the above sketch of his interrogation of the ideologies of 'freedom, equality, property and Bentham' shows that it is not merely his stance of opposition which brings the theme of practical reflexivity to the fore. For the very possibility that social appearances may be misleading – that society's theoretical moment may conceal, and contradict, the nature of social practice – is sufficient to make a “bracketting” of these appearances (of society's “hermeneutical atmosphere”) incumbent on any social theorist who aims to present a true account of the nature of the social practice concerned. And from this it follows that social theory which aims at truth, and not merely social theory which aims at opposition, must be practically reflexive; for only a practically reflexive theory (a theory which construes the social theorist as him or herself socially situated) can make a question out of the way in which society as it were “spontaneously” presents itself to theorist and non-theorist alike. Accordingly all social theory, and not merely oppositional theory, abandons the requirement of practical reflexivity at its peril.

Horkheimer makes this point when he condemns theory for which 'subject and object are kept strictly apart... If we think of the object of the theory in separation from the theory, we fall into quietism or conformism'.22 The theorising 'subject' must grasp, reflexively, his or her presence in theory's subject-matter or 'object', viz. society as a practical totality, if 'quietism or conformism' (or in other words an unquestioning endorsement of extant ideological categories) is to be avoided. Certainly, the severe term 'quietism' underscores Horkheimer's oppositional stance; but the 'conformism' which is also to be avoided is a conformism inimical to the interests of truth itself. To be sure, it may so happen that social 'appearances' turn out to be reliable guides to the nature of social practice: by definition, this would be so only in an 'emancipated' society where alienation and estrangement no longer prevailed. But the theorist (or indeed the citizen) can never know in advance whether this is so: hence 'critical' consciousness – “critical” in the sense of “interrogative” and not necessary in the sense of “oppositional” – is always needful. Critique indeed must become (it must lead to) opposition if it turns out that benign appearances conceal, and inhere in, oppressive and dehumanising practice: but what is, in the first place, needful is the interrogative stance whose possibility practical reflexivity supplies. And this interrogative stance (therefore, practical reflexivity also) remains needful in all possible social formations whatever – and so, too, in a society where emancipation prevails. For society can know that it is emancipated – it can guard against regression, distortion and the re-emergence of estrangement – only if interrogative and practically reflexive consciousness are in play. It can know that it is emancipated only if interrogative and practically reflexive modes of consciousness are part of its sensus communis or, in Gramsci's meaning of the term (which is also the classical one), its “common sense”. Far from it being the case that emancipation abolishes the need for practical reflexivity, an emancipated society is one where practical reflexivity and its implications come into their own.

In sum: practical reflexivity is needful for all social theory because it is not the case that “spontaneously” common-sensical ideas come out of nowhere. They come from practice or, rather, they inhere always-already in society as a practical totality; they form the theoretical moment in and through which a specific practical secures a conviction of its legitimacy and so reproduces itself. In this sense society (the totality) is present in them (in society's theoretical moment). All social theory is thus required to be on guard against false obviousness. It is so required because this obviousness – the seemingly self-evident and self-explanatory character of categories like individuality and rationality – may possibly be “mystificatory” or false: and the practice-constitution of theory penetrates, without remainder, all theory whatsoever – even theorising of the most rarified and conceptually esoteric kind. No theory forms a practice-independent 'realm of its own'. But if all theory must be practically reflexive, the requirement of practical reflexivity applies to oppositional theory with a redoubled force. For not only must such theory (like all theory) aim at truth; in addition, it must inform and guide a practice which differs from that which carries forward, and so reproduces, the status quo. And it can do this only if it loosens the grip – the 'mental cramp', in Wittgenstein's phrase – of those categories, and ideologies, which ensure that practice flows in socially approved channels and in those alone. What remains valid in Lenin once the suspect notion of a “vanguard party” is rejected is his insistence that, without a theory which calls in question received appearances, the possibility of a revolutionary movement cannot be entertained.23

IV

What, for theory, does the requirement of practical reflexivity entail? I suggest that, with good reason, this question admits of being answered only in the most general terms. For what practical reflexivity does is to place at issue, without remainder, the categorial framework which a given body of theory employs; and this means that the terms in which practical reflexivity goes forward must, themselves, be placed at issue if theory is to be on guard against taking ideological categories at their face value at the very moment when, reflexively, it interrogates itself. Thus, categorially, nothing is (or can be) given in advance of the interrogation of truth-criteria which practical reflexivity mounts. There is therefore no one set of terms which count (in advance) as constituting “valid practical reflexivity”. In other words practical reflexivity is the opposite of a “method” or “methodology” which can be established prior to, and independently of, a project of social inquiry in any given case. Practical reflexivity is thus an approach rather than a method: but it is an approach which changes everything. To see the point of practical reflexivity is to accomplish a “Gestalt-shift” after which nothing in social theorising can ever look the same.

Practical reflexivity is not a method which can be “applied”; or, rather, if we are to talk of its “application” then we must say that it is to be applied inter alia to itself. How is this possible, without vicious circularity or, as Hegel expresses it, without attempting 'to know before you know'?24 The answer to this question lies in the unique relation between first-order theory and second-order metatheory which practical reflexivity involves.

We have seen how the requirement of practical reflexivity comes into view whenever theory asks after the validity of its truth-criteria or categorial terms. Traditionally, reflection on truth-criteria is seen as going forward at a metatheoretical level distinct from that of first-order theorising, for vicious circularity seemingly results if categorial validity is made a topic for first-order theorising itself. Thus, for example, vicious circularity is certainly in play when Althusser declares that 'theoretical practice [or 'science'] is... its own criterion, and contains in itself definite protocols with which to validate the quality of its product, i.e., the criteria of the products of scientific practice'; for the application of this thesis is restricted (as it must be if it is to be plausible) to sciences 'once they are truly constituted and developed' whereas, of course, the real question is that of what the criteria for identifying a 'truly constituted' science might be.25 The ascent to a meta-level of theoretical reflection is supposed to (and indeed succeeds in) avoiding this cicious circularity by distinguishing between theory and theory which reflects on theory – much in the fashion of Russell's theory of logical types.26 But, if the danger of vicious circularity is averted, a further danger – that of an infinite regression of meta-levels – looms; for a theory which reflects on the theory which reflects on theory would be needful to establish this latter's categorial validity... and so on, without hope of halt.

Practical reflexivity avoids both vicious circularity and infinite regress by showing how reflection on a theory's categorial validity can go forward within the first-order theory itself. So to say, the same body of practically reflexive first-order theory can play both “metatheoretical” and “theoretical” roles. That there is no division between discrete “metatheoretical” and “theoretical” roles is entailed by the notion of practically reflexive social theory because to ask after the social and practical constitution of ones categories just is to develop, already, a first-order social theory; and, conversely, to develop a first-order social theory just is to arrive at results which can, and must, be applied “in the first person” to ones own theoretical self. For this reason, the requirement of practical reflexivity does not merely impinge at the start of ones social theorising – as, so to say, the first “methodological” chapter of ones thesis or book – but rather accompanies one's theorising throughout and, indeed, just is one's theorising seen from a different (a reflexive) point of view. Non-practical reflexivity admits of construal or theorising at a distinct meta-level; specifically practical reflexivity admits of no such construal because it locates the theorist, and the constitution of his or her categories, within the social world which the first-order theorist explores.

Hence the infinite regress of ascent through meta levels is halted or, rather, never gets started or comes into play. But what of the vicious circularity of knowing (categorially) 'before you know'? Vicious circularity would indeed be entailed if practical reflexivity amounted to the recommendation that social theory be conducted heedless of questions pertaining to truth-criteria, those questions being in some way “automatically” answered by simple inference from first-order theorising itself. Such a recommendation is, in effect, Althusser's. It also seems to be Marx's when, in one of his weakest passages, he claims that 'One has to “leave philosophy aside”..., one has to leap out of it and devote oneself like an ordinary man to the study of actuality'.27 But the recommendation entailed by our earlier discussion is, rather, that first-order theorising be imbued throughout, and at every stage, with a practically reflexive awareness or attitude. Ones practical reflexivity and ones social theorising develop, as it were, together and hand in hand. Each – practical reflexivity and social theorising – just is the other (so that infinite regress is avoided); but also each is the other seen in a different light and so the vicious circularity entailed by an “Althusserian” approach is overcome. First-order social theorising, when informed by practical reflexivity, does not “automatically” answer categorial questions: rather, it is developed with an eye to these questions and with a view to showing how they might be resolved. Vicious circularity is avoided because practical reflexivity affects the first-order results at which first-order theorising arrives. This might seem like a dogmatic an a priori theoretical closure; on the contrary, however, bringing practical reflexivity into play represents a categorial openness superior to any other just because it refuses to take the validity of any categories whatever simply as read. Precisely here, we should stress again that practical reflexivity presupposes, not an oppositional, but an interrogative theoretical stance: it leads to opposition where it turns out that theoretical 'appearances' contradict the practical reality of which they form a mediating part (i.e. where alienation prevails). No oppositional commitment is presupposed. Were an oppositional commitment presupposed then, in effect, we should be claiming to know in advance of knowing the results to which one's theorising would lead. Either vicious circularity would be entailed or one's first-order theorising could never gain purchase on the categorial validity of the theory informing one's oppositional stance – and so the infinite regression to higher and higher levels of meatheory would be unleashed.

The claims raised in the present section of this paper require, of course, a discussion that is a good deal more extensive than, here, I have been able to attempt. The general conception offered is that of a theorising which advances, simultaneously and in the same movement, on a reflexive (categorially interrogative) and a first-order front. An analogy and point of reference for such theorising might be found in Scottish eighteenth-century “common sense” philosophy, which locates a capacity to address issues of categorial validity (a capacity, in other words, for “critical theory”) within the first-order experience and self-awareness of, so to say, everyman rather than in the privileged meta-awareness of a philosophical elite.28 In sum, practical reflexivity amounts to more than being on guard against categorial error and ideological delusion. It also offers, programmatically, an approach to the question of how claims as to the validity of one's categories and truth-criteria might be discursively redeemed. As we have seen, Marx casts practical reflexivity in precisely this categorially redemptive role when he declares, in the eighth of his 'Theses on Feuerbach', that 'theoretical mysteries' – by which I understand inter alia the 'mystery' of category-validation – can find their solution 'in human practice and in the [reflexive] comprehension of this practice' (CW, 5, p. 5). The following through of this programmatic statement lies outwith this paper's bounds. All that we have established, here, is that practical reflexivity provides purchase on the manner in which, minus infinite regress and vicious circularity, the question of category-validation might be addressed. And, indirectly, this proposal returns us to Hegel and the unity between true theory and mutually recognitive practice.29 For it may be – and here the allusion is to “consensus” accounts of truth30 – that the 'human practice' which a practically reflexive account of redeemed truth-criteria must invoke is the practice of an emancipated society – in other words, the practice of mutually recognitive freedom itself. In order to have purchase on the issue of validating categories, the “common sense” of everyman must needs be the public and interactive sensus communis of an emancipatory and non-alienated social world.

Taken from richard-gunn.com/marx-and-marxism

• 1Relevant passages by Hegel include his Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press 1977) pp. 44, 104 and (especially) 490-1; also his Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences para. 382.
• 2 Cf. Marx/Engels Collected Works (Lawrence and Wishart 1975-) [henceforward: CW, 3, pp. 326-46.
• 3See N. Lobkowicz Theory and Practice (Notre Dame 1973) Part III; D. McLellan The Young Hegelians and Karl Marx (Macmillan 1979); L. S. Stepelevich (ed.) The Young Hegelians: An Anthology (Cambridge University Press 1983).
• 4As my introductory comments indicate, I consider that Marx's interpretation of the Young Hegelians is open to question. When present paper refers to the Young Hegelians, this is generally to the Young Hegelians as seen through Marx's eyes.
• 5K. Marx Grundrisse (Penguin Books 1973) pp. 100-1; cf. CW, 4, p. 193. Further passages which deploy the theory/practice distinction against Young Hegelianism occur at CW, 3, pp. 181, 302, 313; 5, pp. 5, 24, 77-8, 126, 173, 237, 282, 286, 384.
• 6I use the term “common sense”, here, with the meaning here given it by Gramsci: see A. GramsciSelections from the Prison Notebooks (Lawrence and Wishart 1971) pp. 134, 323ff.
• 7K. Marx Capital Vol. 1 (Penguin Books 1976) p. 167. The qualification apparently is needful because, in the passage cited, 'scientific discovery' may possibly refer only to the view, shared by Marx and the “classical” political economists, that labour-time is the content of value – and not to the analysis of the form of value which Marx regarded as his own, novel, contribution (ibid. pp. 173-4). In this case, the circumstance that an ideological category retains its grip even in the face of scientific discovery and insight might be due to the incompleteness of the discovery concerned.
• 8The distinction between the two passages is that, in 1844, Marx thinks of the unity of theory and practice in terms of, so to say, a “united front” between discrete social groups (namely, Left-Hegelian intellectuals and the working class) whereas, in 1845, a much closer integration (whatever its precise character) is envisaged both in conceptual and political terms.
• 9Capital, Vol. I, pp. 283-4. A difference between these two passages, dating from 1844 and 1867 respectively, should be noted: the former invokes not merely consciousness in general but self-consciousness, and thereby points towards a notion of free self-determination, while the latter invokes only consciousness of purposively-addressed goals. The former implies that, as humans, we choose our purposes while the latter is compatible with, although it does not entail, the view that our purposes are predetermined. Are humans distinct from animals because we choose our purposes whereas they do not, or (surely a less plausible view) because we alone act in a purposive way?
• 10In Marx's view, theory's estrangement from practice – its understanding of itself, in the manner of traditional philosophy (CW, 3, p. 331), as a practice-independent 'realm of its own' – has its roots in contradictions and estrangements which obtain within practice itself. See 'Theses on Feuerbach', IV, and also CW, 5, p. 45 which signals this point by referring to the emergence of the distinction between mental and manual labour.
• 11See L. Wittgenstein Philosophical Investigations (Basil Blackwell 1968) p. 8, para. 19.
• 12This formulation endorses the notion, criticised by Althusser, of a totality as a unity which is present (wholly present) in each of its moments: see L. Althusser and E. Balibar Reading Capital (New Left Books 1970) p. 96 and passim. For reasons which it falls outside the present paper to discuss, I consider that Althusser's objection to the effect that such a conception of totality is reductionist misses its mark.
• 13See T. W. Adorno et al. The Positivitist Dispute in German Sociology (Heinemann 1976) p. 134; cf. p. 162.
• 14G. Lukacs History and Class Consciousness (Merlin Press 1971) pp. 19-24.
• 15Selections from the Prison Notebooks pp. 404-5, 436.
• 16See note 22, below.
• 17A. Kojeve 'The Idea of Death in the Philosophy of Hegel' Interpretation Vol. 3 (1973) p. 115.
• 18J.-P. Sartre Critique of Dialectical Reason (New Left Books 1976) p. 47.
• 19See e.g. Capital, Vol. I, pp. 174-5; also K. Marx Theories of Surplus Value, Part Two (Lawrence and Wishart 1969) pp. 266-7.
• 20Capital, Vol. I, p. 280; cf. Grundrisse pp. 239ff.
• 21Grundrisse pp. 247, 674.
• 22M. Horkheimer 'Traditional and Critical Theory' in his Critical Theory: Selected Essays (Seabury Press n.d.) p. 229.
• 23V.I. Lenin Selected Works (Lawrence and Wishart n.d.), Vol. 2, p. 47; cf. the critique of “spontaneism” - in bourgeois society, spointaneity will be spontaneity conditioned by bourgeois ideology – at p. 62.
• 24Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences para. 41.
• 25Reading Capital p. 59.
• 26The classic statement is the third essay in B. Russell Logic and Knowledge (Allen and Unwin 1956). The line of argument sketched in the remainder of this paper is indebted to G. E. Davie's interrogation of Russell in his The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect (Polygon Books 1986), Part 3.
• 27CW, 5, p. 236. The passage is weak because refusing to philosophise in no way resolves the problems, including that of categorial validation, which philosophy has traditionally addressed. And if a problem is badly formulated this is not shown by choosing to ignore it. Arguably, Marx lapses into this mistake by taking philosophy to address theorising on the latter's own, allegedly practice-independent, terms and concluding that a break with philosophy tout court and a more 'empirical' mode of theorising (CW, 5, pp. 331, 37) becomes needful (as supposedly practice- independent) is to be theoretically assessed. However, a more promising account of the implications of the thesis of the unity of theory and practice for philosophy – one more in keeping with the eighth of the 'Theses on Feurbach' as construed in the final paragraph of the present paper – is sketched at CW, 3, p. 181: philosophy can only be transcended by actualising it in practice. Here, echoes of Hegel's linking of truth to mutual recognition sound.
• 28See G. E. Davie The Crisis of the Democratic Intellect ch. 10; also his The Social Significance of the Scottish Philosophy of Common Sense (Dow Lecture, University of Dundee, 1973) and his 'Berkeley, Hume, and the Central Problem of Scottish Philosophy' McGill Hume Studies (1981).
• 29Hegelian theory is, without doubt, practically reflexive. In the sixth chapter of the Phenomenology, Hegel tells the story of the history in which – or, rather, at the end of which – he himself stands. His eighth chapter, on absolute knowledge, states explicitly that 'until spirit has completed itself...as world-spirit [i.e. until it has completed itself historically] it cannot reach its completion as self-conscious [i.e. truthfully self-aware] spirit' (Phenomenology of Spirit p. 488). Thus Hegelian truth has practical preconditions, viz., the appearance at the end of history of a mutually recognitive audience who, as free, are capable of acknowledging it. Truth thus appears when its post-historical 'time' has come – and when it can exist in, and for, a mutually recognitive 'public' (ibid., pp. 3-4, 44). On this condition, it 'is at once exoteric, comprehensible, and capable of being learned and appropriated by all' (ibid., p.7). Thus the Phenomenology reflects on the emergence, at the end of history, of the practical totality (that of mutual recognition) of which it itself, as true, forms the theoretical moment; in doing so, it reflects on its own categorial validity as well.
• 30See e.g. T. McCarthy The Critical Theory of Jurgen Habermas (Polity Press 1984) pp. 291-310; M. Hesse Revolutions and Reconstructions in the Philosophy of Science (Harvester Press 1980) ch. 9; also the remarks on 'objective', or categorially valid, theorising in relation to 'universal' subjectivity in Gramsci, Selections from the Prison Notebooks, p. 445.

NOTES ON 'CLASS'

Richard Gunn

(Common Sense, No. 2, 1987)

1. It is much easier to say what, according to Marxism, class is not than to say what class is. A class is not a group of individuals, specified by what they have in common (their income-level or life-style, their 'source of revenue' [1], their relation to the means of production, etc.). The proletariat, for example, is not to be defined as a group 'as against capital'. [2] Nor is a class a structurally and relationally specified ”place” in the social landscape (a place which individual may ”occupy” or in which, as individuals, they may be 'interpolated', [3] etc.). The difference between ”empiricist” and ”structuralist” Marxisms, which respectively treat classes as groups of individuals or as ”places”, is in this regard a trivial one. For want of a more convenient term I shall refer to the view which treats classes either as groups or as places as the 'sociological' conception of class.

2. Marxism regards class as, like capital itself (Marx 1965 p. 766), a social relation. That which is a relation cannot be a group even a relationally specified group; nor can it be a place (relationally specified place) in which a group may be constituted, or may stand. Setting aside such views, we can say that class is the relation itself (for example, the capital-labour relation) and, more specifically, a relation of struggle. The terms 'class' and 'class-relation' are interchangeable, and 'a' class is a class relation of some particular kind.

3. In other words: it is not that classes, as socially pre-given entities, enter into struggle. Rather class struggle is the fundamental premise of class. Better still: class struggle is class itself. (This is how Marx introduces 'class' in the opening sentence of The Communist Manifesto.) That 'class struggle' is intrinsic to 'class' is Marx's point when he stresses that existence 'for itself' – i.e. the oppositional, struggling existence – is intrinsic to the existence of class (Marx 1969 p. 173).

4. I shall refer to the conception of class as a relation (a relation of struggle) as the 'Marxist' conception of class: here, more than convenience dictates the terminological choice. Notoriously, the sociological conception of class faces the embarrasment that not all individuals in bourgeois society can be fitted, tidily, into the groups which it labels 'capitalists' and 'proletarians'. This embarrasment is produced by the conception of classes as groups or places, and to escape this embarrasment, sociological Marxism has recourse to categories like 'the middle classes', the 'middle strata', etc.: such categories are residual or catch-all groups and, in short, theoretical figments generated by an impoverished conceptual scheme. The Marxist conception class, on the contrary, faces no such difficulties: it regards the class-relation (say, the capital-labour relation) as structuring the lives of different individuals in different ways. The contrast in this regard between the Marxist and the sociological conceptions of class can be illustrated, very roughly, as follows:

(See the illustration above.)

Not least, this illustration is rough because the difference in the ways in which the capital-labour relation structures the lives of individuals in bourgeois society is as much qualitative as quantitative: a spatial diagram can only be ”undialectical”, abstracting not only from qualitative distinctions but also from the 'sheer unrest of life' (Hegel 1977 p. 27) – the unrest of struggle – which characterises a class-relation in any given case. (The model for such spatial diagrams is the Figurae of Joachim of Fiore, which become no longer necesary once the spiritual intelligence they summon has come into its own: cf. Reeves 1976 p. 13.)

5. What qualitative forms can the structuring of lives by the capital-labour (once again, a relation always of struggle) take? The form to which Marx especially attends is that of exploitation/expropriation. Other forms include inclusion/exclusion (Foucault), appropriation/expenditure and homogeneity/heterogeneity (Bataille) and incorporation/refusal (Marcuse, Tronti):[4] the list is phenomenologically rich, and open-ended.

6. One difference between the Marxist and the sociological views, as illustrated above, is that on the Marxist view the 'pure' worker (situated on the extreme left-hand side), whose social being is (unlike all the ”intermediate” figures) in no way divided in and against him or herself, is in no way methdolologically privileged. Neither is the 'pure' capitalist. Both, rather, are merely limiting cases and, as such, they are seen only as figures comingled with other in a diversely-structured crowd. The sociological view, on the other hand, treats the 'pure' worker and the 'pure' capitalist as methodological pillars between which the web of intermediate classes is slung.

7. The difference is important because, acoording to Marx, the 'pure' worker does not exist. This is not at all because of a relative decline in the numbers of the ”traditional working class” (however this theoretically suspect group be defined). On the contrary, it is because the wage relation itself is a bourgeois and mystifying form (Marx 1965 Part VI): whoever lives under its sign – even, and especially, the fully-employed producer of surplus-value -lives a life divided in and against itself. His or her feet remain mired in exploitation even while his or head (which is tempted to construe this exploitation in terms of ”low wages”, i.e., in terms which are mystified) breathes in bourgeois ideological clouds. [5] Accordingly, the line of class-struggle runs through the individual by whom surplus-value is produced (as with, say, the figure standing second-to-the-left in the diagram in para. 4, above). Here, again, there is no embarrasment for the Marxist conception of class which is interested in the specific ways in which the capital-labour relation structures, antagonistically, particular lives. But the non-existence of a proletariat in all its purity can only bring the sociological conception of class to the ground.

8. A further evident difference between the two schemes is that the Marxist one speaks of a single class-relation (namely, the capital-labour relation) as obtaining in existing society whereas the sociological scheme acknowledges as many such relations as there are possible link-ups between social places or groups. For this reason, the 'sociologists' accuse the 'Marxists' of reductionism. In fact, it is against the sociologists themselves that the charge of reductionism may properly be brought. The sociologists want to situate each individual, unequivocally and without remainder, in one or other of the specified groups or places: a ”cross categorial” individual cannot be allowed to appear in the picture which the sociologists draw. The point of the sociologists' proliferation of middle classes, middle strata, new petty bourgeoisies, etc., is to find some pigeon-hole to which each individual may be unequivocally assigned. Hence precisely the ways in which, in class terms, individuals are divided in and against themselves – the numerous and complex ways in which the geological fracture-line of class struggle lies through and not merely between individuals – enters theoretical eclipse. Hence sociologists' reductionism. The Marxist conception of class, by contrast, brings experiental richness of this (self-)contradictory life-texture into full theoretical and phenomenological light. The charge that Marxism reduces the lived experience of individual subjectivity to a play of impersonal and sheerly objective ”class forces” [6] is least of all applicable when 'class' is understood in its authentically Marxist sense.

9. A related point is that the Marxist conception, unlike that of the sociologists, does not construe class in terms of the bearing of this or that social role. From his early essay 'On the Jewish Question' onwards, Marx castigates, as alienated and unfree, any society wherein role-definitions (or a ”social division of labour”) obtain. Far from inscribing role-defintions as a methodological principle, the Marxian view of class depicts the individual as the site of a struggle – of his or her own struggle – which brings not only the ”universal” (role-bearing and socially homogenous) but also ”particular” (unique and socially heterogeneous) dimensions of individuality into play. Neither in theory nor in practice do role-definitions such as ”proletarian” or ”bourgeois” (or indeed ”man” or ”woman” or ”citizen”) represent Marx's solution; on the contrary they figure as one among the problems which 'class' in its Marxist designation is intended to resolve.

10. As between the Marxist and the sociological conceptions of class yet another area of difference is, of course, political. The sociological view advertises a politics of alliances between classes and class-fractions: moreover it ascribes to the 'pure' working class a privileged – a leading or hegemonic – political role. No question of such alliances arises on the Marxist view. Nor does the 'pure' working class (the employed as opposed to the unemployed, the direct producers of surplus-value as opposed to the ”indirect” producers, the proletariat as opposed to the lumpenproletariat, those whose labour does not) have a politically any more than a methodologically privileged place: for no such ”places” exist. Nor is there any question of ascribing to ”rising” as opposed to ”declining” classes a monopoly of revolutionary interest or force: such specifications only make sense when classes are seen as places or as groups. Finally, the whole notion of a vanguard party (plus its diluted variants) is overturned since the distinction between ”advanced” and ”backaward” class-elements disappears along with the sociological conception of class itself. In sum: what has traditionally passed as 'Marxist' politics is in fact sociological, and authentically Marxist politics amounts to politics in an anarchistic mode.

11. If classes are not groups or places but relations of struggle, then insofar as revolutionary conflict takes the form of a conflict between groups (but it always does this imperfectly and impurely) this has to be understood as the result of class struggle itself. It is not to be understood sociologically as, for example, an emergence of pregiven classes – at last! - into their no-less-pregiven theoretical and political 'truth'. The question before the individual is not on whose side, but rather on which side (which side of the class relation) he or she stands; and even this latter question is not to be understood as a choice between socially pre-existing places or roles. Not only quantitatively but also qualitatively, class struggle remains inherently unpredictable. The Marxian conception of class focuses sharply the issue of choice with which class struggle confronts us and in doing so it disallows appeal to any role or place or group in which (according to sociology) we already stand prior to whatever self-determining commitment we choose to make. It disallows this not least because it depicts us as torn by the force of the class struggle in which, in a class society, we are always-already consciously or unconsciously engaged.

12. Whoever wishes, can derive sociological wisdom from Marx's texts. Certainly, and especially in his political writings, Marx was not always a Marxist: for example the 'two great camps' conception of class espoused in the Communist Manifesto results from constructing the Marxist conception of class in an out-and-out sociological sense. Nonetheless, unless the Marxist conception of class were in fact Marx's the circumstance that Marx wrote Capital would be unintelligible. It was Marx himself who, long before his critics and revisionists, pointed out that as capitalism developed the numbers of the 'middle classes' could be expected to grow (Marx 1968 pp. 562, 573); and yet he writes a book, entitled Capital, in which a single class-relation (the capital-labour relation) is the theoretical 'object' addressed. This conundrum can be resolved only by taking his remark about the middle classes to be sociological, and by reading the main argument of Capital as Marxist in the above-specified sense.

13. The sociological conception of class, whenever it wishes to establish Marxist credentials, always becomes economic-determinist. This is so because the only ”indicator” of class-membership ('class', here, being seen as once again a place or group) which Marx's writings supply is that of a common relation to the means of production. Besides being related to the means of production, however, individuals are class-members (or who are class-interpolated) find themselves related to the state and to ”ideology” to say nothing about their local church or football team or pub. Hence, at once, the sociological conception of class generates a schema of discrete social 'levels' or 'practices' or 'instances' (Althusser) and must address the question of how these levels are related. The answer is well-known: in the last instance 'the economic movement...asserts itself as necessary'. [7] In the last instance, in other words, sociological Marxism amounts to an economic determinism with, to be sure, long and complex deterministic strings. To claim, as Althusser does, that such a theory (because of its complexity) is no longer economistic is like claiming that a machine is no longer a machine in virtue of the number of cogwheels its motor drives.

14. With the Marxist conception of class, everything is different. Marx's distinction between class 'in itself' and 'for itself' is to be taken as distinguishing, not between societal levels (cf. Footnote 5, above), but between the sociological and the Marxist conceptions of class itself: if a class only becomes such when it is 'for itself' then political struggle with all its unpredictable ramifications and developments and expenditures is already built into what sociological Marxism treats as the economic ”base”. Whereas sociological Marxism attempts to unite levels which it assumes to be discrete, and on the basis of this starting-point and problem can only upon causalist and external relations of however 'structural' (Althusser) a kind, Marxist Marxism moves in the opposite direction and draws distinctions within a contradictory totality, i.e. within an internally and antagonistically related whole: 'The concrete is concrete because it is the concentration of many determinations, hence the unity of the diverse (Marx 1973 p. 101). As diagram in para. 4 makes clear, the totality of the class-relation which is specific to, for example, bourgeois society (the capital-labour relation) is present – wholly present, though in qualitatively different ways – in each of the individuals who form that society's moments or part. The essential thing was said long ago by the early Lukács: 'It is not the primacy of the economic motives in historical explanation that constitutes the decisive difference between Marxism and bourgeois thought, but the point of view of totality' (Lukács 1971 p. 27).

15. Along with 'the point of view of the totality', a wholly novel conception of class politics is brought into play. Once ”politics” is seen (as it is by the sociologists) as a discrete social level the litmus test of the existence of class 'for itself' becomes the formation of a political party of a more or less conventional – which means: a bourgeois – kind. Seen thus, even a vanguard party amount to a variation on a bourgeois theme. However it is not Marx, but rather bourgeois society, which distinguishes between the levels of political state and civil society – cf. 'On the Jewish Question' – and prescribes the former as the arena wherein social groupings in their maturity (which is to say their conformity) may compete. The Marxist conception of class, or in other words 'the point of view of totality', rejects precisely the narrowness of the conception of politics which the sociological conception of class entails. On the Marxist view, the category of politics becomes as wide as the forms which class struggle (and thereby class itself) unpredictably takes. Not merely is no issue excluded from the political agenda; the notion of political agendas is itself excluded since any such agenda excludes and marginalises whatever does not fall within some theoretically pre-established political domain.

16. The above notes claim neither to completeness nor to the provision of a defence at all points of the conception of class which they have attempted, schematically, to restate. Rather, their aim has been to make clear something of what a Marxist understanding of class entails. As regards evaluation of this understanding: the suggestion may be hazarded that the only possible line of critical questioning which seems fertile is that which asks whether the capital-labour relation is the sole such relation of struggle which, in all its richness, structures our lives. And here there can be no question of supplanting Marx: other such relations (sexual and racial relations, for example) are mediated through the capital relation just as, for its part, it exists as mediated through them. Inquiry as to which such relation is ”dominant” remains scholastic unless embarked on in concretely politcal (which is also to say phenomenological) terms. Both politically and methodologically, the great superiority of Marxist over the sociological is that it frees Marxism from every taint of the determinism which Marx castigated as amongst the most murderous features of capitalism – the tyranny of 'dead' labour over 'living' labour, or in other words of the past (as in all deterministic schemes) over the present and the future – and to which from start to finish his best thinkin stands implacably opposed. This is so because the single theme of Marxian ”class analysis” is the finely-textured and continually and uninterruptedly developing struggle which, for Marx, is the existence of class per se.

Acknowledgements

This paper owes much conversation with John Holloway. Filio Diamanti made me realise that my understanding of 'class' required clarification before discussion of it could even begin.

Notes

1. This much at least is clear from the final, fragmentary, chapter of Capital vol. III (Marx 1971 pp. 885-6).

2. Marx (1969) p. 173.

3. Cf. Althusser (1971) pp. 160-5.

4. See Foucault (1979) Part Four, ch. 2; Bataille (1985); Marcuse (1968); Tronti (1979).

5. The view that the ”ideological” mystification inherent in the wage-form leaves the class-purity of the worker uncontaminated depends on treating production and ideology as discrete social 'levels' or instances; so too does the reading of Marx's distinction between class 'in' and 'for' itself which is rejected in para. 14, below. On the notion of 'levels' see para. 13. In passing, it is worth noting that the conception of ideology as a discrete level (however specified) remains wholly mysterious, if only because social existence without remainder – for example gender distinctions, architecture, work-discipline and scientific knowledge – carries with it an ”ideological” charge.

6. For a discussion of this charge see Sartre (1963).

7. Engels to J Bloch September 21-22 1890 (Marx/Engels n.d. p. 498). Althusser's distinction between 'determining' and 'dominant' instances represents a permutation of the same theme.

References

Althusser L. (1971) Lenin and Philosophy and Other Essays (New Left Books)

Bataille G. (1985) Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939 (Manchester University Press)

Foucault M. (1979) Discipline and Punish (Penguin Books)

Hegel G.W.F. (1977) Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press)

Lukacs G. (1971) History and Class Consciousness (Merlin Press)

Marcuse H. (1968) One-Dimensional Man (Sphere Books)

Marx K. (1965) Capital Vol. I (Progress Publishers)

Marx K. (1968) Theories of Surplus Value Part II (Lawrence and Wishart)

Marx K. (1969) The Poverty of Philosophy (International Publishers)

Marx K. (1971) Capital Vol. III (Progress Publishers)

Marx K. (1973) Grundrisse (Penguin Books)

Marx K./Engels F. (n.d.) Selected Correspondence (Lawrence and Wishart)

Reeves M. (1976) Joachim of Fiore and the Prophetic Future (SPCK)

Sartre J-P. (1963) The Problem of Method (Methuen)

Tronti M. (1979) 'The Strategy of Refusal' in Working Class Autonomy and the Crisis (CSE Books / Red Notes)

In both Hegelian and Marxist thought, the concept of mediation figures as a central dialectical category. That the category does theoretical, and revolutionary, work is clear. What is less clear, to myself at any rate, is what might be termed the conceptual geography of the category itself. It is this conceptual geography which, as a preliminary to further discussion, the present paper attempts to clarify. A more pretentious title for what follows might be 'Prolegomena to a Reading of Marx'.

To mediate is to bring about a relation by means of a relating (an “intermediate”) term. A mediation is the relating term itself. To count as a mediation, a relating term must be more than a mere catalyst or external condition (however necessary) of the relation: rather, it must itself be the relation. It must constitute it, in the way that for example – and the example is offered merely heuristically – a rope linking two climbers is constitutive of the relation in which they stand.

If a mediation is, thus, the relation which it establishes, it does not follow that just any relation counts as a mediating term. A mediated relation is distinct from a relation for which, to render it intelligible or accurately describe it, no reference to a relating term need be made – for example, a relation of juxtaposition. A relation of this kind is an immediate relation (which, for its part, may be catalysed or necessitated in this or that way).

Within the conceptual field of mediation, as so far outlined, various possibilities exist. Two (or more) terms may be related (mediated) by means of a third, or further, term; or a single term may be related (mediated) to itself by a second term. Where a single term is mediated to itself, the relation between it and its mediation may or may not be reciprocal. Where it is reciprocal, there exist two terms each of which is the other's mediation, and each of which is mediated by the other to itself. This gives an idea of the internal richness of mediation's conceptual field: either there may exist two (or more) terms plus their mediation; or there may exist a single term plus its mediation; or there may exist two terms each mediating, and mediated by, each other. The first of these three possibilities is, perhaps, the one with which the notion of mediation is most commonly associated. (It is closest, for example, to dictionary definitions of 'to mediate'.) However, the third possibility is quite explicitly invoked by Hegel when he envisages a situation in which each of the two terms 'is for the other the middle [the mediating] term, through which each mediates itself with itself and unites with itself' (Hegel 1977 p. 112). The example he gives is that of a mutually recognitive relation between individual self-conscious subjects.

A further, and all-important, step is taken in exploring the concept of mediation when it is noticed that the process of mediation may be such as to bring about not merely a relation, but an internal relation: it is exclusively such instances of mediation which concern Hegel and Marx. (In the case of a single term which is mediated to itself, the corresponding possibility is that the process of mediation “totalises” discrete aspects into an internally related whole.) Prior to the mediation, that which is mediated may or may not have been internally related (or self-related). But, even supposing that it was, the mediation may establish a fresh internal-relatedness (or a fresh totalisation). If a (fresh) internal-relatedness or totalisation is established by the process of mediation, then the following is the consequence. Since (a) an internal relation is constitutive of the terms which it relates, and since (b) a mediation is itself – as already indicated – the relation of the term(s) concerned, we can say: in such cases, the mediation is the mode of existence of the related term(s). This can also be expressed – Marx and Hegel so express it – by saying that in such cases the mediation is the form or appearance of the term(s) which it internally relates.

Combining this notion of mediation as the mode of existence (form, appearance) of what is mediated with the third possible shape of mediation indicated earlier, a further possibility emerges: two terms may be the mode of existence of one another. And such is indeed the case, for Hegel, with two mutually recognitive self-consciousnesses: in Hegelian usage, the expression 'recognition' carries with it a specifically constitutive force. This being so, it follows that a recognitive relation between individuals in no way requires mediation through a discrete “third term” –
for example social institutions (or in Hegel's term 'spiritual masses') such as state and civil society (Hegel 1977 pp. 300-1) – separate from, and standing over against, the individuals concerned. The Hegel of the Phenomenology is in fact emphatic that the existence of 'spiritual masses' entails alienation, and that mutually recognitive (or non-alienated) social existence is possible only when no spiritual masses or social institutions exist: mutually recognitive self-consciousness 'no longer places its [social] world and its ground outside itself' (Hegel 1977 p. 265). Thus it is that being alive to the various possible shapes of mediation – in particular, the refusal to equate mediation as such with the first of the three possibilities above indicated – allows us to discern what is in effect an anarchist stratum in Hegel's thought. And the emergence of Left Hegelianism out of Hegel becomes intelligible at the same stroke: for example, Marx's 'On the Jewish Question' appears as a restatement of the critique of 'spiritual masses' which the Phenomenology contains. In the Philosophy of Right, by contrast, Hegel reinstates spiritual masses: individuals are seen as mediated to one another via the discrete “third term” of social institutions, most notably and most famously the institutions of civil society and the state. In virtue of this reinstatement, Hegel opens himself to the criticisms delivered by Marx in his Hegel-critique of 1843. The same point may be stated differently: the Hegel of the Phenomenology emerges as the Philosophy of Right's most trenchant critic.

The expressions “form” and “appearance”, introduced earlier, require further elaboration. I should like what I have said to be taken as (in the sense which is relevant here) defining them: the form or appearance of something is its mode of existence. This definitional sense is not, of course, the sense which “form” and “appearance” receive in ordinary language: there, form is understood as opposed to content and appearance is understood as opposed to reality or essence – as though something's form or appearance might be removed or altered without thereby effecting an essential change in the nature (the content or reality) of the “something” itself. In other words, the ordinary-language usage of “form” and of “appearance” is dualistic.

By contrast, their definitional sense (the sense which is relevant so far as mediation is concerned) is non-dualistic. What this involves is made clear by Hegel in his treatment of the relation between appearance and essence. According to Hegel 'essence must appear', i.e, the appearance is the essence's mode of existence: 'Essence...is not something beyond or behind appearance, but, just because it is the essence which exists, the existence is appearance' (Hegel 1892 papa. 131). The relation between appearance and essence here envisaged is non-dualistic inasmuch as it is in and through its appearance that the essence is. Essence stands out ahead of itself as appearance, and it is as thus standing ahead of itself that it exists: “appearance”, in other words, is to be understood not as a passive noun (an inert veil or cover) but as an “appearing”, i.e., in a sense which alludes to the activity of the verb. This thought is one which Hegel derives from Ancient philosophy. For Anaxagoras, similarly to Hegel and in contradistinction to Parmenides' dualistic counterposing of appearance to reality, 'Appearances are a glimpse of the obscure' (Kirk and Raven 1963 p. 394). Anaxagoras's saying is not to be understood as affirming that appearances comprise, so to say, a thin rather than a thick veil. Rather, his thought is that it is in the nature of what is not appearance – namely, being – to reveal/conceal itself or, in other words, to appear in the sense of standing (obscurely) forth. And, in fact, Marx's concepts of fetishism and of mystification register, so far as social being is concerned, an exactly parallel point.

I have dwelt on the non-dualistic meaning of the term “appearance” because this meaning is decisive for how Marx's Grundrisse and Capital are to be read. Famously, Marx speaks of penetrating through appearances to reality and urges that capitalist society appears to those who live in it in systematically misleading ways (e.g. Marx 1973 pp. 247, 674; 1976 p. 421; 1966 p. 817). Such passages are misunderstood if they are read – and of course they have been so read – as counterposing appearance to reality in a dualistic fashion, or as affirming that appearance is less real than the reality it fetishistically reveals/conceals. From the Grundrisse, it is clear enough that capitalism's appearance in terms of freedom, equality, property, etc. is a real moment in capitalist production relations taken as a whole. Marx drives this point home when he contends that social relations which appear as 'material relations between persons and social relations between things' appear 'as what they are' (Marx 1976 p. 166): this passage is unintelligible – it must seem as though Marx is endorsing a fetishised perspective – unless appearance is understood as the mediation (the mode of existence) of the relation in which the producers of commodities stand.1
If, despite all this, a dualistic understanding of the appearance/reality relation is forced upon Marx then the consequence is either determinism (reality is seen as causally conditioning an appearance which is distinct from it) or reductionism (not the appearance, but only the reality, is supposed finally to exist). Once appearances are understood as mediations no such consequences are entailed. Regarding fetishism and mystification, Marx's point is not that we can be mystified about reality, or even that we can be misled by reality, but that mystification – or “enchantment” – is the mode in which capitalist reality exists. So to say, capitalism exists as its own self-denial.

It may seem as though such a view inscribes mystification so deeply in capitalist social reality that the emergence, from capitalism, of revolutionary theory and practice becomes all but impossible. But precisely the opposite is the consequence if, as we shall see, capitalist appearances are modes of existence of relationships which are antagonistic through and through. It is the non-dualism of the appearance/reality relation which allows antagonisms to be matters of experience – to be 'glimpsed', in Anaxagoras's meaning – in however self-contradictory and distorted a way. Once appearance is dualistically severed from reality, by contrast, antagonism is placed outwith the domain of experience and the basis for a politics of revolutionary self-emancipation is undermined.

As with “appearance”, so with “form”. Marx's characteristic mode of questioning is always to ask “Why do these things take these forms?” (e.g. Marx 1976 pp. 173-4). The “things” concerned are production relations which are always, except in communist society, class relations, i.e., relations of struggle: in existing society it is the capital-labour which is “formed” – which gives form and is re-formed – in varying ways. Marx's project is 'to develop from the actual, given relations of life the forms in which these have been apotheosized' (Marx 1976 p. 494). The “forms” concerned are the commodity-form, the value-form, the money-form, the wage-form, the state-form, etc. If “form” is understood dualistically, i.e. as opposed to content which is distinct from it, then once again (for reasons parallel to those given in connection with “appearance”) either determinism or reductionism results. In the event, however, forms are to be understood as mediations (as modes of existence, or appearances) of the class relation – under capitalism, the capital-labour relation – and hence of the struggle in which that relation consists. (On the centrality of class struggle to all the categories of Capital, see Cleaver 1977: every single category in Marx's critique of political economy is designed to contribute to the description of the mediations – the modes of existence – of class struggle, and this is one reason why Capital is to be seen as presenting a critique of political economy rather than a rival political economy on its own behalf.)

It is worth noticing that all of the mediations set forth by Marx stand to be mediated in their turn: for example, exchange-value is the mediation (the mode of existence or appearance) of value, and is for its part mediated by the money-form. For Marx, as for Hegel, no process of mediation is definitive: mediated terms may themselves call for remediation, and far from being static or merely “structural” the process of mediation and remediation is one in which the praxis of class struggle – and therefore capitalism's response to labour's insurgency – is inscribed. Better: mediation and remediation are at issue in class struggle, inasmuch as mediations are forms of class struggle. As usual, it is the categories which thematize activity – here, the activity of struggle – which are given primacy by Marx. Understood thus, the concept of mediation explodes all deterministic readings and establishes revolutionary subjectivity at the very centre of Marx's work.

This being so, there can be no question of revolutionaries having to intervene from outside (like Leninist vanguardists) in inert social structures in order to conjure struggle into existence or to generate praxis from process, since it is as mediations of struggle and as at issue in struggle that social “structures” and social “processes” exist. In this sense, for Marx as for Hegel (and in opposition to every variety of bourgeois or pseudo-Marxist sociology), a social world 'is not a dead essence, but is actual and alive' (Hegel 1977 p. 264). It follows that the politics entailed by a reading of Marx in the light of the category of mediation is, with Luxemburg, a politics of spontaneism: but in the Marxist tradition Luxemburg's category of spontaneism has been understood no less confusedly than the category of mediation itself. At the close of the present paper, I shall offer brief comment on what I take the category of spontaneism to involve.

An additional virtue of the concept of mediation is that it makes possible a theorising of the relation between class struggle and struggles of other kinds. For example, the relation of class oppression to sexual oppression has been a topic of notorious difficulty in both feminist and Marxist thought: sexual and class oppression are intertwined, but of course sexual oppression is older than the capital-labour relation. The necessary insight here is to the effect that capitalist valorisation is not a closed dynamic. i.e., not merely one which destroys, externally, all 'patriarchal and idyllic' pre-capitalist forms (although just such a view seems to be implied in, for example, the Communist Manifesto's opening pages). Rather, it is to be seen as an open process of totalisation which is always ready to incorporate – viciously, voraciously – whatever in pre-capitalism can serve its purposes and lies ready to hand. It incorporates such elements as its own mediations, and in so doing re-“forms” them (understanding “form”, here, in the definitional sense specified above). In this way, capitalism re-forms the family and transforms sexual relations within the family into a “form” of the capital-labour relation itself: the nuclear family comes into being cotemporally with industrial capitalism (Shorter 1976). The sexual relation becomes a mediation of the class relation and vice versa. Women's unpaid labour in the nuclear family serves as a free subsidy to capital so far as the reproduction of labour-power is concerned.2
Thus, sexual emancipation presupposes, but is not reducible to, class emancipation (and vice versa). This analysis is the opposite of reductionist because it construes the process whereby capital re-forms sexual relations as one of struggle and implies neither that all of existing sexual oppression is a consequence of this re-formation – although it is all affected by it – nor that sexual oppression will be automatically terminated once the capital-labour relation is destroyed.

In passing, it can be noted that capitalism's continuing employment of pre-capitalist relations is crucial not merely for any concrete understanding of the capital- labour relation's mediations but also for an understanding of the sources of legitimacy upon which capital may draw. (An example is racist legitimacy, bound up with a heritage of anti-semitism and slavery, so far as the capitalist state is concerned. Amongst other things, this heritage makes it possible for capital to organise a flow of “immigrant” labour-power to and fro across the state's boundaries and in accordance with valorisation's needs.) To see capitalist valorisation as a closed and sheerly self-sustaining dynamic, and capitalist legitimacy as stemming solely from the exchange relation, is to downplay its capacity for incorporating, as its own mediations, that which is or was non-capitalist – and so to underestimate the strength (deriving from flexibility) of that to which revolutionary struggle is opposed. The sheer 'formalism' of the exchange relation would supply capitalism only with a weak legitimation; the 'substantial' sources from which it can derive strong – but nonetheless always problematic – legitimation are both older and more “irrational” and mythic than a Marxism impressed with the hegemony of liberal values would suppose (Horkheimer and Adorno 1969). Sometimes, fascism is analysed as an archaic throwback to times before capitalist rationality prevailed; if this is accepted, however, the conclusion must be that all capitalist states are fascist on precisely this score. The advantage of the category of mediation, here, is that it allows us to break away from the image of a “pure” capitalism overlain and sullied by what Stalinist Marxism terms 'survivals' from a pre-capitalist past. On the contrary to such views: the strength of capital is its capacity to re-form pre-capitalist relations as its own mediations and thereby to translate them into modes of existence of itself.

What I have said about “form” sheds light on yet another contentious area of Marxist theorising, this time an area of a methodological kind. One of the central topics addressed in Marx's 1857 Introduction to the Grundrisse manuscripts is that of the relation between categories which are (in their designation) abstract and categories which are concrete, and we learn that, instead of starting from the concrete and abstracting from it, we must start from the abstract and show how the concrete is composed out of it – the concrete, here, being viewed as 'the concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse' (Marx 1973 p. 101). I shall not attempt to explain all the issues raised in this complex passage, but only to draw out a distinction between two ways in which the abstract/concrete relation can be understood.

Abstracting from the concrete involves abstraction in what may be termed an empiricist sense: the more I abstract, the further I move away from (concrete) reality and the less real – the more purely conceptual – my abstractions become. Marx is for his part willing to employ abstraction in this sense, as when he remarks that 'all epochs of production have certain common traits, common characteristics. Production in general is an abstraction, but a rational abstraction...' (Marx 1973 p. 86). But he adds at once that 'there is no production in general' (Marx 1973 p. 86), in the sense that production is always historically specific, and one of his objections to vulgar political economy is that it confuses abstraction in its empiricist meaning with abstraction in a sense which the notion of mediation brings to light. In this latter sense, that which is abstract can be a mode of existence (a form) of that which is historically specific and no less real than any other aspect of the concrete totality in which it inheres. Mediations, in short, may be either abstract or concrete or a (contradictory) unity of the two. The example which Marx gives of abstraction as mediation is labour, which 'achieves practical truth as an abstraction only as a category of the most modern society' (Marx 1973 p. 105) wherein value-production obtains. The 'dual character' of labour (Marx 1976 pp. 131ff.) as abstract and concrete – as productive of value and of use-value – is one among the mediations of the capital-labour relation itself. Confusing abstraction in the empiricist sense with abstraction in the sense of mediation allows the political economists to construe that which is specific to capitalism (in the present example: abstract labour) as intrinsic to production under all social formations whatever. This confusion is one aspect of the fetishism of categories to which Marx is constantly opposed.

Once again, we arrive at a point which is decisive for how Marx's own critique of political economy is to be read. To be sure, the first volume of Capital discusses “capital in general” in abstraction (more or less) from the questions posed by the existence of “many capitals”, and even at the end of Volume Three we still have to 'leave aside' the conjunctures of the world market, credit and so forth (Marx 1966 p. 831). But this in no way entails that the value-form, abstract labour, surplus-value, etc. – in short, all the central topics of Volume One – are less real than the topics approached as the arguments of Volume Three unfold. Value and labour precisely as abstractions, in the sense of mediations or modes of existence of the capital-labour relation, do real (and murderous) political and exploitative work. The mediations which Volumes Two and Three of Capital add to those of Volume One – the remediations, in other words, of these former mediations – in no way subtract from the importance of the story (the story of the capital-labour relation as a relation of class struggle) which Volume One tells. Nor is it a matter of a “pure model” of capitalism – which exists no more than does 'production in general' or a Weberian 'ideal type' – being moved “closer to reality” by successive stages. To be sure, Volume Three approaches 'step by step the form which they [the 'various forms of capital'] assume on the surface of society...and in the ordinary consciousness of the agents of production themselves' (Marx 1966 p. 25): but just here it is important to keep the sense of “forms” and of “appearances” as mediations clearly in mind. For example, “many capitals” is the mode of existence of “capital in general” and, minus the 'practical truth' – the real social existence – of “capital in general”, the intelligibility of “many capitals” disappears. The point here is more than a textual one. If Volume One is treated as presenting a “pure model” of capitalism (an abstraction in the empiricist sense), then Marxism's emphasis on class struggle – the struggle inscribed in the capital-labour relation – evaporates; both in theory and in practice, one finishes up endorsing the mystified 'ordinary consciousness' of capitalist social relations and the fetishism in which (as Volume Three demonstrates) that consciousness is steeped. To read Marx as an empiricist – as employing only an empiricist concept of abstraction – is to read him as a reformist, and both his political and his theoretical challenges are evaded at a single stroke.

One way of summing up what has been said concerning Marx is to see it as articulating further the possible shapes of mediation discussed above. For it will be apparent that, for Marxism, one application of the concept of mediation as mode of existence (as form or appearance) is of key importance, namely, the application of this species of mediation to a situation wherein, prior to mediation, an antagonistic – or self-antagonistic – relation characterises the to-be-mediated terms. Indeed the antagonism may be one strong enough to destroy the terms, as in the Communist Manifesto's scenario of 'the common ruin of the contending classes'. Hegel tells us what a mediation of antagonistic terms can mean: it can mean that each antagonistically (or self-antagonistically) related term achieves the 'power to maintain itself in contradiction' (Hegel 1971 para. 382), or in other words in its antagonism (which is not at all to say that the antagonism is removed outright or abolished). Suppose, now, that a mediation of this kind brings about an internal relation between, or within, the antagonistic term(s): in such a case, the mediation is the mode of existence not merely of the term(s) themselves but of their antagonism. The antagonism concerned is not removed, but on the contrary is sustained and set on a new footing, inasmuch as (qua mediated) it no longer consumes and destroys or undermines itself. Thus, for Marx, mediations of the contradictions inherent in the commodity-form (the central contradiction is between use-value and exchange-value, and its mediation is money) 'does not abolish these contradictions, but rather provides the form [read: the mode of existence] within which they have room to move' (Marx 1976 p, 198).

In this example, mediation allows not only the antagonistic terms but their antagonism to remain in being. Money, as the mediation of the commodity, is not just superadded to the commodity but is the mode of existence of the commodity itself: 'The riddle of the money fetish is...the riddle of the commodity fetish, now become visible and dazzling to our eyes' (Marx 1976 p. 187). In the absence of this mediation, use-value and value would remain merely juxtaposed, in the sense that use-value production, as a condition of all social existence, is by no means merely value- production and indeed points beyond it. Not the least aspect of the fetishism of commodities is the circumstance that use-value production, as a universally imposed condition of human existence, is established, through mediation, as related internally to value. Hereby, fetishistically, the existence of capitalism becomes inscribed in the ineluctibly given order of things.

Antagonism, of course, returns us once again to class struggle: if the various moments of capital are mediations (forms, modes of existence) of class struggle, then they are mediations which sustain this struggle not merely within the (broad) limits of the avoidance of 'common ruin' but within the (narrow) limits of a capital-imposed order of things. If this is so, then it seems that neither set of limits can become an issue for class struggle – social existence can involve risks neither per se nor for the powers that be – as long as these mediations are in play. And yet, since it is as an antagonistic relation – the capital-labour relation – which they mediate, it is as forms of struggle that capital's mediations always-already exist. The “play” of mediation is thus the play (the risk-taking praxis) of struggle itself. Risk, that is, is intrinsic to social existence and remains so even when it exists in the mode of being denied.

And this returns us to the topic of spontaneism, touched on above. The presence of antagonism in capital (and as capital) allows us to say that, in capitalist society, mediation always and only exists as the possibility of, so to say, going into reverse gear. Mediation exists as the possibility of demediation. Putting matters in this way allows us to avoid what would be a new form of reductionism, namely, a discovery (an uncovering) of class struggle as a level of pristine and authentic immediacy which lies under mediation's shell. Reductionism would be involved here inasmuch as immediacy would be counterposed to mediation, in a dualistic fashion, as the latter's essence and truth. In fact, what lies under mediation's shell is nothing: or, rather, the whole metaphor of a “shell” (together with its famous “kernel”) is inapplicable since the mode of existence of class struggle is the process of mediation and the possibility of demediation itself. This means that the antagonistic contradiction of mediation/demediation is intrinsic to class struggle, as Luxemburg lucidly sees: 'On the one hand, we have the mass; on the other, its historic goal, located outside of existing society. On the one hand, we have the day-to-day struggle; on the other, the social revolution. Such are the terms of the dialectical movement through which the socialist revolution makes its way' (Luxemburg 1970 pp. 128-9). This 'dialectical', or in other words contradictory and self-contradictory, movement is the movement which the term “spontaneism” connotes. In no way does spontaneism conjure, magically and romantically, a surging groundswell of immediacy which will eventually carry before it the web of mediations whose putative truth it is and to which it is externally juxtaposed. On the contrary, the contradiction inscribed in mediation is inscribed in the challenge to mediation as well, and there is no space of immediacy located outside of mediation which might supply a foothold or point of departure from which revolutionary challenge could spring. Spontaniesm connotes demediation and not the conjuring of immediacy, as Luxemburg (unlike her critics) already so sharply sees.

These two things are true: mediation exists as the possibility of demediation; and there is no immediacy, not even in revolution's camp.

If this is so, then the project of revolution (the project of demediation) always contains something paradoxical and, as it were, ironic and playful (it is demediation “making its play”). What Adorno says of the dialectic of identity and non-identity applies to the dialectic of mediation and demediation as well: 'I have no way but to break imminently, and in its own measure, through the appearance [read once again: the mode of existence] of total identity' if non-identity is to come to light (Adorno 1973 p. 5), since it is as modes of existence of one another that identity and non-identity obtain. Indeed, more than analogy relates Adorno's defence of non-identity to the theme of mediation/demediation, since a good part of revolutionary struggle turns on the articulation of that which is particular and nonidentical and hence marginalized with respect to the conformism that any social order entails. This is most evidently the case with sexual politics but holds equally for class politics as well. In Georges Bataille's terms: heterogeneity is to be rescued from the homogeneity which, for example, the bourgeois exchange relation presupposes and enshrines (cf. Bataille 1985 and, on identity and the exchange relation, Adorno 1973). But rescuing particularity and heterogeneity and nonidentity must involve paradox since universality, homogeneity and identity are inscribed in the very conceptual ordering whereby any rescue-attempt must be thought through (to say nothing of the organisational forms which revolutionary practice may find itself driven to adopt). 'The concept of the particular is always its negation at the same time; it cuts short what the particular is and what nonetheless cannot be directly named, and replaces it with identity' (Adorno 1973 p. 173). As with the concept of particularity, so with the concept of demediation: in order to remain in play, it is called upon always to think against itself. And if there remains something opaque about the category of demediation, so be it. Transparency would announce it merely as a fresh mediation, and so close the conceptual space within which the figure of 'revolutionary subjectivity' finds itself able to appear.

Acknowledgements

Kosmas Psychopedis convinced me of the importance of mediation and my poor understanding of it. In the course of many discussions, Werner Bonefeld helped me to see issues at stake.

References

Adorno, T. W. 1973: Negative Dialectics (Routledge and Kegan Paul)

Bataille, G. 1985: Visions of Excess: Selected Writings 1927-1939 (Manchester University Press)

Cleaver, H. 1977: Reading 'Capital' Politically (Harvester Press)

Dalla Costa, M., and James, S. 1976: The Power of Women and the Subversion of the Community (Falling Wall Press)

Hegel, G. W. F. 1892: Logic [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Vol. I] (Clarendon Press)

Hegel G. W. F. 1971: Philosophy of Spirit [Encyclopaedia of the Philosophical Sciences Vol. III] (Oxford University Press)

Hegel G. W. F. 1977: Phenomenology of Spirit (Oxford University Press)

Horkheimer, M., and Adorno, T. W. 1969: Dialectic of Enlightenment (Allen Lane)

Kirk, G. S., and Raven, J. E. 1963: The Presocratic Philosophers (Cambridge University Press)

Luxemburg, R. 1970: Rosa Luxemburg Speaks (Pathfinder Press)

Marx, K. 1966: Capital Vol. III (Progress Publishers)

Marx, K. 1973: Grundrisse (Penguin Books)

Marx, K. 1976: Capital Vol. I (Penguin Books)

Negri, A. 1984: Marx beyond Marx (Bergin and Garvey)

Shorter, E. 1976: The Making of the Modern Family (Collins)

Taken from richard-gunn.com/marx-and-marxism

• 1Here, I speak of the mediation of a relation whereas, previously, I have spoken of the mediation of terms. What may seem like a confusion is only a verbal difficulty, which may be resolved in one of two ways. Either the expression 'term' may be understood in a broad fashion, so as to include relations as one species of term. (In this case, the relation between commodity producers is mediated to itself through the commodity form.) Or the commodity producers themselves may be understood as the 'terms' which the commodity form mediates or relates. Nothing turns on which of these alternative resolutions is adopted, and the expression 'mediation of a relation' can be understood as shorthand for this either/or.
• 2See Dalla Costa and Jones 1976. In her notes to the 1976 edition of this work, Dalla Costa mistakenly says that women's housework is productive not merely of use-value (the use-value of labour-power) but of value and surplus value as well. If this were so, it would destroy her own argument: women's housework would increase (instead of holding down) the value of labour-power, and capital would have an interest in decreasing the amount of housework which women do.

Mediation is one of Marx's concepts which is very much neglected within the 'marxist' discourse. Nevertheless, I think it is one of the most important concepts within marxism. The concept 'mediation' challenges academic marxism and it provides a conceptual framework for the politics of marxism (see Bonefeld 1987).

Before I go into further detail on 'mediation', I want to concentrate briefly on the 'nature' of marxist concepts.

The marxist categories are abstractions of the concrete and complex reality of capitalism. These abstractions decode the "innermost secret, the hidden basis of the relations of sovereignty and dependence" (Marx 1966, p. 791-2). 'The concrete is concrete because it unites diverse phenomena. The concrete is the unity of variety' (see Marx 1973, p.101). Marx's concept of abstract and concrete is thus the methodological metaphor for the continuity of the discontinuous development of the concrete within the abstract and vice versa (see Bonefeld 1987), The analytical abstraction from the concrete leads ''towards the reproduction of the concrete by way of thought" (Marx 1973, p.101). This "is the only way in which thought appropriates the concrete, reproduces it as the concrete in mind" (Marx 1973, p. 101). Thus, the idea of the world “is nothing else than the material world reflected by the human mind, and translated into forms of thought” (Marx 1983, p.29). Only after the development of the substantial abstraction of the innermost secret of the reality can the real movement of the material world be presented appropriately. These abstractions conceptualise the determining relation of capitalism in order to understand its 'perverted and enchanted world' (Marx 1966 p.830). The abstract categories are abstractions from the concrete in order to comprehend the concrete. The only existence of the abstract is within the concrete.

The marxist concepts contain the unifying dynamic of the process of antagonism, which in no case eliminates the antagonism of capitalism (see Negri 1984). This antagonism is the antatonism of labour and capital. The marxist categories contain the reciprocal recognition of labour and capital as an intrinsic relation of struggle. This applies for all the marxist categories. The rnarxist concepts have to be open to the changes in the composition of the social relations which occur during the process of transformation. This is ever more obvious, since it is marxism that analyses the permanent decomposition and recomposition of bourgeois society as a structurally given mediation of its social antagonism and thus as a means of its existence (see Bonefeld 1987). In this sense, the analysis of the hidden laws of capitalism leads inherently to the analysis of the mediation of class antagonism: the modus vivendi of the crisis-ridden development of the capital-labour relation.

The marxist concepts thus contain the analytical perception of the 'hidden laws' and the inherent possibilities of change, both within capitalism (re- and decomposition of form of social relations)' and against capitalist mode of production. Thus, they contain the possibility of 'barbarism and socialism' (see Luxemburg). Marxist conceptions thus contain the notion of the 'possibility' and 'unpredictability' of the development of the capital relation. Marxist categories conceptualise the variety of phenomena as implicit forms of the presence of labour within capital, and thus struggle. The concepts entail the capital labour relation as a relation of subject and object of historical development (see Lukács 19711 ). The categories therefor contain their own negation: they are forms of thought which seek to comprehend the development of the antagonistic social relation and thus to understand history as object and result of struggle.

MEDIATION

The concept of mediation has to be seen within the above outline. The 'determinate abstraction' (see Negri 1984) promotes an analysis of what is mediated. Whereby the mediation itself is inherently contradictory due to its generation as a structurally necessary mode of existence of the organisational presence of labour within capital.

The term mediation inherently contains its own negation which I shall refer to as de-mediation. This term seeks to comprehend the constitution of class through struggle. The term de-mediation will be discussed later.

Concentrating on the term mediation, it contains the analytical penetration of the reality of capitalism as a complex diversity of phenomena. The term mediation is open to the structurally given crisis-ridden transformation of the mode of existence, although the basic pattern remains: the capital relation of necessary and surplus labour.

The recognition of class struggle as the motor of history is basic for the understanding of 'mediation', all-the more because the social antagonism of the capital-labour relation is the relation which is mediated. Economic, social and political phenomena have thus to be seen as object and result of struggle. The historical materialisation of former struggle confines and conditions class struggle (see Marx 1943).

According to Marx, antagonistic relations express themselves always in forms (value-form, state form) (see Marx 1983, p. 106). 'Form' is the 'modus vivendi' (Marx 1983, p. 106) of antagonistic relations. The mediation of antagonistic relations in certain 'forms' does not 'sweep away' (Marx) the inconsistencies of antagonistic relations. Form, and thus mediation, “is generally the way in which real contradictions are reconciled” (Marx 1983, p. 106). Thus, the term mediation refers to the form of existence which allows the antagonistic relations to “exist side by side” (Marx 1983, p. 106).

Thus, it is within 'form' that antagonistic relations can articulate themselves. For this reason I would follow Marx in speaking of the 'perverted and enchanted world' (Marx 1966, p. 830) as a form of existence. Form mediates the existence of antagonisms as a condition of their own existence. As such, the existence of antagonism is a mediated existence, or, with reference to Marx, a fetishized reality. This reality is the material world of capitalism which is based upon class antagonism, which is reproduced by class struggle, which is shattered by crisis (itself also a form of capitalism) and which is dynamically and constantly transformed due to the presence of labour within capital. The mode of mediation is the sole existence of class antagonism.

The totality of phenomena is the material world of antagonism, that is its mode of existence. The relations of production as well as political power relations have thus to be seen as forms of existence of antagonistic relations. The historically changing mode of existence (or appearance, form) has to be grasped as the maerial world of the capital relation which bathes all social, normative and political phenomena in a certain colour (see Marx 1973, p. 107).

Thus, the fetishized world of capitalism is no closed system precisely because it is the form of the capital-labour relation and because it has to be reproduced by class struggle. It is only through struggle that the form of mediation is reproduced and the fethishization of society perpetuated. Contrary to deterministic approaches, this fetishized reality is the reality of captialism as a necessary form of mediation of antagonism. Thus, the enchanted world of capitalism cannot be dismissed as a cover of the veiled reality of truthful laws of capitalism. The only existence of abstract general laws is the cover itself. As such, capitalism exists as a 'totality' of social phenomena within which the antagonism is mediated, with which the antagonism is reproduced and without which capitalism wouldn't exist. The 'determinate abstraction' (Negri 1984) of the enchanted and perverted world of capitalism does not create a hidden reality of capitalism, which is separated from its cover, and from which the false reality of freedom and equality can be deduced as a 'appearance' which is (necessarily) 'wrong' as opposed to 'true' (the hidden laws). The determinate abstraction, conversely to structuralist approaches, depicts the so-called 'cover' as the material existence of class-antagonism.

The concepts of 'Das Kapital' and of the 'Grundrisse' compose the enchanted world in the process of thinking. These concepts thus categorise the mode of existence within which the class antagonism is inscribed and operating, and which is the material world of capitalism. The concept of surplus value, for example, does not exist as an abstract concept of Capital Volume I with which an understanding of the 'concealed' reality should be achieved. It is rather the existence of surplus value production which composes the reality of capitalist exploitation within and through the material world of capitalism, this latter being the mediated mode of existence of antagonism.

The continuity of capitalism resolves itself in the crisis-ridden development of the capital-labour relation. This dynamic development is mediated through the discontinuity of captial's mode of existence, that is, its form of control and its form of pervertion. This permanence of change is mediated by crisis. The transformation of the mode of existence of surplus value production is the historical mediation of the capital-labour class antagonism. The crisis-ridden de- and re-composition of the mode of existence is thus the historical mediation of the achieved form of the material world of capitalism. History is a process of class struggle whose dialectical contradiction is inscribed in the relation of subject and object. Thus, history has to be conceptualised as a totality within which 'kernal and skin constitute the unity' (Labriola 1974, p. 151).

Summing up the argument, the 'enchanted and perverted world' is the only existence of capitalism. The mode of existence is neither cover nor surface. The mode of existence is the mediation of class antagonism. It is the capital-labour relation which illuminates the colour of the social phenomena whose totality constitutes the "concentration of many determinations, hence unity of the diverse" (Marx 1973, p. 101).

DE-MEDIATION

Due to the organisational existence of labour within capital, the mediation of the capital-labour relation is permanently driven into crisis-contradiction-de-mediation and further transcendence.

The mediation of antagonism is thus in a constant process of reproduction-contradiction-crisis and transformation. Fetishized reality does not exist as a closed system. The mediation of class antagonism does not sweep away antagonism and inconsistencies, precisely because it is the mode of existence of antagonisms. The existence of antagonsim in a concealed form (see Marx 1966, p. 817) has to be reproduced by the intercourse of capital and labour: that is struggle.

The fetishized reality has constantly to be reproduced by struggle. As such, it comes constantly into conflict with experience. Thus, it is not only the academical mind which understands the determinating cause of the mode of existence. However, the existence of the abstract in the concrete unifies class conflict and promotes the perception of class antagonism and the understanding of the 'interrelated relation' 'to the popular mind' (see Marx 1966, p. 817). As such, the fetishized reality of capitalism is far from being a closed system whose existence can only be grasped by an intellectually inspired vanguard party acting from 'outside' and administering the 'misled' masses.

The presence of labour within capital constantly de-mediates the mediation of capitalism. Struggle constitutes the de-fetishization of the enchanted and perverted world of capitalism. 'The dialectical relation between subject and object in the development of history' (see Lukács 1971, p. 61) is explicitly elaborated within the marxist method of determinate abstraction and tendency (see Negri 1984, p. 13). It is this dialectical relation between subject and object which provides the understanding of de-mediation as a form of demystification, denuciation and critique of capitalism. All of these forms of de-mediation are intrinsically bound to the practice of destabilisation, decomposition and destruction. Thus, the unity of theory and practice which is explicit for the politics of marxism dwells on the antagonistic class relation of capitalism.

De-mediation thus refers to the constitution of class through struggle. Struggle inherently contains both the reproduction of mediation and the destruction of mediation. Struggle possibly demystifies equality as a mediation of capitalist exploitation, it possibly denounces freedom as a mediation of domination and it possibly criticises 'rights' as a moment of exploitation and destruction (see Gunn 1987).

The activity of labour against its existence as proletarian labour entails the de-mediation of its own experience as wage-labour or, in other words, the recognition of itself as variable capital. Thus, the unifying dynamic of the process of surplus value production continually drives its mediation into contradiction and into de-mediation.

DE-MEDIATION AND MEDIATION

"On the one hand, we have the mass, on the other, its historic goal, located outside the existing society. On the one hand, we have day-to-day struggle; on the other, the social revolution. Such are the terms of the dialectical contradiction through which the socialist movement makes its way" (Luxemburg 1970, p. 128-129).

Mediation and de-mediation are consistent and permanent features of the course of class struggle. The constitution of class through struggle promotes tendencies of de-mediation which are explicitly part of the 'dialectical contradiction' articulated by Luxemburg: day-to-day struggle and socialist revolution. In this context the interwoven process of mediation and de-mediation refers to the possibility of emancipation and the possibility of defeat, that is, the possibilities of socialism and of the transformation of struggle into a new mode of mediation. Luxemburg seems to take this on board when she speaks about the inherent possibilities of socialism and barbarism (see Luxemburg 1970 p. 268, 327). The de-mediation of capitalism is a force inscribed in the dialectic relation of class antagonism. De-mediation thus includes its negation: mediation. The dialectic relation of struggle thus inherently involves the effort to reverse de-mediation by transforming the mode of existence of antagonism. Marx discusses this reciprocal action inherent in the dialectical relation of class antagonism on various occasions. This reciprocal action of antagonism is conditioned by the results of former struggle. Within marxist discourse the relation of mediation and de-mediation is discussed as the reciprocal action of subject and object within the development of history (see Lukács) or as determinate abstraction and tendency (see Negri 1984). The two following examples should clarify this argument: The constitution of class through struggle is seen as productive for the development of the state in the same way as strikes are for the implementation of new machinery (see Marx 1969). Against the 'revolts of the working-class' within production the implementation of new machinery is used as a 'weapon' (Marx 1983, p. 411) to establish control over labour. Struggle thus reproduces capitalism and transforms its mode of existence. Thus, the constitution of class and the transformation of the mode of existence of the capital-labour relation are closely interwoven.

Mediation and de-mediation are concepts which seek to understand the course of struggle. They are dialectically interwoven concepts within which the development of class struggle is inscribed. Thus, they conceptualise the dialectical process of subject and object during history: de-mystification and de-composition, destabilisation and new order of control, practice and counterpractice. In this way, mediation and de-mediation refer to the reproduction of the enchanted world through struggle, which inherently involves the transformation of the capitalist mode of existence and the permanence of primitive accumulation (see Bonefeld 1987).

The permanent and dynamic effort of capital to restructure its control over labour is the precondition of the stability of the capitalist system and vice versa. As for labour, it is the action of destabilisation which immediately leads to the action of destruction (see Negri 1979). The historical form within which the transformation is promoted is crisis, so that the process of mediation is consistently the object and the result of struggle.

The capitalist modes of existence are constantly de-mediated and mediated by the hidden law of their determination: class antagonism and class struggle. Hence, the alternative of socialism and barbarism.

References:
Bonefeld 1987 Open Marxism, in Common Sense no. 1

Gunn 1987 Rights, in Edinburgh Review No. 77

Labriola 1974 Über den historischen Materialismus, Frankfurt

Lukács 1971 Geschichte und KlassenbewuBtsein, Luchterhand

Luxemburg 1970 Speaks, New York

Marx 1943 The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, London

Marx 1966 Capital Vol III, London

Marx 1969 Theories of Surplus Value Vol I

Marx 1973 Grundrisse, Manuscripts of the Critique of Political Economy

Marx 1983 Capital Vol I, London

Negri 1979 Sabotage, Munchen

Negri 1984 Marx Beyond Marx, Notes on the Grundrisse

• 1I do not, however, share Lukács's messianic belief: in the proletariat as the historical executor of history's essence.

Editorial Note
What follows is a new translation by Peter Martin of Section 5 of Chapter 3 of the book Die Andere Arbeiterbewegung ('The Other Workers' Movement') by Karl-Heinz Roth and Elisabeth Behrens. The whole book was first published in 1974 by Trikont Verlag, Munich. ISBN: 3-920385-55-1. In this first English publication the references have been left out, however, this should not affect comprehension of the article. References are available in the original source. This piece will also be included in a forthcoming book on 'class composition and questions of Germany - past and present', to be published by Red Notes (London).

The division of the working class through the forced-labour system.
Those German workers who were not in the army found that their conditions of exploitation relative to the pre-war situation did not substantially worsen until well into 1942. This concession to German workers had a price, though - the forced transportation of millions of people and the limitless exploitation and repression which they had to endure. The restructuring of the working class, which was effected in the shortest possible time and via highly repressive means, led to an improvement of the German workers' position in production. But at the same time, any tendency towards the political homogenisation of this European working class was fought with every available means of class division. At the top of a consciously generated hierarchy that exploited racial prejudices, wage-differentials and positions in the process of production stood the German workers, who increasingly played the role of production overseers, with a view to extracting more output from the foreign forced-labourers. Their participation, whether direct or indirect, in the repression of that broad stratum of the working class subordinated to them effectively undermined the cycle of struggles that they had embarked on before the start of the war.

Apart from German male and female workers, there were five other distinct categories of workers: "Foreigners in general, Poles, Eastern workers, prisoners of war, and Jews". All "civilian" workers from states occupied by or allied to Germany came into the first group. These foreign workers generally had a work contract of at least six months duration, and were paid the prevailing rate for unskilled workers in the relevant branch of industry. Prisoners of war from Western Europe and Scandinavian countries, who were often transferred into a labour status falling under civilian laws so that they could be directly employed in the arms industry, enjoyed more or less the same conditions as the first group. This did not apply to the Polish and Russian prisoners of war. In the case of Russian prisoners of war, the Supreme Army Command ordered that "Soviet prisoners of war are not to be employed under conditions at all comparable with those of other prisoners of war ... Only one law is to be observed: German interests, with a view to protecting the German people against Soviet Russian prisoners of war employed in work-teams and in order to exploit the Russians' labour-power ... The protection of the German people must be the main criterion when Russians are employed; putting them to work is of secondary importance". The Polish and Russian workers, the so-called Eastern workers, each came one step lower down the scale. And right at the bottom, not even regarded as human beings, came the gypsies and the Jews.

National differences between the peoples of Eastern Europe were consciously exploited, and new ones created, in order to prevent a process of solidarisation arising within this most oppressed stratum. The order of the day was "divide and rule". The German Labour Front's training material for guards and company managers mentions the importance of recognising "conflicts and enmities in dealing with the various nationalities". In its memorandum "On the Handling of Foreign Nationals in the East", it emphasises that "not only do we have the greatest interest in not uniting the population of the East, but on the contrary, it is in our interest to divide that population into as many sections and fragments as possible". This pariah-stratum among the workers already bore external stigmas; they had to wear badges bearing the words "Pole", "Eastern worker" or the star of David in such a way as to be visible to all concerned. The wearing of these badges was tantamount to putting them outside the law, and it left them without rights or protection against arbitrary excesses of treatment. They lived in ghetto camps, behind barbed wire, and eked out a barely human existence under dreadful conditions of hygiene, hunger and often sickness. Even the government commission set up by Sauckel's office was obliged to report that the big companies were ignoring even the minimum requirements laid upon them by the National Socialist authorities in the camps. In the mass lodgings, darkness reigned; there was vermin everywhere, and the camps were regularly subject to epidemics. The combination of these living conditions together with the heavy labour every day, the meagre food-rations and the constant terror meant a slow death for millions of foreign workers - in short, destruction through work. The Polish and Russian workers were maintained in a particular pariah status within this working class by means of police methods and administrative violence. Secret service "Regulations Covering the Duties of Polish-nationality Men and Women Civilian Workers during their Residence in the Reich" gives a precise account of the measures used to ensure the isolation of, and discrimination against, these lowest strata of the working class. They were not permitted to leave their place of residence; they were forbidden to use public transport; they were to sew a badge saying "Pole" firmly onto the right breast of every item of clothing; if they deserted their place of work, worked sloppily, undertook acts of sabotage or committed offences against work-discipline they risked being sent to labour-education camps; all social contact with the German population and visits to cinemas, bars, etc. was forbidden; "any person having sexual intercourse with, or otherwise making indecent approaches to, a German woman or man" was punished with death. Needless to say, the ghettoisation of foreign workers in all areas of social life was similarly mirrored in their position in production.

The process of dividing the workers in the factories began with differing levels of pay and discriminatory job allocations, and ended in the concentration camps belonging to the companies themselves, the "labour education" camps. The wage scales were designed to match the grading hierarchy imposed on the workforce. The group classified as "foreigners in general" normally received the prevailing rate for unskilled German workers in the relevant branch of industry. According to a decree issued in June 1942, they were to be paid according to the prevailing local and national rates, in order to increase their output, with the proviso that foreign workers should "not find themselves better placed than German workers". As a matter of course, they received the jobs that fell into the lowest category anyway. Prisoners of war did not receive any pay at all: they were hired out to companies by the prisoner-of-war camp managers. The only way they could earn extra cash of their own was by way of piecework or other surplus-labour. From September 1943, however, regulations were introduced permitting prisoners-of-war to receive part of their wages directly, as part of a series of measures aimed at raising labour productivity. Polish and Russian workers, however, had additional taxes which they had to pay: the "social compensation payment" was a deduction of 15 per cent from the wages of Polish workers, and the "Eastern workers' payment" rose proportionally as their earnings rose. After deductions for board, lodging, clothing and special taxes, the Polish and Russian workers often ended up without a penny of their earnings left.

Foreigners were set to work directly in the factories, and which jobs they were allocated depended on their place in the hierarchy. The Reich Industry Group had stipulated the conditions for the employment of foreign workers as early as 1940: "German-nationality manpower is not to be used for simple, subordinate and primitive jobs; jobs of this kind are to be carried out exclusively by members of the auxiliary populations (principally Slavs, etc). More dignified work of greater value is to be reserved for workers of German nationality." Thus the physically arduous, dangerous and dirty jobs were given to foreign workers, and "work of greater qualitative value" (which consisted in ensuring that no problems cropped up in production; and of acting as overseers to the foreign workers) was reserved for German workers. So, for example, the management at one of the Flick iron foundries wrote to the Reich Iron Association that "its plant needed a contingent of German employees, to oversee the Russian workers and get them to work harder." It was stated that maximum discipline and optimal control of foreign workers was achieved at the Flick plant by putting the foreign workers onto production-line work: "In order to secure higher output from these prisoners of war, groups should be put onto production-line working wherever possible." The employment of foreign labour was organised according to the same criteria. The IG-Farben officials responsible for industrial counter espionage drew up detailed plans for the employment of foreign workers: Soviet workers were to be kept constantly under the supervision of the Werkschutz (Works Security) or other specifically allocated supervisory personnel. In Mansfeld, as elsewhere in the mining industry, foreign workers were generally sent underground. W. Jonas describes the conditions of forced labourers in the Mansfeld copper mines: "The foreign workers were mainly employed where the heavy, arduous, slogging labour is, at the points where they themselves do not set the pace of work, but where the pace is set by the amount of mineral cut out by the mining team, with the latter maintaining a constant pressure on the ore-shifters to get the mineral away from the face." One last example: at AEG in 1942, the proportion of foreign workers stood at 35 per cent, and in some factories there were actually more foreign workers employed than Germans. The company management therefore proposed training the German workers so that they could "take over overseeing and training the foreigners".

The forced labour system operated along identical lines in every factory. Foreign workers got the heavy, dangerous jobs, and the German workers were promoted up the hierarchy of the organisation of labour. They were retrained, they were allocated better and more skilled work, or they moved out of the immediate process of production. They became foremen or simple supervisors to the foreign workers.

Discrimination against forced-labourers and prisoners of war, both socially and in the factories, was maintained on a daily basis by an elaborate machinery of repression. There was considerable resistance on the part of the foreign workers who were transported to Germany and forced to engage in military and arms production. It was only by means of rule of terror that the growing resistance among the foreign workers could be kept under control.

The organised nucleus of repression in the factories lay in the hands of the Werkschutz, the Works Security body. At the onset of war, the Werkschutz was reinforced by groups of "politically reliable" employees, and a subsidiary Works Security system was built up alongside the main one. In August 1940, all company police were once again granted the official status of special police. With Hirnmler's decree of February 1942 on the "Employment of Manpower from the East", repression in the factories was further extended and intensified. The Gestapo were instructed to ensure that those responsible for factory defence kept a strict watch on Soviet forced labourers. Guarding these workers was defined as a specific task of the Works Security, and the Werkschutz "should be reinforced with master-craftsmen and foremen in order to be able to maintain strict control during the labour process as well." "Corporal punishment of the workforce," which could go as far as "special treatment with the rope", was permitted and actually practised. The Gestapo headquarters in Dusseldorf instructed factories in June 1942 that they were to appoint one guard for every 20-30 foreign workers. These guards were expressly ordered "to intervene ruthlessly at the slightest sign of lawlessness and disobedience ... and to make unsparing use of firearms in order to break resistance. Escaping Russians are to be fired on immediately, with the intention of hitting them." In mid-1942, two additional bodies were established - the "Extended Werkschutz I" and the "Extended Werkschutz 2". "Extended Works Security I" was to reinforce the main Werkschutz body, and this was the principle role of its members. The activities of "Extended Works Security 2" were of a lesser order, and related to the maintenance of "labour peace" at the workplace. In 1943 it was stipulated that master-craftsmen and foremen in particular were to involve themselves with Werkschutz in order to be able to keep a particular watch on foreign workers at their place of work. Finally, in 1944 it was ordered that "in order to carry out the increased security measures necessary, the Werkschutz is immediately to be reinforced with an Auxiliary Works Security and a Works Brigade (Werkschar)". With its manifold tentacles _ Extended Works Security 1 and 2, Auxiliary Works Security, Alarm Units, Company Military Reserves, Guards, Works Brigades, foremen and master-craftsmen - the Werkschutz maintained a far-reaching hold over factory life. It was directed almost exclusively against the foreign workers and prisoners of war, and its powers were repeatedly extended as a response to the increasing resistance of these most oppressed strata of the working class. These works police were uniformed and equipped with rifles, pistols and truncheons; at Krupps they also had metal rods covered with leather. Former foreign forced-labourers who appeared as witnesses before the Nuremberg Military Court testified that these murderous weapons were used against foreign workers at the slightest provocation. The Werkschulz was responsible for guarding the foreign workers in the camps, on the way to the factory, and at their place of work. The forced-labourers were not spared the brutality and often cynical cruelty of their guards for a moment. Prison was omnipresent. But what was of decisive importance to the political behaviour of the working class as a whole was that it was not merely a small group of "inhuman works security, SS and Gestapo personnel" who were involved in this incredible system of oppression, but large numbers of ordinary German workers, who were integrated into the system and who basically benefited from it. German workers got better jobs and thus higher pay ; they were no longer right at the bottom of social ladder within the factory, because below them there were still the "foreigners in general, Poles, Eastern workers, prisoners of war, gypsies and Jews", who were much more deprived of their rights than they were.

German workers had become foremen, master-craftsmen, or "guards" of the foreign workers. A document dealing with the formation of the so-called "Factory Military Reserve" shows how an increasing number of German workers took on directly repressive functions over the forced labourers. The chief security manager of the Krupp company wrote to the State Police headquarters in Dtisseldorf: "I have received confirmation that Factory Military Reserves have been set up and sworn in at every factory as per instructions. As soon as distribution of staves, arm-bands and steel helmets has taken place, some 310 Factory Military Brigades, comprising some 2,050 employees, will be available if reserve Brigades and Reserve members are included ... Apart from these Factory Brigades, which ... are intended to maintain the security of the factories, an Alarm Unit has been set up to reinforce the Werkschutz . .. We have received from the Army, via the local armaments brigade, 250 Mannlicher rifles and 4,600 rounds of ammunition to equip both the Werkschulz and the Alarm Units ... The purpose of these units is to combat unrest among our 18,000 foreign employees, 6,000 of them Eastern workers, but in my opinion there will be little need to call on their services, since fears of unrest among the workforce or the population need not be entertained".

The German workers were not only being trained as a means for combatting possible attempts at uprising, and for suppressing armed resistance on the part of the forced-labourers and prisoners of war; they were also expected to oversee the productive output of the foreign workers in the course of the day's work. "Auxiliary guard-teams", "guards" and "reliable" German workers were there to maintain the necessary work discipline. Prisoners of war were to be subjected to "the work-discipline of German factories" during their working hours. "This is maintained by Auxiliary guard-teams appointed from among the German members of the workforce ... These teams do not have a direct working relationship with the prisoner-of-war camp, but they are subject to the regulations applying to soldiers in accordance with Article 35 of the Military Code, as regards the use of weapons." There was no squeamishness about granting additional powers to this army of factory police. Their main duty was to establish "labour peace and work discipline" among foreign workers; nobody asked any questions about how they went about doing so, and nobody called them to account for their handling of those workers. On the contrary, they were induced to act still more harshly and ruthlessly against the forced-workers, on pain of punishment. In order to counteract the decline in output, a memo sent to company managers ran: "Foremen and guard-teams are to be held responsible for failures to maintain output. Ruthless action must be taken against supervisory personnel in any case of shirking - even when grounds of ill-health are pleaded - or loafing. Company managers must not allow any slackness to develop among their supervisory personnel. Sharp punishment is assured by the police, in summary form and without time-consuming hearings."

How was resistance to be expected from this German "foreman of Europe", against the perfected system of Nazi exploitation and repression? When you consider that there was one guard for about every 20 foreign workers, it is not hard to calculate how many German workers were involved solely in the direct oppression of the forced labourers. And the privileges accorded to the German workers in this forced-labour system did not fail in their political intention of undermining any united struggle by foreign and German workers against this new form of capitalist rule. Direct repression in the factories had a whole arsenal of sanctions at its disposal. It began with the factory roll-call each morning, and could end with a worker being despatched to a "labour education" camp. In the IG-Farben factories, the morning roll-call was an undisguised intimidation of the foreign workers to achieve the required output. One set of instructions stated: "At the beginning of every working day, it is to be explained to the Eastern workers, via an interpreter, what work-task they have to fulfil on that day. They are to be told that they will only return to their camp when the work has been properly finished. Under no circumstances is there to be payment for overtime." If work was poor, or output low, wages were cut, extra work was imposed in the form of overtime, night-shift or Sunday working, or the already insufficient food-rations were reduced still further. Sauckel's office instructed all factories that: "If the output of a worker falls behind the average output of a German workers, his pay is to be cut correspondingly." In the case of Polish and Russian workers, deductions for "insufficient output", board, lodging, transport to the place of work, and for time lost due to sickness, led to their not merely receiving no pay, but actually "falling into debt with the company". In cases of offences against work-discipline, food rations could be reduced for anything from one day to several weeks. But this by no means exhausted the sanctions available. In the Wolfen film factory, for instance, a special supervisory service was set up to identify "foreign shirkers". These spies from a body called "Social Bureau II" spent their whole day seeking out so-called "shirkers" and dragging them back to their workplaces. In order to sustain work-discipline, the company management at the Leuna works recommended the following "educative measures": "Heating may be denied to the workshy, for one or more days. The work-shy can be held in a place of detention on bread and water in the camp during their free time. Persistent shirkers are to be reported to the State Police for transport to a concentration camp".

From 1940 on, there were so-called "punishment brigades" in the Leuna works for "workshy and lazy elements"; they were under the particularly strict supervision of a master-craftsman and the Works Security. In the Flick works too there were punishment brigades for workers "working carelessly and lazily". In cases where the factory workers did not themselves feel able to establish the necessary work-discipline among the foreign workers, the Gestapo was called in. The final stage of repression in the factories was the "labour education" camps. Their function was to educate "workshy elements to work discipline" and to "return them to their place of work once this goal has been achieved". Initially, the labour-education camps were attached to the State Police or the Criminal Police headquarters. But with the growth of labour resistance, the companies were losing too many men to the Gestapo and SS, so they took over the labour education camps in the vicinity of the factory with a view to disciplining the forced-labourers themselves. In IG-Farben's labour education camps, the inmates were divided into three categories. The first group was the "re-education company" and it contained mostly German workers who had drawn attention to themselves by making remarks in the factory. They were generally set lighter work, and in the evening had to attend courses in National Socialist ideology. In the second group were the shirkers. Their punishment consisted of hard labour and arduous exercises. Then came the "punishment battalion". In addition to being subjected to hard labour, these people were harassed and ill-treated in an incredible manner. The testimony of former inmates of the Krupp punishment camp, the notorious Dechen and Neerfeld School, show that the companies' own punishment camps were no whit inferior to the concentration camps for ruthlessness. At Krupps, workers were submitted to a regime of systematic torture. First they had to undergo beatings by the Krupp company police. Their private possessions were taken away, they received prison clothing without underclothes, and their heads were shaved with crude razors. "They were woken every day at six o'clock and taken to work without food. Some of the time they were put to work on heavy earth-moving, at other times they were put on munitions construction or into the cast-steel works. They were beaten to make them work harder. After twelve hours' work, they received about half a litre of warm water with cabbage leaves floating in it, about 50gr jam and 25gr sausage. Throughout their period of detention the prisoners received no washing water, no soap, no new clothing, no medical treatment and no wages." These conditions were not exceptional. One former inmate of the Siemens company labour" education camp in Radeberg wrote:

"I have spent six and a half years in German prisons. The worst I experienced was the labour-education camp at Radeberg. The conditions in Radeberg surpassed anything we had ever known. You could more or less calculate when and how you would drop dead. A prisoner who was put in with me died after two days as a result of the ill-treatment. You had to shovel muck several centimetres deep out of the barracks. There were no blankets, soap or towels, and corpses with signs of serious ill-treatment lay in the toilets. Inmates of the so-called labour education camp at Radeberg were beaten for no reason at all, and this meant being put over a stool and being held down by your head and your hands. People often got 50, 60 or 75 blows, so that within three days inmates would die as a result of the beatings".

Common Sense #10, 1991
Text from www.classagainstclass.com

In the Beginning Was the Scream

In the beginning was the scream.

When we talk or write, it is all too easy to forget that the beginning was not the word but the scream. Faced with the destruction of human lives by capitalism, a scream of sadness, a scream of horror, above all a scream of anger, of refusal: NO. The starting point of theoretical reflection is opposition, negativity, struggle.

The role of theory is to elaborate that scream, to express its strength, and to contribute to its power, to show how the scream resonates through society and to contribute to that resonance.

That is the origin of Marxism, not just of Marx’s Marxism but presumably also of our own interest in Marxism. The appeal of Marxism lies in its claim to be a theory of struggle, of opposition, of negation. But that is not what Marxism has become.

Today Marxism is probably more discredited than ever, not just in the bourgeois press or in the universities but also as a theory of struggle. The experience of the Soviet Union and Eastern Europe has been crucial in this respect; the identification of Marxism as the official ideology of the state has meant that the struggles against the state have taken the form not of struggles inspired by a “truer Marxism,” as was hoped by many in the West for so long but of struggles against Marxism as such. But it is not only in the East that the statification of Marxism has led to its rejection. In the West too, the surge of Marxism into the universities in the late 1960s and early 1970s has led in some degree to its desiccation. Borne into the universities on a wave of working-class struggle, Marxist theory has tended to be sucked into the general separation of theory from practice that characterises the university as an institution. As the wave of struggle that provided the basis of Marxism has ebbed, many Marxist academics have completely abandoned Marxism; even worse, perhaps, many have not but have carried their Marxism with them as they adapt to the institutional structures and professional pressures of the university. Often this is not the result of conscious choice, but rather the result of the dynamics of non-choice; work in the university has its own dynamic that constantly tends to separate theoretical work from any political base. The result is often a Marxism that is far more sophisticated but no less determinist than the old “orthodoxy” of the communist parties.

In both cases, the state ideology of the East and the sophisticated academicism of the West, Marxism has lost its scream. Class struggle remains a category, but the simple statement at the start of the Communist Manifesto that “the history of all hitherto existing societies is the history of class struggle” is in fact abandoned. Class struggle in these theories is still seen as being influential but only within a broader framework, variously interpreted as the conflict between the forces and relations of production or simply as the “laws of capitalist development.” Class struggle is important—of course (so “of course” that it can simply be taken for granted)—but it must submit to the “inescapable lines of tendency and direction established by the real world” (Hall 1985, 15). Struggle is subject to structure, and since structure is the structure of capitalist society (the real world), Marxism in this version becomes quite simply a theory of capitalist reproduction. The “inescapable lines of tendency and direction established by the real world” are quite simply the functional requirements of capitalist reproduction, so that these theories are not only structuralist but functionalist. And then, with all thought of rupture or revolution long forgotten, these theorists move from analysing what is necessary for capitalist reproduction to prescribing what is necessary, to making policy suggestions and advising the state, still, of course, using the language of Marxist theory and making obeisance to the importance of class struggle. It is little wonder that many who are actively involved in anti-capitalist struggle feel little attraction to such Marxism.

Yet a theory of the scream is more urgent than ever, because capitalism is both increasingly fragile and increasingly terroristic. The scream will continue as long as capitalism does, but there is a real danger that Marxism as the language of the scream, as the theory of protest, could get lost. Marxism as a theory of determinism and as an ideology of the state is discredited, but it is more urgent than ever to develop Marxism clearly as a theory of struggle. There is of course a long tradition of emphasising struggle as the central element of Marxism, a long tradition of what one might call “left Marxism,” but it is a diverse and often subterranean tradition, without very clear continuities. Many of those who politically have insisted on the self-organisation of the working class have retained theoretical concepts that go against the articulation of the power of labour (as in Pannekoek’s discussion of crisis, for example); and many of those who have made important contributions to theorising working-class power have adopted ambivalent political positions in practice (Adorno and Bloch, for example). The crisis of the regimes of Eastern Europe is, or can be, a liberation of Marxism from much of the baggage acquired over the last century, but it is very important to try to be clear about the foundations of this liberated Marxism.

The most obvious point to be made about a theory of struggle is that its basis is uncertainty. If the world is to be understood in terms of struggle, then there is no room for determinism of any kind. Struggle, by definition, is uncertain and open, and the categories that conceptualise it must also be understood as open. The determinism of Marx’s more triumphalist moments (such as the end of section 1 of the Communist Manifesto, Capital vol. 1, chap. 32, or the 1859 “Preface to A Contribution to Political Economy”), which are so important for the “orthodox” Marxist tradition, must go, so must any idea of historical necessity or any suggestion of a final inevitable victory of socialism. As Adorno put it, after the experience of fascism, it is no longer possible (if it ever was) to think of a smooth dialectical progression ending with communism as the resolution of conflict, the inevitable negation of the negation. We can only think of the dialectic as being a negative dialectic, a dialectic of negation with no certain synthesis. In a world of untruth, the only concept of truth that we can have is negative. There is no certainty in Marxism: its only claim to truth is the force of its attack on untruth. This leads perhaps to a dizzy, dizzying vision of the world (see Adorno 1990, 31), but the dizziness lies not in the vision but in the reality of a world hurtling who knows where.

The dialectic of negation is the struggle of the working class. In a world of struggle, there is no neutrality. The perspective is the perspective of our struggle. As Tronti put it in an article that provided one of the starting points for the theory of autonomia in Italy: “We too had a conception of capitalism that put capital in first place and the workers in second. That was a mistake. And now we must reverse the polarity and start again from the beginning. And the beginning is the class struggle of the working class.” The beginning is the struggle, our struggle, our scream, the scream of negation. As Rosa Luxemburg put it, “The secret of Marx’s theory of value … was that he looked at capitalism from the point of view of its transcendence, from a socialist point of view.” It is only from the standpoint of negation that Marx’s categories make any sense at all: without that, they are quite literally meaningless. That is why there cannot be any continuity between bourgeois theory and Marxist theory: the basic presuppositions that underlie their categories are totally incompatible. Underlying bourgeois theory is an assumption about the stability of capitalism and the power of capital to retain control of society indefinitely. The basis of Marxist theory is just the opposite: the instability of capitalism and the power of labour to overthrow capitalism.

It is essential to retain the idea that the starting point must be the struggle of the working class. Linton Kwesi Johnson has a wonderful expression when he describes the violent reaction of a group of blacks to police harassment: “the bile of oppression was vomited” (“Five Nights of Bleeding”). If we are to avoid the structural-functionalism that characterises so much of Marxist theory, it is important to think of our work in those terms: as a vomiting of the bile of oppression.

However, there is a difficulty here, and it is a difficulty presented by a lot of left theory. The focus on the struggle of the working class leads very easily to a conception of the working class as purely external to capital. From correctly emphasising the subjectivity of labour and the antagonism between labour and capital as the starting point, such approaches easily move to simply counterposing the subjectivity of labour to the objectivity of capital. The one-sided emphasis on subjectivity (voluntarism), although it appears to be the opposite of objectivism (determinism) is actually its logical complement. Both operate with the assumption that there is a distinction between class struggle and the laws of economic development: the difference lies only in the primacy attached to one or the other. Alternately, all notion of the “logic of capital” is abandoned and capital is seen as a purely external subject, manipulating and controlling labour. Class struggle is then seen as the clash of two opposing armies, as a battle that goes back and forth, to and fro. At this level there is no history, or rather history is a formless thing, without shape, without tendency.

Marx’s conception is different: in the clash of the two opposing armies of capital and labour, there is something that gives direction and shape to the struggle. The fact that the two sides are not external to each other: capital is nothing other than alienated labour and the objectivity of the “real world” is nothing than our own alienated subjectivity. The basis of both sides of the class struggle is the same: the power of labour. Capital is nothing other than alienated labour. This is the basis of the labour theory of value, seen even before Marx by both the radical Ricardians and their critics as an assertion of the power of labour. At its most basic, the power of labour is the power to create, and therefore also the power to destroy. When Marx distinguished between the worst architect and the best bee by saying that the former plans the construction before executing it, he might also have added that the architect is also more likely to fail in the construction. The power of labour is the power of uncertain creation, the power of that which is not, the power of nonidentity (Adorno), of the Not Yet (Bloch), of the working class No (Tronti).

When labour and capital confront each other, this is not an external confrontation. The power of labour meets the power of labour but in the form of its antithesis. Contradiction is “non-identity under the aspect of identity” (Adorno), negativity under the aspect of positivity, labour under the aspect of capital. The substance of capital is the power of labour; the power of labour exists under the aspect of capital: it assumes the fetishised form of capital. Once the relation between capital and labour is seen as an internal relation, then the question of form becomes crucial. Unlike the Ricardians, who were content to show that the substance of value was labour, Marx was concerned with the form of value, with the question why the product of labour took the form of value—and indeed he saw the question of form as being the crucial dividing line between his theory and bourgeois theory, for which the question of form is meaningless (Capital vol. 1, 80). The whole of Marx’s Capital is a study of the increasingly fetishised forms of the power of labour. The “pivot” for an understanding of the different forms of social relations is the dual existence of concrete labour and abstract labour, the fact that concrete, useful labour takes the form of abstract labour, the fact that useful, creative labour confronts itself in meaningless, in alienated form.

If capital cannot be understood as external to labour, it cannot be understood as something economic. The movement of capital can only be understood as the movement of the contradiction (internal to capital itself) between capital and labour, the movement of struggle. The notion of “Marxist economics,” one of the most unfortunate creations of the “orthodox” Marxist tradition, insofar as it suggests a separation of capital from struggle, must be abandoned. But if the movement of capital can only be understood as the movement of struggle, the movement of struggle can only be understood as a movement in-and-against capital. The notion that you can understand the movement of struggle or of society in abstraction from the particular form that it takes, the notion that underlies the concept of “Marxist sociology” must also be abandoned. (The absurd notion of a Marxist political science, an idea raised by Poulantzas, need not even be mentioned.)

Discussion of form (or form analysis) often appears to be very far removed from any political concern, so it is important to emphasise why the concept of form is important for developing Marxism as a theory of struggle. The central issue is the articulation and recognition of the power of labour. A concept that emphasises struggle but sees struggle as being external to capital, recognises only one aspect of the power of labour. It hears the scream but is deaf to the resonance of the scream within capital itself. It sees the power of labour in strikes, in demonstrations, in armed struggle but does not see it in the contradiction between productive and money capital, in the inadequacies of technology, or in the internal disorder of the state. It sees the power of labour in the response of the state to overt struggles but does not see it in the very existence of value as an uncontrollable chaos at the heart of capital. It is the presence of the power of labour within capital that makes it ineradicably crisis-ridden, and that allows us to speak not of laws of capitalist development but of certain rhythms and tendencies in the development of struggle.

It is important, to see that the concept of form here implies contradiction, instability. The power of labour appears in the form of its antithesis, the power of capital. Class struggle takes the form of relations or “things” (value, money, profit, etc.) that appear to be neither class relations nor antagonistic. Class “exists in the mode of being denied” (Gunn). As forms of class struggle that deny their own substance, the social forms of value, money, state, etc. are inevitably characterised by a constant tension between form and content. The content is not contained within the form but constantly breaks its banks and overflows. To quote Adorno again: “The name of dialectics says no more, to begin with, than that objects do not go into their concepts without leaving a remainder, that they come to contradict the traditional norm of adequacy” (1990, 5). The power of labour is not contained within the forms of capital; it constantly overflows and forces these forms to reconstitute themselves, to reform, in order to contain the uncontainable. Fetishism, in other words, is not an established fact but a constant process of fetishisation.

This distinction between fetishism and fetishisation is crucial for the way that we understand society and the way that we understand Marxism. If fetishism is total, if class antagonism is completely contained within its forms, then revolution as the self-organisation of the working class becomes theoretically impossible. If fetishism is total and the working class cannot see through the forms in which class struggle presents itself (as neutral things), then there are only two possibilities: either one sees the working class within the structures of capitalism and gives up hope of revolution—the understandable but destructive pessimism of the Frankfurt School—or else one sees the only possibility of revolution as lying in the intervention of a deus ex machina, a vanguard party who will come from the outside. But there is no outside, just as there is no inside: there is only an inside-outside, an overflowing, an in-and-against-and-beyond. The only possible way of resolving this dilemma, the dilemma common to Leninism and the Frankfurt School theory, is to see that fetishism is not total. It is not an established fact but a constant process of fetishisation. Labour does not simply exist in the form of capital: it exists in-and-against-and-beyond those forms of capital. Class struggle does not simply exist in the form of value, money, state, etc. It exists in-and-against-and-beyond those forms. The forms of value. money, state, etc., are better thought of as form-processes, as processes of valorisation, monetisation, statification.

The state, for example, is neither an institution in the sense of a thing that is outside us nor simply a form of social relations in the sense of a link in the chain of capitalist reproduction: it is rather a form-process, an active process of forming social relations and therefore social struggles in a certain way. It is not just an aspect of fetishism (the neutral state) but as part of the general struggle of capital against labour an active process of fetishisation that systematically channels class struggles into nonclass forms, into struggles on behalf of citizens, struggles for democracy, for human rights, etc.—forms that systematically deny the existence of class and therefore promote the disarticulation of the power of labour.

Or money, to take another example, is not a fetishised form of social relations. It is a process of monetising life, of subjecting human existence to the command of money, which implies a constant and violent struggle. The intensity of that struggle is reflected in all the conflicts surrounding the unprecedented expansion of debt throughout the world and in the equally unprecedented rise in theft and “crimes” against property.

Or, to make the point more generally, if the dual existence of labour as concrete and abstract labour “is the pivot on which the comprehension of political economy turns,” then it is important to see the abstraction of labour (the “imposition of work” as it is sometimes called) as a process, as a struggle that permeates not only the workplace but the whole of society—a point emphasised without differentiation in the concept of the social factory.

Capital’s reproduction depends on the fetishisation, on the containment of a struggle that always goes beyond it. The relation between labour and capital is neither external nor internal: it is both, but with no clear dividing line. Labour does not simply exist within capital; it exists in-against-and-beyond capital (again with no clear dividing line between in, against and beyond, and therefore no clear distinction between class-in-itself and class-for-itself). Labour overflows from capital. Capital is not simply the form of labour; it is the process of forming labour; it is the constant process of self-reconstitution to contain labour. Class struggle is the movement of the overflowing-and-containment, or, in other words, class struggle is the movement of fetishisation/defetishisation. This is not to say that class struggle is theoretical, although theoretical reflection is clearly part of it. The process of fetishisation/defetishisation is a practical one. Fetishisation is the process by which social interconnections are broken down and become impenetrable. It is the decomposition of the working class. Defetishisation is the opposite movement: the movement by which, through struggle and the theoretical reflection that is part of it, interconnections are established and the working class is recomposed. Fetishisation is the containment of the power of labour. defetishisation is the overflowing of the power of labour, the scream of negativity. Fetishisation is the smothering of the scream, the assurance that “things are so.” Defetishisation is the unleashing of the scream, the awareness that the only truth is that things are not so, that truth is not yet, or simply not.

Marxism is defetishisation, the theory of the power of labour in-against-and-beyond capital, the theory of the scream that shows that the scream does not exist only in overt militancy (in what is usually called “class struggle”), but that it is much, much more powerful than that because it reverberates in the very concepts of capital, because it reverberates in the deepest silence of everyday life. As Linton Kwesi Johnson puts it:

Inside our ears are the many wailing cries of misery,

Inside our bodies, the internal bleeding of stifled volcanoes,

Inside our heads, the erupting thoughts of rebellion.

How can there be calm when the storm is yet to come?

(“Two Sides of Silence”)

The “internal bleeding of stifled volcanoes” inside our bodies, the “erupting thoughts of rebellion” inside our heads, the existence of nonidentity under the aspect of identity, the presence of the not-yet in the now, the power of labour in-against-and-beyond capital are the instability of capital, its constant tendency to crisis. Crisis is the manifestation of that power and for that reason the central concept of Marxism. Crisis is the eruption of the power of labour.

References
Adorno, Theodor W. Negative Dialectics. London: Routledge, 1990.

Gunn, Richard. Marxism and Mediation. Common Sense, no. 2 (1987).

Hall, Stuart. “Realignment for What?,” Marxism Today, December 1985.

Johnson, Linton Kwesi. Dread Beat an’ Blood. London: Bogle L’Ouverture Publications, 1975.

Marx, Karl. Capital, vol. l. Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1965.

1) 1987 was the fiftieth anniversary of the death of Antonio Gramsci, the founder of the Communist Party of Italy (PCI). The year saw many initiatives and publications aimed at marking the occasion by remembering his work, bringing to light new evidence about his life, and putting fresh interpretations on his political-cultural message. In particular, there was an initiative, which addressed itself to one of Gramsci's most stimulating works in an attempt to open up new interpretations. Namely his article "Americanism and Fordism".

In this article, which he wrote in prison, Gramsci seeks to continue the debate, which he had initiated, on developmental trends within the working class, and among motor industry workers in particular. He embarks on an interpretation which was made possible for him by his experiences as a trade-union and political organiser among the workers of Turin (and among FIAT workers in particular) and which he had further developed as a
theoretician of the workers' councils in the journal Ordine Nuovo, during the period of the factory occupations in September 1920.

Gramsci's interpretation of Fordism, which was written after the Great Crisis of 1929, stresses above all its "social-hygienic" aspects. In this framework he is concerned to analyse the "sexual Restoration" implicit in the "puritan" initiatives undertaken by Ford: the corps of factory overseers was set up to control the private lives and most particularly the sexual behaviour of Ford workers, the company's policy in relation to company housing, which was reversed for married couples, and so on.

In his analysis, Gramsci establishes the connection between these initiatives and the policy of Prohibition. The "new worker" was expected to reserve his physical and psychological energies for factory work, he was therefore expected to have stable sexual habits, regulated within the nuclear family, and he was also to refrain from alcohol. In this way he could be expected to maintain his psycho-physical energies intact, and avoid spending his wages in bars and brothels. Although this sexual Restoration affected women just as much as men, and probably more so, Gramsci stressed the progressive "masculinisation" of labour power in the Fordist factory. Sexual Restoration and Prohibition, according to Gramsci, supplement the regulation of working-class behaviours in the factories initiated by Taylorism. Taylor's intention had been to conserve and rationalise the workers' psycho-physical energies inside the factory. Ford - who saw the worker not only as a producer of goods, but also as a consumer of the wage - sought to conserve the workers' psycho-physical energies outside the factory too.

The second aspect that Gramsci identified in Fordism was a further evolution in the rationalisation of work by means of technological innovation. But in his discussion this aspect remains of secondary importance. Gramsci shares the viewpoint of the communist movement of the 1920s, whereby technological development and the scientific organisation of work were seen as progressive. In one passage he makes the point directly, that 'the Italian workforce has never, either as individuals or as a trade union, whether actively or passively, taken a stand against innovation, where this has aimed at the cutting of costs, at the rationalisation of work, and at the introduction of improved automation and technical organisation of the company complex.'

Although Gramsci was aware that a positive attitude vis-a-vis technological innovation and the rationalisation of work could have negative consequences for the theory and practice of the communist world, he identified these dangers in the methods of militarisation of labour which, in his opinion, Trotsky was adopting in the Soviet Union, rather than in the policy of 'rationalisation by means of machinery' as such.

The third aspect of Fordism which Gramsci highlighted was the close relationship with the need for planning at the level of general economic and wage policies. It was only via these instruments that the Fordist policy of mass production of motor cars and engines for civilian use was able to develop within an adequate economic context. (Given the conditions of his imprisonment, and his death in 1937. Gramsci was unfortunately unable to analyse the Rooseveltian New Deal experiment in similar detail.) Thus far 'Americanisation and Fordism.'

2) It was not until the start of the 1960s that it was possible to reopen a theoretical debate within the Italian workers' movement on themes of the organisation of work and technological innovation. This came after a long period in which these questions received only scant critical consideration - a hiatus which was due to the strategy, developed by the Italian Communist Party under Togliatti, of active collaboration in economic development. It is no accident that this debate opens, precisely, on to the problems and ambiguities contained in Gramsci's thinking. The theme of the relation between people and machines, between the working class and technological innovation, which receives an ambivalent treatment in Gramsci, and to which he devotes less attention than questions of "social hygiene" and of economic policy, was now to become central.

The prime mover in this debate was Raniero Panzieri, a leading figure in the left wing of the Italian Socialist Party, a cultural organiser, and founder of the journal Quaderni Rossi in 1961. During the whole period of the 1970s, the figure of Raniero Panzieri was that of a "tolerated heretic" within the Italian workers' movement, the initiator of that major political-cultural current known as operaismo ("workerism"). In recent years there has been considerable interest in Panzieri on the part of historians whose political experiences had previously been within the extreme Left, but who today have joined the intellectual Court of Bettino Craxi. One of these historians, Stefano Merli, the writer of a pioneering work on the origins of the industrial proletariat in Italy, published in 1987 a volume of Raniero Panzieri's letters, which cover the decisive years of his activity as a militant up to his premature death in 1964.

Panzieri began his considerations on the relation of the working class to technological innovation with a re-reading and interpretations of the "Fragment on Machinery" contained in Marx's Grundrisse. Panzieri maintains that this reference to Marx's text is important, in order to be able to criticise the objectivist and fatalistic view of technological progress as exemplified in Italian trade unionism, which limited its demands purely to correcting the excesses of technological development, without understanding that such development serves only to strengthen the authoritarian structure of the factory. Panzieri wrote: "Capitalist despotism takes the form of technological rationality." He maintains that the trade unions accepted a situation in which the occupational characteristics of labour power were framed by technological development, and that they collaborated in this definition in terms of wage structures, workload, recognition of grading, and so on. According to Panzieri. the union did no more than attempt to correct the "distortions and dysfunctions", while at the same time accepting the order of capital as "technical rationality".

Thus, according to Panzieri's analysis, labour power was condemned to perpetual subordination to machinery. Only if it organised itself collectively, and only if it demanded control over the production process, could the working class find its political identity. Panzieri wrote: "The subversive power of the working class, its revolutionary capacity, appears (potentially) stronger in the developed areas of capitalism, where the crushing relation of constant capital over living labour - with the rationality that constant capital embodies - immediately confronts the working class within the question of its political enslavement." So saying, Panzieri implicitly provided a methodological suggestion for research into "the political history of technology".

3) Panzieri's reflections stimulated a number of field research projects, mainly built around direct interviews with workers in the major factories of Turin - principally FIAT - and in factories with particularly advanced technology, such as the Olivetti plant in Ivrea. This was the moment when Marx's "worker's inquiry" was introduced on a more solid thematical basis, and more strongly in the western tradition, than the "Maoist inquiry" which Italian followers of the Chinese Cultural Revolution were to try to import into Italy a few years later. With the work of Panzieri and the Quaderni Rossi, the preconditions were laid for an alternative history of theItalian working class in the post-War period. The groundwork was laid for a debate on questions of trade union organisation, and there was a real renaissance in studies in the sociology of work.

This research involved members of the Quaderni Rossi group who were close to Panzieri, while other activists placed experimentation with new forms of class organisation at the centre of their political activity and devoted themselves as intellectuals to principally politological forms of activity. This was the group that founded the journal Classe Operaia in 1964. Among the projects and debates of Quaderni Rossi - here I am referring to the first three numbers of the journal, after which splits appeared which led to the publication of Classe Operaia a few months before Panzieri's death - there was also a project for a renewal of historiographical studies, around which Umberto Coldagelli and Gaspare De Caro had elaborated a series of interpretative models and key concepts in the third issue of the journal.

Under the title "Some Hypothesis for Marxist Research into Contemporary History", Coldagelli and De Caro proposed a working project which took as its starting point a critique of Gramsci's national-popular conception, whereby the workiig class was to fulfil within Italian society a function as a driving motor for reform of the system, thereby freeing the system from its protocapitalist and late-feudalist leftovers.

In Gramsci's conception, elaborated during the years of his imprisonment, the working class was seen as functioning as a "modernising factor", both in relation to the economic system and in relation to the political institutions, and it was seen as carrying though to fulfilment the process of democratisation that had been cut short by Fascism. Coldagelli and De Caro counterposed to this conception of history a very different view of the nature of the fascist regime; they stressed the way in which it represented a modernisation of the capitalist system: 'The policies of the fascist regime corresponded fully, from the start, to the new requirements of Italian capitalism. Industry was to be re-organised over the space of a very few years during which all industrial sectors were to achieve extremely high increases in productivity, higher than the West European average."

For Coldagelli and De Caro it was necessary to rewrite the history of the Italian working class from the viewpoint of its organic relationship with capitalist development and its concrete relationship to work, and to abandon the subaltern interpretations which dealt with working-class history only separately from direct relations of production. Such interpretations had been the norm in left-wing (and particularly Communist Party) historiography.

4) In 1963, when these working hypotheses were published, Italian economic historiography was in a rather underdeveloped state. In the Annals of the Feltrinelli Institute for the year 1959, the historian Giorgio Mori had written a well-grounded overview of studies in Italian economic history and the industrial history of the post-War period. In the case of FIAT, Alfa Romeo, Lancia and Autobianchi he was unable to cite one single work which was not written from the companies' point of view. All the available publications on FIAT (7), Alfa Rorneo (2), and Innocenti (1) were in some shape or form company propaganda. The same was true of the liberal historian Rosario Romeo: in 1963, when he published the second expanded edition of his "Brief History of Italian Industry" (Breve Storia della Grande Industria in Italia, first published in October 1961) he was unable to cite one single monograph on the history of the auto industry. There were studies of the steel industry and the textile industry, but these were also few in number. There was a complete lack of a general history of contemporary Italian industry, and there was very little written on the history of the banking sector.

In 1963 - when Coldagelli and De Caro were formulating their working hypotheses - there were also very few works available in the area of general economic history, particularly as regards the economic history of Fascism. The only worthwhile ones were strongly polemical in tone - works which were compiled during the period of political emigration and clandestinity by anti-fascists such as Grifone, Morandi and Sereni, or they were personal testimonies from people who had personally been involved in the reorganisation of banking and industry under Fascism - people such as Felice Guameri, who at the time had been a senior official in the Ufficio Italiano Cambi. If one wanted to find out about the history of the auto industry under Fascism, one had to turn to the interesting presentation which Vittorio Valletta (general manager of FIAT from 1929 right through to 1964) made to the Parliamentary Committee of Inquiry in 1946, or to the factory communiques of the clandestine communists, which at the time were published in the émigré press, and which, after the War, were made available to a wider public in the Feltrinelli Reprints series. There were also testimonies and reconstructed accounts by the leading figures of the strikes of March 1943, as well as the works of Paolo Spriano, the official historian of the PCI, on the Turin working class, although his researches end with the year 1918. Finally, there were the writings of the Turin Ordine Nuovo group, the journal which had been founded by Gramsci and had been the organ of the Workers' Council movement in 1920, which were now being read with a new political commitment.

All in all, one was dealing only with fragments of a history which was still waiting to be written. As De Cam and Coldagelli had correctly pointed out, it would first be necessary to go beyond the view of Fascism as a period of "forced economy" (economia fonata), which had hindered the full unfolding of the productive power of capitalism. This was a viewpoint cultivated in the ideology of the anti-fascist bourgeoisie.

5) In 1967 a seminar was organised at the Faculty of Political Science at Padova University. by a number of former editors of the magazine Classe Operaia. On this occasion I delivered a paper on the Workers' Council movement in Europe, which was published five years later, by Feltrinelli in 1973, and was also translated into German by Gisela Bock. In that paper I formulated a series of research hypotheses on the history of the working class, and I attempted a social-historical definition of the mass work which would match the workers' inquiries and the militant activities being pursued by the Quaderni Rossi and Classe Operaia groups. I had written my university thesis on a topic of contemporary German history, and I had worked for years in the Feltrinelli Library, which owned an almost complete collection of journals and publications on the workers' councils in the Weimar Republic, as well as documents of the Profintern and much other material relating to the international working-class movement.

The political contacts that we had with groups of the working-class left in the USA, in whose political consciousness a formidable "class memory" lay buried, and our great familiarity with anarchist militants who had emigrated from Italy, plus the fact that some of us had relatives or people we knew who had worked in the USA (my grandfather, for example, had been an auto worker in the factories of Detroit) - all this opened the possibility for us to become acquainted with the struggles of the American workers and the legendary experiences of the Industrial Workers of the World, through little-known publications and oral traditions. Many of us were intellectuals who had been abroad as part of our studies and we were familiar with the libraries of half the world. As a result, we had a good fund of bibliographical information, which was augmented through the collective nature of our work. But above all we had the experience of direct militant activity with factory workers: we had taken part in the mass assemblies and the strikes; we had been involved in strikes and meetings; we had been on the picket lines at FIAT and Lancia in Turin, and at Alfa Romeo, Innocenti and Autobianci in Milan, and some of us had experience in the trade unions (I had been in the FIOM., the engineering wing of the CGIL). We had written and distributed dozens of leaflets, we had fought with scabs and had taken part in street clashes during demonstrations. As a result, we tried to make use of this direct experience in the formulation of our historiographical judgements, combining it with our bibliographical knowledge and what we had gathered from the oral history tradition.

The company archives of the big firms were closed to the public, and even if they had been open, we would certainly never have been given permission to use them. The archives of the trade unions - in a state of hopeless confusion - were similarly inaccessible. As a result, our hypotheses sometimes came out as schematic or sectarian, but they had an explosive farce in certain political and trade-union circles; the "scientific community", however, remained indifferent to them; they only first noticed us after the student protest movement.

The most useful hypotheses contained in my paper twenty years ago, in the light of our experience of the intervening years, turned out to be the ones that dealt with the relationship between technological composition and the political composition of the class. Moving from the observation that, despite the different degrees of capitalist development and despite differences in political regimes, working class struggles since the beginning of the century had developed in large international cycles which had homogeneous characteristics, I posed the problem (this was the theme of my editorial article in Classe Operaia, no. 2) of the circulation of struggles - in other words, of communication between working-class collectivities, and I asked whether technological standards in fact acted directly as a vector of communication of disciplinary actions which sparked reactions of insubordination.

This whole problematic naturally brought to the fore the relationship between the spontaneity of the struggles - conceived as a culture of collective insubordination - and the organised labour and trade union movement. From an analysis of the ideology of the workers' councils in the Weimar Republic and the ideology of the Italian factory councils in Gramsci's time, I formulated the hypothesis that their shared positive attitudes towards technology and production, their project of managing the factories in collaboration with the technicians, sprang essentially from their professional position as highly skilled workers. I suggested that the reason underlying the remarkable spread of the workers' council movement in Germany was that the socio-professional composition of the German working class was characterised by a very high percentage of highly skilled workers, especially since the driving sectors of German industry were high-skill sectors.

I used the term "technical composition" to define the totality of socio-professional contents and its associated culture of work, and I defined as "political composition" the totality of autonomous and class conscious ways of behaving and their associated culture of working-class insubordination. Finally I advanced the thesis that Fordism as a technological-social system - operating via the modification of the labour process and the introduction of the assembly line - was aimed at destroying the figure of the highly qualified skilled worker, in order at the same time to destroy the cultures of autonomy and control and self management of production, which had expressed themselves in exemplary fashion in the shape of the Soviets and the workers' councils. Fordism created a new figure, that of the mass worker, in order to destroy the history and memory of that generation of the working class which - albeit only in one part of the world - had produced a communist revolution. I thus ascribed a fundamental importance to the auto-sector, not only because it was the sector in which the assembly line was furthest developed but also because it was within this sector that the mass worker was created as a new social class.

The auto industry was thus a laboratory of social engineering, inasmuch as class conflict in this industry was readable as a kind of thermometer for overall class relations. In this interpretation, technology was understood as an instrument which produced social classes and social relations even before it produced commodities.

6) When I read the chapters of the Daimler-Benz Book dealing with the Weimar years, it brought to mind several observations that I had made twenty years previously, as well as a series of further developments, among them the book of Karl-Heinz Roth and Elizabeth Behrens on The Other Working-Class Movement. Inasmuch as Daimler-Benz had maintained throughout the whole period of Weimar a pre-Fordist technology and therefore a "high skill" technical composition of labour-power, and inasmuch as this "conservatism" at the level of technological innovation had resulted in a paralysis of Fordisation in the entire sector of auto - components and accessories, the effects on the overall composition of the working class were even more conservative: the emergence of the mass worker was retarded and the social hegemony of the highly-skilled worker was prolonged until 1933 and beyond. From this point of view. Germany appears as a late-corner in the history of the mass worker. Is it possible to interpret other aspects of the class conflict in the Weimar period in the light of this delay? Did this state of affairs also continue into the following decades, when the role of the mass worker was covered essentially by foreign labour-power?

Quite conversely, the protagonists of class conflict in Weimar Germany were more the unemployed and the marginalised elements than was the case in other countries. On the one hand the high-skilled sector of German workers, and on the other, poverty. The class composition of the Weimar Republic is a Janus-headed thing: of the poor and the highly-skilled. What were the consequences in terms of social ideologies and form of social behaviour?

7) The problematic of the relationship between people and machinery was considerably deepened by the mass movement of 1967-68. A sizeable component of the student protest movement in Italy chose as its theoretical axis the "critique of the capitalist use of science". Marx was given a new reading, via the interpretation offered by Panzieri and other comrades of the workerist (operaista) tendency. In the science faculties we saw the spread of an alternative view of technology: as "a power that is hostile to the class".

May 1968 in France showed that the factory working class was an active political subject in the movements. In the Italian auto factories the "base committees" and the "worker-student assemblies" began to develop. As of May 1969, the FIAT workers in Turin began a series of strike actions that were to last right through the summer. The whole elite of the Italian student movement flooded to the gates of the Mirafiori and Rivalta FIAT factories to support the strikes, which were conducted outside of the trade union organisations.

Within the trade unions a profound tactical shift began to take place, and with the beginning of the negotiations on the Metalworkers' contract a new historical phase began which was to become known as the "Hot Autumn". This phase led to the creation of a widespread network of factory councils (comigli di fabbrica). These events had a major cultural and political significance. The concept "mass worker" became a term of everyday usage, and the concepts which had been developed in the workerist studies of the 1960s became widely accepted, in sociology, in political science, and last but not least in historiography. The commitment of the student movement and the trade unions to the workers' struggles gave rise to an extensive political-propagandist literature, which today provides an essential source for the reconstruction of the history of Italian industry in this period, and for the auto industry in particular. The intention of all this was to "let the workers speak, and the "workers' inquiry" was being used by everyone - albeit sometimes in ways that were debased and populist - and not only by the
Maoists.

8) 1970-71 saw the appearance of two major works on the history of the auto industry, and of the FIAT workers in particular: Valerio Castronovo's biography of Giovanni Agnelli (the father of the present head of FIAT), and Liliana Lanzardo's book on the PCI and the working class at FIAT from 1945 to 1949.

Castronovo's book is a classic of Italian "entrepreneurial history". This was the first time that a historian had been permitted access to the FIAT company archives. He worked in FIAT'S historical documentation office, and relied on materials that the company's press office had collected. An important element of his reconstruction was the archives of the Turin employers' confederation, and government archives in Rome, especially on questions of the relations between Agnelli and the central government.

Castronovo gives us the principal outlines of the history of the auto sector, along with a wealth of incidental detail. The creation of the company from its origins through to the First World War, the big phase of technological modernisation during the War, the background to the company's relations with the reformist area of the labour movement and with the communist sector during the revolutionary phase before the rise of Fascism. Finally, he documents from the inside, for the fist time, the relationship between the management of a major industrial company and the Mussolini regime. The most novel (albeit not the best) part of the book describes the creation of what was, by the standards of its day, the ultra-modern Lingotto works, through Fascism, the years of the Great Crisis (1930-1) and the imperialist intervention in Ethiopia (1935-6).

Although Castronovo focuses principally on the personality of Giovanni Agnelli and his political and financial dealings, the book also provides detailed information on aspects of the organisation of work, on wage policies, and on the internal hierarchies. In short, while one might be puzzled by some of his interpretations of actual events, the history of FIAT is finally laid before us with a wealth of documentary detail.

The book by Liliana Lanzardo, on the other hand, who had previously been one of the group around Quaderni Rossi, analysed the history of FIAT from a quite different point of view. Her book was based on a source of prime importance, namely the documents and archives of the consigli di gestione ("self-management committees"). These were bodies which had been created in the immediate post-War period (1945) by the newly-founded parties and the trade unions with a view to the self-management of the factories.

The experience of these consigli di gestione is of great historical interest, inasmuch as it reveals the extent to which the Communist Party of Italy, at the moment of its greatest political power, was or was not intending to remove the management of production from the capitalists. Lanzardo's book thus presents itself as an essay on the relationship, between class, party and capital in the phase of revolutionary "euphoria" following in the wake of the Resistance.

It is clear from the book how fast the PCI had dropped its plan for workers' management of production and had accepted managers who had been compromised under Fascism being brought back into the company's management structure. These managers - among them Vinorio Valletta - had formerly (in the period after the Resistance, when the partisans in Italy and particularly in the north, were still armed) been removed from the company's management.

The book also makes clear that the workers had perceived the consigli di gestione not as technical organs, but as real organs of power. The ideology and practice of the consigli di gestione brought to light the positive achievements, but also the contradictions, from the time of Gramsci. They revealed deep splits within the class composition of the period, but also the great unity and solidarity which the Resistance had created among blue-collar and technical workers. They brought to the surface people's hopes for a "new way of producing" and for developing a new, more humane organisation of work. The consigli were opposed by the Allies, and were seen as the "seeds of Bolshevism". The industrialists, on the other hand, had an ambiguous attitude to them: they tried to turn the productivist ideology of the consigli to their own profit, but at the same time they saw them as a hostile force when they set out to place limitations on management, or even went so far as to declare them "unnecessary". However, when the power relations in society changed, the consigli di gestione were deprived of power, and then completely swept away.

Liliana Lanzardo's researches set the whole problematic within a very complex framework of socio-political relationships. It became an important text for the ideological formation of the extra-parliamentary movements, because in their eyes it demonstrated that the PCI had "betrayed the working class and the Resistance not only on the question of armed revolution, but also as regards the organisation of production.

9) Both these important monographs on the history of FIAT were published at a time when studies of economic history in Italy had already taken an important step forward, adopting highly sophisticated research methodologies and theories of economic analysis. The Ford Foundation funded Social Science Research Council in New York had, in 1963, entrusted Simon Kuznets and Moses Abramowitz with the coordination of an international historical research project on the economic development of the industrialised countries. The research leaders for Italy were Professor Giorgio Fua (and for Germany Gottfried Bombach and Rolf Krengel). The findings of this research were published in three volumes, of which the first appeared in 1968-9; they contained numerous essays on particular aspects of the development of the Italian economy during the past hundred years. This was an event of great cultural importance, because these studies provided - at the level of research method in history and the history of industry - a moment of modernisation, bringing Italy into line with the most recent development of post-Keynesian economic theory and historiography. The methodological approach was macro-economic and quantitative in nature, with the extensive use of statistical series of growth indicators, and an almost total exclusion of socio-political problematics.

Nonetheless, this was the fist time that people had addressed themselves to the problems of actually using the statistical sources that were available on the history of the Italian economy. The macro-economic approach meant that the history of the auto industry was subsumed within the more general history of the development of means of transport. The Appendix to the third volume of this research contained a bibliography of the works that it considered "essential reading" in the field of Italian economic history. Under the heading "Industry" there was still no single published work on the history of the auto industry. The omission of socio-political problematics in the Ford Foundation study, and the overall quantitative approach meant that the Fascist period was in no sense problematicised. Paradoxically, this was grist to the mill, as far as militant historians were concerned, because the statistical tables spoke for themselves, and confirmed the correctness of the thesis advanced by Coldagelli and De Caro, that, in its initial period. Fascism in Italy had brought about a significantly faster rate of capitalist development than had been the case in other countries.

It is a far cry from the Ford-financed study to the essay written by Ester Fano on the question of the economic stagnation between the two world wars, which appeared in 1971. Ester Fano had been a collaborator of Raniero Panzieri at the end of the 1950s, and here, for the first time, basing herself on the work done by Josef Steindl, she tackled the problem of the relationship between economic development and stagnation during the Fascist period - and this in terms which were judged as acceptable in both political and economic historiography. As Steindl had already shown for the USA, stagnation was not at all in contradiction to a strengthening of the power of capital between the two world wars; it was a far more general phenomenon in western countries, which was not attributable so much to the individual economic policies of individual countries as to the particular ways in which capitalist restructuring had proceeded between the wars. This restructuring had either massively replaced living labour with machines, thereby producing a cycle of "over-accumulation" (as Grossmann would have put it), or it had "frozen" productive capacities, inasmuch as plants were employed at only a fraction of their capacity (as Daimler-Benz appears to have done) while being supported by public funding. The particular characteristic of the Italian economy was that this tendency to stagnation - which was more characteristic of the 1930s than of the 1920s - went hand in hand with a continuing low productivity of agriculture, due to specific measures taken by the regime (maintenance of a semi-feudal situation, population policy, etc).

Ester Fano's study was an isolated instance in the panorama of Italian histories of Fascism. It was read with very great interest by young researchers in the Institutes concerned with the history of the Resistance; the reaction of the academic milieu was one of respect, but at the same time embarrassment, because, while this study paved the way for further debate and research, it also threw into crisis some of the conceptual models of bourgeois anti-fascism. Fano came in for particular criticism from the liberal categories of the Left, for whom Fascism had been a parenthesis within Italian economic development.

A further important phase in the history of economic research into the Fascist period was the project L'economia italiana nel periodo fascista (The Italian economy during the Fascist period), which was organised by the "Luigi Einaudi Association for the Study of Money, Banks and Finance", in Rome, whose results were published in a special issue of the journal Quaderni Storici, published in 1975. Among the significant essays in this collection were - alongside an article by Ester Fano on agriculture under Fascism - an essay by Vera Camagni on industrial wages during the dictatorship, and an essay by Ercole Sori on migration movements.

All this brought us closer to laying the basis for a "social history of Fascism" which had been ignored by both political historians (the history of governing institutions, political parties and organisations) and by quantitative economic historians. These attempts to write a social history of Fascism were, moreover, regarded with mistrust: in 1975 the results of the investigation were published as a collection of essays by Il Mulino publishing house, edited by two historians, Ciocca and Toniolo; the studies by Ester Fano and Ercole Sori were excluded from this volume.

10) The political and social climate of the early 1960s encouraged researches into the social history of the proletariat under Fascism. Through this work the historiography of the working class in the auto industry was enriched through new, albeit sometimes fragmentary, understandings.

We have a particularly valuable contribution in the researches of Gian Carlo Jocteau, on the history of the labour tribunals and labour litigation in Turin through the period of the Great Crisis.

The introduction of the Bedaux system, the wage cuts and the sackings at FIAT and in other industrial sectors in Turin during the Great Crisis had triggered social conflicts which very often led to proceedings in the labour tribunals - proceedings which had the support of the Fascist unions. The records of these labour tribunal proceedings thus provide an important source for reconstructing the conditions of working-class exploitation in that period. Given that channels for social and political mediation of conflict did not exist in the period of the Great Crisis and after, labour conflict went through a phase in which it expressed itself in the law courts. The labour magistracy in Fascist Italy had the power to make rulings as well as administer them; thus it played a far more important role in Italy than in other countries, as a moment of the control and mediation of industrial conflict. This magistracy also had an influence on the definition of collective labour contracts, and thus brought to a head a number of contradictions within the Fascist union, which was the chief party responsible for the juridicalisation of labour conflicts. However we should bear in mind that the Fascist union never pressed collective proceedings in the labour courts, but only individual cases.

11) Another important contribution to an understanding of this period is provided by Giulio Sapelli's book: Fascismo, grande industria, sindacato. Il caso di Torino 1929-1935 ("Fascism, big industry, and the trade unions. The case of Turin. 1929-35"). With this book the question of the relation between technology and labour-power was brought back to centre stage.

Sapelli had made extensive use of the archives of the Fascist police and the archives of the Unione Industriali di Torino (Turin Industrialists' Union); in this way he was able to provide a detailed reconstruction of the period of the Great Crisis and the social tensions associated with it. This was the period in which the National Fascist Party had to face the problem of how it was to find a mediating role for itself, between the extremely aggressive behaviour of the employers, who were not inclined to accept the concept of the corporate state, and a working class that had been embittered by the mass sackings that had been taking place most particularly in the textile and construction industries, and in the area of small-to-medium industry.

The application of the Bedaux system of exploitation, in its "Italian version", and the rise in the cost of living had further increased the bitterness of the working class. The Fascist unions in Turin went through an "extremist" phase. In other words, they were supporting workers' protests, were initiating legal proceedings against the employers in the labour courts, and were demanding the abolition of the Bedaux system. The Fascist Party was obliged to intervene in the union with a view to getting it to take a softer line; to this end it despatched Tullio Cianetti as commissar, who was later to become secretary of the Fascist Confederation of Industrial Workers (Confederazione Fascista dei Lavoratori dell'Industria).

The National Fascist Party (PNF) and the local government authorities adopted social welfare policies with a view to helping the poor and the unemployed; but at the same time they pushed through measures in order to maintain capital and its profits; this was the period of the state funding interventions, with the setting-up of the "Institute for Industrial Reconstruction" (IRI - Istituto per la Riconstruzione Industriale).

Sapelli made extensive use of source material from the emigre communist press, and on the basis of police records he was able to verify that the reports that the clandestine communists were sending abroad were remarkably precise in their information. He also made extensive use of the archivse of the Fascist Party, and the archive of Mussolini's personal secretariat. While Castronovo had been principally concerned to analyse the figure of Agnelli, Sapelli, in the first chapter of his book, analysed the policy of the entire Turin employing class, in which Agnelli obviously played a very important part, but which he did not wholly represent. For instance, there was a strong freemasons' lodge, and within the Turin employers there were various other notable figures with their own particular interests. The unifying link between them was that they were all using the Fascist regime as a means of disciplining the working class.

The myth of a capitalist but anti-fascist bourgeoisie, which maintained its faith in progressive liberal traditions, and distinguished itself in its respect for the dignity of man and for democratic freedoms, collapsed completely. Finally, Sapelli addresses himself to the problem left open by Castronovo, of an alleged "autonomy" of Agnelli in relation to Fascism. The hypothesis whereby Agnelli allegedly used Fascism, but kept them firmly outside the strategy of his business decisions (a hypothesis which is very similar to what Hans Pohl maintains for the relations between the company management of Daimler-Benz and the Hitler regime) may find confirmation in various specific instances of Agnelli's behaviour, but, as Sapelli shows, this circumstance can in no way obscure the fact that there was a perfect correspondence between FIAT company policy and the basic objectives of the Fascist regime.

As suggested above, the most novel and interesting aspect of Sapelli's book is where he deals with questions of the organisation of the labour process. On the one hand he has tried to reconstruct how Taylorism was taken up by factory managers and production engineers; on the other, he provides an outline history of technological innovation at FIAT and examines the introduction of certain machine tools which required the application of new job-evaluation and wage systems. He thus sheds light on concrete aspects of the discussion on the Bedaux system, which at the time was dominating debate at the political, trade union, juridical and entrepreneurial level.

A second aspect that Sapelli examined related to the discussion on Fordism. Although the Lingotto RAT plant in Turin was the most technologically advanced factory in Europe, Agnelli seems to have adopted up Fordism as a social precept (i.e. the notion of the worker as consumer) only after the Great Crisis - in other words, at a point when the sharpest class conflicts had already been subdued, and when FIAT was engaged in introducing a new industrial cycle which was largely to be financed by the fascist armaments policy. In the preceding period, in the 1920s, Agnelli, for all that he was running a factory with Fordist technology, didn't need to adopt Fordism as a social doctrine, because, for him, problems of conflict and consensus had already been resolved by the fascist repression. (On Fordism itself: One should distinguish between myth and reality; thus, for example, the five-dollar day was principally a means of selecting workers).

In subsequent years Sapelli deepened his researches into Taylorism and Fordism in Italy. In particular he explored the role of the ENIOS (Ente per I'Organizzazione Scientifica del Lavoro), the national foundation which was set up in 1926 for research into the scientific organisation of work. He looks at the contribution of production technicians, engineers, managers and individual capitalists to the culture and practice of "rationalisation" in the inter-War years. His researches provide an important contribution to the analysis of the modernising process of the industrial elites, and demonstrate the powerful influence that the so called "German" technical thought exercised on whole generations of Italian engineers and production managers. These managers were fascinated by the German example, by the myth of Germany as "the country of rationalisation". The social policies of Hitler's National Socialists, on the other hand, were regarded somewhat more suspiciously (too "social", in their opinion). The same sceptical distance applied in relation to the Nazi state's anti-Jewish racist policies. From the date of its founding, through to 1938, the key figure in the ENIOS was Gino Olivetti, a Jew and a man man who had the full confidence of the Fascist Confederation of Industrialists. This research was compiled by Sapelli in the book Organizzazione, lavoro e innovazione industriale nell'ltalia tra le due guerre ("Organisation, work and industrial innovation in Italy between the wars"), published in 1978, and in his essay Gli "organizzatori della produzione" tra struttura d'impresa e modelli culturali ("The production organisers: company structure and cultural models"), published in 1981.

Both these works are to be seen as researches into the history of the technocracy. In both of them the problematic of class conflict is more or less pushed to one side. Sapelli's intention is to write simply a history of the ruling class, via through a neo-Fabian approach which incorporates the aristocracy of labour. As a result, Sapelli went on to a brilliant academic career in the 1980s, then became one of the most active managers in the field of historiographical research sponsored at an international level by public funds and by high finance; he then became head of the Feltrinelli Foundation, and is now director of the Associazione di Studi di Storia dell'Impresa ("Association for the study of Business History"), the Italian equivalent of the Gesellschaft fuer Unternehmensgeschichte run by Hans Pohl.

12) With the flare-up of workers' struggles after the Hot Autumn [1969], with the spread of consigli di fabbrica ("factory councils") and the shop stewards' movement (delegati di reparto), with the continuing activities of the extra-parliamentary groups and the mass response to all state attempts at "authoritarian solutions", Italian society lived the early 1970s in a permanent condition of tense conflictuality: the factory working class became a central political and cultural reference point. In the tertiary and service sectors traditional forms of trade-union organisation with direct election of representatives were changed in line with new negotiatory forms that were arising in the factories. So began a new phase of political "literacy training", which often employed the concepts that had been developed by the "workerists" of the 1960s.

People who only a short time previously had been dismissed as heretics by the official labour and trade union movement suddenly found themselves, at the start of the 1970s, regarded as "anticipators", as ahead of their times in terms of theoretical and intellectual development. In this climate, of great tension and great political passion, a group of intellectuals who, in different ways, had taken part in the workerist elaborations of the 1960s, decided to address themselves to the historiographical problematic, in the terms in which it had previously been sketched in Quaderni Rossi and Classe Operaia, only now with an updated posing of the questions.

This led to the publication of the journal Primo Maggio ("First of May"), whose first issue appeared in 1973. Under the rubric "Essays and documents for a class history", the journal was edited by myself up until 1980 (Issue 13), and thus far has produced 29 issues. One of the principal aims of the journal was to re-start the process of historical reflection on the mass worker - particularly in the auto industry. Already in the Editorial to the second issue (1974) a number of methodological considerations on the relation between factory and society were examined, taking as their base a critical re-reading of Gramsci's article "Americanism and Fordism". The same issue also contained an analysis of the company structure of the FIAT motor company, which was to appear in the form of a book a few months later.

Discussion also focussed afresh on researches into the organisation of the mass worker in the USA, in Europe and in the Soviet Union in the 1920s and 1930s. At the same time, there was a move for a renewed initiative around the Workers' Inquiry (inchiesta operaia) - in other words, around a process of reflection and analysis to be undertaken in direct collaboration with the collectives in the factories, with a view to documenting the currently existing relations of class power. Primo Maggio thus became the first journal to identify and anticipate the "capitalist counter-reformation" in the auto sector.

These counter-reforms began with the restructuring of the Innocenti-Leyland plant in Milan. The principal instrument of this restructuring process was the cassa integrazione guadagni a special form of unemployment benefit in the shape of a redundancy fund which was financed through the social security system, and which has facilitated a drastic reduction of personnel in the factories in the period post-1975, and at the same time has led to an effective selectivity process for the hiring of future workers. The events at Innocenti-Leyland were analysed in Primo Maggio in collaboration with the workers' collective that had led the struggle against the company's restructuring plans. The journal was supported in this work by a group of specialists in "oral history" from the De Martino Institute, in particular by Cesare Bermani, who at that time was already a member of our editorial board, and who, at the time of writing, is the journal's director.

The combination of oral history and workers' inquiry, as it was pursued at the Innocenti-Leyland factory in 1975-6, was taken up immediately afterwards in Turin, where an editorial sub-group of the journal had been created, coordinated by Marco Revelli (son of the well-known oral historian Nuto Revelli). This led to workers' inquiries being conducted at FIAT too, which made possible an examination of the formation of the mass worker in Turin. This work continued through to the dramatic defeat of the FIAT workers in October 1980. After the October 1980 strike, following the company's announcement that 24,000 FIAT workers were to be sacked, the work of this group was carried on, at an individual level, by some of the group, despite the fact that the Turin redazione of Primo Maggio had dissolved itself. Only a small part of the materials that were gathered in this five-year period of work (1975-80) has ever been prepared for publication. Most of it remains in the archive.

The material consists of:
a) materials on technological innovation at FIAT-Turin, in particular on the phase of robotisation;
b) hundreds of taped interviews with FIAT workers, both men and women;
c) hundreds of interviews with young proletarians who were organised in the "circoli del proletariato giovanile" (youth proletarian clubs); this section has already been transcribed from tape recordings, and runs to about 5,000 pages;
d) trial documents and associated paperwork arising out of labour and criminal court proceedings which were conducted against factory workers and against young proletarians and militants of various political organisations; this material was put into safekeeping in the offices of lawyers who had represented workers and militants in that period, and who had close contact with the Turin editorial group of Primo Maggio;
e) documents on FIAT company policy, on the "consigli di fabbrica" (factory councils), on the trade unions, and on the role of various local government organisations and political parties in the social conflicts;
f) photographic and audiovisual material.

In March 1974 the journal "Classe" published a special issue with the results of a sociological investigation into the operai di linea (assembly line workers) at the Alfa Romeo factory, under the title L'operaio massa nello sviluppo capitalistico ("The mass worker in the history of capitalist development"). The journal Classe, whose intellectual head was for many years Stefano Merli, first appeared in June 1969, and it had as its brief an analysis of the past and present history of the working class and the organisation of the labour process. Already in its early issues (see Issue 8 for the mass worker), Classe had published a number of articles on workers' struggles at FIAT and in other car factories, and it was continually concerned with the theme of the history of Taylorism and Fordism in Italy (the theme of a Special Issue in December 1982).

By comparison with Primo Maggio, the journal Classe was far more systematic in its investigations. The circle of its contributors was far broader than that of Primo Maggio. Classe could also rely on the distributional support of a medium-sized publishing house, while Primo Maggio financed itself, was entirely self-sufficient, and was distributed via an alternative distribution system. Classe could also reckon on the support of political and trade-union circles, which saw the publication as their semi-official theoretical journal. The individual volumes of Classe were published as monographs, more or less in book form, running to 300-350 pages apiece, while Primo Maggio was always in the nature of a magazine, generally about 70 pages in all, was more experimental in nature, and was more closely linked to the autonomist movement.

Classe represented the "average" of the rank and file trade union movement of the 1970s, and to that extent represented a characteristic testimony to the culture of that period. As regards the history of the auto workers, the following articles in Classe deserve consideration: Angelo Dina on the internal FIAT strikes of 1968-9; the above-mentioned investigation into assembly-line workers at Alfa Romeo; the work of Paola Agosti Ronza reconstructing the various turning points in trade union policy at FIAT between 1955 and 1962; the interview with a group of workers from the Innocenti-Leyland factory in Milan; the diary of an Alfa Romeo worker from the "Portello" factory in Milan; and finally, a number of contributions on the history of the workers' struggles at Pirelli in Milan.

In this way the building blocks were coming together to enable us to reconstruct the history of the mass worker in the auto industry. In 1975 the journal of the Centro Piero Gobetti in Turin, Mezzosecolo, published a long interview with Battista Santhia, who had led the comitati di agitazione (agitation committees) in FIAT and in other Turin factories during the Resistance. These committees were the clandestine trade-union structures of their time, and they reached such a high degree of organisation, that they were able to practise sophisticated forms of struggle and sabotage (and, according to Santhia, eventually caused a 10 per cent fall in production).

The interview is informative about very interesting and hitherto unknown details such as the methods employed by the partisans to hinder the German troops in their project of dismantling the FIAT plant, and the relations between communists and anarchist militants within the Resistance, as well as giving new details of the class composition of the time. The same issue of Mezzosecolo also published an important article by Marco Revelli on the organisation of the Italian Communist Party among factory workers in Turin shortly before the introduction of Mussolini's Special Laws.

By the time of the Party's last legal provincial congress in 1924, factory workers made up 70 per cent of party members. The communists succeeded in winning a big following in the elections for the internal trade union representatives in the FIAT works in April 1925 - three years after Mussolini's seizure of power! In the brand new Lingotto factory, they got 2.978 votes in the Mechanical Section, and 1,595 in the Bodywork section. The fascist list received only 429 and 218 votes respectively. The thesis of Revelli, who was on the editorial board of Primo Maggio, was that this political following was to be related back to the "workerist" line adopted by the Turin party organisation, a line that was supported by Gramsci. In his article he attempted to show that the working class did not let itself be subjected by Fascism; that their resistance originated in the everyday resistance to exploitation in the factory; and that the socio-cultural identity of the factory worker had found a new point of political identification in the radical line of the PCI.

One indirect but nonetheless highly significant contribution to the history of the mass worker was provided by the 1976 edition of the Annals of the Feltrinelli Foundation, which was dedicated to the history of Italian trade unionism in the post-War period. Particularly important in this regard was the introductory essay by the editor, Aris Accornero, Problemi del movimento sindacale in Italia 1943-73 ("Problems of the trade union movement in Italy, 1943-73").

Accornero, who had been close to the journal Classe Operaia in the 1960s, had earlier been a worker at the RIV ball-bearing factory in Turin, one of FIAT'S supplier plants, and a trade union militant. Then he became a trade-union official for the CGIL, and he now teaches sociology at the University. He had already published investigations into the origins of Taylorism, and personal accounts covering the period of his trade union militancy in the factories during the first major phase of restoration of the employers' power in the post-War period. His familiarity with the workerist literature of the 1960s and his own personal experiences led him to ascribe a decisive importance to the relationship between the working class, the organisation of the labour process and technology.

Other rank and file trade-union militants, and local cadres of the PCI who had lived through the realities of the workers' struggles and had also participated directly in those struggles in their capacity as negotiators for their organisations, willingly transformed themselves into historians and continued to contribute to the extensive literature on the workers' struggles in that period. In this context, the book of Marino Gamba, Innocenti: Imprenditore, fabbrica e classe operaia in cinquant'anni di vita italiana ("Innocenti: Company, factory and working class through fifty years of Italian life") is worthy of attention, as is Renzo Gianotti's Trent'anni di lotte alla FIAT ('Thirty Years of Struggle at FIAT).

The theme of working-class collectivity was also taken up by industrial sociology - for example in Dario Salemi's book Sindacato e forza lavoro all'Alfa Sud. Un caso anomalo di conflittualita' industriale ("Unions and workers at Alfa Sud. An anomalous case of industrial conflictuality"). An area meriting particular attention is the work of Dario Lanzardo, who was formerly a contributor to Quaderni Rossi. In 1962 he had been directly involved in the clashes in Turin, around the first big of engineering workers' strike since the strikes of the Resistance period.

This was the occasion when demonstrators attacked the local headquarters of the UIL trade union (which was politically close to the Socialist Party of Italy, PSI), because the union had signed a separate agreement with FIAT management. In later years these clashes, which spread from Piazza Statuto into the centre of Turin and which were particularly violent, were to take on something of a symbolic character. Some saw them as the starting date of the autonomous working-class movement in Italy; others saw them as having been caused by provocateurs, intent on exasperating the industrial conflict, and thereby firing the starting shots in what was to become the period of "red terrorism". Lanzardo used the available documentation as well as the records of juridical proceedings and personal interviews with people who had been directly involved in the demonstrations, in order to show that the Revolt of Piazza Statuto (this was also the title of his book on the subject, which was published in 1980: La Rivolta di Piazza Statuto) was an expression of authentic proletarian anger after the years of superexploitation and repression.

The repression had been assisted not least by the collaboration of a number of "yellow" unions, which, acting on behalf of FIAT company management, had acted as spies, snoopers, and agents of intimidation against the workers. One of the people interviewed ends his account as follows:
"Question: Do you remember anything else about Piazza Statuto?
Answer: No, I can't remember anything now; you should talk with Emilio ... he's been to college... When a worker does something, they don't think about what people are going to say about it afterwards. We simply do it because there's nothing else we can do!"

13) The end of the 1970s was marked by a series of social and cultural movements which exploded not only the interpretational methods of the traditional Left, but also those of the extra-parliamentary Left which had originated in the movement of 1968. As a result of this, rank and file trade unionists were as disoriented as those intellectuals who had chosen to involve themselves in working-class struggles in the period between 1968 and 1978, and they all tended to react by rejecting politics. From that point on, armed groups such as the Red Brigades (Brigate Rosse) and Front Line (Prima Linea) were permanently on the front pages of the newspapers. These groups also had roots inside the car factories, particularly in FIAT in Turin and Alfa Romeo in Milan. Some of the statements which they distributed after their armed attacks contained detailed analyses of the position of the workers in the factories, and very precise descriptions of the organisation of the labour process.

Managers in the car plants also became victims of the armed attacks. Each important phase of the trade-union struggle was accompanied by actions that were then claimed by the armed groups. The problem of violence was the central question of political life, and it engaged the attention of public opinion to an extent that was hitherto unprecedented. The question here was not only the organised violence of the armed groups, but also the actions of the so-called "diffuse terrorism" and the violent actions that took place in connection with militant trade-union and community struggles: for example, the "militant pickets" (picchetti duri), or the internal marches round the factories which regularly ended with the destruction of administrative offices and the (generally symbolic) kidnapping of management personnel. This social reality explains the harshness of the state reaction in 1979 and 1980.

In the minds of manipulated public opinion, there began to be less and less distinction between the murders by the Red Brigades and the militant pickets, which in the meantime had begun to invade the tertiary sector and the public services. During this period, workers in heavy industry were already beginning to feel the effects of the restructuring. When one criticises the brutality of the repression in the period 1979-80, one should not forget that the armed struggle had reached an almost frenetic pitch, so that in cities such as Turin, armed attacks were taking place at a rate of one every three hours on average. This was one of the factors that contributed to the destruction of the movement as a whole.

This all brought about a situation in which, at a political and cultural level, the struggles of the mass worker came to be identified with terrorism; this in turn led to a paralysis of left-wing culture, and of the Left which had participated in the struggles. During this situation, in which one had the impression that the course of history was careering out of control, the so-called "Movement of 1977" came into being, a movement which contained a whole range of new elements, and which brought to light many contradictions in the theory and practice of the Left. The editorial group of Primo Maggio was probably the only group of intellectuals and historians which concerned itself with trying to understand the nature of this movement and at the same time began to re examine its own theoretical paradigms.

The first paradigm to be brought into discussion was precisely the historical centrality of the mass worker. The process of tertiarisation and decentralisation, the diffusion of small units of production and (particularly in Italy) the extension of home-working began to undermine the material bases of Fordist society. The movement of 1977 had brought a new generation of young people onto the stage of history. Their needs, their symbols, their ways of expressing themselves, their position within a radically altered labour market, their situation within a conception of the family and of society which had been brought into question by the feminist movement - all this needed to be understood, and this was the task that we set ourselves - although it was only fulfilled to a very limited extent. All this was also the subject of discussions within th Primo Maggio editorial group, which took place on the basis of my article 'The Tribe of Moles" (La Tribu delle Talpe).

In the auto industry we saw an occurrence which, even at a distance of ten years, still remains puzzling - namely the hiring of 10,000 young men and women by FIAT. These hirings brought the generation of 1977 into the factory. What would be the process of their assimiliation, in the light of the realities life on the assembly line, the introduction of new robotised technologies and the experiences of the previous generation of workers? So began the most interesting phase of the "workers' inquiry" (inchiesta operaia) on Primo Maggio, a phase which had to be broken off because of the repression of the years 1979 and 1980. The results of this inquiry were never completed; for the most part the material still lies in our archives. Of course, of these 10,000 new hirings in 1977, many left the factory within a few months, of their own accord; others were sacked by management in October 1980. Up until this point, we had still seen no well-grounded historical analysis of the mass worker in the auto industry.

At the start of 1977, however, the first international conference on oral history was organised in Bologna. Cesare Bermani made the introductory speech, in which he raised important questions about the subjectivity of the working class and of the young proletariat.

14) The essay by Duccio Bigazzi (Gli operai della catena di montaggio: la FIAT - "Assembly-line workers at FIAT") which was published in the Annals of the Feltrinelli Institute in 1980, dealt with the problem of technological standards in the FIAT auto industry in the period 1921 to 1938, on the basis of a wealth of documentary material. Bigazzi analysed the process of professional change which was triggered by the introduction of new machinery into the factories; his intention was to reconstruct an outline of the mass worker in Turin during the period of Fascism. Bigazzi described the various phases of the construction of the Lingotto factory, on the basis of documentation from the "FIAT Historical Archives Centre". He also made extensive use of oral testimonies and contemporary publications in the technical and economic press. This enabled him to construct a detailed picture of the Lingotto factory at the time when it came on-stream (1924-5). He concludes that Lingotto was at that time the most advanced auto factory in Europe, and that the high level of its technology was matched only by the Ope1 factory at Ruesselsheim.

Once the assembly lines had been introduced and the process of technological innovation brought to a conclusion, FIAT sent some of its technicians to visit Ford's factories in America, in order to produce a comparative report on the relative technological standards of the two concerns. From this report by FIAT'S technical staff it becomes clear that the technological content of each of the two concerns was at essentially- the same leve1,but that Ford had a far higher level of productivity. This was for two reasons: at FIAT there was insufficient coordination in the supply of component parts throughout the production process; and labour time in the various individual work-phases of the process were insufficiently saturated. In order to deal with the second of these two aspects, FIAT management pushed ahead with a "Taylorisation" of the company. This culminated in the introduction of the Bedaux system during the years of the Great Crisis. On the other hand, there were no major innovations as regards machinery, except in the area of body painting and sheet-metal working. One could summarise these developments by saying that at FIAT, under Fascism, first the Fordist factory and then Taylorisation were introduced. This would confirm the thesis that the system of technology was a deterrent and was used as a factor of intimidation and disciplining in times of heavy repression. This organisational model reappeared at FIAT in the period 1980-1.

It was after the mass sackings (veiled through the mechanisms of the cassa integrazione) that we saw an acceleration in the installation of robots in production. At the time of its opening in 1924, the FIAT Lingotto factory appeared as the embodiment of the working-class defeat. Lingotto was to become a pilgrimage point for visitors who were taken on tours through the various departments of the factory in minibuses; the factory was divided into four floors, with a test-track on the roof. Witnesses mentioned the silenzio operaio (the silence of the workers) as a phenomenon that they found particularly striking. But the workers wanted to visit the factory too. The fragmentation of work within the Fordist-Taylorist system had deprived them of an overall view of the cycle of production. So on Sundays they would turn up back at the factory - they made up the largest group among the visitors - and what they were looking for was the meaning of their work, their individual contributions, within the cycle of production as a whole. It was not some attachment to the factory that brought them back into the plant on their free days; the factory was for a long time known as "Portolongone", which was the name of a nearby jail for prisoners serving life sentences.

The first attempts at a coordination between technological innovation and the wage structure was the introduction of a collective pieceworksystem, in the form of a plant-wide production bonus designed to get workers to operate collectively and always to bear in mind that there was someone waiting down the line for them to finish their jobs. This seems to have been more an educational policy than a technical requirement - in fact the system was soon dropped, in favour of individual piecwork agreements. Nonetheless the system achieved real results in terms of work-rhythms: in 1926 FIAT produced 51,000 vehicles, a record which was not to be surpassed until 1935-7. In 1927 a period of stagnation began, which was further exacerbated by the crisis of 1929, and which meant that at Lingotto very few technological innovations were introduced; production fell and the number of workers and of hours worked was reduced. Uniquely among the major European auto manufacturers, FIAT did not invest in technological innovation until 1938, when the situation was to change with the building of the new Mirafiori works. Lingotto, the most modem factory in Europe in 1924, was actually scheduled for closure and demolition in 1937 to make way for the new Mirafiori works.

In the event, things turned out differently: Mirafiori was built in another part of town, and the Lingotto works continued in operation through to the 1980s, when it was finally closed. The latest plan is to develop it in part as a monument of industrial archaeology, and in part as a kind of "FIAT Beaubourg". During these ten years of technological stagnation (1926,36), from management's point of view the only reserve resources for higher productivity was human labour-power. This meant a relentless, crushing process of the transformation of living labour. For this reason, output-related wages (individual piecework, group piecework, section piecework etc) were manipulated in such a way that the wages obtained via the higher productivity remained barely sufficient to put together a living wage. In 1928 this situation was further exacerbated by the introduction of the Bedaux system, with the result that workers rebelled with increasing frequency against foremen and time-and-motion personnel, which in turn led to the intervention of the police and the arrest of numbers of workers. However, when, in 1930, after sackings and a general rise in the cost of living, a wave of strikes broke out in Turin and other industrial cities, strikes which were even supported by the local Fascist unions, the Lingotto workers did not stream out into the streets of the city, but confined their protests within the four walls of the factory.

In these years FIAT accelerated up another process, namely the introduction of new workers into the position of specialised manual workers (i.e. the modern operaio di linea - line worker). Turnover was very high, and the sackings during the Great Crisis enabled the company to be extremely selective in their hiring policies. During this period the relationship between FIAT and the government was also extremely tense, since the government was alarmed at the prospect of public disorders. The Prefect of Turin asked FIAT for a weekly statement with a list of those who had been sacked, and the reasons for their sacking. The statistics as gathered by Bigazzi in this regard (October 1930 to December 1931) make interesting reading :

Reasons Number of workers Percentage
Staff reduction 847 70.2
Indiscipline 143 11.8
Sickness 90 7.7
Unsuited for work at FIAT 102 8.5
Voluntary redundancy 25 2.0
Reason not known 38

The formulation "Unsuited for work at FIAT seems to me to be characteristic of the company's behaviour towards its workers - and the sackings for "sickness" and "indiscipline" can be seen as variants of that general definition. When one takes these figures as indicators for the degree of selectivity of factory personnel, one arrives at a rejection rate of something like 30 per cent, which is very high. Bigazzi also researched hospital records in the city and established that in these years the number of workers who were hospitalised as a result of accidents at work rose very markedly. This led to the Bedaux system being called into question. Even the Fascist unions were calling for it to be abandoned, and this was to happen - albeit only in appearance - in 1934.

This fact caused the engineer Charles Bedaux to publish an article in Il Corriere della Sera, in which he challenged the notion that the system applied by FIAT was the same as his own. He had scheduled rates of increase of 100% for points obtained over and above the operating standard, whereas at Lingotto the increase was only 75 per cent. During this period of extreme social tensions brought about by heightene exploitation in a context of general economic crisis. Agnelli brought into his factories a new generation of workers, "new" not only as regards the nature of their skill qualifications, but above all "new" in relation to the experiences of that generation that had either experienced or had been present during the defeat of 1922.

This was the first real generation of mass workers in Italy. This becomes clear when one reads the emigre communist press of this period: the older party cadres had real difficulties in understanding the attitudes and behaviour of the newly hired workers, attitudes which vacillated between anger and rebellion on the one hand, and opportunism and individual compromises on the other. In 1933, and again in 1935, Agnelli travelled to the United States to visit the new Ford plants at River Rouge. By now FIAT was once again producing at a satisfactory level of output; military orders and Italy's colonial adventure in Africa had made it possible for the company to pull out of stagnation. In 1936 the first studies were undertaken for the construction of the Mirafiori works, which was originally planned as a kind of horizontal Lingotto. Construction of the new plant began in 1938, and once again FIAT was up with the most advanced technology of the times. (The Volkswagen plant in Wolfsburg was constructed according to the same model, and with the mass participation of Italian labour-power.) By the time that production actually began, Mirafiori was no longer merely a car factory, but a factory that made everything possible; two thirds of its output consisted of military goods.

Bigazzi's historical analysis ends at this point. The historiography of the Mirafiori works during this period is still fragmentary. If one discounts the material contained in the biographies of Agnelli and Valletta, most historical analysis into the relation of capital and the working class at FIAT during World War II is limited to one important episode in the history of the Resistance - the strike of March 1943, which brought about the crisis of the regime, and the fall of the Mussolini government. Studies of the period 1940-45 at FIAT tend to follow the fortunes and misfortunes of the historiography of the Resistance. The entrepreneurial history of this period also shows a certain reticence towards a deepening of analysis of the War period, which was marked by a new attempt to discipline the workers and by an alteration of the composition of the workers following the massive input of female labour power into production to make up for shortages of available male labour.

After the publication of the Daimler-Benz Book, it appears to me that although details would still need to be corroborated via accurate historical research into FIATS operations - that working conditions in Italian factories never sank to the levels of absolute degradation that occurred in German industry under the domination of the Nazis; on the contrary, shortages of labour-power had inclined Italian industrialists, most particularly in the armaments sector, and at FIAT in particular - to a "softer" policy towards their workers; they favoured a wage policy which brought certain privileges for qualified and specialised labour power, in particular for technical personnel. This does not mean that the living conditions of the working class during the War were good or even satisfactory; it is simply to say that when one takes FIAT as an example, in the years from 1940 to 1945, the intensification of exploitation was not pursued as violently as in the years of the Great Crisis, when the first generation of mass workers was created in the factories.

Finally, one should not forget that after 8 September 1943 (the Badoglio government's armistice with the Allies) Italy's industrialists began a slow process of political realignment with a view to loosening their ties with Fascism and to re-establishing relations with the Allies. The Agnellis and FIAT had no difficulty in re-establishing close contacts with US big capital, and with the intelligence services of the US army. This turnabout also provided for contacts with the Italian Resistance movement - not only with its liberal and monarchist sections, but also with the communists and socialists, with the partisan movement and the working class itself - an alliance which the industrialists very much needed when the German Wehrmacht began dismantling plant and machinery with a view to transporting it to Gennany. It was workers organised in the clandestine movement who saved the machines, and thus provided a valuable service to their bosses.

A further factor which may have influenced the conditions and ways of behaving of the "new FIAT workers" during the War - was the attitudes of the young peasants, artisans and students who had applied for jobs in the company's armaments producing departments in the hopes of avoiding or postponing their military service. Finally, one should not forget that after 8 September 1943 the clandestine work of trade-union organisation at FIAT experienced a major upswing. The organisation of this movement moved from the rather spontaneous strike movement of March 1943, to increasingly difficult collective forms of autoriduzione produttiva (self-reduction of production) in the period 1944-45. In order for these forms of struggle and resistance to be used successfully against the Nazi occupation, it was obviously necessary to have a detailed knowledge of the cycle of production and of the factory as a whole, a knowledge that the mass worker did not have; to this extent, another form of thinking was required, a culture which only the older militants of the generation of the 1920's still possessed. These were the ones who had survived in the silence of clandestinity, or those who were returning from emigration, or those who had been freed from imprisonment in the Fascist prisons.

Apart from detailed knowledge of the factory, it was also necessary to create an alliance with other layers of employees ranging from technicians to white collar workers, through to security personnel, workers in the internal factory transportation system and the plant engineers. This was a phase of solidarity, of collective complicity, and a phase of the reconquest of knowledge, which later was to become the basis for the ideology of the self-management councils (comigli di gestione) in the immediate post-War period. This was also a phase of stronger identification with the factory and with the technological heritage it housed. Once again, as previously in 1920, communist ideology was able to reconcile men with machinery, and opened space for high-sounding dreams and utopias.

14) At the time when Bigazzi's essay on the creation of the first generation of mass workers in Italy appeared was published, we were hardly in a position to appreciate it. Good friends had been arrested and the judiciary had decided that the full responsibility for all the illegal acts committed in Italy since 1968 was to be laid at the door of Italy's "workerist" tendency. The witch-hunt against the intellectuals of the "workerist Left" was already in full swing. They were to be silenced - through show trials, long years of imprisonment in special prisons, exile, expulsion to officially designated locations, by the destruction of their books by erstwhile "Left" publishing houses, and by denying them access to libraries. The historian "establishment" made a great contribution to this witch-hunt campaign, inasmuch as some of its best known members were active participants.

The independent alternative network of Left bookshops and distribution cooperatives was destroyed, and journals such as Primo Maggio had great difficulties in surviving at all. Nevertheless, in 1981 the editorial group of Primo Maggio, together with the Instituto De Martino, was able to organise a conference in Mantova, which brought together a wide range of historians who were involved in the field of "history from below". The first proceedings of this conference, published five years later, show that despite the shock of the defeat, the experience of Italian left-wing historians, both in method and in terms of empirical analysis, had found a clear voice. Duccio Bigazzi laid out in his essay the first results of his researches on the auto workers of Alfa Romeo, which appeared as a book in 1988, and which was the most important monograph of the 1980s dealing with this topic.

15) The conference can be seen as the last (failed) attempt to found a "society of Italian radical historians". From that point on, political resignation and the individual pursuit of academic careers led to self censorship (as of 1982, thousands of new teaching positions were tendered, and salaries were raised). Thus the balance of Italian historical writing in the 1980s on the man-machine problematic in industrial conflict, or in general on the problematic that Gramsci sketched in his "Americanism and Fordism", is very meagre. But when we consider the retreat of left-wing historians, the defeat of the factory council movement and the mass sackings in the big factories played a far more important role than the campaign against the "workerists".

With the sackings, militants of the factory councils - particularly those who had fought on job-protection and health and safety issues - and sick workers and non-productive workers, and older workers, were selected out. More than 700,000 workers were sacked by companies up and down Italy. In the motor industry, these developments took their course with the sacking of 61 FIAT workers for "suspected membership of terrorist groups" in Autumn 1979. This put the engineering unions in a difficult position: for the first time since the "Hot Autumn" and the coming into effect of the statuto dei lavoratori ("workers' statute"), factory workers were being sacked on explicitly political grounds. These sackings brought a new situation of workers' legal rights into being. Moreover, the question needed to be asked: how had FIAT management been able to identify the "suspects"? Did there exist alongside the ordinary factory security personnel a special company police, or had the lists been drawn up by the carabinieri of the Anti-Terrorist Squad? From the point of view of criminal law, too, a new situation was being created.

Nevertheless, there were hardly any solidarity initiatives, either on the part of "liberal" public opinion, or on the part of the unions. From the published "Memoirs" (1988) of FIATS general manager at the time we learn that the sackings had been discussed in advance with the general secretary of the CGIL union (Confederazione Generale Italiana del Lavoro, Luciano Lama. One of the few political initiatives was the protest meeting that was called in Turin by the editorial board of Primo Maggio together with other journals. The proceedings of this meeting were published in a special edition of Inchiesta. The records of this initiative are important for the recent history of FIAT workers, because they document the level of discussion and the sense of "before the Deluge" that prevailed at the time - in other words, a few months before the "35 Days" strike at FIAT against the mass sackings, which was the focal point of the defeat of the Italian factory council movement in the 1970s.

A comparison between this special edition of Inchiesta and the proceedings of a Turin Communist Party conference (February 1980) on company policy and the economic situation of FIAT, shows that the PC1 conference discussed seriously the possibility of Agnelli's concern being absorbed into the state sector of the economy, given the conjunctural difficulties it was going through at that time. This is revealing, given what we know of what happened a few years later - in other words, exactly the opposite: the state auto manufacturer Alfa Romeo was absorbed into Agnelli's private empire. This shows how unclear the PC1 leadership was about the real relations of power at FIAT. On the other hand, the dangers of a catastrophic defeat of the workers' movement and the restoration of the old FIAT despotism was accurately analysed and assessed at the Mantova conference.

In this stocktaking of the Italian historiography of class conflict in the auto sector, the proceedings of both these conferences are of particular interest, since they are the last available sources of information on the workers' reactions to the new technologies (the first robots were introduced in 1978-9) prior to the long hiatus in historical and sociological analysis which was to last for ten long years. The destruction of the network of Works Councils, the re-establishment of despotic industrial relations which left the workers no room for negotiation on questions of technological innovation, and the disintegration and ideological disorientation of the Left intelligentsia all led to a situation in which no further information came out of the FIAT works in Turin, and the situation at the workplace ceased being an object of analysis. It was only when the Ministry of Labour sent its inspectors into FIAT that the world of FIAT was once again, after ten years, opened to public scrutiny. The inspectors' brief was to look into the truth of complaints that had been received from trade unionists and social workers, against FIAT management, regarding alleged infractions of the basic rights of workers. These complaints led to a judge in Turin ordering an investigation against FIAT management, which in turn led to FIAT being put on trial.

Parallel to this ambivalent-seeming state-bureaucratic initiative (which here serves only as a possible source for a future possible history of working conditions at FIAT in the 1980s, and also as a symptom of an "atmospheric" change in public opinion in relation to FIAT), there were signs of a revival of interest in circles close to the trade unions, in the history of labour struggles at FIAT. The occasion for this was provided by the twentieth anniversary of the "Hot Autumn". It seemed that the cultural establishment also had an interest in these themes, as is shown by the publication, by the Milan publisher Garzanti, of Marco Revelli's book Lavorare in FIAT (November 1989).

Marco Revelli, who had previously been a member of the Primo Maggio editorial group, was one of the few intellectuals who, during the big strike in October 1980, followed the struggle on a day-today basis and set about collecting documents and eye-witness accounts (see above). After the defeat and the mass sackings (in 1979 FIAT still employed 102,500 workers in auto production; by 1984 the figure was only 55,400), together with Mariella BerraRevelli conducted a sociological investigation into the phenonema of mental depression and disorientation among those sacked FIAT workers who were living off the cassa integrazione, i.e. in a position where they were still de jure employed by the company, but were de facto in a kind of retirement, which it was impossible to say whether it was temporary or permanent. As many as
200 cornmined suicide.

In the course of 1981-2, Berra and Revelli conducted several interviews. The important thing that emerged from the interviews was that unemployment destabilised family relationships and put the central role of the man in the family so strongly in question that many became prey to depression, and some committed suicide. This is additional evidence for the way in which strongly patriarchal structures still exist in working class families, even when the woman is in full-time employment. The unemployed men were reticent about getting involved in new functions (housework, childcare). However, this is only one aspect of the problem. Another aspect was that the sudden lack of a community of solidarity led to a loss of emotional equilibrium. The factory was the only spatial fixed point of social aggregation and identification with one's own class. Other socialisation- and meeting- points that existed outside the factory (party branches, trade union offices. bars) had either long since faded away, or had been made non-viable by the great level of mobility among workers. The self-organisation of workers at plant level had reached such a pitch that the factory was no longer simply a place where one went to work, but also a place of socialisation.

A precondition for workers to get financial support from the cassa integrazione (which made good up to 90 per cent of your previous wages) was that the worker undertook no other paid employment. It was not lack of money, but the loss of social and political role, the enforced idleness, and the lack of any initiative or policy aimed at retraining, that was the source of the depression. Occasionally initiatives were undertaken with a view to offering the "cassa integrati" (as they were known, half ironically, halfdismissively) unpaid work in the community. Only a small majority were in a position to refind the way to autonomous self-organisation, but even people involved in these initiatives suffered under a severe psychological strain. By this analysis, all Gramsci's observations in "Americanism and Fordism" were recurring, except that here it was not a matter of forcing upon the workers, through the company structure, a new socio-hygienic system of values; it was more a collapse of what really had been a workers' civilisation, a workers' culture, which may have had its ambiguous aspects, but which for thousands of proletarians constituted a unique res publica. Workers' identification with this culture was so strong that it evoked among a shocked population an emotion of being at the end of an epoch, of being rolled over by
history, a sort of Goetterdaemmerung atmosphere.

In his above-mentioned book on the Fascist trade unions and the working class in Turin, in order to highlight the level of exploitation at FIAT during the Great Crisis (1930-1). Giulio Sapelli stresses that in that period two FIAT workers committed suicide. What historian of the future is going to ascribe a historical meaning to the wave of suicides in our own times?

16) The factory workers, and above all the militants of the factory council movement, had perceived the mass sackings of the 1980s not merely as a conjunctural restructuration policy but as the collapse of an epoch and the twilight of a civilisation; the intellectuals, on the other hand, saw them as a turning point, as the end of an epoch that had begun with the movement of 1968, an epoch which had been stamped with illusions and extremist mistakes. Even a section of the intelligentsia who had been imprisoned repudiated their own political past and "revised" their own history by means of an internalisation of the defeat. The great majority of the left-wing intellectuals interpreted the turning point, sometimes publicly, sometimes tacitly, as a liberation from their continuing relationship of analysis with real mass movements and complex political phenomena such as the urban guerrilla movement.

The restoration of order in the factories and in society as a whole was greeted with relief. Apparently one can do one's researches better when dead silence rules all around. In Italy's special prisons, and during the course of interrogations, there were instances of torture, but the reaction of the intelligentsia was to ignore it. The rules about crown witnesses in political court cases led to the total undermining of the right of defence (in the reforms of the penal code which came into force in 1989, this advance was even institurionalised: the mal dialectic between the representative for the prosecution and the representative for the defence was replaced by a system of direct "negotiation" between the judge and the accused). Leftwing intellectuals, with only a few exceptions, left indignation about this to the specialists in penal reform. Thus they turned their backs not only on the trade-union struggles of the working class, but also on fundamental values of the liberal tradition.

The responsibility for this situation is borne by the Communist Party, whose policies had helped mould the culture of the emergenza ("emergency"). The judges who had been responsible for the wave of arrests of 4,000 suspected "terrorists" were closely linked to the Communist Party. The prosecution logic, and even the techniques of cross examination, were on a par with those of the Stalinist trials of the 19%. The PCI put their best lawyers at the disposal of the crown witnesses. The culture of "emergency" established a tendency whereby every mass movement that went beyond the bounds of legality was viewed on the same level as the armed actions of organised groupings. For this reason, the factory council movement and the defensive struggles of the factory workers were seen more as likely ground for acts of anti-State violence than as the healthy components of basic democracy.

So it was that our Leftwing intellectuals undertook a 180 degree turn, on societal questions. They enthusiastically embraced the crass ideology of Reaganite neo-liberalism; they lost their basic democratic instincts; they repudiated not only their reformist-communist and social-reformist culture, but even the spirit of liberalism. They succumbed fully to the ideology of post-Fordism, and returned to conceptions of society that dated back to the socalled "Golden Age" of America in the 1920s. In short, they threw overboard the whole of Keynesian political thinking. They engaged in idolatry of private enterprise and abandoned any idea of a "humane" capitalism, even though in Italy there exists a fair tradition of socially responsible capitalism (Adriano Olivetti, Enrico Mattei). In short: the leftwing intellectuals went right over to right-wing conservatism. In recent European history, to find such a radical betrayal of one's political roots one has to go back to 1933, when many democratic and social-democratic Germans went over to national socialism. So it is no wonder that, today, ten years after all this, Italy is the only country in the OECD where entire regions are no longer under state control, but are under the Mafia; where justice - according to the 1990 annual report of the Bar Association - is all but paralysed; and where the highest level of concentration of capital in Europe is matched by a Parliament incapable of establishing a sufficiently strong government majority to be able to set up an anti-trust law. What is unprecedented in this Italian model is the combination of a strong tendency to monopoly with an independent level of production organised in small and medium-sized firms: "concentration without centralisation", in the apposite definition of the American sociologist Bennett Harrison. This is the core of post-Fordism.

17) In the heads of our historians, political scientists, sociologists and so on there is an idee fixe that industrial conflict is about to disappear from the stage of history, that work-relations are no longer the basis for socio-political identity, and that terms such as "class" or "class composition", as methodological tools for the study of history, are valid only as far as the October Revolution and no further.

The debate on post-Fordism and post-industrial society that emerged in those years was marked by this orientation of the leftwing intellectuals. This began with a series of studies on Taylorism (which I analysed in a paper for the Hamburg Institute for Social History, Einfuhrung in die Lektuere von Gramscis "Americanismo e Fordismo" - "Introduction to a Reading of Gramsci's Americanism and Fordism" - November 1989) in which a positive "historical revisionism" appeared in outline. For social historians this turnabout meant that instead of the history of industrial society, they cultivated the history of companies, and as far as business and entrepreneurial history went, it was occasionally low-grade stuff.

So it was that, for example, it was rare to find studies on the auto industry that still concerned themselves with the history of working conditions and class relations in production, and what few there were generally originated from the same authors. There was no new blood. It is also worth noting that all these studies first appeared in print after 1988, at the same time as a certain anti-FIAT sentiment was beginning to make itself felt among public opinion. One exception was the important study by Stefano Musso on wages policies at FIAT before and after the Great Crisis, which first appeared in Classe (December 1982). Musso set out to deal with the same questions that Castronovo, Sapelli and Bigazzi had already discussed (see above): "Was there a 'Fordist phase' in FIAT'S wages policies during Fascism?" He examines, on the one hand, the organisational debate on the Taylorisation of small enterprises, and on the other hand he establishes certain difficulties with the wage statistics; his thesis is that Taylor's system was, in the Italian case, tested more in the smaller supplier industries rather than in the big auto manufacturers. In opposition to Bigazzi, he interprets the introduction of the Bedaux system in FIAT in 1927 as merely the intensification of individual work outputs, and not designed to promote a reorganisation of the productive apparatus.

From there he poses the wages question historically, in the following manner: In Italy, up until about 1920, there was no wage scale system by which wage levels could be accurately related to levels of qualification among the workforce. The wage scale system under Fascism, in other words from 1929 to 1939, had only prescribed the level of minimum wages; wage scales related to qualification levels and job specifications were very vaguely defined. Thus the data failed to establish the real wages, for example under piecework working, and to evaluate the knowledge with a view to a comparative study. The only source was the wage scale books (libri matricola - the one for the FIAT-Lingotto works was destroyed during the War).

On the basis of certain data - what was published by the employers themselves, what was available in publications of the city administration, and an Inquiry by the ministry of labour in 1925, Musso believes that he can argue that wages at FIAT were 30 per cent higher than in other sectors, namely before and after the introduction of the Bedaux system; nevertheless, neither in 1914, nor in 1925, nor in 1948 were these wages sufficient to guarantee a minimum standard of living for a five-person working-class family. Only highly skilled workers, or unskilled workers putting in a lot of overtime, could hope to reach that minimum. In order to corroborate his thesis that there was no Italian Fordism, Musso leans heavily on an interview that Giovanni Agnelli gave to the United Press agency in June 1932, in which he described Fordism as a social philosophy that was only suitable for the United States, and where he added that the higher wages were unthinkable in Italy because of the limited market existing within Europe.

The communist emigre press of the period took these assertions as pure 'demagogy', and Musso attaches perhaps too much significance to them. However I agree with his conclusion, that FIAT never set their sights on a wages policy that would presuppose the creation of an internal consumption market. In the Fascist period, as far as the prevailing business philosophy was concerned, the working class was not seen as potential buyers of cars. The same number of Classe had a further article dealing with the problematic of the cycle of vehicle production: Carlo Carotti, Sistema Bedaux e sindacato fascista alla Pirelli ('The Bedaux system and the fascist union at Pirelli").

18) A typical product of Italian historiography of the 1980s was the biography of Vittorio Valletta, the general manager of FIAT. Vittorio Valletta presents a unique case in the history of European motor industry managements, because he succeeded in maintaining his position of power in an unbroken continuity from 1929 to 1964. He embodied the history of the firm far better that the members of the Agnelli family - in fact he was more or less the embodiment of the company's philosophy. He came to be known simply as I'Ingegnere. Unlike Castronovo, Sapelli and Bigazzi, Piero Bairati (who was commissioned by FIAT to write this biography) had the opportunity to use the records of board meetings, the company correspondence from 1943 to 1967 (the correspondence prior to 1943 was destroyed by bombing during the War), the archives of the American Multic company, which had had business dealings with FIAT, and various individual personal archives, such as the Jona archive in the Luigi Einaudi Foundation. However, Valletta's personality, which was of considerable historical significance, was rather devalued by Bairati's style of "palace history writing". The reader who is looking for a history of "technology from above" will be disappointed. Instead of a reconstruction of the system of personnel management, he gives us an unproblematicised and adulatory life history of the man.

However, some passages of this book deserve closer examination, and may be of particular interest for German readers. Bairati writes: "In the reconstruction of Valletta's role during the War, I have found the documents of the "German bureau" within the FIAT archive to be of extraordinary importance." The head of this bureau was the then director of FIAT-Germany, Piero Bonelli. These documents were evaluated by Bairati particularly in the chapter La tattica del camaleonte ('The tactic of the chameleon"), where he follows Valletta's activities from the Badoglio armistice (8 September 1943) through to the end of the War. He advances the thesis that Valletta was able to use cleverly planned obstructions in order to hinder the German occupation troops from transporting FIAT plant to Germany, and was able to place FIAT'S armaments production under the direct control of the Reich Minister of the Economy. According to him, Valletta was playing a clever double game, which almost led to his being imprisoned by the German occupation troops; he maintained good relations with the representative authorities of Mussolini's Salo Republic and the German occupation authorities, and at the same time he maintained contacts with the American secret services and also with anti-fascist and partisan groups.

The reconstruction of one particular episode from 1944 is very informative for Bairati's approach in describing the incident: the German military authorities were wishing to transfer Shop 17 of the Mirafiori works, the section where aircraft parts were manufactured. On 19 June 1944 the whole factory was paralysed by a strike, and on 21 June the Prefect of Turin ordered the factory to be closed. On 26 June, while the factory was still empty on account of the lockout, as Bairati writes, "the Allied air forces, with unbelievable accuracy, bombed, precisely, Shop 17". From the way in which the episode is described, the reader might conclude the following: a) the organisation of the strike was known to the factory management and perhaps they even had a hand in it (this would presuppose a direct link existing between the plant management and the illegal strike committee - but Bairati says nothing about this); b) the strategic leadership of the Anglo-American air forces was informed that there was a danger of Shop 17 being trans-shipped and that they were informed of the location of that shop and were told that on such-and-such a day they could bomb it without any danger to the workers - on this Bairati says nothing. He gives no explanation; he leaves history to float in the sky, and leaves the reader to his own fantasies and conjectures; and on the question of "which non-communist partisan groups did Valletta have contact with", he offers no answer. He states simply that he had come across a list of resistance groups which had received financial
support from FIAT. No more than that.

In order to build the picture of Valletta as a saviour of men and machines, Bairati faithfully records all the instances in which the Ingegnere intervened with the German military authorities to argue for the release of imprisoned FIAT workers. However there is one fact which cannot conceal - namely that the head of the internal factory security force, and Valletta's right-hand man, was an ex-secret agent of Mussolini who had shared responsibility for the murder, in 1937 on French soil, of the Rosselli brothers, two antifascist intellectuals who were leaders of the emigre group Giustizia e Liberta.

At the end of the War, despite his patriotic services rendered and his donations to the resistance movement, the "chameleon" was sentenced to death by communist partisans. Valletta escaped execution by a hair's breadth. He was provided with a hiding place by the partisans of the (socialist) Matteotti group. On the authority of the Liberation Front, he was removed from office, and a commissar was installed, although only for a period of a few months. As a result of the reconciliation policies of the PCI leadership, which had been a member of the Badoglio coalition for the period of the liberation war in the Italian territory that was under the administration of the German military authorities, Valletta was able to return to his post as general manager of FIAT.

Bairati does not address the historical question of the kind of debate that took place on this, within the communist movement and the political leadership of the Liberation Front, or the question of how meaningful was the idea of punishing Valletta for his political responsibilities under Fascism. As a result, the questions that were thrown open by Liliana Lanzardo's book (see above) are left unanswered.

Giulio Sapelli, the president of the Institute for Advancement of Business History, attacked Bairati's work with unaccustomed vehemence. In his opinion it is an example of how business history should not be written.

19) The first volume of Duccio Bigazzi's monograph on the history of the Alfa Romeo car company appeared in 1988. This study should have been a useful source for an inquiry into the Taylorisation of the company and the changes in the skill and grading structure of the workforce, but even though the author was to analyse a section of the company's archives and had access to the minutes of most of their board meetings, he limited himself strictly to general aspects of the history of the company. The first volume describes the year of the company's foundation, the major changes in class composition during the First World War, the turbulent post-War years up to the victory of the Fascist Party, the insuperable crisis that the company went through until the first intervention by state capital (in 1926, the year of Mussolini's emergency regulations and the suspension of political pluralism).

In contrast to Bigazzi's first essay on FIAT, which had been an example for the history of the mass worker, this second study dealt in exemplary fashion with the history of the worker aristocracy. In fact it is not possible to draw a clear dividing line between these two conceptions.

Alfa Romeo was founded by a French businessman in 1906, and a few years later transferred into Italian hands. The Alfa Romeo workers were known for their degree of professionalism. Famed as "magic mechanics", they built for themselves a closed group that was distinguished by a pride in its work. Bigazzi does not allow himself to be influenced by this legend, and criticises the notion, taken over from traditional historiography, o the "work ethic". He agrees with David Montgomery that these groups of highly qualified workers, whose hardcore consisted of tool preparation workers and maintenance workers (attrezzisti), had a sense of being bound by an ethical code of solidarity.

Bigazzi's work does not only go into the 'Taylorist problematic"; the reactions of people to the new methods of evaluating labour output, to the introduction of new technology etc, are only one theme of his inquiry. A second important theme is the analysis of the relations between the factory and the surrounding industrial network that was dependent on Alfa, which consisted largely of supplier firms. The final location for the Alfa factory (abbreviation of Anonima Lombarda Fabbrica Automobili, which first got the name Alfa Romeo in 1913) was sought in an area on the outskirts of Milan where there was as yet no industry settled, and which was a long way from the districts where proletarians lived and from other industrial sectors.

The factory was clean and well-lit: it was seen as the height of modernity. Within a short time a lot of other small companies had moved into the same area, companies which functioned as subcontractors for Alfa. There was a brisk exchange of labour between these companies and Alfa, which had a high turnover rate. When we compare this situation with the situation at the Ford plants in Detroit, we see that despite big differences of size and the level of organisation, their
personnel policies were essentially the same. [Note 691 In 1913, fate took the two companies down separate paths: Alfa had to confront a big market crisis, because its sports and luxury models were not finding buyers. Ford, on the other hand, went down the path of the cheap standardised model. Nineteen-thirteen was the year of the first big trade union discussions in both companies. The Alfa workers plumped mainly for the syndicalist-revolutionary organisations, and thereby constructed a "turbulent enclave" in the otherwise markedly reformist labour movement in Milan.

The craftworker ethic goes hand in hand with a strong class consciousness, which reached out into the hinterland of the smaller companies and workshops in the auto-producing sector. A solidarity began to build up in the auto sector at the time when the frst rationalisation policies were being put into effect. The texture of relations between "Il Portello" (the main Alfa works), the supplier firms and the other auto sector companies and workshops (in those days Milan was a more important auto city than Turin) shows a community of militant workers which was held together by more than just a shared place of work. The strategy of uprooting - in other words, the decision to locate the factory a long way from where the workers lived - was to backfire. The syndicalist-revolutionary trade union groups answered such a model of organisation more successfully than the reformist unions.

Seen in historical tern, for the Italian working class they constituted the transition from "shop unionism" to "industrial unionism". This was also the meaning of the emergence of the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) in the USA. This form of organisation, which went beyond the limits of individual firms, and which existed outside the neighbourhood solidarity of the proletarian districts, was to reappear repeatedly in the history of the Italian labour movement. It was a characteristic of the factory council movement in the 1970s.

20) The history of the "Portello" Alfa Romeo works in Milan reminds us that Milan was the first capital of Italian vehicle production, before Turin took the lead. But Milan still remained an important centre of the production cycle after FIAT began to grow larger and consolidated its domination of the domestic market. After the Second World War, through to the 1970s, there were still three independent motor manufacturers producing in Milan - Autobianchi, Innocenti and Alfa Romeo - and a number of medium-to-large component companies, such as Pirelli, Magneti Marelli and Borletti. Many of these firms have now been incorporated into the FIAT empire; only Pirelli has maintained an entirely separate identity.

In the 1960s, Alfa Romeo built another bigger factory in Arese, a few miles north of Milan. This plant gradually took over production from the old "Portello" works and set up new production lines. Trade union organisation at Alfa Romeo never suffered the catastrophic defeats that occurred with such regularity at FIAT. This difference was established principally in the phase 1979-82, when the factory council organisation at Alfa Romeo had to overcome the great crisis. Several factors contributed to this. Alfa Romeo belonged to the state concern I.R.I., in which industrial relations had generally been conducted on a rather cooperative basis between the unions and plant management. The Milan engineering group of the Christian union federation CISL took the course of supporting the workers' resistance to the various restructuring attempts at Alfa Romeo, and entered into open conflict with the other engineering unions and with its own federation, which by the end of 1989 had decided to send a commissar in, to restore control. This group of militant trade unions had great support from the Milanese labour tribunal, which often ended with sacked workers and unpopular factory councils being reinstated. The court judgements of this small group of courageous labour judges - who were heavily criticised and attacked
both by the employers and by the trade unions - were a unique thing in the gloomy panorama of Italian justice.

In the mid-1980s, under the prime ministership of Bettino Craxi, the state sold the Alfa Romeo works to FIAT, at a ridiculously low price. Their hope that FIAT-style despotism would be able to restore order at Alfa Romeo was not to be fulfilled. On the contrary, it was out of the Arese Alfa Romeo works that the spark came that led to the "FIAT scandal". A technician, the chairman of the Communist Party cell in Alfa Romeo, complained that the factory management had discriminated against him on account of his political affiliation. The communist press started a campaign protesting at the violation of the civil rights of FIAT workers. This campaign was directly supported by the press organs of the De Benedetti group (in particular by Italy's largest daily newspaper, La Repubblica). We discovered with a certain surprise that FIAT'S despotic style of management was also unpopular with public opinion.

Some circles among the employers - for example the Benedetti and Gardini groups- seized on this opportunity as a way to set limits to the power and influence of the FIAT group. The government was forced to intervene, and the Ministry of Labour sent in its inspectors. They established that certain violatory practices were widespread. For the workers this was an opportunity to give vent to their long suppressed anger against a tyrannical company management. They streamed in to see the inspectors and to place their evidence on record. FIAT's reputation was seriously shaken. The outcome was that a criminal judge found that there were serious violations of rights on the part of FIAT's company doctors, and he took a decision to issue summonses against the chairman of the FIAT board, Cesare Romiti, and FIATS two personnel managers. In addition, for the fist time in nine years FIAT workers went on strike again.

This turning point, which can be characterised as political rather than merely "atmospheric", coincided with the twentieth anniversary of the "Hot Autumn". Testimonies and reflections on the events of the Hot Autumn were published. One example of this material is Gabriele Polo's volume I Tamburi della FIAT ("The drums of FIAT", Turin, 1989), a collection of the personal experiences of eleven FIAT workers. There was also the special edition of the daily newspaper Il Manifesto, on the Autunno Caldo (12 December 1989). These recollections also provided an opportunity to recall the bombing of the National Agricultural Bank in Milan on 12 December 1969, in which twelve people were killed.

The most significant publication of this period was Marco Revelli's book, Lavorare in FIAT ("Working for FIAT), which appeared in a large paperback edition published by a well-known Milan-based publishing house, Garzanti. This book, of only 139 pages, describes graphically the most important phases of the class conflict at FIAT. Revelli skilfully combines technical data, economic background material and personal interviews with FIAT workers. He offers no fresh historical insights, but the book is indispensable for an account of the history of the working class. Another important work appeared at about the same time: Liliana Lanzardo, who eighteen years previously had written an important contribution to the history of the Turin working class (see above), edited a volume entitled Cattolici e comunisti alla FIAT ("Catholics and communists at FIAT") - a series of personal accounts of active militants, which is valuable for making available a wealth of new details on the period between the 1920s and the 1960s.

EDITOR'S PREFACE TO JOHANNES AGNOLI'S “DESTRUCTION AS THE DETERMINATION OF THE SCHOLAR IN MISERABLE TIMES”

Johannes Agnoli's contribution first appeared in German in 1990. Against the background of the fall of the Berlin Wall, the context of Agnoli's argument is the institutionalisation through parliamentary politics of the so-called new social movements of the 1970s during the 1980s. This “normalisation” and “responsibilisation” of the new (West-) German Left was accompanied by what at first sight appears to belong to a different area of controversy: the Historians Dispute of the 1980s. This dispute was provoked by Habermas' reaction to neoconservative attempts at normalising German fascism. According to them, fascism was justified as a defence of the European middle classes against Bolshevism and the extermination of millions merely a copy-cat of the original Gulag. Habermas reacted against this “Asiatic” interpretation of German fascism and proposed that, in contract to the neo-conservative attempt of providing a new basis for national pride and love of the German fatherland, that the only patriotism possible in German is constitutional patriotism — the love of the constitution. The institutionalisation of the previously unruly new social movements and the historians dispute connect in Habermas' idea of a constitutional patriotism, that is the espousal of the liberal-democratic state and its values of equality, justice, and freedom, as the best of all world. Instead of criticising the constitutional liberal-democratic state for what it is, the acceptance of the “political game” entailed and entails the acceptance of the values upon which it is based, transforming the critique of the state into a constructive criticism that while aiming to better the state, leads to the strengthening of the structures of power. Agnoli contrasts and compares the constructive attempts of the erstwhile new social movements to better the state with system theory's stern conception of how to contain and integrate new social forces into the structures of power — this not to change but rather to strengthen them. The essay shows the integrative force that the norm “responsibility” entails and explains why conflict is seen by the proponents of state power as a useful resource for stabilising the structures of power.

Agnoli concludes his essay by saying that it was written for German readers. Indeed, the essay deals with German conditions. But it does so in a systematic way and this means that his argument reveals theoretical insights of much wider importance. In fact, the essay is essentially about the relationship between the Left and the form of the state. He argues his case by contrasting constructive critique (and constructive conflict) to destructive critique (and destructive conflict). He stands firmly on the side of destructive critique and demands that it has to be restored to its rightful place: to destroy horrors. In contrast, he shows that honest and well-meaning constructive critique is forced to accept the very conditions through which horror subsists. The implication of Agnoli's argument is that the Left, if it takes itself seriously, has to be a destructive Left and that is, a Left that stands firmly on the side of human emancipation. Such emancipation entails that the Left abandons its illusions about the state as a means of liberation. The world to win is a world where humans are a purpose and not a resource, a world of human dignity.

Human dignity does not come cheap. It involves courage. More importantly, it requires patience and irony.

The first publication of Agnoli's essay in English in Common Sense: no. 12, was translated by Werner Bonefeld and Byrt Klammack. It contained a number of errors that have been corrected in the present translation. The re-translation benefited from the publication of a revised German edition of the essay published in his Der Staat des Kapitals und weitere Scbriften zur Kritik der Politik, Ça ira, Freiburg, 1995. The article appeared first in Konkret no. 2, February 1990.

 
DESTRUCTION AS THE DETERMINATION OF THE SCHOLAR IN MISERABLE TIMES
Johannes Agnoli

The determination of scholarly work as destruction originated with Johann Gottlieb Fichte; Hölderlin drew attention to the misery of the period. Fichte's determination was based on the belief in the emergence of a new era; Hölderlin, in contrast, found the period to be one of such misery that he asked himself what role, if any, was left for a poet.

In our time, misery remains strangely hidden and appears alien. Everywhere conformist constructions prevail. We witness the reconstruction of values, the dignity of nature is unearthed together with its flora and fauna. Although there are many ruptures, these are seen to be confined to other regions of the world. This then leads to the self-satisfied and contented view about our never ending wave of progress. To put it differently: a historical end is still proclaimed and this proclamation comes from the United States. In contrast to Marx's dream of the beginning of human history, it announces the final victory of the Western order. It celebrates the blessings of accumulation and praises the achievements of the liberal-democratic Rechtsstaat (state of law-and-order) as history's finest and final accomplishment.l The scholarly world, that is those sciences that do not deal with pure chemicals or with physical quantities but, rather, with human affairs, conditions, and troubles, does not remain on the sidelines. On the contrary, it contributes forcefully to the stabilization of the institutional structures, the system of liberal normative values, and the communicative systems of interaction; and it is powerfully engaged in the creation of new forms of citizenship, of life-styles and life-worlds, and the establishment of new forms of functionality. Certainly, as never before, the true mission of the scholar is seen to consist in constructive work. Reason is set to work, in part to simplify the world of things through systemic reductions (the so-called “reduction of complexity”), in part to advance placid forms of communication (the philosophical endeavour to mimic the data-processing of informatic studies),2 and in part, in a complete reversal of reason, to attack reason. Because of an affectionate feeling of discontent, the attack on reason goes hand-in-hand with cheerful leaps into the spiritual, the mush of the soul.3 The latter is not worth discussing. It is however disturbing that the new proponents of the enlightenment deny reason its historic role of, at any given time, provoking insubordination and destroying horrors, whether it be from church, state, despotism — or any other form of rule, as Voltaire liked to say.

It is not the case that the scholarly world accepts the seeming lack of ruptures uncritically. Nolte has criticised historiography and its failure to interpret German fascism in asiatic terms; Habermas criticised Nolte and his discarding of reason; Tugendhat criticised — in constructive terms according to the Frankfurter Rundschau — Habermas' friendly critique of Nolte.4 Nevertheless, a constructive mood dominates and trust in the established order is widespread. Those who do mistrust especially the existing relations of constituted power and engage reasons historic role to lead humanity to emancipation,5 and who do not make positive proposals and shun a constructive engagement with politics, find themselves, quite unintentionally, in conflict with the stipulated norms of the Constitution according to which scholarly work has to project constitutional values (see below).

The misery of our time that the successfully stabilized structures of power crystallize at all levels — even those engaged in alternative social projects have become becalmed from self-content — this misery demands destruction. The “system of order” has to be dismantled, trust has to be undone; and, instead, the explosive power of doubt has once again to be restored to its rightful place so that at last the soothing image of a faultless world changes, and that, in the face of current dramatic developments, the symbols of the positive, the good and the pretty vanish. Meanwhile, Germany (fortunately recently only West-Germany) seems to remain a country where critique blossoms always in constructive terms.6 Is this the German culture? Is this a continuous, uninterrupted German intellectual tradition?

THE CLASSICS

The greatest of the German proponents of the Enlightenment teaches us something different. Kant, it is true, regarded according to tradition and his own statements, duty as a noble endeavour, the moral code in our hearts as a useful institution, and he admired the star-studded sky. Anything else, however, that came to his mind he demolished: the metaphysical unity of the world, the objectivity of space and time, the immortality of the soul, the indisputable existence of God. Admittedly, he let God, or what Goethe referred to as the “old man,” return through the backdoor that he conveniently constructed. This he did, however, only to install a sort of moral authority to ensure good behaviour in our daily life — better: as a “postulate” so that we all live decent lives and regard humanity as a purpose, not as resource as in, for example, the realization of profits or the achievement of parliamentary majorities. Heinrich Heine, whom Goebbels declared a Destruktiver, a “force of decomposition,” held Kant as a more resolute and decisive revolutionary than the French Jacobins. And Giosui Carducci (Nobel Prize 1906) took up Heine's contention: “Decapitaron Emanuele Kant Iddio Massimiliano Robespierre il Re”— which is to say: Kant decapitated God, Robespierre decapitated the king. Whereby Kant holds first place among the destructive figures of history.

Kant, however, was not satisfied with doing away with God. He did worse: he decapitated the impartial head of science and replaced it by reason and that is, the principle of partiality, of social obligation. According to Kant, only that science is true which helps the common individual to dignity (Hartenstein, Nachlaß, p. 625).7 He added an even more destructive element. In 1794, on the 12th of October, he received a “special order” from his Majesty the King to cease his philosophic “distortion and degradation of Christianity.” (Note that if one replaces Christianity by the liberal-democratic ground order of the German constitution, the King's order amounted to the first conception of an anti-radical law).8 Under this type of pressure, Kant began to understand the character of the constituted political order and started a dispute with the constitutional scholars. In his Conflicts of the Faculties, he developed the principle of partiality in its entirety. The constitutional scholars, he argued, might allow themselves to work positively within the existing constituted political system and affirm existing conditions. However, philosophy has a more important role: it is the role of philosophy to enlighten the population about the “true character” of the constitution in spite of orders to conceal it. What did Kant understand by the “true character?” Kant in no way meant the well-known gap between constitutional norms and constitutional reality whereby it would be the obligation on the part of politicians and scholars to restore the damage. Kant did not differentiate between “good constitutional norms” and “bad constitutional reality.” Kant's emphasis on the true character of the constitution focused negatively on the rottenness of the norms themselves. He vindicated the right of philosophy to destroy all constitutional illusions and expose the fiction of a representative body as, in fact, a reality of domination [Herrschaft]. He called all affirmations of the constitution by one name: "Deceitful publicity" (Conflicts of the Faculties, Königsberg, 1798).

Kant's conception of the determination of the scholar did not remain without consequences. The destructive element found its way into Hegel's conception of negation as the dynamic force of the consciousness of freedom — even though the ageing Hegel (in contrast to Kant, who became wiser with age) subsumed negation under a general reconciliation with the state. Hegel was a poor master who, however, had a much better student. The good student followed Kant's “critical project” and pushed aside Hegel’s reconciliation. Marx wanted neither to construct or affirm. He wanted primarily to negate. Like Heine, he was tradition-bound to the historic duty of decomposition. He went, however, several steps further: into the depth and into the basis of society. Marx was not satisfied with merely exposing the true character of the constitution. Beyond the recognition of the constituted deceitfulness of the constitutional state and after exposing its true character, the reality of its essence, and that is its function, had to be revealed. He destroyed the illusion of the pretty form of the state, a form that hides and yet organizes an ugly content. In this way, the absurdity of a mode of production on which bourgeois purposive-rationality, profitability, and respectability feed, was exposed. It stood naked. All who live from their labour and the sale of their labour power “find themselves directly opposed to the form in which, hitherto, the individuals, of which society consists, have given themselves as individuals, they must overthrow the state.” Bakunin on Asia? No: Marx and Germany (German Ideology, MEW 3, p. 77).

Negation and destruction are therefore not missing from the German scholarly tradition. On the contrary, it has its classics. Their destructive reason has representatives even where common wisdom and the educated middle classes would least expect. Only a few in this country know, for example, who this Benimm-Knigge really was: “free Mister” Knigge was a radical Jacobin who understood the terreur and who, thinking about “Ça ira,” criticised the German condition, lamenting that in Germany, “the nice lampposts are standing all so unused.”9

SOME EDIFYING NOTES

Is this tradition really that of the “other Germany” which has historically been pushed aside by mainstream, constructive Germany? In reassurance: Knigge's lampposts — whether pretty or not — are still quite properly providing light only for the streets. For the scholar, on the other hand, there still remains the Kantian duty and the Marxian project and that is, to continue the philosophical-political destruction of this powerfully protected misery that is blessed by consensus. By continuing this project, however, the scholars are likely to be forced to live in the shadows. General goodwill is removed from them and they make themselves suspect. But they must accept that danger if they are to take their determination and themselves seriously. This then means that against all official orders (Basic Law, Art. 5, 3),10 scholars are left with no alternative but to reveal the fiction of freedom that the “Palace” (as the ancient Egyptians referred to the structure of power) posits and to disclose the fragility of its existence. When scholars orientate themselves on Kant, then they appropriate Kant’s wisdom (see his answer to the special order of the King) and deal with the constituted liberal-democratic order and the structures of power in a two-fold and rightly famous manner. They will attempt to conceal the true character of the constitution and thereby bring their work into line with the Zeitgeist.11

TheZeitgeist creeps in fact away from the correct determination of scholarly work, and chooses instead to participate in the building of consensus: if one affirms existing conditions and norms, then the deplorable state of affairs loses its reality and transforms into correctable accidents. The responsibility for overcoming these rests with the so-called self-regulating capacity of the market, of power, and of parliament.

The first manifestation of the Zeitgeist undoubtedly understands itself as critical, but does not recognise its negative determination which is above all and principally “de omnibus dubitandum” (doubt everything). The critical dimension of the Zeitgeist is characterized by the painstaking quest for the good; that is, justice, equality and freedom. The good is supposed to be constitutionally guaranteed, despite various weaknesses. But the comforting conviction that the liberal-democratic ground order is basically sound despite the occasional infiltration of bad political practices which can be coped with whenever necessary, renders philosophy a pure work of edification, of state building. In spite of all enlightened proclamations, and in opposition to a programme that is admirably devoted to rationality, these new ideas of state building discover the universal element through which all political interactions first realize their human character: LOVE. But even love can have, within itself, the rationality of destruction (see Goethe's Marienbader Elegie). Rescued from such danger, caught on the edge of the abyss, and drawn into the positive, love becomes transcendental if, through edification, it is offered an object of desire that lies beyond all critique. Such transcendental love remains shielded from all adverse experiences and can therefore be loved for its own sake and that is, because of and for itself.

The initial enlightenment can not be denied. Love is given a rationally defined object that prevents any stumbles into the emotional-barbaric, and guarantees instead something of good quality. Besides, love of the fatherland — patriotism, the original sense of the word, has run its course — brings to the fore unpleasant things: heavy indigestible stuff that is well past its sell-by date. On this point, philosophy remains philosophical and that is, it maintains its destructiveness. But as love enters the phase of edification and reaches its object, it becomes harmless, observable, and worthy of affirmation: edification brushes away the love of the fatherland and proclaims, instead, its love of the constitution.12 In this respect Friedrich Engels’ observation is confirmed: in the rest of the world, political power explicitly insists on the rule of law and on the compliance with the constitutional order. In Germany, however, obedience to law, order and constitution is not sufficient — one is also required to love them.

For fear of undermining the political culture and of raising new uncertainties about proven institutions, reason, once free and probing, becomes pure affection and dissolves in a two-fold manner: first in general and second in love. In the late middle ages, philosophy had freed itself from servitude — due in part to the destructive force of nominalism. Philosophy did no longer want to remain in the role of an ancilla theologiae and regained its autonomy. Now, its constructive manifestations drag philosophy back into the role of a social servant: ancilla constitutionis. By refusing the possibility of a destructive autonomy within society that searches for emancipation, and by refusing to observe the institutional norms — these are norms of power and domination — with suspicion, philosophy affirms existing conditions and its defence of the constitutional order provides the office for the protection of the constitution, that is the security service, with the much desired ideological legitimation. This development is in stark contrast to a not-so-distant past when there was intellectual scolding of this office. However, when dealing with supposed or real enemies of the constitution, the security service's institutional love inspires quite different activities compared with the activities of those whose love of the state holds honest constructive intentions. The revolutionary tragedy of the Jacobin terror has long since been transformed into a constitutional comedy — to use a famous phrase (cf. Robespierre's speech on the 12th of December 1793, with German Basic Law, Article 18).13 In the meantime, love has become a satyr's game: the new Chauvin14 stands grinning at the Celler hole.15

In this manner, Kant has been stood on his head: the true character of the constitution lies in the fact that the constitution is true. Consequently, any further thoughts about it, any critical pronouncements, any destruction of the structure of power become superfluous. For constitutional patriotism, the destructive scholar is a scandal.

SYSTEMIC CONSIDERATIONS16

Constructive endeavours are widely accepted and edification approves itself. The other positive manifestation of the Zeitgeist has some misgivings about this. Does a dynamic state form not need the conflict of opinions and interests between groups and social partners? Does it not require the pluralist competition between interests? Cianetti who was Italy’s Minister of Corporations in 1945, already saw the necessity of the social conflict.17 But he also declared that conflicts must be contained within the limits of the system; in general: they must be regulated through law, not provoked. This clever notion achieved constructive endorsement in system theory which emphasises the constructive nature of conflicts and the consolidating quality of strikes. Besides, the German constitution provides guarantees for clashes of interest and seeks to support them as long is they are confined within the boundaries of the constitution.

Here it is not love which is seen as the most secure foundation of the political form. Rather it is CONFLICT. Conflict is accepted as a stabilizing force of the system, providing it with structures and securing its success. However, wherever conflict manifests itself in constructive or functional forms, the critical element does not remain absent. Conflicts without critical ideas amount to mere shadow-boxing and so lose their functionality. Critique seems, then, to be a systemic condition of political stability. But this presupposes a particular, much praised and emphasised quality of critique — critique has to abandon its negativity: it must refrain from destruction and operate constructively. Constructive critique — yet another tautology of the Zeitgeist — constantly makes positive proposals and seeks to improve and consolidate existing conditions. In so far as constructive critique opposes any attempt at demolishing existing conditions which is the aim of destructive critique, constructive critique is also a critique of destructive critique.18 Destructive critique — looked at from the lenses of systemic thought - lacks the functionality of the positive.

System theory focuses with great care on the positive elements of conflict, for the positive is the yardstick against which anything new is measured. A theory which is devoted to the state and sees the state as “Being” or “Subject,” must analyse new forces that enter the political arena not only with love but also with severity. This is because, as we know, within the system all fields, processes, movements, facts and persons not only interact with one another, they also, and importantly, constitute a finely meshed network that is susceptible to disturbances and ruptures. Should one mesh fail, and thereby allowing a dysfunctional conflict, an unknown intention, or an autonomous social power to slip into the network, then the complex relations between function and system can destabilize and destruction may assert itself

System theory has much more reliable means of protecting the state against such destructive possibilities than any chatter that sees itself to operate in spaces where power does not exist.19 This means is the norm that facilitates integration. It was first conceived by Max Weber. It is not called love. It is called responsibility. New social forces are subsumed under the obligation of responsibility. Only when new social forces enter the structures of power on the basis of responsibility and not merely on the basis of conviction, do they show their “political capacity” ['Fäbigkeit zur Politik’]. If they act responsibly, they leave behind all its subversive, insurrectionary potential and contribute instead to the consolidation and extension of political power, rendering it fully accepted as a legitimate group. First it gains the capacity to act as opposition [oppositionsfäbig] then it gains the capacity to enter into coalitions [koalitionsfäbig], and lastly it gains the capacity to govern [regierungsfäbig]. Absorbed by the norms, rules and limitations of liberal-democratic parliamentary democracy, its previously unruly character dissolves and it becomes a firm constituent element of constituted power. In other words, the representatives of the new social forces transform into functionaries of representation and thereby perform the systemic function of stabilization. In the end, neither the nice A. Vollmer nor the destructive J. Ditfurth can withdraw from this mechanism of integration that is so much stronger than the power of constitutional love.20

Who would deny that system theory deals with its object (the constitutional state) in as critical a manner as the heirs of critical theory — that is: critical but constructive.21 Occasionally, it even displays mistrust but it does so only for the sake of form. For its declared intention is precisely the opposite. Its aim is not to generate mistrust but to create new relations of trust and loyalty. In this endeavour, it is very much served by a logic of argumentation that is as complex as it is rich with associations. It detests destructive critique and is suspicious of any mistrust since it, like a mole digging underfoot, undermines the belief in the correctness of conditions. In essence, system theory without knowing or intending it, finds its political consummation in the German constitutional guarantee of the continuity of power: in the “constructive vote of no-confidence.”22

I do not know whether the founders of the German constitution were aware of the etymological humour of this monstrous idiom. Nevertheless, system theory finds in it its belated justification. The vote to remove an existing Chancellor by a new one during a parliamentary term results from a conflict situation and, in this way, symbolizes precisely the type of conflict that serves stability. Constructively handled distrust — such as the constructive vote of no-confidence — grows out of a trust in the continuity of power. The work of the scholar, in contrast, should be concerned with the demise of power.

But since love is the basis of trust, edifying and systemic work find themselves together again in the end, and both contribute to the creation of a new theodicy of the state. Love of the constitution is not misled by the evil of the political world; and system theory supplies the means for the functional integration of love. The systemically achieved edification is realized in a constitutionally protected high level of tolerance: the neo-Leibnizian proof of a secularised theodicy. But this theodicy does not lack its malicious element — just as in the original. For in his time, God certainly loved the best of all possible world — but he also watched very carefully the haphazard evil of man-kind in order to make corrections and mete out final punishment. A love that protects the constitution cannot do without control. It is for this simple reason that all those who are lovingly tolerated are also systematically kept under surveillance.

SOMETHING SUBVERSIVE

In the end, there should be some constructiveness after all. “Where is the positive?” In the misery of our time, we find it only in negation, in the nowhere — the so-called Utopia. In fact, the utopia that emerges from the destruction of all structures of inequality, subordination and power — this utopia is today the only possible way out from the impending obliteration that looms on the horizon. For the scholar, this means that social conflict must be freed from its systemic, stablilizing function, and it must be released from all constitutional love. Its historic dignity as a Force of destabilization has to be restored. The defence of destabilization is identical with the defence and realisation of freedom. “Who claims earnestly to want freedom but simultaneously battles all destabilizing activities, contradicts himself” (Geymonat).23

POSTSCRIPT

Doubt comes to the fore: I have written this for German readers and German readers are earnest people whom one must take seriously. Hence the concluding problem: how can we achieve enlightenment with respect of destruction as the determination of the scholar without the furor teutonicus [teutonic furore] playing the accompaniment? The melody that will entice the ossified relations to dance, needs the basso continuo of irony — that is the most secure defence against the tortuous and misguided path of constructive thought.

TRANSLATED BY WERNER BONEFELD

ENDNOTES

These notes have been compiled by the editor. They are meant to guide the reader through Agnoli's argument and to suggest further reading.

1. For a detailed assessment see Agnoli's “The Market, the State and the End of History,” in Bonefeld, W. and K. Psychopedis (eds) The Politics of Change, Palgrave, London, 2000.

2. Agnoli refers here to the regressive transformation of consciousness into forms of technological and that is functional rationality.

3. Agnoli refers here to the growth of occultism, spiritualism and esoterism during the 1980s.

4. Agnoli refers here to the Historians Dispute of the 1980s. The Frankfurter Rundshau is a national liberal-left newspaper. See also Agnoli's Fashismus ohne Revision, Ça ira, Freiburg, 1997, for an analysis of fascism and critique of attempts, including Nolte's, at normalising fascism and of according blame for fascism to the working class. An introduction of his book to an English readership can be found in Bonefeld “On Fascism," Common Sense no. 24. See also Bologna's "Nazism and the Working Class," published in Common Sense, no. 16.

5 See Kant's definition of the Enlightenment as humanity's exodus from self-imposed immaturity.

6 Note that the article was first published in February 1990 when the upheaval in East Germany was at its peak.

7 Kant, I. (1868) “Nachlaß” in Sämmtliche Werke, G. Hartenstein edition, vol. 8, Leopold Voss, Leipzig.

8 Agnoli refers here to the Radikalenerlaß of 1972. This barred people with supposedly anti-constitutional opinions from employment in the civil service, including teachers and postmen. See also footnote 10.
9 Adolf Freiherr von Knigge, 1752 to 1796, was the author of a book on how to behave. “Benimm-Knigge” translates as “Behave-Knigge.”

10 “Art and science, research and teaching, shall be free. Freedom of scholarly work shall not absolve from loyalty to the constitution” (Basic Law, Art. 5, 5). By the late 1970s, at the height of the new social movements, University Professors were, under pressure of dismissal, forced to sign statements declaring their loyalty to the state. Unless scholarly work accepts the constitutional order, it would otherwise place itself in legal jeopardy and be subjected to police surveillance and persecution. The following quote from a Constitutional Court judgement of the early 1970s might clarify this: “The normative right to free speech and free expression of opinion is restricted if the expression of opinion is in opposition to the liberal democratic ground order. The legally protected right to express the opinion that there is no freedom of opinion in the Federal Republic of Germany casts doubt on the validity of the constitutional value of the liberal democratic ground order. Because of this, the opinion that there is no freedom of opinion in Germany is not protected by the basic right of free opinion” (quoted in Preuß, Legalität und Pluralismus, Suhrkamp, Frankfurt, 1973, p. 24). On Agnoli's conceptualisation of the Radikalenerlaß and liberal-democracy, see his Die Transformation der Demokratie und andere Schriften zur Kritik der Politik, Ça ira, Freiburg, 1990. For an introduction of this book to an English readership see, Bonefeld “Constitutional Norm versus Constitutional Reality in Germany,” Capital & Class no. 46, 1992.

11 Kant's reply is published in his Conflicts of the Faculty. In his reply to the King's order to abstain from denigrating Christianity, Kant argues that since he did not provide an appreciation of Christendom, he could therefore not be accused of degrading Christendom. His reply, in fact, emphasises the importance of Christendom because of its moral force to secure good and honest behaviour. In short, Kant's reply agrees with the King and it does so in such a way that makes the ossified relations dance. Kant replies with irony, determination and praises the existing powers in a careful way. Praise of existing powers is not a punishable offence. Yet, like never ending applause, it can work like a destructive force.

12 Agnoli is referring here to Habermas’ notion of a constitutional patriotism that he offered as an alternative rational source of national identity and as a means of securing the liberal-democratic values of justice, equality and freedom.

13 Article 18 of the German Constitution declares that those who make an unconstitutional use of the basic liberal rights enshrined in the Constitution, lose their basic rights. See also footnote 10.

14 The term chauvinism derives from a French comedy in which the character of Nicolas Chauvin plays the role of an ardent veteran of Napoleon's. Chauvin's absurdly extravagant national pride and sense of national duty repeats itself as a comedy in the activities of the security service against supposed enemies within (see footnote 15).

15 Agnoli refers here to the activities of the security service in the federal state of Lower Saxony. It became known in 1986 that a bomb that had exploded outside the walls of a prison in the town of Celle, where persons convicted of terrorist offences were held, was not detonated by a terrorist group as it was alleged, but by the security service itself. The person responsible for the bombing was a convicted murder who had been released from prison. The bomb attack was used as a means of intensifying the search for terrorists and of infiltrating the convict into the terrorist scene as a contact. The constitutional comedy, referred to by Agnoli, entails, then, the new Chauvin as an ardent follower of law and order of a constitutional status quo based on state terrorism.

16 This section analyses the contribution of system theory to the stabilisation of political power. The important proponents are Luhman and Parsons. Parsons’ work plays a significant part in Habermas' reconstruction of critical theory. For a destructive critique of Habermas, see Reichelt, “Jürgen Habermas’ Reconstruction of Historical Materialism,” in Bonefeld, W. and K. Psychopedis (eds.) The Politics: of Change, Palgrave, London, 2000.

17 On Italian fascism's acceptance of social conflict as a constructive force that supports the stability of political power, see chapter 8 of his Fashismus ohne Revision, op. cit.

18 In order to clarify this point, see for example the current debate on globalisation where well-meaning commentators argue that globalisation leads to new forms of barbarism if its logic cannot be arrested through the creation of new forms of liberal-democratic intervention at the national and transnational level. This argument charges that the Left has to abandon its negative critique of capital and its state because the misery created by globalisation requires urgent action and intervention of a radical reformist kind. Globalisation is said to have rendered obsolete the ability of anti-systemic opposition to effect change. In order to avoid the dreadful consequences of globalisation, the Left is called upon to make positive constructive proposals. In short, destructive critique of capital and its state is rejected as socially irresponsible. It provides no positive proposals for the avoidance of barbarism and for this reason, by implication, is seen to be complicit in capital's project of neo-liberal globalisation. For a detailed discussion, see Bonefeld “Globalisation and Democracy,” in [i]Common Sense[i], no. 22, 1997.

19 The idea of communicative action in spaces defined by the absence of power is Habermas’. For critique see, Reichelt (op. cit.).

20 Vollmer and Ditfurth were representatives of the German Green's realist (Vollmer) and fundamentalist (Ditfurth) factions. The realist faction called for a policy of ecological realism and favoured to join the Social Democratic Party in a coalition government. The fundamentalist faction represented a more comprehensive rejection of the established party system and were reluctant to enter into government with the Social Democratic Party. Note that Agnoli's essay was first published in 1990. Many members of the fundamentalist faction left the Green Party in 1991. The Greens are currently the junior partner of a coalition government led by the Social Democratic Party.

21 Agnoli refers here to Habermas and Offe, the two best known representatives of the second generation of critical theory.

22 “The federal parliament can only pass a vote of no-confidence in the Federal Chancellor by the election, with an absolute majority, of his successor” (Basic Law, Article 7, 1).

23 Agnoli quotes here from Geymonat's La Liberta. Geymonat is professor of philosophy at the University of Turin, Italy

NAZISM AND THE WORKING CLASS - 1933-93
by Sergio Bologna
translated by Ed Emery

[Paper presented at the Milan Camera del Lavoro, 3 June 1993]

A meeting like this doesn't just happen by chance. We have received assistance from a number of organisations. For example, the Micheletti Foundation (to be specific, Pier Paolo Poggio) has researched the available literature in English, American and French journals; the research institutes in Hamburg and Bremen have made available original research work and a selected bibliography; and Michael Wildt, editor of Werkstatt Geschichte undertook to study the journal published for history teachers in junior and secondary schools in Germany, Geschichte im Unterricht. We wanted to see whether the teachers' association has, in recent years, addressed itself to the relationship between Nazism and the working class, whether the subject has been discussed in their journal, and whether we might find useful bibliographical references. As it happens, in the past six years the topic has not even been broached.

Such a lack of interest strikes me as bizarre, given that recent events in Germany's political and social life have brought to the fore the problem of the influence of extreme Right-wing and neo-Nazi ideas and forms of behaviour within the working class, among skilled workers, apprentices and irregularly-employed youth.

On the other hand, in a disturbing development, over the past decade various historians have focused increasingly on what they say was the decisive contribution of sections of the working class to the Nazis' electoral victories, and they have also documented a massive presence of the working class within the social composition comprising the electoral base of the Nazi Party.

In this area we are witnessing a crescendo of contributions.
1. The workers who voted for Hitler: the new historical revisionism
Already by the early 1980s work was being done on analysing election results from the 1930s. This work has been continually updated and enriched, and has now arrived at the following conclusion: the percentage of votes for the Nazi party deriving from the working class showed a continual upswing in the period preceding the Nazis' seizure of power. Jurgen Falter is one of the historians who has researched the phenomenon in depth, and he presented his initial results in 1986 in the journal of the Friedrich Ebert Foundation, an organisation close to the Social Democratic Party. In his most recent article, published at the start of this year (in the journal Geschichte und Gesellschaft), Falter previews the results of his research project carried out on 42,000 Nazi party membership cards, from which it appears that the party's working-class membership stood at more than 40 per cent.

What we find developing here is an interpretation of Nazism as a phenomenon within which the working-class component is strongly present, if not decisive. This flies in the face of the traditional interpretation, which sees the Nazi party essentially as the party of the Mittelstand, in other words of the middle classes. This is one aspect of the problem.

In my opinion there is an even more important consideration. Namely: since the fall of the Berlin Wall, a number of articles and books have appeared in Germany, published with remarkable editorial efficiency, all tending to demonstrate not only that the working-class component was decisive within Nazism before Hitler's taking of power, but also that, after taking power, the policies pursued by the Nazi regime were actively favourable to the working class and tended to bring its social status closer in line with that of the middle classes, along tendentially egalitarian lines, thus making Hitler a true "social-revolutionary" of the twentieth century.

A key work in this revisionist strand is Rainer Zitelman's book Hitler, Selbstverstandnis eines Revolutionars (published in Italian translation by Laterza in 1990).

Before dealing with his theses, it is worth pointing out that about ninety per cent of the literature on the relationship between the working class and Nazism in Germany does not accept this interpretation. However our publishing industry chooses to ignore this fact, and is happy to promote books that are launched by the media, particularly if they present a challenge to accepted historical interpretations.
Given that the Italian Left also tends to follow cultural fashions, it has become a kind of echo chamber for this historiographical revisionism.

Zitelman's text is pretty insubstantial, given that it consists of a compilation of quotations from Hitler's speeches and writings, unaccompanied by any research into archive sources. The basic thesis is that Hitler was a true working-class leader who had a real interest in the betterment of the working class; he set in motion highly advanced social policies, and specifically a policy which used the instrument of the indirect wage to produce equalising tendencies within the structure of German society.

All this, as I say, is based not on a close examination of the facts, but on Hitler's offical statements, writings and speeches. I would say that here we are dealing with a kind of historiography which is tendentially new, compared with the historiography around which the issue of the so-called Historikerstreit developed. This latter involved a dispute around the nature of Nazism and the problem of the guilt of the German people, prompted by the publication of the work of Ernst Nolte. The controversy began in 1986, but by 1989 it had run its course, partly because the polemic had run out of steam, but also because in that year the fall of the Berlin Wall opened a whole new series of contradictions and cultural problematics which were inevitably also reflected within historiography.

The new polemic to which I am referring has not yet arrived in Italy, but I expect that it soon will. It would be sensible not to let ourselves be taken by surprise. In order to avoid being thrown onto the defensive by this new revisionism, we need to react in advance, in order to clarify publicly the terms of this new debate.

2. Historical research in Germany today
The fall of the Berlin Wall, as well as creating new contradictions, made available a large amount of new historical material - sources from the ex-German Democratic Republic, which were particularly rich in material covering industrial and economic issues in Germany during the Nazi period. This source material is invaluable for a reconstruction of the context of working-class life and work under Nazism. In addition, in West Germany, as from the early 1980s a number of major industrial companies opened their archives, not only to company historians, but to outsiders too. The Daimler Benz company provides a good example of this development. In 1987, two research projects were published virtually simultaneously. The first was put together by a group of researchers whose principal concern was to present a good image of the company; the second was able to highlight Daimler Benz's grave responsibilities in the preparation of the Nazi war machine, and in the use of forced labour. This second text, the Daimler Benz-Buch, prepared by our Foundation (principally by Karl-Heinz Roth) was widely read (a new and updated edition is about to be published by the 2001 publishing house). Its importance was that it opened a breach in the wall of silence on the subject of forced labour under Nazism, to which I shall return below. Among other things it forced Daimler Benz to admit publicly the silences and contradictory claims of its "official" historians, and, for reasons of image, to shell out the not inconsiderable sum of 20 million marks as financial compensation for surviving forced labourers and their families.

The fall of the Berlin Wall and the events that surrounded it produced a major upheaval in the structures of historical research in ex-East Germany, and set in motion a process of self-criticism among various leading East German historians, in particular over how they had handled the problem of relations between the working class and Nazism.

In short, with the fall of the Wall, a sound basis was laid for continuing detailed research work and examination of the documents and archives of the Nazi period. This has subsequently led to a vigorous publishing activity. The effect of two decades of this work has produced results which the machinery of revisionism will be incapable of eradicating.

My intention in drawing your attention to all this research is to enable you to judge for yourselves the baselessness and intellectual dishonesty of the new voices of historical revisionism, and the profound ignorance of those who choose to publish and promote their books.

3. Forced labour in the Nazi period: examples of research
An early example of this research is an article by Ulrich Herbert, director of the Centre for Studies of the Nazi Period, in Hamburg. This was published in the journal Geschichte und Gesellschaft in 1979, under the title "Workers and National Socialism. A historical assessment. Some unresolved questions". Ulrich Herbert is a well-known historian, particularly known in Italy because of his work on an overlooked corner of historical research - the use of foreign labour-power within the German war economy from 1938 onwards.

As I said above, the question of forced labour was also one of the main points of the research carried out by Karl Heinz Roth on the history of the Daimler Benz company, and it has been the subject of work done recently by Italian historians.

Unfortunately not many Italians choose to research the social history of Nazism. For this reason it is worth mentioning two important recent works by Italians - the study by Gustavo Corni entitled "The agrarian policies of National Socialism, 1930-1939", and Brunello Mantelli's piece entitled "Camerati del Lavoro", on the use of Italian forced labour within the German war economy.

Mantelli's studies have been proceeding in parallel with a study by our own Foundation, on the transfer of Italian workers to Nazi Germany, an oral-history project which has been largely in the hands of Cesare Bermani. Bermani's work has opened new understandings of everyday life in Nazi Germany on the basis of a little-studied episode in relations between the Third Reich and the fascist government in Italy: the handing over of some half a million workers in return for supplies of fuel. This was an anomalous episode in the history of Italian emigration. Before the Second World War, emigration was spontaneous and uncontrolled, whereas in the case studied by Bermani and Mantelli the exchange of labour power was formally contracted between two nation states.

As I was saying, progressive German historiography has given us a useful view of the years of the war economy - namely that the composition of the workforce was multinational, the ethnic stratification was extremely rigid, and 80 per cent of this workforce was working under conditions of forced labour.

This element of forced labour has been one of the new areas of research which has been pursued during the past decade not only by our Foundation, but also by other researchers, and it provides a fundamental basis for understanding the relations between Nazism and the working class.

4. The work of Timothy Mason, and the debate among German social historians
A crucial work in the history of relations between Nazism and the working class is the book by Timothy W. Mason, Arbeiterklasse und Volksgemeinschaft ("Working Class and the 'National Community'" [published in English as Social Policy in the Third Reich, Berg, Providence and Oxford, 1993]), which revolutionised our view of working-class behaviour under Nazism. Halfway through the 1970s, and in opposition to all previous positions, he used unpublished documentation to show that, in Nazi Germany, in the period from 1936-37 onwards, in particular among the working class, and not only in the factories, there was a passive resistance, which often became active, and that there were also strikes, to which the regime was forced to respond with repressive measures.

Mason thus completely overturned the dominant view which claims that there was no resistance to the Nazi regime from within the working class except during the first few months of its rise.

Mason's thesis is supported by a wealth of documentation. The book (1,300 pages long) was published in 1975. More than three quarters of it consists of documents. The only part to have been translated into Italian was the Introduction, which was published by De Donato in 1980, under the title La Politica Sociale del Terzo Reich, a book which unfortunately disappeared from circulation when its publisher went bankrupt.

As from that moment, all historical research had to take account of Mason's work. On the one hand it produced further studies along similar lines, and on the other it created fierce opposition.
The new wave of historical revisionism tends to dismiss Mason's work and documentation out of hand. Mason's great merit, leaving aside his observations on the subjective behaviour of German workers, was that of redefining the historiography of Nazism, which, in Germany in particular, at least until the mid-1970s, had only once shown signs of life, in the debate sparked by the great Hamburg historian Fritz Fischer.

For the rest, Western historiography continued churning out books on Nazism as a totalitarian model, following the canons of an institutional historiography which was completely blind to phenomena in the society at large.

Although Fischer also belonged to this school, his merit was to have posed the problem of the "continuity of elites" in German history, a continuity which carried on uninterrupted in the transition from the Wilhelmian period to Weimar, and from Weimar to the Nazi period: the continuity of the power groups, particularly in the field of economic power, had the effect of diminishing the effects of institutional changes. Broadly speaking, the transition from monarchy to republic, and then from republic to dictatorship, were changes of facade, while real power remained firmly in the hands of the same groups as previously.

Many historians polemicised against this interpretation.

One of the protagonists - and this brings us to our own area of interest - was a historian who is seen as one of the founders of social history in Germany, Jurgen Kocka.

The social historians counterposed to Fischer's line of argument a conception of social dynamics based on an analysis of class relations and on the emergence of forms such as the socialist mass parties. This conception was in opposition to what they saw as Fischer's "immobilist" vision, trapped within analysis of the power elites.

On the other hand, for Karl Heinz Roth and for the work of our Hamburg Foundation, Fischer's thesis has provided a fundamental interpretational tool.

The historical debates that followed on this were not particularly to do with Nazism, but they had important consequences in the historiography of the Nazi period, in particular the controversy among the social historians themselves. This divided the current headed by Jurgen Kocka from the "young" historians who, arising out of the movements of 1968, gave greater importance to a "history of the everyday" (Alltagsgeschichte), breaking down the divisions between the personal and the political. This tendency distanced itself from a social history which had tended to work within the classic schema of working class = trade union.

In the course of the debate, different conceptions of the "working class" were to emerge. For Kocka and his school, the working class means waged labour; for historians of the everyday, the monolithic concept of working class is sterile, because in their opinion the historian's job is to analyse all the divisions and differentiations within society, and in particular to analyse all aspects of everyday life, even where they are not principally defined by work or by work relations.

This debate has very important implications at the level of relations between the working class and Nazism.

Why? If we adopt a monolithic concept of the working class, inevitably our judgement on its behaviour in relation to the Nazi regime will end up being schematic - either for or against, either opposition or submission - whereas if we use the more highly differentiated concept of stratified class composition and analyse everyday behaviours as "political" behaviours, this gives us a more diversified space within which to judge the attitude of the German people as a whole, and of the proletariat in particular. It enables us to reach more articulated conclusions. Furthermore, Kocka's conception, which is similar to that of many Italian historians close to the ex-Italian Communist Party, assigns a central role to the organisations of the labour movement - the political party and the trade union - in the history of the working class and of working-class mentality. They tend to assume an identity between the class and the party, whereas the historians of the everyday tend to highlight the "autonomy" of the working class from the party and from party ideology, a possible "distance" that separates the culture (or rather cultures) of the various working-class and proletarian groups from the culture of the party and union.
Among the principal exponents of the "historians of the everyday" we might cite Alf Ludtke and Lutz Niethammer - the latter being the author of a recently published book Die volkseigene Erfahrung, which attempts to understand, via a series of interviews, the subjective view which the citizens of the ex-DDR had of the communist system of power.

5. The movement of grass roots historians
When historians of the Kocka tendency come to deal with Nazism, they generally view the behaviour of the working class negatively, and therefore consider Tim Mason's work as exaggerated in its claims.
The Alltagshistoriker, on the other hand, see Mason as an important reference point. Arising out of his treatment of the social history of everyday life, the end of the 1970s saw a new movement emerging in Germany - that of the Geschichtswerkstatten or "History Workshops". As elsewhere, this was a movement of non-professional "grass roots" historians, but more importantly it can also be seen as part of the movement of Burgerinitiativen, of the civil rights movement, insofar as it defended the right of local communities to know and understand their own pasts.

It played an important role in preventing the distancing and the demonisation of Germany's Nazi past, and thus also made possible a reconstruction of the history of the working class and proletariat, insofar as its concern was more with the "history of the forgotten ones" than with the history of Great Protagonists.

This was one of the aspects of the neue soziale Bewegungen (the "new social movements") in the 1980s.

This overall movement, which reached its height in the period 1983-4, today finds expression in two journals: Geschichtswerkstatt and Werkstatt Geschichte. One of the controversies between the social historians and the "historians of the everyday" hinges on the definition of "culture": the social historians accuse the historians of the everyday of replacing the idea of "class" - in other words of a social formation defined by a set of material conditions that are quantitatively verifiable - with an idea of "culture" as an ensemble of subjective and "non-material" elements which tend to dissolve any "class" identity. The historians of the everyday, on the other hand, accuse the social historians of wanting to limit the identificational criteria of a social class to quantifiable elements, and of advancing party and trade-union ideology as the only element of collective working-class culture.

Alongside this debate there also developed a debate on the use of oral sources.

While these methodological disputes were important in the sense that they helped lay the basis for a new phase of studies on the relationship between the working class and Nazism, what was more interesting was the results obtained at the concrete level of researching documents, connections and memories.

A couple of major oral history projects were carried out in individual regions, in an attempt to gain a better understanding of the behaviour of German people under Nazism; Lutz Niethammer's study on the Ruhr focused on relations between the working class and Nazism in an industrial region, while Martin Broszat's study on Bavaria dealt with a principally agricultural region where Nazism enjoyed its earliest successes. These two were followed by many other studies which focussed on a given region, a city, a village, a factory, a neighbourhood, or even a group of friends.

So, we have a project of diffuse local research which in part confirms Mason's theses and in part highlights the ambivalence of working-class attitudes and behaviour.

As I say, one of the controversies was over the problem of culture, and the contradiction between the culture of working-class communities and the culture of political parties and trade unions.
The historians of the "everyday" tendency maintain that working-class culture is a culture which is created in specific environments (neighbourhoods, factories, local communities), and is thus a gruppenspezifisch (group-specific) culture, of limited social nuclei which live in a community or milieu of their own; it is, if you like, a sub-culture, and thus the history of the working class is to be seen as a history of interconnecting sub-cultures.

Secondly, the history of the working class is to be analysed in all the various fragmentations and segmentations which the working class has experienced; one should not limit oneself, as so often happens in the work of social and labour-movement historians, to examining only the central portion of the factory working class that is tied culturally to the social democratic party and the social democratic trade union.

This historiographical innovation had the merit of mounting a radical criticism of the concept of culture, and of the way that it was used by social democracy.

Some of these researches have maintained that the culture of the party and its functionaries was seen as alien by the rank and file. Apparently they termed it Wissensozialismus, the socialism of abstract knowledge; these historians say that the history of culture has to be examined in the mental attitudes of the working class at this mass level too, because the fracture between high culture and low culture, between rank and file culture and the culture of party functionaries, becomes very strong in certain historical periods.

One may or may not agree with these theses, but from a heuristic point of view they were strongly innovative and set in motion a series of fruitful research projects aimed at establishing a relationship between historical memory and the new generations of Germany's citizens, without the filtering mediation of ivory-tower academics or party apparatchiks. This gave us a historiography which identifies the localities where things took place, uncovers the historical remains, and restores to specific locations - to cities that were devastated by war, razed to the ground, and then rebuilt - the memory of their past, particularly the memory of their past under Nazism.

Here, for example, we had many initiatives in the area of Gedenkstatte - of places where one could meditate on the recent past (for example, uncovering the traces of concentration camps or some of the smaller forced-labour camps) - and also many initiatives aimed at gathering the memories of communities that had subsequently been dispersed, be they neighbourhoods, factories, or villages.
After the devastation of World War II, which resulted in internal migrations and emigrations, other migratory movements were then sparked by the division of Germany into two separate states, and the return of territory of the ex-Third Reich to neighbouring countries such as Poland, Russia and Czechoslovakia, which caused further movements of populations; then there were the great waves of immigrant workers coming from southern Europe, the Balkans and Turkey, resulting in a continuous redesign of localities.

The fact of preserving traces of the past and constructing around them an initiative based on historical memory - not simply the setting up of a memorial stone - ranks high in the scale of civil activity and meaning.

What does it mean? It means that, whether we like it or not, history has a political function. And, as it says in the title of a recently published collection of historical essays, Geschichte als demokratische Auftrag ("History as a democratic undertaking"), the preservation and elaboration of memory should be one of the commitments of democracy. From a cultural point of view, this way of doing history is the absolute antithesis of an academic culture, counterposed to it in mentality, intentionality, tone and language. In many cases local trade-union and municipal organisations have encouraged and supported these rank and file initiatives, which have been simultaneously a challenge, a warning, and a stimulus to the university-based historical establishments.

We have seen various professional academic historians abandoning their isolation and getting involved with this kind of initiative; a number of factory councils have organised the gathering and recording of people's memories, and have encouraged companies to open their archives; we have also seen priests and pastors collaborating, in making available documents from Church archives.

Many of these grass roots historians are teachers and social workers.

Anyway, the point that I am making is this: in Germany there was the growth of a rank and file movement which, through to the mid-1980s, was able both to monitor and stimulate the research of professional university historians. This movement was able to add many pieces to the historical jigsaw of working-class life in the Weimar Republic and under Nazism.

6. The debate on "modernisation"
One of the problems which has animated historians in the past ten years has been the so-called "modernisation" debate. In other words, is it the case that, far from being a step back in history (as earlier interpretations have seen it) National Socialism was in fact a period of powerful innovation at all levels, not only in economic and technological terms, but also in social and industrial policy, in management of the media, etc. Needless to say, a question like this puts the cat among the pigeons, because if one sees the regime as having been innovative and modernising, one may end by having a more favourable view of it.

The problem here is in the ambiguity of the terms "modern" and "modernity", and in the values which they are accorded among different historians, depending on their vision of the world and their idea of progress.

This discussion concerns us here, because in the recent period it has focussed on the problem of social policy, in other words on the regime's intitiatives aimed at "integrating" the working class.

Karl Heinz Roth's latest work to be published by our foundation completes the edited collection of documents of the Institute of the Science of Labour of the DAF (Deutsche Arbeitsfront, the Nazi trade union). In this work Roth gives a clear exposition of the various phases and positions represented in this debate, and he takes a position which is categorically opposed to the modernisation thesis.

In Roth's opinion, the Nazis' measures and policies of control, repression and destruction of the working class are far more in evidence than measures and policies aimed at consensual integration.

Naturally, this debate has not been limited to the history of the Nazi period; it has also extended back to the history of the Weimar period. One of the most original contributions has been that of a young historian who died recently - Detlev Peukert. He coined the phrase "the pathology of the Modern" to characterise the regressive aspects of Weimar and the Hitlerite regime. Peukert dealt with, among other things, the anti-Nazi resistance of German youth and of German militant workers. (His book The Social History of the Third Reich was published in Italian by Sansoni in 1989.) A number of his colleagues have since written articles in a volume in his memory, dealing with the problems arising from the concept of the "modern" and its use by historians: Zivilisation und Barbarei. Die widerspruchlichen Potentiale der Moderne. Detlev Peukert zum Gedenken, ed. F. Bajohr, W. Johe and U. Lohalm (1991).

All these controversies, and the various levels of research that feed them, make it possible for us to set about finding an answer to the fundamental question that Mason's book had posed: why was it that the passive resistance to Nazism did not then translate into active resistance, into an open demonstration of antagonism, and why was there not a "sacrifice" of struggle against Nazism by the working class and the German proletariat, such as could be presented to the judgement of history as an element of its memory? Why was it that those sectors that did put up resistance were so thoroughly defeated? And how is it possible for historians from the "Left" area close to the Social Democratic party to write - as Gunter Mai did in an article published in the late 1980s - "The bourgeoisie brought Hitler to power; the working class kept him there"?

Is it historical revisionism? Is it a polemical exaggeration? Is it a product of the tendency to devalue the role of the working class today? Is it an ideological stance? Or is it a logical consequence to be drawn from a reading of the documents? Is Mason now a thing of the past? Did he misread the documents? Is his distinction between "opposition" and "resistance" artificial? Or is it the case that, as the majority thesis would have it, the resistance was of such tiny, insignificant minorities as to reduce it to a peripheral and passing episode?

I would like to attempt to answer these questions, on the basis of work that has been done by historians from Germany and other countries. I shall limit myself to two basic elements in the period covering the transition from the Weimar Republic to Nazism: the regime's administration of unemployment, and the physical confrontation with the Nazi gangs.

Or rather, instead of providing answers, I shall attempt to provide a better framework for the questions, formulating them in different terms, and highlighting aspects of the history of the German proletariat which may be unfamiliar to the wider public.

7. The structure of the workforce at the end of the Weimar Republic
After that lengthy prologue, I now come to the main body of my contribution.
I have divided it into three parts: 1) class composition and the structure of the workforce in the period of the Great Depression, before Hitler took power; 2) the organisation of self-defence and armed clashes between Nazi gangs and the German communist proletariat, taking the situation in Berlin as my example; 3) employment policies, the industrial lift-off, and the political behaviour of the working class in the early years of the Nazi regime.

So, let us begin with the technical composition of the class.

What was the working class at the end of the Weimar Republic? If we examine the statistics gathered by Heinrich A. Winkler in the third volume of his monumental work on the working class and labour movement in Weimar (Der Weg in die Katastrophe, Dietz Verlag 1990, 2nd edition) a few figures will suffice to define the situation: by the end of the Weimar Republic, the number of workers employed in factories with fewer than 10 employees stood at something like 7 million out of a total of 14.5 million - thus around 50 per cent of the workforce; in 1925 this had been 6,800,000 out of a total of 18.5 million, and thus a bare 34%.

Thus when we speak of the working class of the final period of Weimar, we are talking of a working class that was already extremely atomised, which inhabited a factory environment that was fragmented and pulverised - as if they had been subjected to a decentralisation of production ante litteram.
If the Weimar Republic was an extraordinary laboratory of modernity, it was partly on account of this form of production: instead of following the tendency of the times towards concentration and the big Fordist factory, it took an opposite path, in order to permit a better political and trade-union control of the workforce.

In addition, we should remember the massive presence of self-employed workers, which rose from 15.9% of the workforce in 1925 to 16.4 in 1933, while the overall percentage of workers remained stable at 46%.

According to Hachtmann, the author of a book on the industrial working class of the Third Reich (1989), self-employed workers represented 17.1% of workers employed in artisanal industry, and 25.1% of those employed in the transport-trade sector.

Thus we are in the presence of a working class which was extremely fragmented and which was characterised by relatively unstable patterns of employment.

The statistics on unemployment, classified by sector, feature at the head of the list, above engineering workers and workers in the metal trades, a strange figure of a worker, described as Lohnarbeiter wechselnder Art - in other words, a mobile waged worker, a worker who moved from one sector to another, from textiles to building, from engineering to transport, from agriculture to the service sector, without fixed employment in any particular sector.

Historians have given scant attention to this, but the statisticians of the period were sophisticated researchers, with a deep understanding of the world of work, and aware of the marked segmentation of the labour market; they were struck by the appearance of this particular figure of manual worker (they were not necessarily unskilled workers; they could as well be skilled workers selling their labour here and there, at higher rates than they could have obtained by remaining in one particular workplace).
The statisticians thus coined this term Lohnarbeiter wechselnder Art to describe this unstable, wandering mass. 900,000 of these mobile workers were unemployed in 1931; by 1933 the figure was 1,296,000. In Berlin, at the height of the Depression, they represented 45% of the unemployed, and in districts such as Kreuzberg, 48%.

8. The puzzle of the micro-enterprise
The problem posed by the statistics is the following: what grip was it possible for the political organisations of the labour movement, and in particular the Social Democrats, and the Catholic and Socialist trade unions, to have over a workforce that was so fragmented, dispersed and mobile?
The main thrust of the Social Democratic union had concentrated on the component of the working class employed in the big factories, or in municipal workplaces, where trade union agreements were more or less respected. But this vast territory of the micro-factory, of micro-work, was a territory governed by unwritten rules and family-type relations of control.

This level was characterised either by isolation, or by moments of cohesion that were at best informal.
Historians have studied this field very little; what has stood in the way of historical research has been the old prejudice that the micro-enterprise consisted essentially of pre-capitalist artisanal undertakings, and that the artisans, the micro-entrepreneurs, belonged to the Mittelstand, to the middle classes, and were thus all reactionaries.

The problem is that historiography is still carrying with it the prejudices of the historians of the Social Democratic labour movement, who considered as working class only the workers who worked in the big factories, and who have dedicated their research activities almost entirely to them. The result of this is that the province of artisanal undertakings was seen as the territory of the small-to-middle bourgeoisie, and therefore entirely reactionary and corporatist.

This prejudice, based on an implicit concept of progress whereby only the big factory was capable of introducing processes of modernisation - by creating on the one hand a productive bourgeoisie and on the other trade-unionised workers, has literally blinded historians to the real nature of the processes of decentralisation of production, through which, very early on, capitalism - and the Weimar Republic is a real laboratory in this respect - moved to weaken the social cohesion and trade-union unity of the working class.

The result of this prejudice is that historians have taken account only of the "little bosses" and not of their employees; thus historians have continued to see the artisanal concern as a pre-capitalist left-over, and not as the result of a decentralisation of the production of the big factory and a deliberate atomisation of the working class.

If we want proof that here we are dealing with a "modern" phenomenon (or with a "pathology of the modern", as Peukert would have it), and not with some pre-capitalist remnant, we have it in the fact that after 1925, in the period of so-called "rationalisation", when Taylorist methods were being introduced massively into Germany, and when there was thus a process of modernisation of capital, the number of workers employed in micro-enterprises employing less than ten workers remained constant.

9. The Communist Party and unemployed workers
I now turn to the question of the social base of the Communist Party, and I would begin with the phase of rationalisation, which began in 1924, when the worst of the inflation had been overcome by means of monetary reform, and particularly with help from the Americans.

Productivity in the capital goods industry rose by 30% in the period 1925-29, and by 25% in the consumer goods sector.

These were characterised as Weimar's "golden years": 1924-28. For some sections of the "new bourgeoisie" this was the case, but for the mass of workers it certainly was not. The average level of wages remained below that of 1913, and was only exceeded in a few categories. There was a strong degree of hierarchisation.

In this period, not only did the condition of the working class fail to improve, but there also began a systematic and selective expulsion from the factories of the militant trade-union cadres of the Communist Party, and of the more combative among the Social-Democratic worker militants.
The base of the Communist Party in the following period of the Great Depression, was characterised by considerable fluctuations in its membership, and by a large membership of young people; these two aspects were in part linked.

In 1931, two years into the Depression, the German Communist Party was a party with a membership made up of 80% unemployed workers.

At the party's organising conference in Berlin-Brandenburg, one of the Communist Party's strongholds, 878 of the 940 delegates present were unemployed.

But the years of the Great Depression were also the years of an impressive electoral advance by the Communist Party. Electoral successes (or failures) are always to be measured against the "social power" of the party. We need to examine what strength the party might have had, given the social collocation of its members and supporters, in terms of influence over the mechanisms of power within civil society.

Since it was made up principally of the unemployed, and thus mainly of ex-workers and young people in search of a first job, the Communist Party was not in a position to exercise any kind of trade-union power. It had to limit itself to trade-union propaganda, and to the hope that one or two of its militants still surviving in the workplaces might be able to act as the driving motors of particular conflicts.

For a party that was still rooted in a "workerist" perspective, according to which the struggle against capital was to be won in the workplace, within the relations of production, this situation was profoundly disturbing. The Communist Party was obliged to shift onto "general" terrains, into mass campaigns that were as noisy as they were abstract, and the result of this was to over-emphasise the "propagandist", "cultural", "ideological" and basically electoralist side of its activity.

This paradoxical situation, of a workers' party which had absolutely no trade-union power, was one of the reasons for the party's growing "ideologisation" at a time when the collectivity, as a result of the Great Depression, was having to push for things that were very material and concrete - the satisfaction of its most basic needs.

But at the same time the condition of unemployment was a collective condition. The unemployed were not a marginal corner of society - they represented 30% of the population. The KPD was thus the strongest organisation of a new social stratum, that of the "long-term unemployed", which was a potentially explosive mix. This meant that the party had a social power and possibilities for mobilisation which were even greater when one remembers its popularity among the youth of the big cities.

10. Divisions among the unemployed, and fractures within the labour movement
A few statistics will suffice to give an idea of the extent of the unemployment, and the dramatic nature of the situation in the years of the Great Depression, when both the Communist Party and the Nazi party were winning their biggest electoral successes.

In the fourth quarter of 1930, the unemployed stood at 3,699,000; in the same period of 1931, the figure was 5,060,000; by one year later it stood at 5,353,000. The peak was reached when Hitler was already in power, in the first quarter of 1933, with 6,100,000 unemployed.

But these are only the "official" unemployed, registered as such at government employment offices. Historians had been working on these figures up to about ten years ago. Then, thanks to work done by a woman researcher, Heidrun Homburg, attention was focused on statistics of the period which suggested the existence of a "hidden" stratum of unemployment. Homburg's work provided the basis for Winkler's reconstruction (for the post-1933 period, Rudiger Hachtman embarked on original research which, however, takes as its starting point the same contemporary works that Homburg had examined). The atomised structure of the workforce in the micro-enterprises, and the presence of a wandering mass of precarious workers, meant that there were very large numbers of people who had not worked sufficiently to get the right to unemployment benefit. In addition, as we shall see shortly, there were reasons that served to keep the unemployed away from Employment Offices.

Thus if we also take into account the hidden unemployment, we arrive at the following figures: 4,115,000 unemployed in the fourth quarter of 1930, of which 32.5% were without unemployment benefit; 5,943,000 in 1931 (33.5% without benefit); 6,704,000 in the third quarter of 1932 (37.6% without benefit); and 7,781,000 in the first quarter of 1933 (31.6% without benefit). In short, if we add the "hidden" unemployment to the official statistics, we have to add between a million and a million and a half people to the figures. Unemployment on this scale produced such a strong fracture within technical class composition that it inevitably had consequences at the level of people's ideas, and thus of their political behaviours.

The first fracture, obviously, was that between the employed and the unemployed, and therefore between a significant part of the base of the Social Democratic parties and the Communist rank and file; the second split occurred between unemployed people on benefit, unemployed people with forms of personal support, and unemployed people with no support whatever.

The unemployment weakened the institution of the trade union in its functions of social control, whereby it creates a connective social fabric, a mediation between society's relatively guaranteed strata and its marginal strata.

Both the parties within the labour movement, the SPD and the KPD, were deeply affected by the unemployment, which undermined their ability to exercise real power in society. The Communist Party tended increasingly to turn to propaganda activities, whereas the Social Democrats increasingly focussed their energies on local municipal administration, and on the administration of health and social security - in other words on that small amount of real power which enabled it to defend its members employed within public administration - and the management of public resources, given that trade-union activity in industrial workplaces had been effectively paralysed by the Depression. There was thus an enormous distance between the mentality of an average SPD cadre, who identified (and not just ideologically) with the bureaucracy of the Weimar Republic - and the mentality of the average KPD cadre. What the Communist Party had to offer its militants (the young, the unemployed, the rootless, the impoverished, the declassed) was the Utopia of the conquest of power - in other words the destruction of the Weimar state and the setting up of a Soviet-style republic. When people talk about "the two parties of the labour movement, the SPD and the KPD", they are perpetuating a mystification, a historical falsehood. But it is one into which it is easy to fall.

The SPD and the KPD occupied such different positions, and the mentalities of their militants were so different, that it is hard to see them as members of one single "labour movement". These two political forces had been locked in bitter battle since the revolution of November 1918 and the events which followed it: the split between the workers led by the Social Democrats and those led by the Spartacists; the murder of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht; the split between the Social Democratic union and the KPD factory cells during the period of "rationalisation" (in this period the trade unions had attempted to set up structures for co-management, whereas the communist cells had declared outright war on the rationalisation and had been systematically rooted out of the factories, with their militants being sacked in a joint union-employer campaign).

These were deep wounds, which, far from healing, became increasingly open. They were wounds within the body of the working class, and they aggravated the divisions already produced by the differences of social status (employed, unemployed, etc).

It was not simply a question of two separate political lines, of different strategies of leaderships that were at loggerheads with each other; it was a question of two cultures, two different and hostile mentalities, so that "unity at the grassroots level", in other words the kind of unity that can be born out of everyday relations, on concrete issues, was just as difficult, if not more difficult, to create, as unity at the top.

Erich Fromm, who was working at the celebrated Frankfurt Institute for Social Research run by Max Horkheimer, had the idea, in 1929, of organising a Workers' Inquiry, with the intention of examining the mentality and everyday opinions of ordinary working-class people, so as to identify possible inclinations towards authoritarianism; he applied a psycho-analytic methodology derived from family analysis. However his methods were not acceptable to the sociologists at the Institute. As a result of disagreements, the results of the Inquiry (which was terminated in 1931, on a very limited sample of around 700 questionnaires completed) were not published.

Fromm and his collaborator, Hilde Weiss, the woman who actually did most of the work and must therefore be considered the true author of the Inquiry, were only finally able to publish their results in 1939, in exile in America. At the time it appeared that they had been reluctant to publish in 1931, because they were alarmed by the authoritarian streak which was revealed in the answers from their respondents, who were mostly militants of or sympathisers of the SPD. A reading of the replies to the questionnaires, which were republished in 1983, confirms this impression.

Although the research sample was small, one can see a clear difference of mentality between the average SPD cadre and the KPD militant. One section of questions concerned issues of women's liberation, of women's dress and sexual behaviour, and another concerned questions of bringing up children.
It is striking that the answers to these questions were more open and more detailed than those about rationalisation and conditions of work in the factories, on which there were about 50% "don't knows".

11. The welfare system as a system of control
Now, to return to the Communist Party, and to probe the source of its difficulties even at the moment of its greater electoral successes. The Party's potential power in society derived from the fact of its being the largest political organisation present within the mass of the unemployed. This meant that the institutional negotiating partner with which Communist Party members had to deal was the administration apparatus of the Ministry of Labour involved in the organisation of unemployment benefit - in other words, a complex and capillary apparatus which was one of the pillars of the Weimar state. The Communist Party had to prove itself in the organisation and leading of social conflicts not in the workplace, but in the arena of social welfare.

If we wish to understand the crisis of the Weimar Republic and the transition to Nazism, it is clearly crucial that we understand the mechanisms of control, selection and disciplining which the welfare apparatus had at its disposal.

The spiralling rise of unemployment gave this apparatus huge powers during the final phase of the Republic. We could go so far as to say that, in the eyes of the ordinary citizen, the only identifiable face of the state was that of the welfare apparatus. The discretional powers of this apparatus steadily increased, and at the same time its function as a "benefit agency" was gradually replaced by a function of "gathering information about people".

The final Weimar governments, the two Bruning cabinets, the Von Papen cabinet and the Von Schleicher cabinet, were well aware of the controlling potential of the welfare apparatus. They used the lever of the system of Arbeitslosenversicherung - compulsory unemployment insurance - with great cynicism and to calculated effect in order to create a maximum of segmentation and atomisation within the mass of the unemployed.

This policy was put into effect by means of a series of decrees - and thus via a procedure which sidestepped parliament - in which the conditions of access to unemployment benefit were progressively altered. As the conditions of eligibility were changed, some social groups were excluded, while others found their money being drastically cut. In many instances these decrees (which among other things created enormous bureaucratic confusion, and an endless sense of insecurity) confined themselves simply to identifying social groups which were to be excluded from unemployment benefit or social security, for periods which might be temporary... or forever... or until the next decree...

For example, young women without children lost the right to benefit, as did young people below the age of 21, and particular categories of workers (usually the weakest, and the most rebellious). The arguments used to justify the cuts and exclusions - which were always accompanied by some little "present" for other social groups, in order to accentuate the divisions - were always the same: the necessity of reducing the public spending deficit.

Thus millions of the unemployed felt themselves constantly under threat even in an area of social right which they had acquired by means of contributions. Ordinary people, who were already desperate as a result of prolonged periods of unemployment, had the impression that the government was playing roulette with their poverty.

Insecurity and exasperation grew, and there was a strong desire to get rid of the regime. But the atomisation of the unemployed prevented a social reconfiguration to the Left.

The political Left did not exist; the SPD defended the Weimar regime as a democratic regime, as having been won by workers' victories; and the KPD wanted it to be abolished and replaced.
The fact of these constant changes in the rules of social welfare contributed importantly to increasing the level of "hidden" unemployment; increasing numbers of people found themselves denied any form of social security, while others chose not to put themselves in a position of having to apply for moneys over which they would always have to argue.

The system was organised around three forms of intervention. The first was the Arbeitslosenunterstutzung (ALU), the unemployment benefit made available under the 1927 law on compulsory unemployment insurance. This could be enjoyed only by those who had contributed for a certain period, in other words those who had been continuously employed over a period of years.

The Krisenunterstutzung (KRU) was a benefit available for exceptional crisis situations in individual industrial districts or factories (along the lines of a special redundancy provision). This was available principally to those who had not accumulated sufficient contributions in order to obtain the ALU - in other words precarious workers, those who were unable to find a steady job, and who alternated periods of employment with periods of unemployment; this form of benefit was also introduced by the 1927 law.

The third form of benefit was laid down in a law of 1924, and could be defined as a poor law; whereas the two previous benefits were administered and paid by the employment offices, and thus were part of a state insurance system, this third benefit was paid by individual municipal councils. The difference lay in the fact that those who did not have a sufficient period of steady employment to enjoy the rights laid down in the law of 1927 fell into this form of assistance. However, it was not a right acquired through an insurance system, but rather a gesture of solidarity of the municipal council and was based on discretional criteria. It was paid according to the individual circumstances of the person concerned, and the claimant was eventually expected to repay it. This was called the Wohlfartsunterstutzung (WU).

The important point is the following: during the Depression, unemployment became a mass phenomenon and the periods involved grew longer and longer. Given that the system was conceived as operating at three levels, an increasing number of people who had the right to unemployment benefit ended up either losing their right, after prolonged periods of unemployment, or running out of time under the operating system laid down by the law.

The result was that during the Depression an increasing number of people fell out of the first two levels and ended up in the third, with the result that local councils found themselves having to cope with a demand for funds which hadn't previously existed. Thus unemployed people were receiving less and less money.

To phrase it differently, the unemployed were being turned into the assisted poor, and the judgement as to whether, and to what extent, they had the right to assistance was decided no longer by a ministerial bureaucracy but by a municipal bureaucracy which was in part unprepared, but which was also overwhelmed by the huge demands being made upon it.

For the latter Weimar governments this situation was something of an advantage, given that it shifted the problem of social security assistance from state finances to local municipal finances.
What did this mean for the unemployed, and particularly for the central core of the working class, which found itself driven into an assistential system which put them on the same level as the poorest and most marginal members of society? It meant that the workers became "the poor" not only in material terms but also in terms of the law.

The relationship with a "social state" had been very important to social democracy and to the trade unions, in giving a sense of citizenship to the working class of the Weimar Republic and in this way inculcating a loyalty to the Republic's institutions. This bond was now being shattered, and the result was a further sense of alienation among the unemployed working class, in relation to the state and its institutions. Thus, when the working class is accused of not sufficiently defending the democratic Republic, one has to bear in mind that this democracy by now represented very little in the eyes of the central nucleus of the workforce. The result of driving the unemployed onto the system of municipal welfare was to create an army of people obliged to go asking for charity from a bureaucrat, who very often judged their needs solely on the basis of subjective impressions. The unemployed could receive social security only if they succeeded in convincing the benefits officer in a face-to-face interview. This led to the creation of a mass of millions of people who were open to blackmail. Furthermore - a fact which was important for the subsequent Nazi regime - the details of all these people were thoroughly documented.

But this was not all. As I said above, social security benefits paid by the municipal councils were expected to be repaid. Thus large numbers of people found themselves saddled with lifelong debts to their respective municipal authorities. (In a shrewd move, in 1935 Hitler issued a decree which cancelled all debts of welfare recipients to their respective councils.)

These circumstances perhaps explain why it was that, as the crisis progressed, increasingly large numbers of people chose not to take up any form of benefit, and thus added further to the numbers of those who were no longer registered as unemployed.

This is the origin of the political, economic, social and statistical problem of the so-called "hidden unemployment" during the Great Depression. At the start of the crisis, the vast majority of the unemployed had the right to an unemployment benefit, the ALU referred to above. By March 1933, when Hitler was already in power and unemployment was reaching a peak, ALU recipients had become a minority. The vast majority ended up in the third pool: in other words, a situation was created in which millions of people were completely at the mercy of the municipal system of poverty assistance.

To these we should add those who objected to the fact of being subjected to a highly discretional system, and of being monitored, and in addition of having to pay back their meagre benefits, and who ended up increasingly in the ranks of the "hidden unemployed". These represented, as I say, 32.5% of the total numbers on benefit in 1930, 37% in 1932, and 36.6% at the end of 1933 (we should bear in mind that this slight fall during 1933 was due to a reduction in unemployment thanks to the forced-employment systems introduced by Nazism, to which I shall return shortly).

The result of all this was that during the years of the Depression, the weaker parts of the proletariat were either subjected to a system of monitoring and blackmail by the public social security authorities, or simply decided not to take up benefit, and thus found themselves deprived of any social or institutional reference point except that represented (for a minority) by the political organisations. Among these organisations, the two which exerted the greatest attraction for the mass of unemployed and rootless people were the National Socialist Party and the Communist Party, which, during that period, won the major electoral successes in both political and local elections.

To repeat, in order to be absolutely clear: the determining factor was not simply the problem of unemployment; it was the way in which unemployment - and unemployment benefits - were managed for the unemployed and the poor. This system seems to have been created deliberately in order to bring about further atomisation within the proletariat (this is clearly suggested by recent research on the crisis years).

12. The "anti-social" strata: from the welfare office to the "Lager"
Recent research projects have shown how the social security system and the bureaucracy which administered it were consistently seen by the German proletariat as an adversary against which it had to stand its ground.

The latest issue of the magazine Werkstattgeschichte carries a series of accounts by people telling the stories of their own personal tribulations as unemployed and poor people obliged to queue at social security offices in the 1920s. The accounts cover three successive periods: the Great Inflation (1923), the period following the great rationalisation (1924-28) and the period of the Great Depression (1929-33). In the memories of people who lived through those years, the relation with the welfare office is always conflictual.

The effect of the crisis was to reduce to a state of poverty people who came from a variety of different social strata - clerks, shopkeepers and artisans, for example, who were expected to queue alongside old people, ex-prostitutes, single mothers with children, sailors without ships, unemployed factory workers, young couples devoid of means, and invalids. Once a day, once a week, or once a month, they had to go and convince the relevant authorities of the legitimacy of their requests, and had to repeat their personal stories with a mixture of humiliation and submission.

Ever since the welfare system was first set up by law, the Communist Party had been agitating and mobilising among potential welfare applicants in order to get them to act collectively, to overcome the bureaucracy's attempts to divide them - not to go with a submissive attitude, but to go with the attitude of people demanding their lawful rights. Thus, partly as an effect of communist propaganda work, the behaviour of social security claimants became increasingly peremptory and aggressive, creating angry reactions from benefit officers and a rigidification of the structure. The same issue of the magazine records dozens of episodes of assaults, clashes, threats to benefits officers, and the police repeatedly being called. These scenes were an everyday reality in the Weimar Republic, particularly in the big cities. We should not forget that, despite the fact that they received subsidies from the state, and despite the fact that the broad outlines of criteria were fixed by the state, the municipal councils could only hand out benefits according to their financial capabilities; in small municipalities, which was where the majority of the German population lived, obviously the means available for social security were extremely limited. This meant that as regards the level of benefits, the qualification for benefit, and the form of benefit (which could be supplied partly in kind, or in return for work) there were enormous differences from zone to zone, and from municipality to municipality.

Then there was the major problem represented by the very large numbers of migrant workers, travelling from one place to another in search of work; of necessity they found themselves requesting assistance not from the municipality of their own home towns, but from the town in which they were residing at the time.

If this situation was already creating tension and unease in the period prior to the Great Depression, one can imagine what it must have produced with the onset of the crisis itself, and with the fact that, as we have seen, all of a sudden millions of people were expelled from the system of state unemployment insurance and put onto the municipal social security system. It was precisely at this point that the role of the social benefit system as a system of control and monitoring came to the fore. With the polarisation of the relationship between the administrative structure and the claimant in the course of the Depression, the structure progressively lost almost all its character as a social service, and became increasingly a supplementary policing system over the weaker parts of society. It became a system which increasingly divided and selected, creating further systems of degradation, but above all institutionalising social differences.

This was the basic building-block of the Nazi system. One of the basic arguments of the research on marginalised sections of the population in the final period of the Weimar Republic concerns the role played by the welfare system. Our Foundation has done extremely important work on this area, around the history of municipal social security in Hamburg (the volume, edited by Angelika Ebbinghaus, was published in 1986 under the title Opfer und Taterinnen). What does this research reveal? It shows that the staff of the welfare bureaucracy, which was largely female, went over more or less without problems from the Social Democratic government to the Nazi government. The Nazis took over almost the entire personnel, and asked them to continue working as previously. In other words, to continue carrying out functions of monitoring, surveillance and classifying. In the meantime the Nazis were constructing a parallel structure of selecting out marginalised people on biological and racial grounds. The welfare structure, which included social hygiene personnel in addition to administrative staff, provided various kinds of information on individuals, on single "cases", to the authorities, who then intervened, in the sense of the segregation or physical annihilation of those individuals (internment in labour camps or in so-called psychiatric clinics, where they were subjected to forced sterilization and other "eugenic" operations).

The majority of these people were considered suitable candidates for segregation and eventual annihilation because, for various reasons, they were defined as asozialen, in other words "anti-social". The reasons were many-fold: because they had been unemployed for too long; because they had committed small crimes against the common good; because they had been involved in prostitution; because they had illnesses that were considered hereditary; because they were seriously disabled; because their marital or sexual behaviour was irregular; because they had repeatedly assumed antagonistic protest attitudes in the workplace or against representatives of institutions (this was the case with the majority of Communist sympathisers); because they had changed their place of residence too often; or simply because they had been caught too many times on public transport without a ticket.

Large numbers of the poor and the marginalised were thus defined as "anti-social" on the basis of information gathered by the welfare offices and amassed in their personal files, and they were then slotted into a machinery of selection which was not only a process of racial selection, but also a process of social selection. The majority of those interned in camps at the start of the Nazi regime consisted of these so-called "anti-social elements", who were subsequently to be termed gemeinschaftsfremde ("alien to the community"). Even by 1941 there were still 110,000 non-Jewish German prisoners in concentration camps, interned as asozialen. The politics of racial selection did not thus originate in anti-semitism; it originated not in ethnic concerns, but in order to handle the social question. The intention was physically to destroy the marginalised. This was what then led to the development of the so-called Nazi eugenics policies, or, as they were called, the "demographic policy" (Bevolkerungspolitik). The first Lagers, the first concentration camps, were the "labour houses" (Arbeitshauser) or hostels for the boarding of those who, in exchange for welfare benefit, were obliged to do compulsory labour. It is here that we must look for the origin of the Nazi concentration camp system.

On the basis of the 1924 law which introduced social security for the poor, measures were also brought in to introduce forced labour. Now, when Hitler instituted his first measures of forced labour to reduce unemployment, he did it in terms of the law that had set up forced labour. The law of June 1933 (Gesetz zur Verminderung von Arbeitslosigkeit, the "Law for the Reduction of Unemployment"), one of the most important framing laws of Nazi labour policy, was framed explicitly in terms of the 1924 law on compulsory labour. This kind of labour is defined as a relationship does not give rise to a wage; it is part of a welfare service, and thus exists outside the framework of civil law governing labour relations; since the worker had no right to a wage, the services in kind which he received, in other words board and lodging, were conceived as a welfare provision, which came within the framework of administrative law. This was the nature of the juridical instruments by which the Hitler government brought about a reduction of unemployment over the next two years.

The Nazi regime boasted of having absorbed, in the space of two years, something like eight million of the unemployed. However, we should not forget that about 70% of the jobs created by the Nazi regime's employment policies were part of the big programme of infrastructural public works (such as the Autobahn motorways). The workforce employed on these projects was defined within the juridical framework of compulsory labour (Pflichtarbeit). This was one reason for the growing discontent which spread among these workers, and which, in 1935-36, gave rise to what some have called a "cycle of strikes". The police authorities and the party organs registered 260 stoppages of work, most of which took place on motorway building sites or on building sites of other public works projects. The shortage of evidence as to which figures might have played a role as agitators, initiators and organisers of these stoppages suggests that the great majority of the workers who were active in these protests had already endured experiences, however brief, of imprisonment and internment in the camps.

All the above, plus the fact that the great majority of workers were given jobs which were more or less forced labour, lend little credibility to the notion that the Nazi regime was an advanced example of Keynesianism in action. It would be more precise to say that the Nazi regime combined a number of formulae which we could call Keynesian (the financing of public works to create jobs) with welfare-type mechanisms inherited from the Weimar Republic, in addition to another absolutely integral factor - a system of coercion and repression within which the concentration camp functioned as a key component of labour policy. In short, the spending of public moneys to reduce unemployment could exist only within a labour policy environment in which not only were market variables suspended, and in which enormous areas of labour were regarded as falling outside of the rules of the civil code and were left in large part to the discretionality of the executive powers - in other words, labour that had become militarised. Thus the prevalent attitude of Nazism in relation to the working class was one that led not to its advancement and/or emancipation (as Zitelmann claims), but to its militarisation.

13. The years of creeping civil war
I would like to touch on a problem which has been raised several times by historians. The question has been asked as to why the German working class did not rise up in violent demonstrations (barricades, general strikes, occupations of factories and railway stations etc) against Hitler in 1933. Why did it not put up a credible resistance in the preceding years? These questions come from a repertoire of false problems and mystifications which a certain brand of historian has concocted in order to deny the truth of the matter - in other words that a section of the German proletariat, particularly in the big urban and industrial centres, organised in part by the Comunist Party, but also developing autonomous forms of self-defence, tried by every means possible to counter the Nazis in the final years of the Weimar Republic, the time when Hitler's action squads and the trade-union initiatives of Nazi factory cells were becoming increasingly active and aggressive, and were conquering territory piece by piece.

In an attempt to "defend" the German working class from the ignominious accusation of not having put up a resistance, some historians maintain that the proletariat who might have put up a local resistance to the Nazis were living a life so dire (given that they were almost entirely long-term unemployed) that, even though there was a subjective willingness to put up a fight, the hold of such a fight could at best have been brief and ephemeral.

There may be a lot of truth in this interpretation (as we have seen above, with the operations of the social security system), but it still avoids the concrete question of how precisely they might have organised physical confrontation in the cities, in a situation in which (albeit characterised by strong elements of social destructuration produced by the crisis) proponents of political violence had to come to terms with a state structure that was very well equipped with the means necessary for the restoration of law and order.

The problem is thus far more complex, because it has to do with research methodologies of a phenomenon that is entirely specific: namely so-called "political violence". Historians generally treat this problem almost exclusively from the viewpoint of ministries of the interior and police headquarters, not least because they rely almost exclusively on police records to study it. In fact the reality is rather more complex. It would be better to approach it from the subjective point of view of people who, in that period, were making the decision as to whether or not to fight the Nazi gangs in open confrontation.
At this point I propose taking a small step backwards, to take a look at some of the basic historical conditions which created the situation in which the physical confrontations between proletarian and communist militants and Nazi activists developed.

As we know, the Weimar Republic was governed in the period from the Great Inflation (1924) to the beginning of the Great Depression (1929) by centre-Left coalitions, in which the Social Democrats had a considerable presence, whereas in the years of the final crisis (1930-33) it was governed by centre-Right coalitions. In this later phase, Parliament was completely bypassed, since government was based on presidential and government decrees which tended to sidestep the formal mechanisms of parliamentary democracy.

The Weimar Republic was a strange state system: more than half of its territory actually consisted of the Region of Prussia, within which - in the framework of the federalist constitution - there was a government which did not reflect the same relations of power as did the national parliament.
Prussia was in fact governed by a majority of Social Democrats, who shared power with other parties but who in reality maintained control of both public administration and government. Berlin was part of Prussia, which meant that in the capital there was an overlap between the national government and the regional government, a system which finally went into crisis in 1931-32.

Now, Prussia was governed not so much by the Social Democratic party as such, as by some of its more prestigious exponents. They had considerable power, and they were located on the extreme Right of the party. The key man in Prussia, for many years prime minister of the Prussian government, was Otto Braun, a man of open and declared authoritarian tendencies, who saw the role of social democracy as being in maintaining law and order, in the untouchability of the state bureaucray, and in a corporative partnership between trade unions and big capital. In the words of Theodor Eschenburg, the author of a fine book on the problem of "ungovernability" in the Weimar Republic, he was in favour of a "recallable dictatorship". Otto Braun's principal collaborator was for many years Albert Grzesinski, who was Minister of the Interior in Prussia, and from 1930 was also head of police in Berlin.

We should not forget that during this period the Social Democrats had considerable powers in the area of law and order, because in 1928 one of their number, Carl Severing, was appointed Minister of the Interior of the Reich. The SPD took advantage of this to institute an extremely efficient reorganisation of the police, with the principal aim of setting up a special corps to prevent Bolshevik disturbances and uprisings. Unfortunately they were not equally efficient and motivated in preventing and repressing Nazi gangsterism. The situation inevitably aggravated the historic fracture between Social Democrats and Communists that had already existed since the murders of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht - a fracture which experienced a particularly acute moment - a point of "no return" - in the events of Mayday 1929.

As you may know, in the Weimar Republic, Mayday was not a holiday. It was Hitler who declared Mayday a national Labour Day, in 1933. Thus the celebration of Mayday became a question of high moral value, and at the same time a problem of public order. On the one hand were the Communists, social revolutionaries and anarchists, who wanted to turn it into a day of struggle - an open, public proletarian festival, a challenge to capital and to the existing order. On the other stood the Social Democrats, wavering between a concern for legality and at the same time a need to make their role and presence felt on such a significant day.

Mayday 1929 in Berlin fell in an atmosphere that was particularly tense, due partly to the onset of economic crisis and partly to the onset of a crisis of the political system.

The police chief in Berlin, a Social Democrat by name of Zorgiebel, had already banned all public demonstrations in Berlin in December 1928. In March 1929 he extended the ban to the whole of Prussia, and then renewed the ban specifically for Mayday 1929, asking the trade unions to abstain from public demonstrations and to organise only indoor meetings. The Communists, however, decided to challenge the ban and to demonstrate in the streets. The Social Democratic trade unions and the SPD organised their Mayday events in theatres, association offices etc. The Communist slogan was: "We do not accept the ban. We shall demonstrate in the streets, and if the police try to attack we shall call a general strike for the next day." And so it was to be.

The police, as has been shown from research in police archives, mounted a deliberate attack, organised by special anti-subversion units. There were violent clashes, which spread to include workers who were coming out of the indoor meetings of the Social Democratic trade unions. The Communist Party called a general strike for the following day, but despite pressure from many militants did not distribute weapons; nevertheless, in the quarters of Neukolln and Wedding the barricades went up and the police had to lay siege to the areas for three days before they were able to restore order.

The final balance was extremely heavy: thirty people dead, all of them demonstrators; 200 wounded; 1,200 people arrested, of whom 44 were kept in custody by the police. The Prussian Minister of the Interior seized this opportunity to ban the mass organisations of the Communist Party.

These events brought about an unhealable fracture between Communist militants, and the Social Democratic party and its organisations. Oral history research has shown that in the memory of proletarian militants (not only communists) this was a turning point, a "point of no return" in their remembrance of their total alienation from anything to do with the SPD. Whereas the killings of Rosa Luxemburg and Karl Liebknecht might possibly have been attributed to the Freikorps and not purely to Noske's policies, the blame for the repression of Mayday 1929 in Berlin lay squarely at the door of Social Democratic ministers and functionaries. This trauma split the working class down the middle, right on the eve of the final clash with the Nazi militias.

We should bear in mind that the big growth of National Socialism took place first in the South, i.e. in Bavaria, before then working its way up through the agricultural territory of Central-Eastern Germany, spreading north-eastwards into the old textile areas of Thuringia and Saxony on the one hand, while in the North-west it moved into the Catholic zones of Baden, Rhineland and Westfalia. The drive northwards seemed to follow a pincer movement targeting the red metropolises in the ports of the North, and especially in Berlin, which was a major working-class stronghold.

At that time Berlin was a city with a powerful proletariat in industry (electrical engineering) and in the tertiary sector (transport and distribution), and this proletariat controlled entire local areas. When we speak of working-class quarters such as Neukoln and Treptow, just to give an idea of the size of them, we are talking of a population of 400,000 inhabitants. The battle for control of Berlin and its region was to last for three years, throughout all the upheavals of the Great Depression.

The Nazis entrusted this task to able and freethinking individuals who represented the "far Left" of the party, people whose radical style of agitation tended to pull the carpet from under the feet not only of the Social Democratic trade unions, but also of the Communists. They pursued a "workerist" and trade-union propaganda, under the aegis of the "National Socialist factory cells" (NSBO), and they combined this with a systematic activity of terrorism via the use of militias and goon squads.

The central figure of the Nazi Party in the battle for Berlin was, however, Josef Goebbels, the great specialist in the media and mass communications. Of the two radical leaders, Otto and Gregor Strasser, the first left the party in 1930, and the second was marginalised in the party shortly prior to Hitler's nomination as Chancellor.

14. Street fighters and "wilde Cliquen": Who did the fighting in the streets of Berlin?
Throughout the period of the Weimar Republic, the terrain of politics was not confined to the dialectic between parties; it was, above all, direct, extra-parliamentary action, which often involved daily street and community confrontations pitting proletarians and militants to the left of the SPD, against police, militia and irregular military forces of the Right, who were increasingly joined by the massive and threatening presence of the National Socialist gangs.

My intention is to look at this aspect of political struggle in a very specific time and place. The period is the last three years of the Weimar Republic, and the place is Berlin. These were the years of big electoral successes for both the Communists and the National Socialists. They were the years of the Great Depression, and for Hitler the conquest of Berlin represented something of a crucial battle. We have to answer the question as to whether the German proletariat did or did not put up resistance to the advancing forces of Nazism. From a reconstruction of the events of those three years in Berlin our reply is that there most certainly was resistance. It was also an armed resistance. The proletariat defended inch by inch the territory and the communities which, over decades of struggle, had become its strongholds. For details of this resistance I refer to research by an English historian, Eve Rosenhaft, published by Cambridge University Press in 1983, under the title Beating the Fascists? The German Communists and Political Violence 1929-1933. This is a detailed reconstruction of the military clashes between Communists and Nazis in Berlin.

What was the developmental process of this physical confrontation, between the working-class milieu which at that time controlled entire quarters of the city and the activists of the National Socialist party? And what were the problems of tactics and technique - more political than military - in this street-by-street struggle?

The paramilitary structure of the Communist Party was very strong, not least because, with its street politics, it was attracting the young unemployed, and the party was articulated in a number of organisations. The largest of these was the Kampfbund gegen den Faschismus, which at the end of 1931 reached a figure of 100,000 members, and which had more than 7,000 militants in Berlin alone.
This is a very large membership for a political organisation which was dedicated essentially to militant action. Thus we have a highly complex and capillary structure of self defence promoted by the Communist Party, which extended beyond the communities which it controlled. This organisation and the specifically "military" slant of Communist political action acquired increasingly greater weight as the aggressive initiatives of the National Socialist gangs developed.

This mechanism inevitably created contradictions, and brought about a crisis within the party's organisation in Berlin. I mention this problem of contradictions within the Communist Party now, because it is important that we bear in mind the enormous difficulties which a struggle at the level of physical and military confrontation posed for the German proletariat of that period.

The first big difficulty was the material conditions of life and living-standards of the vast majority of those who were the direct protagonists of the struggle. The Communist grass roots consisted essentially of unemployed people, or of workers working in small factories and in those parts of the tertiary sector characterised by intermittent, precarious work. At the end of 1929, the party claimed 135,160 members, of whom 50% were working in factories; two years later, at the end of 1931, it had 381,000 members, of whom only 17% worked in factories. The district of Berlin-Brandenburg had about 30,000 members at the end of 1930, of whom 51% were unemployed, but at the district's organising conference in September 1931, 88 out of 96 delegates were unemployed.

These unemployed belonged to the stratum of those who fell into the third level of the welfare system, the municipal social security system. They were the most open to blackmail, they were the most monitored, and often in order to escape state control they chose not to take up social security benefits. They were young and very young, often coming from broken families; they had never worked and had no prospects of finding work; they entered and left the party and its organisations extremely easily.

People say that in some respects they were very similar to those of their peers who were joining the ranks of the National Socialist organisations. In fact, while it is true that the activists in both parties were characterised by being extremely young, nevertheless the parties' respective successes in recruiting took place in quite different contexts. We have the electoral researches of Falter and of various American historians to show that the Nazi vote was relatively low in the areas of high unemployment, and decidedly high in zones of low unemployment, whereas the Communist vote was markedly stronger in areas of high unemployment. However, while some generational and social characteristics of Communist and Nazi activists may have been similar, the conditions in which they lived and operated as militants involved in direct confrontation clashes were radically different: the finances available to Hitler's party enabled it to finance gangs, and to give them a minimal structure as an army of mercenaries; the Communist militants, however, were entirely voluntary, and could only draw on material assistance if they fell foul of the law (the Rote Hilfe or Red Aid was a powerful and well organised structure, although in the final years of Weimar it too was enmeshed in the travails of internal party crisis). The fact is that conditions for proletarian militants involved in the daily confrontations with the Nazis were extremely difficult, but despite this they fought with exceptional determination and self-sacrifice.

However the crisis which exploded within the party in May 1932 had a devastating effect on this militant structure. This involved the marginalisation of Hans Neumann, who, together with two other leaders, Thalmann and Remmele, ran the party; also the removal of Albert Kuntz, the party's organising officer in Berlin, and two leaders of the Communist youth organisation, Alfred Hiller and Kurt Muller. This internal crisis was the outcome of a clash within the party which had become more acute since the electoral victory of 1930, and which was based on the relationship between individual violence and mass action. The fact that the party's electoral successes had given greater weight to the parliamentary fraction made it more difficult to strike a balance between legal and semi-legal forms of politics.

This was the period during which, under pressure from the Comintern, the KPD was initiating a change of tactics. This involved condemning individual actions and trying to create a unity of rank and file action with militants and sympathisers of the SPD, and even trying to draw in some of the working-class base of the National Socialists. However the struggle was not extinguished; in fact the active militant defence of the "red areas" from Nazi incursions became a daily part of proletarian life, because many young proletarians - having left the Communist organisation after their leaders were removed and put in a minority, and after the tactic of the united front and mass action had gained the upper hand - had continued to maintain the self-defence structures, and to be involved in struggle.

In the proletarian quarters of Berlin, right from the time of the Wilhelmian Reich, there had been a long tradition of profound hostility to the police. During the Weimar Republic, in some of the poorer quarters, the inhabitants preferred to organise vigilante squads against criminality rather than asking the police to intervene. Every time the police stepped in to arrest a person in these communities, they had to reckon on a possible negative reaction by the local population.

The Communists - Walter Ulbricht played a central role in the organisation of their militant party structures in Berlin - in turn set up vigilante squads in the communities, and groups which defended particular groups of citizens, such as the anti-eviction groups (Mieterschutz). Finally, we should not forget that a large proportion of the young proletarians who chose to oppose physically the incursion of National Socialism belonged to no political organisation, or belonged only in a marginal sense, without any sense of party discipline.

Detlev Peukert has done research on the youth gangs of Berlin (the so-called wilde Cliquen) at that time. These were not gangs in the traditional criminal sense of the term. Out of 600 youth gangs present in Berlin in 1930, only 10% had a relationship with organised crime, whereas around 70% were represented by the so-called "wandering bands" (Wandercliquen) which moved as groups, moving between the city and the hinterland, wearing white and green berets. One of their favourite pastimes was to embark on confrontations with the Hitlerjugend. In 1931 there were estimated to be 14,000 members of youth gangs, 50% of whom were considered apolitical, and only 15% defined as sympathising with the radical Left. I like to recall these circumstances, not least because one of the sponsors of our conference has been the Concetta Social Centre. It is worth remembering that among those who physically resisted the Hitlerite youth in that period, an important role was played by self-organised groupings of the young metropolitan proletariat, which had no connection with the various Communist organisations, but had more libertarian inclinations. Their attitudes were the attitudes characteristic of a youth culture founded on control of territory and on a strong group identity, in a period in which (these figures are from 1933, when Hitler came to power) 63% of young males below the age of 25 in Berlin were unemployed. Their behaviours are not comparable with those of the youth gangs of today in Los Angeles, or in South American cities, whether in the level of reciprocal violence, or in the level of arms used, or in general as regards the practice of violence.

Eve Rosenhaft has tried to quantify by job-categories those who were fighting the Nazis in the streets (she calls them "the streetfighters"). On the basis of the figures gathered by the police, and those which came out in the course of trials, 43% were transport sector workers, 25% engineering workers, 8.7% building workers, 7% carpentry and furniture workers, 6.4% food workers, 2% printers and binders, 1.7% workers in the clothing sector, and 3% unspecified.

In short, workers of the transport sector, involving port workers, sailors and railway workers, were a large percentage of those organising the resistance against Nazism and undertaking actions not only of propaganda, but also of sabotage.

15. Exemplary actions and mass struggle in the campaign for the control of taverns ("Kneipen-Kampagne")
What was the tactic used by the Nazi party to penetrate the proletarian quarters? One of the most significant moments of the "Battle for Berlin" was the so-called campaign for the control of the Kneipen, in other words the city's street-corner pubs. Berlin's working-class quarters were inhabited principally by unemployed families (in some areas the level of unemployment was running at 75%). These unemployed had nowhere to go during the day, and they tended to gather in the taverns. The Kneipen have always had an important role in the history of the proletariat, as focal points for proletarian socialisation, and sometimes they had also functioned as meeting points and points of political exchange, a crossroad of circuits of information, places where actions and initiatives were organised. Unfortunately the taverns in the working-class areas in this period had a clientele that consumed little and was sometimes unable to pay even for what little it consumed. Landlords risked bankruptcy, and sometimes found themselves having to sell out to others who perhaps did not share their political sympathies, or who had not lived the same moments of struggle as some of their customers.

The Nazis adopted a tactic of persuading pub owners that if they were to come over to their side, they could count on a secure income. In many instances, this tactic was successful, and the tavern in question would turn from a meeting-place of Communist sympathisers to a meeting-place for National Socialist activists.

After a while, this systematic penetration by the Nazi gangs began to become worryingly widespread, and proletarian hostelries were beginning to operate as launchpads for terroristic activities carried out by Nazi mercenaries. The Communist Party therefore decided to initiate a campaign to regain control of some of these places. This was the so-called Kneipe-kampagne. The party embarked on a programme of systematic attacks on taverns that were now frequented by Nazis. The party's new line recommended that armed activity should always be undertaken within a framework of mass struggle, in order to avoid the risk of practising pure counter-terrorism. However, as we shall see from Eve Rosenhaft's reconstruction, the practice of mass struggle had been made extremely difficult by the material conditions in which the proletariat of that time found itself.

The incident in question was particularly notorious. The SA had succeeded in buying out a tavern owner in one of the streets of Neukolln, a stronghold of the Left.

"The house at 35 Richardstrasse was in many ways a model of society in Neukolln. It was one of the largest tenements in the area; built in 1905, with six courts, it contained 144 apartments. Four fifths of these were typical workers' quarters with kitchen, one living-room and shared toilet. They housed around five hundred people. These included about a dozen shopkeepers and master craftsmen, nine clerks, salesmen and domestics, two artists, twenty-one pensioners, and some ninety skilled and unskilled workers representing the major Berlin trades. Among the leaders of the tenants' movement against the SA were a printer, a pipe-fitter, a tailor, a metalworker, two construction workers, two unskilled labourers and a disabled veteran. The tavern on the ground floor front of the building had been bought in October 1929 by Heinrich Bowe, a contractor who had made a disastrous investment in his home town of Magdeburg and had decided to set up in business with the remains of his savings. It had been a centre for the activities first of a religious youth group and then, after the War, of clubs with left-wing political affiliations, and this continued after Bowe took over. As the Depression deepened, more and more of Bowe's guests were unable to find work; they continued to spend their days and evenings in the tavern, but the meagre allowance they received from the employment office and the welfare bureau did not permit them to go on eating, drinking and spending as they had in the past. When the SA offered to guarantee a minimum turnover of a barrel of beer a day if Bowe would put his premises at their disposal, the innkeeper saw the offer as the nearest way to avoid financial ruin. He consulted the local police commander, who assured him that there would be no serious danger involved, and accepted the SA's proposition. The clubs which had previously patronised the tavern promptly withdrew their custom, 'although Bowe would have been happy to keep some of them, especially the ones who used the bowling alleys'. Shortly thereafter, Bowe himself joined the NSDAP, 'for business reasons'. On 26 August, Sturm 21 of the Neukolln moved into Richardstrasse 35, and Bowe's expectations were fulfilled, with upwards of a hundred people gathering regularly in the assembly room at the back and some thirty hungry SA men appearing for lunch every day.

The establishment of Sturm 21 in the Richardstrasse was thus very much like other SA takeovers of taverns during these months; like them, it reflected the growth of the Berlin SA, a development in which self-confidence ran before and fuelled a numerical expansion. The Nazis were outsiders only in the sense that they declared themselves to be so; the SA had a long history in Neukolln. An NSDAP cell had been operating there as early as 1926; and the leader of Sturm 21, a twenty-five-year-old salesman born and raised in Neukolln, had belonged to the party since its founding. By mid-1931 Neukolln had three SA Sturme and, according to the Communists' own intelligence, the NSDAP had 1,300 members and nine tavern-headquarters in the district at the end of August. Communists and SA-men had been getting to know each other for several years. On the Communists' side the SA was being identified and treated as a physical threat as early as October 1929, when the first SA group there already claimed seventy members; the SA leader dated the intensification of hostilities between the two groups from an incident during the election campaign of 1930. In 1931, the developing relationship between the two parties had already produced one change of allegiance, from SA to Kampfbund. In the course of the prosecutions following the attack on Bowe's tavern, a leading Communist activist joined the SA.

That the SA was familiar in Neukolln did not, however, mean that it was welcome in the Richardstrasse. As Sturm 21 moved in, public attention was being focussed on the crimes of the Berlin SA by reports of the murder trial of members of Sturm 33, the notorious Charlottenburg squad. Given the character and history of the house, and the political sensitivity which had been growing in Neukolln with the National Socialist presence, tension was bound to arise between the tenants of the building and Bowe's new guests. Very soon after Sturm 21 took up residence, there were reports that the SA-men were urinating in hallways, waving their pistols at children playing in the courtyard, and threatening to shoot into people's windows.

On 28 August the KPD functionary to whose cell Richardstrasse 35 belonged organised a tenants' meeting at which Communist speakers urged the calling of a rent strike. The proposal was adopted, and a few days later Die Rote Fahne reported success all along the line: three hundred extra copies of the paper had been sold, Social Democrats were showing interest, the house-defence squad already had sixty members, and the tenants had formed an action committee. The rent strike was set to begin on 1 September if the SA was not turned out. Goebbels, it was reported, had given orders that Richardstrasse 35 was not to be abandoned under any circumstances. In fact, the rent strike failed to materialise. In the weeks that followed, tensions increased as both the Communist and the National Socialist press focussed on the conflict. On 3 September Der Angriff, the National Socialist paper, claimed: 'In any case, things have gone so far that an SA-man doesn't dare venture into the Richardstrasse alone.' The Berlin central office of the KPD received reports from Neukolln that girls were no longer safe on the streets at night. Groups appeared in the courtyard behind Bowe's tavern chanting 'Schlagt die Faschisten' and 'Keep up the rent strike'. The windows of the assembly-room overlooking the court were smashed, and by the middle of October a special police patrol had been assigned to prevent people from gathering in front of the house. A group of KPD officers who visited the Richardstrasse one evening found the street completely deserted - an unusual scene in a working-class neighbourhood and a clearer sign than any amount of rowdiness that something was wrong.

In the meantime, the rent strike had started again. On 29 September, the tenants met and resolved to begin the strike on 1 October. This time, the effort was better prepared and publicised. Vorwarts reported sympathetically, remarking that Reichsbanner men as well as Communists had already been attacked. Posters were printed announcing the strike, and mimeographed newsletters were issued. These explained that that strike had been postponed in the first place because the manager of the building had yielded to pressure and promised to evict the SA. The manager later denied that he had made any such promise; in any case, the SA stayed. Nor, the tenants claimed, had the police been of any assistance; according to the resolution of the tenants' meeting, police officers had been heard to declare that the house should be 'smoked out', since half the tenants were criminals anyway. All that was left for the beleaguered tenants was self-help; tenants who continued to pay their rent would be regarded as strike-breakers and allies of the troublemakers. A notary was named to whom rent payments could be made for the duration of the strike.

In spite of the weeks of acrimony that lay behind it and the material and technical support which it received from the KPD in its execution, the October rent strike failed. It was impossible to mobilise a power which did not exist, and the tenants proved to be practically without power against their landlord. The threat of eviction, which the building manager raised at the first sign of action by the tenants, was a powerful deterrent in itself. What finally broke the back of the strike, however, was the fact that those tenants who were on welfare were not in a position to withhold their rent; the welfare bureau paid the rent directly to the manager. After two weeks of the strike, the manager claimed that eighty per cent of the rents had been paid, and a proposal was made formally to call off the action. The united response of Braunschweig's workers to the violence of the SA on 18 October inspired a burst of optimism strong enough to make the Communists reconsider. But the tenants' meeting at which those events were to be discussed, on 21 October, was the last that was heard of the strike. On the eighteenth, Bowe died of the wounds that he had received in the attack on his tavern; the tenants' meeting was broken up by the police and the thirty participants arrested."

Thus far Eve Rosenhaft's reconstruction. The attack on Bowe's tavern was carried out on 15 October by about 30 demonstrators. They fired a number of shots at the premises, wounding customers and fatally wounding the owner.

As we can see, the attempt to unify mass action and armed action failed, not least because the rent strike was rendered impossible by one of those lethal mechanisms of control characteristic of the municipal social security system described above. The majority of the tenants were on municipal social security; in this case the social security office anticipated payment of all or part of the rent, and transferred the amount directly into the landlord's account; even if they had wanted to, the tenants could not have gone on rent strike. The reprisal action was not difficult to organise and carry out, but the fact that it was not welded to mass action gave complete victory to the Nazis, because from that moment on they encountered no further resistance in that housing block, and for the group of tenants who had been most active in the attempted rent strike there opened a period of fear of being suspected or incriminated of complicity in the killing of the landlord.

Of course this is only one episode, but it is illustrative of the kind of conditions in which German proletarians found themselves having to fight when they attempted to oppose the advance of the Nazis: repression by the Social Democratic police, the hunger and poverty caused by unemployment, the controlling mechanisms of the social security system, the contradictions and uncertainties of Communist Party policy, the lamentable shortage of equipment in the face of an adversary that was better equipped, better paid and better trained - all these elements illustrate even more the heroism and selflessness of those German proletarians who attempted to defend the territory of the "red areas" from the Nazi invaders.

The general conclusion that can be drawn from these fragments of history is that it is not true that the German proletariat surrendered without a fight. The truth of the matter is that its capacities for resistance had been worn down during the terrible years of the Depression, when the Weimar Republic was governed with semi-dictatorial methods by those who opened the way for Hitler to come to power; the energies of those people who tried to resist him were stretched to the limits. The years which preceded Hitler's seizure of power were years of creeping civil war. In the conditions in which the opponents of Nazism were obliged to conduct their resistance, it is hard to imagine how they could have done more or better. Therefore the judgement of historians who say that the German working class and proletariat submitted to Hitler without resistance is both unfair and incorrect, a travesty of reality, a view reflecting only the tendentiousness and ignorance of those who express it.

Within this recognition of the moral and political strength of the resistance struggle of the German proletariat against Nazi terrorism, we should also remember that the Communist Party was the organisation which most determinedly and radically conducted the struggle against the advance of National Socialism, using all means possible, including the illegal. It would be reasonable to ask to what extent the culture and preparation of the party's so-called military cadres (party members who had been on courses in the Soviet Union training them for civil war, armed clandestinity and insurrection) was suitable for the political-military situation in which they found themselves, which was defined by illegal behaviours of the proletariat, and forms of control of metropolitan territory. This was not a pre-insurrectional conflict, or a battle for seizure of power, nor was it a campaign by a Red Army.

An extremely important part must have been played by spontaneous forms of struggle and informal resistance, by non-party circuits of information, and by forms of youth aggregation - in short by that heritage of autonomy and antagonistic cultures which had been sedimented in the proletarian metropolis without its exponents needing to go through party training schools. In addition, we should remember that alongside the widespread culture of the Communist organisations there was a vast area influenced by social-revolutionary and anarcho-libertarian cultures. A sizeable section of the politicised proletariat was to be found in the anarcho-syndicalist Freie Arbeiter Union organisation, which at one point had 400,000 members, initially involving building workers and textile workers, and then spreading to involve engineering workers in small and medium factories and miners; this was a purely proletarian organisation, with no intellectuals or cadres coming from the petty and middle bourgeoisies.

Compared with this overall section of the movement, which represented the active, daily,street by street resistance to Nazism, the actions and policies of the Social Democratic organisations were more inclined to demonstrating and less inclined to fighting. It is true that hundreds of individual cadres of the Social Democratic trade union and party were drawn by class solidarity to participate in various ways in actively resisting the invading Nazi squads. But our judgement on the behaviour of the Social Democratic party's leadership and apparatus (up until late 1932 they still consider that the prime danger for the so-called Weimar democracy was Bolshevism) has to be one of condemnation and contempt for their profound anti-proletarian sectarianism, their frightening political shortsightedness, and their deep cowardice in the face of Nazism.

As for the actions of the Communist Party, I think one should say that, despite some wavering and many mistakes, the Communist Party fought determinedly to prevent the advance of National Socialism. However, in history books you too often find the thesis that the Nazis and Communists went side by side to fight against the institutions of Weimar, and you frequently find reference to the two episodes in which they found themselves in a united front against the Socialist Party: the public transport strike in Berlin in Autumn 1932, and the referendum against the Prussian government under Otto Braun; you almost never hear of the physical clashes which took place between proletarians organised by the KPD and the Nazi gangs.

At this point I would also point to the central role played in Berlin during those years by Josef Goebbels' great adversary Walter Ulbricht. This is not meant to indicate approval for the role that Ulbricht went on to have subsequently as the head of the SED and the prime minister of East Germany. In fact it appears that once he reached power Ulbricht preferred to forget his heroic Weimarian exploits, because recalling the true events of that period might have jeopardised his relations with the Social Democrats and contradicted the legalitarian and gentlemanly image that post-war Communism was seeking to acquire.

16. From the capitulation of the trade unions to the first industrial policy measures of Hitler's government
On 30 January 1933, Hitler became Chancellor. On 21 March, Nazi squads attacked various trade-union offices, in particular those of the ADGB trade union federation, which had reached a membership total of 8 million in 1921, but had then fallen to 4.5 million by the end of 1932 (in itself no mean figure). On that same day, 21 March 1933, Leipart, president of the ADGB, wrote to Hitler that "the trade unions are not intending to act directly on the terrain which pertains to state policy. Their task is rather to direct the just demands of workers in relation to the government's measures of social and economic policy." A few days later, Leipart again wrote to Hitler to inform him of the trade unions' complete dissociation from the Social Democratic party, and offering the government the collaboration of the trade unions.

Meanwhile the Christian trade unions had declared themselves apolitical, and the trade union organisations of white collar workers (which were headed by the Christian trade union, and another of the centre Right) announced their submission to the regime.

A few days later Hitler declared Mayday a national holiday, and the leadership of the ex-Socialist ADGB union federation invited its members to join the labour day celebrations. This was the signal for a complete capitulation. On 2 May, in an action that was coordinated throughout Germany, commandos of the SS and the SA occupied trade-union offices throughout the country, as well as the head offices of the "Bank of Workers, White Collar Workers and Functionaries" in Berlin, its branches throughout the Reich, and all offices of the trade-union press, without encountering any resistance. Leipart himself was arrested, along with all the leaders of the various individual trade unions, the directors of the workers' bank, all union officers above a certain level, and the editors of the trade-union press. Throughout the country, the actions of the Nazi commandos were carried through in a peaceful and disciplined fashion, almost as if there had been a tacit agreement between the aggressors and their victims. Incidents were few and far between. This was how the organisation which expressed the longest-standing tradition of the German working class capitulated shamefully to the violence of the dictatorship.

All this happened exactly sixty years ago. The intention of today's meeting has been to recall some of the factors which made possible the victory of National Socialism and the defeat of the German working class and its organisations. Before I end, I would like to outline some of the circumstances which enabled the Nazi regime to consolidate its power, to soak up unemployment, and, in the final instance, to create a system for the disciplining and integration/consensus of the workforce.

There have been many research studies of the labour policies of the first three years of the Nazi regime prior to the launch of the "Four Year Plan". Researchers have looked not only at the transformations of industrial labour, but also at the living conditions of the working class, at working-class attitudes and behaviours, at the National Socialist trade-union organisation, the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (DAF), at the structures of the factory trustees, at contractual proceedings, etc. In short, today we have large amounts of information to put alongside the material gathered by Tim Mason for the subsequent period (1937-39), and this material tends to confirm his basic theses.

For the notes that follow, I shall use four basic sources: the work done by our Foundation on the DAF's Institute for Labour Science, and in particular a long essay on the social policies of the Nazi regime by Karl-Heinz Roth, which will be published in 1994; Rudiger Hachtmann's book Industriearbeit im Dritten Reich (1989) ("Industrial Labour in the Third Reich", subtitled "Research on labour conditions and wages in Germany from 1933 to 1945"); Matthias Frese's book, Betriebspolitik im Dritten Reich (1989), ("Company Policy in the Third Reich", subtitled "German Labour Front, employers and State bureaucracy in German industry, 1933-39"); and the book by Gunther Morsch, Arbeit und Brot (1993) ("Work and Bread", subtitled "Studies on the condition, mood, attitudes and behaviours of German workers, 1933-37").

I shall add figures taken from research on individual industries (for example, our Foundation's Daimler-Benz-Buch) and individual regions (for example, Bremen im Dritten Reich ("Bremen in the Third Reich") by Inge Marssolek and René Ott).

If we want to understand the policies of the Hitler regime in relation to the working class, it is not enough to consider only the problem of unemployment and the policies pursued to absorb it. We also have to examine the measures taken against the employed working class. These measures manifested themselves not so much as employment policies, but rather as industrial policy initiatives, and thus were introduced with a close collaboration between the political/state apparatus and big capital. This would be a suitable point at which to open discussion of the class transformations on which we have thus far only touched. What we have here is a terrain of technological innovation and of major modifications in the organisation of labour (in particular of its skill structure). It is a terrain of restructuring with characteristics very different from those of the period 1924-28 (the phase of so-called "rationalisation" and the drastic job-cuts following the introduction of labour-saving machinery, reorganisation of the labour process etc).

The figures that follow give a sense of the effects of the first big phase of restructuring, and give an idea of the class composition scenario at the moment when Hitler took power.

From 1925 to 1929, increases in productivity in industry as a whole reached a figure of 25%; the figure was 30% in capital goods sectors. In 1925, factory workers represented 46% of the workforce, while in 1933 they were 46.3%. There was no big change in the balance between between the various occupational strata: public functionaries and military personnel still stood at 17%, while figures for the self-employed had risen by about half a percent and in 1933 stood at 16.4% of the workforce. In the overall period 1925-33, one of the more striking phenomena was the expulsion of women from the productive process (a 12% drop).

In 1933, 25% of industrial workers were concentrated in the engineering and electrical engineering sectors. The food processing sector had 15%, textiles 13.1%, the building industry 12.5%, clothing 9.7%, wood 6.5%, minerals, 5.4%, brickworks 4.5%, chemicals 3.1%, press and publishing 2.3%, paper 2.1% and water, gas and electricity services 1.9%. In fact the importance of the engineering and electrical engineering sector within the workforce as a whole was much greater than appears from these figures, because in 1933 the sector had a potential workforce of 3,068,500 people, of whom only 1,862,600 were in employment - in other words the sector had 1,194,100 people unemployed); if we use this technique of adding both employed and unemployed within a sector, we find the building industry in second place, with an active population of 2,002,800, of whom only 1,105,600 were in employment.

These figures, albeit rough, show that the central nucleus of the German factory working class at the moment that Hitler took power was concentrated in the engineering and electrical engineering sectors. Therefore, if the Nazi state wanted to pursue policies aimed at moulding the working class to its ends it was going to have to intervene with industrial policy measures in the engineering and electrical engineering sector. The working class of the building industry, as we know, has very different characteristics to the factory working class. The textile and clothing sectors, for their part, were characterised by a majority presence of women in the workforce: 56.4% in textiles in 1933, and 68.2% in clothing.

Roughly speaking the geographic distribution of the factory system in Germany was as follows: the textile and clothing industry had a large concentration in Saxony and neighbouring regions, with a level of women's employment higher than the national average, touching on 70%. The coastal region embracing the big ports of the North (Hamburg, Bremen and Kiel), and the areas of Berlin, Lower Saxony, Central and Southern Germany, had the big car factories, and the factories for shipbuilding, machinery, electrical plant, light and heavy engineering. Heavy industry, coalmining and steel industry were concentrated in the Ruhr and the big industrial basin of Westfalia and the Rhineland.

Broadly speaking these were the three blocs of the factory working class which Hitler was going to have to integrate into his totalitarian state. These were also the most refractory sections of the factory working class, the part with the longest Socialist and Communist traditions, and with the strongest trade-union background.

If we examine the industrial policy initiatives of the period, and the course of restructuration and major technological innovation, certain things become apparent.

The industrial territories characterised by a large number of women workers (which in the employers' eyes presented a less urgent and serious problem of discipline) were left largely on the margins of the processes of innovation and restructuring. The textile and clothing industries were left in a limbo of stagnation, which saw neither major traumas nor major transformations. The most significant interventions were in the engineering sector, and thus in the construction of means of transport and machinery.

Why did women seem to represent the more docile component of the working class? Already during the Weimar Republic, women workers were discriminated against and kept in a position of subordination. Their wages were 30-40% lower than those of men for similar jobs, and in the auto industry their piecework earnings were less than half those of the men. A large part of the female working population had been excluded from the system of compulsory insurance. The decrees of the final Weimar governments introduced new regulations aimed at excluding certain strata of the population from social state benefits, and these had hit women particularly hard, especially young single women. During the Great Depression women's social condition worsened still further, because a public opinion campaign was launched against married women who worked; they were accused of taking work away from men, and of enjoying a double wage, their own and that of their husbands. When it came to layoffs, women were often the ones who suffered first.

Now, this is not the point to enter on a specific discussion of National Socialist state policy regarding women, although this topic has, in the past 20 years, seen some of the very best historiographical research on the Nazi period. Suffice to say that in its employment policies the Hitlerite state did not promote women's work - or rather it promoted the image of the housewife dedicated entirely to her husband and to reproduction. This does not mean that, in situations where women's employment was high, women were replaced by men; while in general the Hitlerian woman is seen as a breeder of pure-race exemplars, women's employment in industrial labour did not fall much in the years which preceded the Second World War (in percentage terms it went from 29.3% of industrial employment in 1933 to 25.2% in 1938).

However, in absolute terms the number of women employed in industry rose from 1,205,000 in 1933 to 1,549,000 in 1936. And in a number of decisive sectors such as engineering (but not auto) and electrical engineering, women's employment rose; it went, respectively, from 40.1% in 1933 to 41.6% in 1938, and from 37% in 1933 to 38.8% in 1938.

In the textile districts of Saxony, where 70% of the workforce was female, throughout the period preceding the War there were substantial layoffs and many sackings, because the textile industry was short of raw material as a result of the Nazi policy of autarchy. Thus textile wages, including those of the most skilled male workers, were five times lower than those of skilled workers in the auto industry. This meant that the textile districts of Saxony, Thuringia and the Rhineland were regions of great poverty during the whole period prior to World War II, and workers were encouraged to transfer to other industrial regions, where from 1936-36 onwards, key sectors of industry were experiencing shortages of skilled labour.

The regime was able to exploit these sectoral and regional imbalances to ensure the discipline of the working class.

What was happening in the highly industrialised areas was radically different from the situation in the textile districts, and was characterised by expanding sectors and technological innovation. However, before going on to cite examples from the auto and aeronautical industries, I want to look at an important fact of Germany's class composition at the moment when Hitler came to power, to which which I referred earlier. Namely the dramatic fragmentation of the working class, a fragmentation which had grown throughout the Weimar period. In fact in 1925, 30.4% of workers were employed in establishments with fewer than 200 employees, and 22.7% in establishments with a maximum of 3 employees. This too is an important fact for understanding why, once Hitler reached power, he encountered no great difficulties in disciplining and integrating the working class. As I said above, unfortunately historians have not analysed the characteristics of the micro-firms of that period; thus we do not know the nature of the technical and economic relations that existed between this enormous territory of the micro-firm (totalling about 96.3% of all firms) and the big companies. For example, was it a relationship more or less analogous to what we have today in the so-called "network company"? This lack of analysis makes it hard to understand the relations that would have existed between workers employed in micro-firms and workers employed in big companies of that period.

However, the industrial policies of the Nazi regime tended to favour a powerful drive towards concentration; the individual activities of self-employed workers and artisans were discouraged by means of specific decrees; employment in large factories was encouraged, and here - as we shall see shortly in the statistics on working hours - exploitation was more intense and discipline better guaranteed. The extension of weekly working hours was one of the more striking phenomena of Nazi industrial policy.

If we leave aside the textile districts, where the stagnation produced by the policy of autarchy had led to working weeks of between 14 and 36 hours, in the rest of industry and in particular in the key sectors, from 1934-35 onwards, there was a tendency to extend working hours well beyond the 8-hour day. There was a crisis in the labour market due to the fact that in the latter years of Weimar apprenticeships and professional training had fallen into decline, and this meant that workers in the more specialised jobs were working an average of 12-16 hour a day.

A decree of 26 July 1934 authorised working hours in the building industry and the service sector to be extended to 60 hours per week. This law opened the way for a general increase in working hours throughout industry, in some cases provoking excesses against which even the Nazi authorities themselves had to intervene. Inspections carried out in engineering factories in 1935-36 discovered that it was not unusual for workers to be working between 80 and 110 hours, in other words doing between 30 and 40 hours overtime per week.

This increase in working hours was combined with an extension of forms of payment geared to output - wage forms which permitted, among other things, considerable diffentiations of treatment within various categories of workers. The regime's labour policies, if we leave aside for the moment occupational measures, were such as to encourage the employers and management in industry to practise an intensive exploitation of the workforce of a kind that had perhaps never previously been seen in the history of the German working class.

If the workers initially submitted to these conditions, this was for two main reasons: most workers had come from a recent bad experience of unemployment, and since wage levels were very low the only way to ensure an income and a decent standard of living was to do a lot of overtime and accept the rigours of piecework. But these are also the premises for an attitude of greater resistance, of rejection of exploitation, and even of sabotage, as Tim Mason has documented - behaviours which began to be seen in the later period, when the war economy began to get into its stride.

In his research on the Italians who went to work in German factories post-1938, Cesare Bermani has collected personal accounts which suggest that German workers proposed to Italians that they work more slowly. We should perhaps remember that, while during the Nazi period Taylorisation was massively introduced into the majority of German factories, the work was not so much organised on assembly lines with automatic conveyors, but, as Hachtmann observes, was more based on "islands" of production, with individual and small-team piecework.

There were visible symptoms of a greater autonomy of the working class (or at least of some groups) at the moment when, once full employment had been established, and with the beginning of a boom based on massive state orders in the field of war production, the working class realised that it had a certain power. This power derived particularly from the fact that companies were complaining about shortages of skilled workers, and were thus disposed to improve terms and conditions of employment in order to attract labour.

Thus this period saw an increase in mobility of labour from factory to factory, sector to sector and region to region. Mobility figures for the motor industry fluctuate between 17% and 20%, and are indicative of the scale of the problem. Since many workers with Social Democratic or Communist sympathies in the Weimar Republic had been skilled or qualified workers, companies were rather inclined to turn a blind eye to their political pasts, for the sake of attracting skilled labour. There are documents of the DAF and the Gestapo indicating a note of alarm at this attitude of the employers.

However, in the course of 1936-37 we find an identifiable cycle of strikes, a kind of "moment of insubordination", which was precisely recorded in a document of the DAF (published in its entirety in No. 4/1991 of our journal 1999) which reported more than 200 work stoppages in the period from January 1936 to July 1937. Very few of these actions took place in large factories (exceptions were at Opel in Russelsheim, where on 25 June 1936 236 workers in the Body Plant went on strike; Auto Union in Berlin, where 600 trim workers went on strike; and in the shipyards at Bremen, where a Communist organiser, Ernst Novak, was arrested and tortured to death).

The other labour agitations took place mostly in motorway building sites, in small and medium-size factories, and in the textile districts where hunger ruled. The regime's repressive apparatus went into action. 11,687 people were arrested. There were 609 trials, 3,238 sentences comprising a total of 8,294 years in prison; 898 of those sentenced were reportedly members of the Communist Party, 730 members of the ADGB, and 473 of the SPD.

With bureaucratic precision, the DAF subdivided these labour disputes according to their causes: 21% were attributed to "Marxist agitation", 14% to "general instigation", 15% to "social unrest", 25% to "wage questions", and 22% to "other reasons". The most thorough-going research on this "cycle of struggles" has been that of Morsch, who gives it a hundred pages in his book Arbeit und Brot.

Within the Nazi trade unions there was a phenomenon of infiltration by Communist agitators (the KPD had shortly before proposed entrism into the National Socialist organisations). Thus between 1936 and mid-1937 there was a huge purge operation, which affected upwaards of 2,700 DAF cadres, who were accused of high treason. In fact, as research by both Mason and Morsch shows, the Communist Party actually had little to do with these labour disputes. They tended to be spontaneous incidents, often supported even by members of the Nazi trade unions, when conditions of work in factories and work yards became intolerable. (There was a similar phenomenon in Italy in 1929-31, when the regime was obliged to take a hard line against many Fascist trade unionists.)

Another crucial factor in the transformation of class composition was the state support given to the technologically advanced and innovative sectors, for example aeronautics. To give a few brief figures for the development of the aero industry in Bremen (taken from an essay by Dieter Pfliegensdorfer published 1988 in the first issue of our journal 1999), the Focke-Wolf company went from 300 employees in 1933 to 32,500 in 1944; and Weser Flugzeug Bau went from 410 employees in 1934 to 28,000 by 1944. The other nerve points of the German aero industry were at Rostock (Heinkel), Dessau (Junkers), and Bodensee in Bavaria (Dornier).

In Bremen there was a very particular problem of local political class composition that needed to be addressed. The central core of the working class consisted of highly politicised shipyard workers, among whom Communists and Social Democrats had maintained a solid base during the period of the Weimar Republic. The shipyards had been hit badly by crisis during the Weimar years, and a lot of local capital, in conjunction with capital coming from the maritime-commercial sector, had been looking for new investment opportunities in the aeronautical industry. Thus it was the shipyard employers themselves who were to create the new industry, with the result also of creating a new type of working class. As it turned out, recruitment into the industry did not draw so much on the freely available ex-shipyard workers, but more on skilled workers from the small engineering industries.

The projects of large-scale aircraft production and the constitution of a new working-class elite met with enthusiastic approval from the Nazi regime, which saw this as the realisation of one of its principal objectives. Driven by generous state orders, the Bremen aero industry underwent considerable expansion. Weser Flugzeug Bau was building under licence, whereas Focke-Wolf created its own models. The Focke-Wolf factory had a workforce which was very highly skilled, and which manifested esprit de corps and pride in the factory. It had a legendary managing director, an engineer by name of Tank, who himself did the test flights for the new models, much to the approval of his staff. Fokke-Wolf invested a lot in research and experimentation in helicopter technology; its aircraft won competitions all round the world.

Its personnel policies had two faces: on the one hand, a generous social policy (the building of homes for employees, intensive touristic and cultural activities, a very pleasant working environment, a spacious 1,000-seat canteen which could also be used for social events and political indoctrination, and free access to the Roselius library, with its 11,000 volumes; on the other hand, a system ruthless militarisation (identity cards, strict surveillance, the presence of the Gestapo in the workplace in addition to the normal factory police, with the pretext of protecting industrial-military secrecy).

In 1937, to accentuate the elite character of the factory, but also its military vocation, a school was opened for aeronautical-mechanical pupils, which was accessible only to those who belonged to a special section of the Hitler Youth. Shortly afterwards, the Fliegertechnische Vorschule was created, where the future technicians of the Luftwaffe's ground staff received training in advanced mechanics; these pupils lived in barracks close to the factory, and were under military discipline.

The accounts collected by contemporary historians among workers who had lived the Nazi period agree in stressing the excellent atmosphere in the factory, and the extent of collaboration with fellow workers; however, it took only a minor infraction, a lateness, an unjustified absence or an angry word for a worker to end up in a concentration camp; thus it sometimes happened that one's workmates would disappear for months at a time, with no explanation offered, and when they returned they were obliged to maintain silence as to where they had been.

This systematic operation of integration and militarisation did not, however, prevent pacifist leaflets appearing in the factory when war broke out, as well as refusals of overtime, and absenteeism reaching a level of 10%.

Another important aspect of the policies tending towards the integration of the working class (which has been analysed in particular by the literature on women) is that regarding the integrative social provisions provided by individual companies. These were so extensive as to constitute a parallel system to the state system. This integrative "welfare" system was particularly attentive to the problems of women workers with children; company policy with regard to women in the factory was expected to make provision for their role as mothers of the Aryan race.

Thus the overall social and industrial policies pursued by the Nazi regime can be seen as highly complex, inasmuch as they intervened selectively and in a differentiated manner on various individual components of the workforce. The result was the phenomenon that historians of the working class under Nazism have consistently highlighted: adaptation and submission, participation and alienation, atomisation and an enforced withdrawal into private space, at the same time as public space is invaded and pervaded by the mass apparatus of the regime, an apparatus which was not merely propagandistic, but which actually did offer an alternative society.

So we can say that the integration was not a general integration, but an integration aimed at particular new sectors.

Horkheimer, the former director of the Institut fur Sozialforschung in Frankfurt, used to say: "If you don't want to talk about capitalism, then don't talk about Nazism." However, in recent times the relationship between Nazism and capitalism has become increasingly the subject of a debate which, in some respects, is full of misunderstandings and is of no particular use: the debate on the so-called "modernisation" to which I referred earlier.

Unfortunately to enter into this debate would take us beyond the terms that we have set ourselves with this initiative. Our principal aim has been to commemorate the sixtieth anniversary of Hitler's rise to power, to reconstruct the basic stages of his advance to power, and to examine his policies as they affected the working class. We have examined the nature of that social territory which we call the "working class" during the period of the Great Depression, and we have recalled how a section of the German proletariat reacted to, and fought determinedly against, the rise of National Socialism.

We have had to leave out of account certain important aspects of the period, as for example the activities of the National Socialist factory cells. These played a decisive role, particularly in the years of the "Battle for Berlin", where they had important successes in the workplaces; the Nazis' factory cell organisation, the NSBO, reinforced the "extremist" and social-revolutionary wing of the Hitlerian movement, headed by the Strasser brothers; after the Nazis' taking of power, it was progressively marginalised, in part integrated into the DAF trade union apparatus, and in part brutally liquidated in the course of the various purges which took place from 1934 onwards.

However, if we organise any similar events in the future, we would expect to return to these developments. We would be interested to analyse the Nazi regime's industrial and social policies with more precision, in its three major phases: the phase of reduction of unemployment (1933-36), that of the Four Year Plan (from 1937 onwards) and that of the massive importation of foreign labour-power, to which the Nazis added the ever-growing army of prisoners of war and deportees, with a view to constructing a kind of forced-labour apparatus never before seen in modern industrial society.

When we approach the question of relations between National Socialism and capital, or more particularly between the Nazi state and big capital, we should not overlook the contribution made by the historiography of the ex-German Democratic Republic, both as regards the theoretical definition of these relations (characterised by schemas that are typical of the culture of Socialist countries), and as regards the empirical research, which is extremely rich, and which has produced results of considerable value (for example Dietrich Eicholz's research on the war economy).

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the entire scientific and apparatus of the ex-GDR was hit by a wave of purges and sackings, in the course of which the academic community of West Germany unfortunately demonstrated a cowardliness and spirit of revenge unworthy of a civilised country. Some historical research institutes that had won a worldwide respect, such as the Institut fur Wirtschaftsgeschichte of the ex-Academy of Sciences of East Berlin, founded by Jurgen Kuczynski - the great historian of working-class conditions - and the "Institute for the History of the Labour Movement" were abolished; others, such as the Institute of History at the Humboldt University in Berlin, underwent major staff changes.

The journal of our Foundation has been the only journalistic publication to document precisely and in detail this operation of purging and dismantling of the history departments of the ex-German Republic. The historians and researchers of the ex-GDR have reacted to this operation in several ways: some have given in, but others, such as Manfred Kossok, ex-Vice-rector of the University of Leipzig and director of the Institut fur Universal- und Kulturgeschichte (formerly under the directorship of Markow) stood up against the offensive. (Kossok, whom I had the pleasure of meeting last summer in Leipzig, died in February of this year.) Others launched a process of critical rethinking of the experience of the ex-GDR's historiography of Fascism (on this, see the interesting volume of essays entitled Faschismus und Rassismus, edited by Werner Rohr, published by Akademie Verlag, Berlin 1992).

This group of historians, which includes Dietrich Eicholz, set up in Berlin the Berliner Gesellschaft fur Faschismus- und Weltkriegsvorschung, to continue both the research work and the advancement of theoretical-methodological thinking on the Nazi phenomenon. This initiative has gone hand in hand with initiatives in West Berlin, such as the Berliner Forum fur Geschichte und Gegenwart, an organisation which intends to coordinate initatives with the Geschichtswerkstatten.

These few indications should suffice to show that there exists a broad array of people who are not inclined to surrender to the ruling mood of revisionism in Germany.

Incidentally, we should not forget the journal of our own Foundation, 1999. Zeitschrift fur Sozialgeschichte des 20. und 21. Jahrhunderts, which has a readership of 3,000 and more than a thousand subscribers - way ahead of any other similar journal. Thus there may be many shadows in German cultural life, many opportunistic and academic capitulations among historians, a worrying growth of the neo-Nazi phenomenon, and an attempt to cancel out the memory of the GDR, but at the same time there are many militant democratic forces at work.

However, it should be said that even the most committed historiography has for many years been unable to create new, richer, more complex and articulated interpretative schemas than those which were laid down in the 1960s and 1970s. The problematics seem substantially to have remained the same, and the research work has gone forward on a kind of plateau. What we lack is the creation of new historical paradigms and new interpretative perspectives, and this has sometimes been a source of weakness in otherwise impressive and accurate research projects. It has left us disadvantaged in the face of the superficial pamphleteering of revisionist historiography, which may lack in documentational evidence, but which has a devastating subversive energy, and is capable of proposing new syntheses and new "myths". This subversive energy is given plausibility by the media, who treat the revisionist theses as "scoops", and it is not neutralised by "serious" research, because it has a different form from that of traditional "historical discourse".

This revisionism is not dangerous so much for the things that it says, as for the ways in which it says them; it has created a diferent kind of historical discourse, dislocating completely the terrain of cultural comparison, and bypassing research on documents and sources.

In order to confront confront this revisionism, it is crucial that we take account of this change in the status of historical discourse.

At this point it would be worth asking how Italian historiography, particularly that of the self-styled "Left", compares to the more impressive German and Anglo-Saxon research on the Nazi period.

In the preparations for this conference, Pier Paolo Poggio examined the principal history journals being published in Italy today (including Rivista di storia contemporanea, Passato e presente, Studi storici, etc). Going back over the past 15 years, he found only one article dealing with the relationship between Nazism and the working class in the 1930s. Needless to say, it was an article by Tim Mason, published posthumously by Gustavo Corni in a Trento journal. For the rest, the only indication in an Italian research context of the progress made in this field by German historiography has been the occasional comment from Enzo Collotti. Nor does the issue seem to have sparked much interest on the cultural pages of L'Unita or Il Manifesto. Since there is no doubt that there are specialists who know this literature well, one can only presume that they have not thought it worthwhile publicising its results. Thus, what the public knows about the history of Nazism is what it is handed from the colour supplements, where vulgar journalism pours forth rivers of banalities and commonplaces on the occasion of historical anniversaries, or from the works of revisionist historians, eagerly translated by our publishing houses and then popularised on TV chat-shows.

Our meeting today has been an attempt to resist this trend, since we believe that this dramatic page of history should not be reserved for specialists. It is so full of meaning and warnings that it should be a basic axis of the political-historical culture of each and every one of us. In the absence of this, it is hard to see how one can have a sure sense of democracy. It is, thus, a story which has to be told in a language which is clear, simple and accessible - told with all the passions of great civil and political struggles.

[This is the text as submitted to CS. Formatting has been updated for MS Word, but diacriticals have not been inserted.]
Updated 1 January 1997.

The Politics of Debt:
Social Discipline and Control [1]

I. Introduction
During the 1980s and 1990s debt has become a serious political and social issue. This is true at the personal level and at the public level. The huge number of personal bankruptcies, insolvencies, bad debt and currency crises, culminating in Black Wednesday in September of 1992, brought home to public consciousness the awesome power of money. Debt is just one aspect of the changed perception of money. During the 1980s, not only in Britain, but all over the world, the attempt to control public expenditure, to lower wages, to expand part-time work etc., has meant a more direct subjection of every aspect of life to money. Against the background of a concerted attack on collective provisions, access to medicine, housing, education, transport, etc., depend much more directly on the quantity of money we possess. At the same time as governments tried to freeze public expenditure, access to provisions such as, for example, healthcare became more and more dependent upon the ability to pay.

The sheer misery of poverty and homelessness in the 1990s is there for all to see. However, the increase in poverty is not really surprising against the background of the credit-sustained boom of the 1980s. In fact, the level of repossessions, personal bankruptcies, etc., is intrinsically linked to the 'prosperous' 1980s. During the 1980s, the principal means of containing inflationary pressure was the control of that part of public expenditure which supported policies of social redistribution. Those dependent upon government welfare spending were held responsible for the containment of inflation through a reduction of public spending relative to GDP. Although the overall level of public expenditure increased, individual benefit rates were cut. Further, the attempt to balance credit-expansion through a policy of state austerity was reinforced by the integration of social policy with labour market policy, as emphasised by the government's training programmes, tax and poverty traps, as well as imposed reliance on credit-based consumption. Furthermore, the increase in low pay was supported by the deregulation of wage councils, mandatory competitive tendering as well as the weakening of trade union control of the labour market. Wage council protection for a number of workers in low paid employment was repealed, making it legally possible to reduce wages below poverty levels. Local authorities, as well as the NHS, were forced through financial pressure, compounded by mandatory competitive tendering, to restrain wages. This was achieved either by contracting services out to private operators or by using the threat of contracting out to achieve compliance from trade unions with wage restraint. As a consequence wages declined and conditions deteriorated (Ascher, 1987; Rowthorn, 1992). The discrepancy between high and low paid workers increased dramatically over the last 15 years to 'levels greater than anything since the 1940s' (S. Brittan, Financial Times, 6.1.94). The socialisation of the debt problem through worsening conditions, low-paid work, as well as tax traps, poverty traps, rent arrears, and homelessness, was compounded by the shift in emphasis from direct to indirect taxation, particularly the increase in VAT and National Insurance contributions, and high real interest rates. The attempt at reducing public expenditure as a proportion of GDP did not only trap people in poverty but, also, did not let them out of debt.

This paper looks at the politics of debt in Britain over the last 10 years. The aim is to explore this issue in terms of social discipline. Throughout the paper, the notion of 'class' is used predominantly in sociological terms. [2] This is because the focus is on the disorganisation of class relations through social divisions which deny social cooperation and solidarity. The connection between poverty and gender, racism, ageing, disability, and low-income, though not new, has been reinforced over the last decade. The paper examines the policy of debt under Major and concludes with an assessment of recent debates on 'citizenship' by all major political parties.

II. Debt and Social Division
During the 1980s, the ratio of household debt to disposal income increased dramatically. It had 'remained steady at 40-50 per cent in the 1970s and early 1980s, rose from about 45 per cent in 1982 to just over 50 per cent in 1984, and then to over 90 per cent in 1990' (Dunn and Smith, 1994, p. 84). The casualisation of employment and financial insecurity were mirrored by a growing ratio of debt to future wage income, particularly affecting those who appeared to benefit from the 1980's boom by, for example, home-ownership. However, many had to borrow in order to secure basic needs, whilst their income proved inadequate to sustain repayment. The connection between low income and credit was reinforced by social security reforms, the deregulation of wage protection, the weakening of trade union control of the labour market, government work-for-your-benefit training programmes and, particularly, the adoption of the means-test to determine most social security benefits. Against the background of housing benefit reforms and rising rent charges, many struggled to pay their rent. Indeed, during the 1980s, rent arrears was the most common debt problem (see Berthoud/Kempson, 1990). Furthermore, government's social fund, which replaced Family Income Support in 1989, had to be repaid. The fund is an interest-free loan for people with special needs. Although claimants might be assessed as eligible for entitlement, the payments are limited by local DSS budgets, imposing a ceiling on the total amount a local DSS office can provide. In its first year of operation the social fund was '40 per cent over budget' (McGlone, 1990, p. 168). Those who successfully apply at a time when money is still available are expected to repay these loans from subsistence level Income Support (see Ford, 1991).

Many of the very poor were excluded from credit-facilities because they were denied a bank account. They relied on legally registered or illegal loan sharks who charged astronomically high rates of interest (see ibid.) and resorted, in a number of cases, to physical assault in case of non-payment. Available evidence supports the association between poverty and credit and between low income and debt. [3] The increase in part-time, low-paid work, and means-tested benefits, meant that basic needs had often to be secured on the basis of borrowing, precipitating a cycle of debt as additional credit was required to secure repayments of outstanding loans. The situation is particularly painful for lone mothers. [4] During the 1980s, the number of lone mothers dependent on state benefits for their income increased from 320,000 in 1979 to more than 700,000 in 1989 (ibid.). At the same time, the percentage of working lone mothers dropped while those in part-time work were often excluded from eligibility for 'employment protection measures such as redundancy payments, unemployment benefit or sick pay' (ibid., p. 72). Additionally, their access to unemployment benefit is threatened by the requirement to show adequate child care arrangements before qualifying as 'unemployed'. There is a lack of nurseries and for many lone parents a nursery place is often beyond their means. Their position as unwaged workers in a waged society is made worse by the denial of unemployment benefit and child-care facilities. They depend on access to credit.

The connection between poverty and credit has not changed in the 1990s. A recent study (Kempson et al., 1994) argues that half the mothers in low-income families regularly go without food to secure basic needs of their children. In the 1990s, the attacks on single mothers who are 'married to the state' rather than a breadwinner and the moral panics orchestrated by the Conservative government since 1993 targeting also beggars, young offenders and pensioners (see McRobbie, 1994), indicates that, in the pursuit of public expenditure cuts, welfare support of conditions is an expense to be avoided. However, not only 'claimant groups' are trapped, the government's education policy caught many students in debt. During the 1980s, their financial resources declined while essential resources, such as books, rose in price. In 1989, students were denied access to housing benefit and then expected to meet extra costs such as the Poll Tax. Since October 1990 the student grant has been frozen and a complementary 'loan system' instituted. The company charged with providing student loans has now lent £700 million and the figure is rising (Guardian, 2.8.94). By 1993-94, 20 per cent of students were reported to have considered abandoning their studies because of financial hardship. Debts amounting to several thousand pounds are common. This situation is likely to get worse because from September 1994 maintenance grants are to be cut by 10 per cent a year for the next three years (Observer, 21.8.94). The costs to sustain the University education of children are particularly painful for working class families lacking the private means to supplement grants and for middle class families whose earnings are too high to qualify for a student grant and who are, at the same time, trapped by mortgage debt which they find difficult to service.

III. From the 1980s to the 1990s
The conditions for 'Thatcherism's' relative success were the political defeat of the organised working class and the world boom of the 1980s, unleashed by the global liberalisation of financial markets and sustained by an explosion of international credit. However, these conditions were ephemeral. The crash of 1987 indicated that the neo-liberal policies of the 1980s had reached an impasse. Although the world boom was sustained for a while after the crash in 1987 by continued credit-expansion, the foundations of the boom were rapidly crumbling. The bubble, created by credit-expansion, burst in the late 1980s. At the same time, average wages continued to keep up with inflation and, despite mass unemployment and an expanding casualised and low paid labour force, the attempt to lower unit labour costs failed. This was particularly true in Britain. The Thatcher governments of the 1980s presided over an increase in private and corporate debt, persistent inflationary pressures, mass unemployment, and comparatively high unit labour costs. [5] In Britain, high unit labour costs were adjusted to competitive price rates at the world market through currency devaluation and a policy of social dumping.

The last decade did not represent a frontal assault on the working class. Sections of the working class enjoyed a growth in living standards, even if they paid the price of inten-sification of labour. [6] The use of public expenditure focused on the disorganisation of class premised on the divisive orientation of collective welfare provision to the market. This was brought about by, for ex-ample, contracting out of services, deregulation of wage protection, in-tegration of employment and social policies and encouragement of property ownership. The attack concentrated on those sections of the working class, such as women, young workers, the unemployed and 'racial' minorities, which could be separated from the organised labour movement much more easily than others. Under the Major government, these workers continued to be disciplined through debt and precarious (short-term, casual, non-unionised, unhealthy, cheap and often dangerous) work. However, austerity encroached upon the apparent beneficiaries of the 1980s: they too found themselves in increasingly strained circumstances.

The continued mugging by the state of those pushed to the margins of society continued unabated under the Major government. However, we must be careful with the use of our terms. The state does not mess about with poor people, the homeless, the unemployed, the disabled, the low paid, the financially insecure and all others upon whose labouring existence national wealth rests. It governs in the national interest and personal freedom. The issue of 'freedom' is specific: 'poverty is not unfreedom' (cf. Joseph and Sumption, 1979) and intensification of work and lower wages (i.e. lower unit labour costs) are in the national interest. Deteriorating conditions and hardship improves Britain's position on the world market and future prosperity will derive from improvements in Britain's global competitiveness, offering better conditions and affluence for all in the long run. In other words, deteriorating conditions are only transitory as improved economic performances will eventually trickle down to the original producer and so rectify present conditions of hardship in the long run. Compliance with hardship is thus declared to be in the national interest and economic uncertainty becomes, by implication, a symbol of patriotic endurance. Safeguarding of the national interest requires lower public spending and a balanced budget, wage restraint, increased labour productivity, low rates of inflation and a sound balance of trade. The Thatcher governments ruled in the national interest by disciplining social relations through poverty, debt, unemployment, intensification of work, anti-union policies, economic insecurity and harsh conditions associated with the reform of the welfare state to a warfare state. These achievements were endorsed as being in the national interest: the fundamental challenge to the Thatcher government by the miners in 1984/5 was denounced as an action by the 'enemy within'.

The vilification of single mothers by the Major governments continued previous attacks on the so-called dependency culture. That poor people go hungry is, in this view, not a consequence of welfare policies, debt and poverty, unemployment and a labour market policy which is premised on the casualisation of employment and low pay as well as 'economic conscription'. Rather, the '12 million people who live in households with less than half of average earnings' (Guardian, 1993, p. 6) lack responsibility. They simply go hungry because they 'buy the wrong food' (A. Widdecombe, Junior Social Security Minister, according to Guardian, 4.6.91). The position of unwaged people in a waged society makes them not only exploitable for moral crusaders who proclaim the virtues of law and order as well as family values. They also become exploitable by creditors demanding repayment and legal action. Families on benefit or low income are forced into debt to provide essentials such as food, housing, fuel and clothing (see Kempson, et al., 1994). The other side of a politics of debt is physical and mental illness (see ibid.), symptoms of a desperate struggle to make ends meet. For some, prostitution becomes a means of survival. [7] The rationale behind, for example, the attack on lone mothers is not that of reducing the overall burden of public expenditure, or of encouraging them to re-enter the labour market. They are already on the labour market seeking proper employment, and the savings from further cuts in individual benefit rates would hardly amount to a significant reduction in the overall level of public expenditure. The rationale is the imposition of discipline and control effected through vilification, ghettoisation and financial insecurity.

The disciplining power of debt reinforced social division and, at the same time, united people through the common experience of financial distress. The moral panics of 1993 can be interpreted as an attempt to emphasise the difference between beggars and lone mothers, on the one hand, and those whose own financial distress still distinguished them favourably from the plight of the unwaged in a waged society, on the other. Those on the edge of poverty were thus invited to feel comfortable in comparison with beggars. They were thus given the opportunity to look down and to point their fingers at beggars. Unfortunately for the government, this attempt at setting people against each other back-fired. The finger was pointed at government.

There is sharp difference between the debt economy of the 1980s and the 1990s. During the 1980s the boom vindicated the market-based restructuring of the welfare state and the control of people through poverty and tax traps. Despite severe wage pressure for some workers, average earnings increased during the 1980s. According to Glyn (1992, p. 81), 'aggregate real incomes fell by 5%. Those workers who kept their jobs, however, saw a substantial (28%) increase in their real wages.' Alongside property ownership, 'most people therefore felt themselves better off year by year' (German, 1993, p. 16). In other words, social conflict was contained through wage increases which far outstripped the rate of inflation at the same time as the increase in debt and poverty discouraged solidarity with those whose poverty was the mirror image of the 'prosperous' 1980s.

However, the ready extension of credit and the coercion entailed by the collection of debt are two sides of the same coin. The lifeblood of the boom was credit and the price for the control of credit expansion was paid by the working class, particularly the unemployed, so-called ethnic minorities, women and the impoverished. Those fortunate enough to participate in the boom were disciplined by the threat of marginalisation. They faced harsh penalties should they fail to respond adequately to market forces or should they be in disagreement with 'management's right to manage'. The sack, or loss of wages, or even a reduction in overtime, meant that contractual agreements on interest payments might be disrupted. During the 1980s, the incentive not to risk the bases of life, such as housing, education, health, clothing, heating, and so forth, helped to undermine solidarity and made social relations exploitable for a policy of state austerity. The risk of debt and the futility of industrial militancy was for many confirmed by the miners' strike of 1984-5. It showed the consequences of disagreement and the misery caused by lack of money. The social conflict was contained on the basis of what Hirsch (1991) refers to as the 'southafricanisation' of metropolitan countries. This characterisation is shared by Negri (1989, p. 97) who argues that the 'ideal of modern-day capitalism is apartheid'. However, and as Negri insists, unlike Hirsch, apartheid is the ideal but not the reality. The reality was an accumulation of debt on future surplus value production and an accumulation of debt on future wage income. Overt forms of social conflict were avoided through credit-expansion and indebtedness as well as the marginalisation of those deemed inessential. The market based reform of social provision involved a disorganisation of class relations distinguishing between the strong and able and the weak and marginalised. The politics of market self-regulation was in fact a politics of poverty and debt.

The 'dual society', that is, the polarisation of social relations between the poor and indebted, on the one hand, and average wage earner and indebted, on the other, was not an end in itself. Rather, it was a condition of containing social conflict on the basis of polarisation. This polarisation looked more and more fragile the longer the boom progressed. Following on from the loosening of monetary policies in 1982 and especially after the crash of 1987 and from the support to the consumer boom through the tax-cutting budgets of 1987 and 1988, the growth of debt as a proportion of future income became more and more unsustainable. Coinciding with the passage of the Community Charge (poll tax) through parliament in 1988, introduced in Scotland in 1989 and in England and Wales in 1990, government responded to growing unease on financial markets over the deterioration of the so-called Lawson boom by tightening monetary policy. The social security reforms of 1988 and 1989, as well as the poll tax, supported the pound through a tight fiscal regime at the same time as interest rates were raised from 7.5 per cent in May 1988 to 13 per cent in November of that year, and to 15 per cent in October 1989. Interest rates remained at 15 per cent for just over a year until they were cut to 14 per cent, coinciding with entry into the ERM in November 1990. The poll tax was an ill-devised attempt to make people pay the costs for the growth in credit. However, its introduction indicated that the credit-boom of the 1980s had reached an impasse and that the time to pay up had come.

IV. Debt and Social Discipline in the 1990s
When interest rates increased in the late 1980s, the cost of borrowing became intolerable for many. Although average wages continued to increase up to 1992, disposable income declined through a combination of inflation, increases in indirect tax, and higher borrowing costs. Debt squeezed household income. The debt hangover was enormous: 'Total personal debt trebled between 1980 and 1992, from £100 billion to £ 300 billion', making 'actual wage levels today lower than they might at first seem' (German, 1993, p. 19). The property owning democracy of the 1980s was not only held responsible for enjoying benefits which had not been earned. It also transformed into a republic of debt.

By the late 1980s, one in nine households struggled to make ends meet (see Berthoud/Kempson, 1990). In the second half of 1989 alone, the rate of home loan arrears between 6 and 12 months rose by 29 per cent and about 450,000 to 600,000 families were said to be two months in arrears (Guardian, 5.3.90). These arrears were not confined to the poorer regions but included wealthy areas in the south. The UK joined the ERM with interest rates at 14 per cent (down from 15 per cent) while inflation was at 9.5 per cent in 1990 (up from 7.8 per cent in 1989). During 1991 interest rates declined further from 13.5 per cent in February to 10.5 per cent in September, compared with an inflation rate of 5.9 per cent. During 1992, interest rates declined dramatically, especially after the suspension of the pound's membership in the ERM on September 14th, 1992. However, they still stood at 7 per cent in November 1992, compared with an inflation rate of 3.7 per cent. [8] Real interest rates remained high, representing a huge transfer of resources from private debtors to banks and building societies who, themselves, were struggling with high rates of bad debt exposure. [9] The reduction in interest rates did not indicate a relaxation of monetary policy. The politics of monetary tightness continued as real interest rates remained high. At the same time, fiscal policy was tightened and public sector pay frozen.

During the 1990s, the monetary squeeze on debtors was enormous. Unemployment increased from the official rate of 5.9 per cent in 1990 to 8.3 per cent in 1991 and 10.1 per cent in 1992. Bankruptcies increased dramatically, per year, from 9,365 in 1989 to 35,940 in the first nine month of 1992. During the same period, company liquidations rose from 9,427 to 24,825. Manufacturing output contracted and the volume of retail sales declined dramatically. The GDP dropped from 2.1 per cent in 1989 to -2.2 per cent in 1991 until it 'recovered' to -0.6 per cent in 1992. The PSBR which had shielded the pound in the late 1980s from sustained speculative pressure, moved from -14 per cent in 1988-89 [10] to a staggering 36.5 per cent in 1992-3. At the same time, the amount of outstanding bank and building society lending increased year by year, reaching £622.8 billion in 1992 compared with £504 billion in 1989. Indeed, as the Financial Times (19.10.92) reported, 'mortgages in arrears are quickly approaching total building society capital.' House prices collapsed. The number of repossessions reached staggering proportions: 75,540 properties were repossessed in 1991, 68,540 in 1992, and 58,540 in 1993, compared with 15,810 in 1989 (McKie, 1994, p. 119). This 'socialisation' of the debt problem was reinforced by an equally dramatic increase in mortgage payment-arrears: The number of mortgages in arrears in 1989 stood at a level of 80,600. By 1992, this figure had increased dramatically to 352,000 and had fallen slightly to 295,500 by 1994 (CSO, 1995). The property owning democracy collapsed under the threat of debt, repossessions and homelessness. According to the Independent (19.7.93), around 150,000 young people were becoming homeless each year. The 'unofficial homeless' both actual and potential in England in the 1990s is judged to be approximately 1,712,000 (Burrows and Walenotwics, 1992). This estimate includes people sleeping rough (c. 98,000), unauthorised tenants or squatters (c. 50,000), single people in hostels (c. 60,000), single people in lodgings (c. 77,000), insecure private tenants (c. 317,000), and the hidden homeless (c. 1,200,000). (Atkinson and Durden, 1994, pp. 193-4).

Repossessions, evictions, homelessness, and loss of wages and jobs, were not the only forms taken by the socialisation of the debt problem. When the property market deteriorated, many home owners were left with negative equity. By the fourth quarter of 1994, 1,300,000 were left with a negative equity (Observer, 22.1.95). That is, their mortgage debt was higher than the present market value of their ill-affordable property. While many home owners were in arrears with their mortgage obligations, they found it very hard to solve their cash-flow problem by selling and moving to cheaper accommodation. They, too, were trapped in debt. Their assets changed into liabilities. While the Chancellor Norman Lamont endorsed rising unemployment and business failures as a price worth paying for the defeat of inflation (cf. Smith, 1993, p. 188), the transformation of a property owning democracy into a democracy of debt undermined the most popular policy of the Thatcher era. Mortgage default not only threatened Labour voters but included also the traditional Tory support. Their faith in 'Thatcherism' which had already taken a critical turn with the introduction of the poll tax and particularly the uniform business rate, [11] was broken against the background of repossessions, negative equity and job threats. Indeed one reason for the crisis of the Conservatives is the 'crisis among the lower middle classes' (German, 1993, p. 4) who, traditionally, supported the Conservatives. 'Their businesses bankrupted, their homes repossessed and even managerial jobs under attack' (ibid.), they have found 'that the market economy intended for the working class has instead come to their own door with a vengeance' (Hutton, 1994, p. 2). Debt, as Hutton reports, 'has suddenly become the millstone around the middle-class neck' (ibid.).

The increase in poverty, economic insecurity and financial distress is not just caused by low wages but also by the level of taxation, the debt hangover and the replacement of full-time employment by part-time employment and interest rates outstripping rates of inflation. In an attempt to contain the fiscal crisis of the state and cap consumer spending, the government introduced VAT of 8 per cent on domestic fuel in April 1994 proposing that this should rise to 17.5 per cent in April 1995. The proposal was defeated in December 1994. In addition, the Spring budget of 1994 saw the freezing of personal allowances, a 5 per cent reduction in the married couples allowance, an increase in national insurance contributions, and a cut in mortgage interest relief from 25 per cent to 20 per cent. From October 1994, the government levied a new 3 per cent insurance premium tax, and from November a new air passenger tax. By April 1994, the average tax burden, in direct and indirect taxes, totalled 35 per cent of earnings. This is set to rise to 36.2 per cent in 1995-96 as compared with a figure of 32.2 per cent in 1978-79 under Labour. The burden of taxation falls most heavily on those sections of the working class existing on below average earnings. For those on three-quarters average earnings, the increase was from 27.4 per cent of income in 1978-79 to 31.2 per cent in 1994-95. However, those with two children on ten times average earnings would see the burden of taxation rise from 37.3 per cent in 1992-93 to just 37.7 per cent in 1994-95 (Financial Times, 24.1.94). In a survey of the period from 1979, William Keegan (Observer, 16.1.94) indicated that despite the well publicised reduction in the upper marginal rates of tax since 1979, tax increases since 1993 have led to a position where the average family has a greater direct tax burden than in 1979. During the 1980s, the increase in VAT and higher National Insurance contributions offset much of the putative benefit from lower direct taxes. At the same time, the direct burden in fact increased - for those earning less than £78,000 a year - because of the erosion of tax allowances.

The socialisation of debt through high real interest rates was thus compounded by fiscal tightness. Government sought to contain inflation by making people pay-up. Despite lower retail prices and a decline in the rate of inflation to below 4 per cent since 1992, consumer spending declined as people tried to service their debt. However, many people not only failed to reduce their debt but were also compelled to increase their borrowing. According to a report in the Financial Times (9.7.93), the number of people getting into debt increased during the second quarter of 1993. This is not surprising because the difficulties in securing basic needs means that repayment obligations might not be sustained, rendering additional credit a means to secure the servicing of previous credit-obligations.

The recession of the 1990s led to a dramatic shake out of labour. Yet, average wage increases declined only slowly during the early part of the recession from 9.5 per cent in January 1990 to 7.25 per cent in January 1992. Since then, however, average wage increases declined dramatically to 5.5 per cent in September 1992, and to 3.75 per cent in April 1993. The decline in disposable income coincided with massive redundancies. Employers laid off workers and curbed overtime in an attempt to reduce costs. 'By February [1992] 1,500 were loosing their jobs every day' (German, 1993, p. 11). The rate of unemployment increased from a low of 5.6 per cent in April 1990, to over 10 per cent in 1992 (see McKie, 1993). The sustained effort by the Major government to make people pay through poverty, job uncertainty and insecurity did not involve, as it did during the 1980s, a divisive attempt at mugging those in precarious work. Although the mugging of the poor continued unabated under Major, the middle classes suffered as banks cut back on employment, as companies seeking to reduce wage costs cut down on their white collar staff, and as government itself, including its National Health Service, announced job losses for the middle-class salariat. The generalisation of the debt problem coincided with the generalisation of unemployment. Cost saving exercises meant that not only blue collar workers were laid off but, also, that white collar staff had to go.

The disciplining powers of debt, fiscal tightness, and precarious work, can not be overestimated. Indeed, the politics of debt amounts to an attempt at disciplining social relations to monetary scarcity and a life of hard and unrewarding labour to sustain basic needs. The incentive not to endanger the bases of life, such as housing, education, health, clothing, heating, and so forth, helped to undermine resistance to wage reductions and the introduction of new working practices. People know it is bad. They see their neighbour's sudden unemployment, they know what 'repossession' and eviction mean. They know what it means to struggle with inextricable debt problems under conditions of fiscal tightness, precarious employment and wage restraint. They struggle to make ends meet, to hold on to their flats and to maintain their level of consumption. Tax increases bite into their budgets. They know that loss of employment and wages might mean loss of almost everything. They also know that social security benefits are tailored around the incentive effect of finding new employment in a society of mass unemployment. They do not need to be told that social security benefits involve a decision about the amount of money on which a human being can be kept alive. Fear and anxiety makes people agreeable to comply. The risk of unemployment and financial insecurity renders obedience a prudent response to government policy and managerial decision. In other words, social resistance against a policy of state austerity was replaced by individualised struggles to maintain existing positions of employment, income and conditions. The transformation of a property owning democracy into a republic of debt meant a control of social relations through fear of unemployment and financial ruin. The collection of unpaid debt during the 1990s through repossessions, evictions, collapse of consumer credit and living on less in order to service interest obligations imposed upon the republic of debt the principle of the free market: pay-up or else!

The increase in unemployment, and the risk of personal bankruptcy, supported a dramatic squeeze on both private and public sector wage levels. According to a CBI survey, 'manufacturing pay rises between April and June 1993' were the 'lowest for at least 16 years' (German, 1993, p. 17) [12]. In the public sector, excluding managers and administrators, pay increases were very low and were held back by a public sector wage freeze at 1-1.5 per cent for 1993-4, now extended for a second year. Against the background of the tax increases in 1994-95 by £8.4 billion above their level in 1992-93 and a further £8 billion in extra taxes to be imposed between 1994-95 and 1996-97, there appears to be no let-up in the attempt to lower wages and to restrain spending power through fiscal pressures. Although unemployment increased markedly during the 1990s, the rate of unemployment appeared to drop from 1993 onwards. However, by Spring 1994, almost half a million people (460,000) counted by the government as in work were in reality either on government training programmes or existing as unpaid family workers (Employment Gazette, October 1994, Table 7.1). Of the remaining 24.5 million workers in the UK, 18.5 were in full-time employment whilst 6.0 million had part-time work. The increase in employment concealed the loss of 40,000 full time jobs compensated by the creation of 144,000 part time jobs (Financial Times, 23.4.94). Despite the increase in employment, the total number of working hours in the UK continued to fall (ibid.). The Department of Employment recorded in Spring 1994 that redundancies were running at the same rate as in Autumn 1993, with manufacturing employment hit the hardest suffering monthly falls in employment of 6,000 workers in May and 9,000 in June 1994. Even after the government's attempts to redefine, for statistical purposes, the concept of employment, the seasonally adjusted rate of claimant unemployment stood at 9.2 per cent of the workforce in the Summer of 1994.

V. Social Division and Responsible Citizenship
During the 1980s, debt, precarious work, and the daily struggle to make ends meet were largely confined to the working class. 'Tory voters have looked on happily as employers' rights to determine pay and work conditions have been steadily increased, never thinking casualisation would come to them. The ready capacity to hire and fire was meant to enable the Tory-voting classes better to manage the wage bill of the working classes, whose lives they regulated' (Hutton, 1994, p. 2). [13] The erosion of positive rights and entitlements associated with the Keynesian era had been pushed aside during the 1980s: the right to welfare was attacked; the right to employment disappeared; the right to housing was delegated to market forces, the right to health care became more and more selective; the right to education was eroded; the right to enjoy values other than material gains was restricted to those financially able to entertain a happy life. Rights were redefined: instead of the right to employment, the right to go in search of employment ('get on your bike') was proclaimed. Other rights either disappeared or were severely restricted: the right to campaign for higher wages, health and safety standards, for example, became more and more restricted, if not abolished altogether. [14] The erosion of 'rights' coincided with the privatisation of services, deregulation of wage protection and the encouragement of private insurance against risks, such as ill-health.

However, 'debt' is a great 'equaliser', and also a force of social division. The discipline through debt, job uncertainty, economic insecurity and psychological distress has reached the middle classes. As Hutton (1994, p. 2) indicates, with 'personal debt in relation to post-tax income now the highest in the industrialised West and house prices drifting, nobody can be carefree'. The imposition of financial insecurity needs to be seen against the background of rising unemployment and the creation of new types of employment. 'Full-time jobs only represent three fifths of Britain's jobs' and only 'a fifth of new jobs are the full-time pensionable jobs that the middle classes used to cherish' (Hutton, 1994, p. 2). The norm is part-time work, self-employment or fixed contract jobs. This norm is not new. It used to be the norm for the unskilled and semi-skilled and unemployed, and of those in low-paid employment. This has not changed. What has changed is that people like the junior manager, the partner at a City firm and the university lecturer participate unhappily and reluctantly in the new world of uncertainty and distress.

The consequence of the 1980's expansion of credit is the 1990's generalisation of a policy of social dumping. The differentiation between the unemployed and low paid, on the one hand, and the employed at the higher end of the wage scale, on the other, is changing its form. The so-called two-third society of the 1980s has been broken up into one-third societies. The marginalised are joined by the nearly marginalised. The policy of austerity divided the former two-third into the 'newly insecure' (cf. Hutton, 1993) and the full time pensionable employed. The latter are covered by collective bargaining and enjoy employment rights associated with the so-called affluent society of the 1950s and 1960s. The 'newly insecure' are those at the 'upper end of income distribution' but in casualised short-term employment and with considerable mortgage debt (ibid.). The division of social relations according to income and conditions is not new. However, it is being recomposed. From the 1960s onwards it existed in the form of a consumer society which was supported by full-time, pensionable income for the majority of the working population. Since the late 1980s this applies, as Hutton argues, only to one third of the population. Although still employed 'to manage the life of the working class' (cf. Hutton, 1994), the middle class are at risk of 'proletarianisation'. Their debt burden is made worse through cost saving reductions in the white collar labour force, the risk of unemployment, attempts to improve efficiency through intensification of work, casualisation of employment and wage pressure (including the extension of performance related pay to hitherto protected professions). The attempt to make bureaucracies and government institutions leaner and fitter, has not only involved the intensification of work but, also, financial distress, imposed premature retirement, unemployability at middle age as well as anxiety and fear that the intensification of work means growing uncertainty about future employment. Jobs for life are under threat and the reorganisation of the health service, higher education, financial business and the banking system, and Westminster's bureaucracy, make the condition of the middle classes more and more comparable with those of the working classes. The management of the life of the working class is, itself, casualised and made more efficient in terms of cost and intensity of work.

Compared with the 1980s, the Major governments are not just treading the same path as the Thatcher governments. They do so under fundamentally changed conditions. Under Major, 'rights and entitlements' associated with the institutionalisation of labour's political power after the second world war, continued to be pushed aside. However, while continuing the policy of deregulation, labour market liberalisation and the tough public order policies of the Thatcher period, it failed to win the approval of traditional Tory supporters. The Major governments are unpopular not because of their deflationary policies but because deflation hurts those who benefited from the policy of state austerity of the 1980s. Although the Major administrations failed miserably to balance their books, they were successful in reducing inflation to a record low. [15] However, the costs are grave: traditional Tory support amongst the middle classes is being alienated. This was expressed in their revolt against the poll tax, especially the component of business rate. The anti-poll tax movement raised the issue of a politics of debt to the level of mass resistance against the awesome power of money (see CSE, 1989; Holloway, 1990). Opposition to the tax straddled wide sections of society, including small business. Similarly, non-payment of the poll tax was advocated for a number of reasons, ranging from liberal conceptions focusing on the 'unfairness' of the tax to those emphasising class politics. The homogeneity of the movement was not achieved so much through political organisation but, rather, through the money form itself. It was through its resistance to the imposition of tight money that the movement achieved cohesion, unity and direction, rendering it a politically destabilising force. For government, the insubordination to the rule of money involved the risk that the social conflict transformed from a 'constructive' conflict to a 'destructive' conflict.

The characterisation of 'conflict' as a constructive conflict [16] is intrinsic to the notion of a pluralist society and has been influential in the study of a variety of fields such as industrial relations [17] and theories of parliamentary democracy. [18] The understanding that conflict is endemic in a pluralist society does not mean that conflict should be provoked. It means that rules, procedures, and laws etc., are invoked which regulate conflict and through which conflict can express itself in 'constructive' forms. Underlying the disorganisation of class relations into relations of pluralist interests and conflicts is a policy of responsible citizenship defined by entitlements and political as well as social rights and duties. This policy does not aim at ending the position of the working class as a labouring commodity but, rather, at confining its struggle and aspirations to a pluralist conflict over distribution and conditions. The position of the working class in the production process is not questioned. Rather, the aim is to undermine proletarian consciousness and therewith the political constitution of proletarian discontent and struggle. The working class is thus treated as a specific interest group amongst others in society, defined by its income resource and consumer habits. The politics of responsible citizenship involves the denial of the question of exploitation in favour of an acceptance of the wage relation. In other words, the despotic regime of exploitation is disguised as social relations are contained in the republic of the market. Discontent is channelled into the ballot-box allowing a choice between 'competing parties of the same kind' (cf. Kirchheimer, 1957, 1966). All groups in society are called upon to contribute 'equally' to the improvement of economic conditions, subordinating aspirations, such as decent income and conditions, to so-called national interests. However, any 'constructive conflict' does not lack its destructive potential. Social conflict and discontent questions existing rules and procedures and so raises the issue of political power. The disorganisation of class as class seeks to replace rebellion by wage conflicts and the question of political power is replaced by competing party political managers interested in the maximisation of votes and the marketing of conventional wisdom, especially during times of elections. Whether social conflict can be contained within existing forms or whether it is conducive to the reform of rules, or whether it develops to a serious political challenge, are open questions.

The anti-poll tax movement opened the Pandora's box. Government's response was swift: criminalisation and conciliation, abolition of tax, change of Prime Minister, and the depoliticisation of economic policy by joining the ERM. Government exploited the limited focus of the anti-poll tax movement and demobilised its momentum. The concern of the anti-poll tax movement was too narrowly focused on the imposition of the poll tax and it failed to widen the campaign to a broader mobilisation against the rule of money. This led the movement to dissipate with the abolition of the tax under the incoming Major government. The success of the anti-poll tax campaign to force government not only to abolish the tax, but also to force Thatcher's resignation, should not be underestimated. However, its limited focus allowed the Major government to shift emphasis by focusing on the exchange rate of the pound as an anchor of monetary tightness. As Sandholtz (1993, p. 38) indicates, 'for government that found it difficult domestically to achieve monetary discipline, EMU offered the chance to have it implemented from without'. [19] For the UK, membership was largely motivated 'by the expectation of benefiting from its disciplinary effects' (ibid., p. 28). At the same time, ERM-membership allowed government to 'shift the blame for necessary adjustments to an international regime, thus evading electoral punishment' (Busch, 1994, p. 84).

Throughout the 1990s, there has been a groundswell of discontent and government has been treading on thin ice. Although the Major government had hardly the money available to buy itself out of problems, it engineered a pre-election pay-off by increasing levels of public spending in 1991-92, retreating from and avoiding a number of 'potential industrial confrontations' (German, 1993, p. 11). Further, the level of non-payment of the poll-tax remained high under the incoming Major government. Despite the abandonment of the poll tax in March 1993, thousands are either still being taken to court or threatened with poindings for being irresponsible by refusing to pay outstanding poll tax bills. Further, the groundswell of discontent is indicated, amongst other things, by the public outcry over the pit-closure programme, the support for the Timex workers, nurses, ambulance drivers, and signalmen, the barrage of criticism over fiscal policy, civil disobedience against motorway construction, and the campaign against the Criminal Justice Bill. All these manifestations of discontent did not amount to a sustained challenge and either dissipated or did not mark significant victories. They indicate, however, that government has to be circumspect and that its attempt at socialising debt is based on precarious foundations.

The differentiated mixture of attack and conciliation changed form after the suspension of sterling's membership in the ERM. Although the support for the miners in Autumn 1992 forced government to delay its pit-closure programme, closure was imposed on a much larger scale. Wage ceilings in the public sector have been implemented since the pound's collapse and the level of taxation increased to a record high. A policy of fiscal tightness involves a more subtle attempt than monetary tightness to make people pay for the increase in debt. This is because, it involves apparently conciliatory elements through the system of rebates and specific concessions. At the same time, it makes resistance much more difficult: many direct taxes are reduced at source and indirect taxes, such as VAT, are raised over the counter. Further, progressive taxes, such as the council tax which replaced the poll tax, appear to be fair and just, so supporting the notion of the state as neutral arbitrator presiding over the pluralist conflicts amongst responsible citizens. Further, after the forced exit from the ERM, government set out to resolve political crisis by reinforcing social divisions, using the language of 'citizenship' in an attempt to channel conflict into constructive forms. [20] However, first of all, government took the unpopular decision to close most coal mines. Although the miners were hardly a political force since the strike of 1984-5, they represented, nevertheless, a focus for militant opposition capable of challenging government. After the miners, the Major government targeted beggars and lone mothers, reinforcing social division by distinguishing between 'scroungers' and those whose property owning dreams had turned into a nightmare. The rational behind the orchestration of moral panics was to divide social relations between the 'responsible' citizen and the 'irresponsible' element, that is, between those who tried hard to maintain their condition and those who, apparently, called upon the state to support a life outside productive work. While Major's back to basics campaign threw some light on the 'Victorian' sexual practices of some Conservative members of parliament, the connection between the depiction of lone mothers as irresponsible members of society who are having children to gain benefits was not only distasteful but, also, symptomatic: people forced to live in miserable conditions are identified with their condition, making them outcasts in the eyes of those who proclaim in favour of decency and easily exploitable for a policy which emphasises the moral values of poverty. To use a phrase used in the late 1970s by Keith Joseph and Jonathan Sumption, 'poverty is not unfreedom' and being 'married to the state' is the denial of freedom. The so-called 'dependency culture', upon which the above phrase focuses, is the denial of freedom because it rejects enterprise and responsibility and calls, instead, upon the state to violate individual freedom by supporting those who lack enterprise.

The vilification of beggars and lone mothers is not surprising and is more than just a repeat of earlier excesses of the Thatcher era. It amounts to a desperate attempt to overcome political crisis by securing the support of traditional Conservative voters. Vilification aims at smoothing fears of the middle classes of being 'mugged' by those left unwaged in a waged society. At the same time the traditional backbone of Conservative support is called upon to pay up. Their proletarianisation notwithstanding, fear and anxiety are exploited in an attempt to prevent solidarity with those whose poverty stands as a warning of a nightmarish future. Vilification can be interpreted as an attempt to undermine solidarity and social cooperation against a policy of austerity. It helps to divide social relations in terms of income groups and reinforce this division by setting different income groups against each other, forging a climate of distrust amongst these groups who, at the same time, are all trusted by government to pay the price for economic recovery. The other side of government's vilification is the issue of 'responsibility'. Government calls upon the population to trust its judgment and handling of the economy and urges those adversely effected by its policies to refrain from showing sympathy with the plight of beggars and single mothers. Solidarity with, government pronounced, villains is discouraged: all those who live a decent live are given an opportunity to distance themselves from irresponsible elements and to show responsibility by shouldering the burden of economic adjustment without question. The issue of 'responsibility' is specific: it defines the acceptance of hardship and deteriorating conditions as being in the national interest. Responsibility on the part of the individual is thus defined as a matter of national revival. The neo-liberalist conception of the empowered individual and its definition as an enterprising agent on the market, on the one hand, and the endorsement of individual responsibility, on the other, are two sides of the same state sponsored coin. The neo-liberal retreat from the state has meant a direct (re-)commodification of many aspects of social life and the enterprising individual is called upon to use the new found empowerment to make ends meet. The defiant protester and striker stand for all that which is harmful to the national interest. The stigmatisation of beggars and lone mothers as undesirable and irresponsible, is symptomatic: Behind the facade of moral high mindedness lurks the fear that solidarity and social cooperation might disrupt the fragile social fabric of atomised, debt-ridden and hard working people.

Against this background, Major's back to basics campaign and his talk of a classless society are much more than electoral devices and ideological window-dressing. Back to basics means the abandonment of fictitious wealth creation through credit expansion and a return to the old values of 'pray and work': [21] Rather than accumulating debt on future income, the demand is to act responsibly, to trust government's wisdom and thus to accept what it has in store and comply with its dictate. In other words, the responsible citizens are called upon to live not only within their means but also to consume less than has been produced in order to reduce deficits. Acceptance of lower wages, deteriorating conditions and intensification work, as well as the tailoring of life around material gain, rather than single motherhood, is endorsed as a civic duty. In this context, the issue of citizenship becomes specific. It has been raised by Conservatives, Liberals [22] and the reformist Left. Douglas Hurd endorsed the notion of 'active citizenship', indicating that the time had come to shed Thatcherism's image of self-interest, greed and selfishness and to replace it by the virtues of self-help combined with moral obligations to support worthy causes. [23] The Left, particularly those connected with the former Marxism Today, New Times and the New Statesmen, proposes a Bill of Rights, constitutional reform and endorses the notion of a caring Britain. It espouses the idea of 'citizenship' in terms of rights, challenging both 'the unfairness and amorality of the market and the diffusion of responsibility brought about by large-scale industrial socialism'. It seeks to find a 'third' way between the market and state organised capitalism 'by linking a strong individual ethic with a new affirmation of what it means to live as part of a community' (Mulgan, 1991 p. 38). Despite the differences between these approaches, all endorse a critique of neo-liberalism and social democracy (i.e. the Labourism associated with Keynesian policy) in favour of communitarian values, community cooperation and self-help. The role of the state is no longer seen as coordinating production. In the 1950s, the Left's conception was linked to the postwar welfare state. This state was seen as providing a new common experience of real socialism (cf. Marshall, 1950). The new Left debate on citizenship has turned its back on 'state-organised socialism' and endorses a social capitalism with 'real' individual freedom and choice. The role of the state is emphasised in moral terms: to supply help for those who help themselves. The emphasis on the moral dimension of state action endorses essentially the Christian Democratic values of an ethical socialism where the state helps those who help themselves. [24] The state is thus charged with granting people entitlements in the market where individual awareness of injustice will help to rectify gross discrepancies.

The issue of social justice is attractive. The promise is that misery and hard and non-rewarding work in the present is a condition of prosperity in the 'long run'. This image is seductive especially against the background of mass unemployment, poverty, homelessness and financial distress. However, before we let ourselves be seduced we will first have to return to basics. Governments, not only in Britain, but all over the world, are preaching the gospel of rising productivity and competitiveness. The promise is thus that fewer and less paid workers will produce more. However, under current conditions, rising productivity translates primarily into higher unemployment, further closure of productive capacities and financial turmoil. Does 'classessness' indeed mean generalised poverty, job insecurity and financial distress rather than a return to the 'affluent society' of the 1950s and 1960s which captured the imagination of so many?

VI. Conclusion
The espousal of the notion of 'citizenship' by all major parties is symptomatic. It raises the virtues of civic duty and responsibility and emphasises social 'rights' in terms of property rights. The call for 'citizenship' has an apparent progressive ring to it. It summons equality, justice and freedom. Social relations are not perceived as class relations but as relations between individualised property owners endowed with abstract rights. The neo-liberal retreat from the state is thus legitimated through the language of the Enlightenment. The emphasis is on the civic virtues of responsibility and trust in the state, espousing the idea of the loyal and law-abiding citizen, which is empowered to utilise property for both selfish purposes and the common good. [25] In the context of a republic of debt, the demand is thus that law-abiding and empowered individuals recognise their duty to struggle on to make ends meet. Compliance with harsh conditions, espousal of the ethics of hard labour and the acceptance of the rule of money, is endorsed as the citizens' duty. The republic of debt is thus seen as the framework within which the rights of citizens subsist. Within this context, the role of the state is to preserve justice, that is, to impose upon social relations the condition of their existence, that is, the free and equal citizen who recognises the duty and responsibility entrusted upon it by virtue of the ownership of property, including the ownership of labour power.

Postscript
The debate on citizenship should be taken seriously. Though, it should be deepened and not restricted to legitimise the social engineering of discipline. It should be taken on in the tradition of Enlightenment thought: Doubt everything!

Bibliography

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Agnoli, J. (1990), Die Transformation der Demokratie und andere Schriften zur Kritik der Politik, Ça-Ira, Freiburg.

Agnoli, J. (1992), 'Destruction as Determination of the Scholar in Miserable Times', Common Sense, no. 12.

Andrews, G. (ed.) (1991), Citizenship, Lawrence & Wishart, London.

Ascher, K. (1987), The Politics of Privatisation, Macmillan, London.

Atkinson, R. and P. Durden (1994), 'Housing Policy Since 1979: Developments and Prospects', in Savage et al. (eds.) 1994.

Berthoud, R. and E. Kempson (1990), Credit and Debt in Britian: First Findings, Policy Studies Institute, London.

Bonefeld, W. (1992), 'Constitutional Norm versus Constitutional Reality in Germany', Capital & Class, no. 46.

Bonefeld, W. and J. Holloway (1995), 'Money and Class Struggle', in Bonefeld/Holloway (eds.) (1995), Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money, Macmillan, London.

Burrows, L. and L. Walenotwics (1992), Homes cost Less than Homelessness, Shelter, London.

Busch, A. (1994), 'The Crisis inthe EMS', Government & Opposition, vol. 29, no. 1.

Clarke, S. (1990), 'The Crisis of Fordism', Telos no.83.

Clarke, S. (1991), 'Introduction', in ibid. (ed.), The State Debate, Macmillan, London.

Coser, L.A. (1956), The Functions of Social Conflict, Free Press, Glencoe.

CSE (1989), 'The Anti-Poll Tax Campaign: New Forms of class Struggle', Common Sense, no 8.

CSO (1995), Social Trends 25, HMSO, London.

Dalla-Costa, M. (1995), 'Capitalism and Reproduction', in Bonefeld, W., Gunn, R., Holloway, J. and K. Psychopedis (eds.) (1995), Open Marxism Vol III: Emancipating Marx, Pluto Press, London.

Dunn, M. and S. Smith. (1994), 'Economic Policy under the Conservatives', in Savage et al. (eds.) 1994.

Fairbrother, P. (1994), Politics and the State as Employer, Mansell, London.

Flanders, A. (1970), Trade Unions, Hutchingson, London.

Ford, J. (1988), The Indebted Society: Credit and Default in the1980s, Routledge, London.

Ford, J. (1991), Consuming Credit, Child Poverty Action Group, London.

Fox, A. (1966), Industrial Sociology and Industrial Relations, HMSO, London.

German, L. (1993), 'Before the Flood', International Socialism, no. 61.

Glyn, A. (1992), 'The "Productivity Miracle", Profits and Investment', in Michie (ed.) 1992.
Fußnoten:

[1] This article arises out of a wider project conducted with Peter Burnham and Alice Brown, which will appear as A Major Crisis? The Politics of Economic Policy in Britain in the 1990s, Dartmouth, Aldershot.

[2] A conceptual analysis of the relationship between debt and class struggle can be found in Bonefeld/Holloway (1995).

[3] See, for example, Ford (1998,1991); Berthoud/Kempson (1990); Kempson et al. (1994); and Alcock (1993).

[4] In Britain, by the late 1980s, there were approximately 1.1 million lone parents, of whom 910,000 were lone mothers (Millar, cited in Ford, 1991).

[5] See the contributions to Michie (ed.) (1992).

[6] The following part is close to Bonefeld/Holloway (1995).

[7] On the global character of capitalist development and prostitution, see Dalla-Costa (1995).

[8] The above and subsequent data can be found in McKie (ed.) (1993, 1994) and Smith (1993) and German (1993). The data on the housing market for 1993 can be found in Financial Times , 27th of January, 1994.

[9] The bad debt exposure of some of the leading banks was so dramatic that some commentators, like Anthony Harris, considered that government should nationalise banks (Financial Times, 19.10.92).

[10] The negative PSBR stands for a public spending surplus.

[11] The uniform business rate was part of government's Community Charge (Poll Tax). It replaced 'non-domestic rates levied by local authorities on commercial and industrial properties with a national non-domestic rate' which was 'set each year by central government and collected on the basis of a single, common rate poundage'. The re-evaluation of rates led to substantial increases in the rate bills. Government was regarded as having betrayed the loyal support of small business and commercial enterprise. The business community reacted by organising a 'revolt of its own'. In some areas, especially in the South of England, non-payment campaigns were organised (Stoker, 1991, pp. 181, 190).

[12] See Panitch (1986) for an analysis of the wage-squeeze during the 1970s.

[13] The following part is indebted to Bonefeld/Holloway (1995).

[14] For example, in the UK, the young unemployed on government sponsored training schemes are not regarded as employed by the Department of Social Security. That means they are not entitled to industrial injury benefits.

[15] The reduction in the rate of inflation under Major is quite unprecedented. Its nearest equivalent was the reductions under Callaghan in the 1970s (see Jay, 1994).

[16] A theory of the 'functionality of conflict' is presented, for example, by Coser (1956) and has been developed within the Marxist framework by Poulantzas (1973) and Hirsch (1991).

[17] See the work of Flanders (1970) and Fox (1966) For an assessment: Hyman (1989).

[18] Modern variants of the interrelation between constructive conflicts and the building of democracy can be found in the work of Held (1986, 1989), Keane (1988), and the contributions in Andrews (1991) as well as Hall and Jacques (1989). For a critique of such a view: Agnoli (1990, 1992); Bonefeld (1992) and Clarke (1991).

[19] The ERM is phase one of the European Monetary Union whose final stage is complete convergence of members' currencies.

[20] Under Major, new trade union laws and the reform of public sector employment were legitimised through the introduction of 'Citizen Charters'. On the reorganisation of the public sector employment: Fairbrother (1994).

[21] 'Pray and work' is a well suited description of the socialisation of debt during the 1990s. It derives from the monastic rule of 'ora et labora'. The Roman means of control through bread and amusements ('panem et circenses') would be much too expensive. However government tried hard, although unsuccessfully, to provide amusements to strengthen its credibility. David Mellor's resignation as Minister of Heritage and as the self-appointed 'minister of fun' in 1992 indicated government's difficulties and the vilification of lone mothers during Major's back-to-basics campaign misfired miserably: the Conservative party found itself to be at the centre of modern versions of cheap entertainment as sex scandals broke. The Major government is also hoping to overcome political crisis by presiding over the provision of bread. John Redwood (Secretary of Wales) described government's future strategy as follows: 'Looking to the future, I see a good period for strengthening and broadening the base of popular capitalism' (Interview in the Independent, 3.9.93). In other words, the monastic rule of pray and work is only transitory and will be replaced by panem et circenses. We know what 'panem' looked like in the 1980s and government's own brand of 'circenses' is, indeed, amusing. However, amusement can not be sustained on a cheap basis for long as David Mellor now knows only too well.

[22] Paddy Ashdown showed his commitment to community spirit in his Citizens' Britain.

[23] See the introduction to Andrews (ed.) 1991.

[24] In Germany, the left of the CDU is committed to an ethical socialism of self-help. This issue is construed in terms of 'subsidarity'. On the British Left's endorsement of Christian Democracy: Clarke (1990).

[25] The endorsement that property is an individual right which carries social obligations, confirms the new found interest in Germany's 'social market economy' (see Basic Law, Articles 14 and 15; for comment: Bonefeld, 1992).

This article is a direct appeal for like-minded people to come together in a project of shared political work.

The idea is: to muster all available forces to work on a militant class-composition study project. This is to inform, and to be the basis of, possible future political organisation.

Prelude

A small group of friends. We celebrate Mayday each year. We look forward to the day when everyone makes May 1st a dayoff-work-day, to celebrate struggles past and present - to meet, to eat and drink, to sing and dance... [Incidentally, Mayday 1996 is a Wednesday. Don't just let it pass. Celebrate it.]

Mayday as a time for reflection. Look at the past. Plan for the future. So what happened this year?

Mayday 1995: Friends reported that the TGWU branch at the Ford-Dagenham Assembly Plant voted explicitly against taking the day off work on Mayday. For fear of being "in breach of contract". That is how things have changed.

Mayday 1995: A hundred thousand workers marched in Turkey to celebrate Mayday, despite the massive presence of armed Turkish police, who had killed people on previous marches. That is how things have changed.

Mayday 1995: For our part, we ran up the red flag in the back yard. We marched with the Turks and Kurds (as usual, just about the only people marching in London). A few friends round for supper in the evening. And we sang the old songs of struggle and resistance.

But absolutely, categorically not enough. Some of us feeling an urgency. A drive for a particular kind of work. A deepseated wanting. A need to know what is happening. Because something is stirring, all around.

Twenty years, perhaps, since class power was last winning. We've lived the years of defeat. Years of impotence. Years of anger. The rich getting richer and life's been shit for the rest of us. The foundations of working class power systematically destroyed. No doubt. We've been on the losing side.

But in some vaguely definable way, class power is on the move again. We're picking ourselves up out of the wreckage. And the question is: how do we regroup, gather strength, mobilise social forces for a project of winning rather than losing?

A Small Proposition

The old class forces have been taken apart. World-wide. "Decomposed". New class forces are emerging. New configurations. This is what we call a "new class composition". Nick Witheford offers definitions, and their history, elsewhere in this issue of Common Sense.

The new class composition is more or less a mystery to us (and to capital, and to itself) because it is still in the process of formation. Eternally in flux, of course, but periodically consolidating nodes of class power.

Before we can make politics, we have to understand that class composition. This requires us to study it. Analyse it. We do this through a process of inquiry. Hence: No Politics Without Inquiry.

The Proposition Stated in Other Terms

Relations between capital and labour have been radically restructured during the past two decades, in favour of capital. Labour is being recomposed into new circuits, cycles and patterns of production. A new class composition is being formed, world-wide. In time, this class composition will begin to assert its interests - in its own new circuits, cycles and patterns - of opposition, of struggle. At that point, mere technical class composition turns into political class composition. It becomes real power, political power.

The enemy constantly studies class composition in order to fracture it, break it, disperse it, permanently dissipate its strength. We, for our part, study class composition in order to strengthen it, consolidate it, turn it into a real basis of power.

The old compositions and their associated bastions of class power (miners, auto workers, dockers, steel workers etc) have been broken down. New class compositions (information industries, services etc) are being built up.

Before we can be active in building the class power of these new compositions, we have to know who they are, where they are, what are their conditions of work and life, and around what issues, slogans, struggles they will mobilise during the coming years.

And at the moment we know just about fuck-all.

So: an invitation to comrades far and wide to join in a process of INQUIRY.

The Conference of Socialist Economists as a Possible Base

After the 1994 Conference a group of us in the CSE set up a "Working Group on Work". Our interest has been in the changes taking place in work, and struggles arising from these developments. Similar work has developed previously in CSE.

For example, in the lead-up to the 1976 "Labour Process" conference. This analytical work was particularly strong around the motor industry, and led to useful organising activity in that industry.

CSE Conference provides one useful forum for mobilising these kinds of collective energies. There are people who could build a base for a serious project of class composition analysis. Each contributing some small part of the overall inquiry.

Thus part of my purpose is to propose a "class composition" theme for a future CSE Conference. Perhaps for 1996. Left to find a title for it, I would propose:

"Class composition: Studies of changing relations between capital and labour. Global restructuring and the rebuilding of class power."

We might all, each in our own way, undertake to make small contributions of insights, towards building a pool of knowledge in these areas.

Need for a Network of Research and Action

However, the project needs a far wider base.

I could pretend to speak for a group, an organisation, a world political perspective. I am none of these things. I speak merely for myself, and for the particular baggage of historical and political experience that I carry with me.

I am convinced that serious revolutionary politics is impossible without a committed, detailed, daily work of analysing and understanding class composition, in all its varied and changing forms. This work needs to be undertaken by large numbers of people, and its methods and results need to be coordinated by a process of regular bulletins and regular meetings. It is only lack of political imagination, a sense of defeatism, and basic human laziness that stand in the way of our doing it.

A Momentary Diversion: My Envy of the Scientists

In recent months I've been reading physics books. Atoms, particles, astronomy, cosmology, that sort of thing. A new wave of popularisation in science. Exhilarating to ride this wave. Huge and wonderful discoveries. Old ways of thought turned on their heads. A lot of nonsense thrown out of the window. The whole essence of "being human" is being challenged, redefined.

I watch these scientists working. They have teams of researchers. Networks of international contact and cooperation. Extraordinary machines for observation and analysis. Confidence and enthusiasm. Reaching out to audiences that are not familiar with their language. Creating new public languages. And in the process you find them celebrating and documenting the development of the intellectual history of their discipline.

I am deeply envious.

Once there used to be a "science of class struggle". After all, class struggle is as available to scientific analysis as any area of the physical world. But the science of class struggle got itself a very bad name when it transmuted into "scientific socialism" and Stalinism.

The science of class struggle never recovered from that. It had a brief and glorious resurgence in the Italian revolutionary Left, as scienza operaia ("working-class science"), but the prevailing anti-scientism of the post-1968 Left sank any notion that the class struggle could be approached scientifically.

I hold to that idea of a scientific approach.

Another Momentary Diversion: The Rhetoric of War

The miserable debacle of state socialism in the "communist" world has deprived us of great chunks of our language. Who are we? What are we? How do we describe ourselves? What is our politics?

Where do we choose the words with which to name our politics. Communism? Socialism? Revolution? Redistribution of wealth? Social reform? Working-class autonomy? Class war? There is a problem here. These names are all variously tainted by previous associations.

So at this time I prefer to give the project no name.

Except that I believe that we must see it in terms of war.

War is being waged on us. Class war. (Sometimes literally, by military means.) We would do well to respond in the language of war.

The rhetoric of earlier communist and anarchist movements always had a strong military flavour to it. But the notion of war is less than fashionable nowadays.

When I say "respond in the language of war", of course I don't mean rushing round killing people. I mean that we begin to speak (once again) the language of tactics, strategy, fields of battle, mobilising of forces, application of technologies, and a theory of war.

I find that the joining of these elements provides me with the bones of an operating system. On the one hand, a notion of a "science" of the class struggle. And on the other, a notion of the class struggle as a "war" within which we have a part to play. Plus, as a basic foundation, the conviction that if you're not part of the solution then you're part of the problem.

Moments of Crisis and Dislocation:

No Politics Without Inquiry

You might object to the notion of a somehow "objective" science.

You might object to the notion of "war" and its associations of militarism.

You might object to the notion of disembodied intervention in the body politic.

You might say that the very notion of an "Inquiry" is a nonsense without a prior questioning of the self-stance of the "Inquirer".

I agree. All these notions are deeply problematic.

In answer to the objections, I say let us take these notions and problematise them. Frankly. Enthusiastically. Without fear. Then see where we go from there.

So this article proposes an Inquiry, in the hopes of generating small amounts of discussion, and perhaps also generating practical activity.

To this end, we might look briefly at earlier instances of the Inquiry, to see whether they offer insights regarding method, content, ways of approaching knowledge etc.

A note, here. We are not starting from a basis of nothing at all. Even a minimal glance at the literature makes it clear that the Inquiry has a strong and substantive intellectual pedigree.

For example: Marx... Lenin... Luxemburg... Mao... Not to mention the US National Commission on Civil Disorders (1968).

Over the years I have done amounts of work on class composition analysis. Some of this work has appeared in Common Sense [Sergio Bologna on "The Historiography of the Mass Worker" in CS 11 and 12, and his work on "Nazism and the Working Class", CS 16]. During this period books and pamphlets have accumulated on my shelves.

During the years of defeat my view of my books and pamphlets has oscillated (daily) between seeing them as a precious historical resource for the furtherance of struggle, and as useless mounds of paper taking up space.

Anyway, in preparing this article I went fishing in my library. I pulled down volumes fat and thin. Dusted them off. To see what they had to offer, as regards class composition analysis and the possibilities of a new communist project.

What I found was that, at each major point of crisis and dislocation in the development of capitalist society, various kinds of people have instituted mass social inquiries. Their intention has been to document and research the attitudes and conditions of life of the oppressed masses. As a political project.

Studies that ranged from Chinese peasants labouring under feudal despotism to the Black proletariat of the racist ghettoes of Newark and Detroit. Studies of various kinds. London housewives. FIAT car workers. The shifting masses of migrant labour toiling across whole continents. The collective flux of intellectual labour energies concentrated on the Internet.

In short, at certain points in history people have felt the urge to ask: Who are we? What is happening? How have things changed? Hence the Inquiry.

It is generally at points of fracture, crisis, restructuring, dislocation of capitalist development etc that these Inquiries come about. And the Inquiries see themselves as a prelude, a precursor and a precondition of politics.

We are living such a period right now. And the need for an Inquiry is urgent. It is not an optional extra. It is fundamental. In short: No Politics Without Inquiry.

Contained Excitement

I offer below a small list of some of the material I found on my shelves. The list is not comprehensive. It is indicative. It indicates the kinds of treasures that are in store when one begins researching previous exemplars of the Inquiry. Source materials for a science of class struggle. Method. Content. Theoretical framework. Epistemological basis.

The class struggle Inquiry is a scientific discipline unto itself. Related to other disciplines, but with a peculiar fire all its own. Extraordinarily exciting. Ill-considered trifles, a marginal field of human knowledge, lost and buried chapters from forgotten books, but at the same time the very basis of a political project. An incitement to action.

It would be good to produce an annotated bibliography of the Inquiry, together with a commentary on its intellectual history. The antecedents, the past practices, reflecting on future possibilities. Given time and energy, I might do this during the coming year. For the moment I shall contain the excitement sparked by these texts. I offer a few bits and pieces from examples of the Inquiry as conducted in the past 150 years. Very brief.

Some Previous Examples of "THE INQUIRY"

The Inquiry has its own typology. It has varieties of genres, varieties of intention. Some are produced by the state. Others are produced by political organisations, by way of external intervention. Others are produced from within the ranks of organised labour. Yet others are the product of people's observation of their own condition. Earlier examples include:

Karl Marx: The Workers' Inquiry

In the later years of his life, Marx prepared a comprehensive questionnaire designed to elicit the conditions of life and work of the labouring classes. [It was republished in Detroit in the early 1970s, with a view to promoting this kind of militant research in the auto industry. And again, only last year, in Italy.] Here Marx outlines the project:

"Not a single government... has yet ventured to undertake a serious inquiry into the position of the French working class. But what a number of investigations have been undertaken into crises - agricultural, financial, industrial, commercial, political!

"We (shall organise) a far-reaching investigation into facts and crimes of capitalist exploitation; we shall attempt to initiate an inquiry of this kind with those poor resources which are now at our disposal.

"We hope to meet in this work with the support of all workers in town and country who understand that they alone can describe with full knowledge the misfortunes from which they suffer, and that only they, and not saviours sent by Providence, can energetically apply the healing remedies from the social ills to which they are a prey.

"We also rely upon socialists of all schools who, being wishful for social reform, must wish for an exact and positive knowledge of the conditions in which the working class - the class to whom the future belongs - works and moves." (Marx 1973, p. 4)

Inevitably this brings to mind the fifteen pages at the start of The Communist Manifesto that provide the classic statement of the class-composition analysis ("Bourgeois and Proletarians") that led into the organising project of communism:

"The essential condition for the existence and for the sway of the bourgeois class is the formation and augmentation of capital; the condition for capital is wage labour. Wage labour rests exclusively on competition between the labourers. The advance of industry, whose involuntary promoter is the bourgeoisie, replaces the isolation of the labourers, due to competition, by their revolutionary combination, due to association. The development of modern industry, therefore, cuts from under its feet the very foundation on which the bourgeoisie produces and appropriates products. What the bourgeoisie therefore produces, above all, are its own grave-diggers. Its fall and the victory of the proletariat are equally inevitable."

And, in among all this, we also have to consider Engels' The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844, the precursor of Charles Booth's Life and Labour of the People of London (1902) and Henry Mayhew's London Labour and the London Poor (1861). Not to mention, in our own time, Gareth Stedman Jones' Outcast London: A Study in the Relationship Between Classes in Victorian Society (1971).

Lenin and Luxemburg

Lenin. The Development of Capitalism in Russia (1898). A huge work - the bibliography alone runs to some 500 titles, begged, borrowed and perused both in prison and on the road into exile. Three years of work to provide the analytical grounding of the Bolshevik project. Detailed work on the composition of the labouring classes in Russia. And the potential for politics: "The increase in the number of peasants thrown into the ranks of the industrial and rural proletariat... The population of this 'corner' - ie the proletariat, is, in the literal sense of the word, the vanguard of the whole mass of toilers and exploited."

Rosa Luxemburg. The Mass Strike, the Party and the Trade Unions. Rosa, released from prison and recuperating in Finland. Extending the analysis of the proletariat and its real movements and interests. "We have attempted... to sketch the history of the mass strike in Russia in a few strokes. Even a fleeting glance at this history shows us a picture... Instead of the rigid and hollow scheme of an arid political action carried out by the decision of the highest committees and furnished with a plan and panorama, we see a bit of pulsating life of flesh and blood, which cannot be cut out of the large frame of the revolution but is connected with all parts of the revolution by a thousand veins." (Luxemburg 1970, p. 43)

US Riot Commission Report

An example of a state-sponsored class composition analysis. In 1967, in the wake of the riots in Newark, Detroit and other cities, President Johnson instituted a commission of social inquiry, whose report was published under the title "What Happened? Why Did It Happen? What Can Be Done?" This documented in large detail the experience of the Black proletariat living in the urban ghettoes. A comprehensive analysis of the newly-formed class composition that had rioted in the streets. A state initiative. Framed in a rhetoric of social reform and repressive control. Over 600 pages, in the popular edition.

Its Introduction reads: "...An extraordinary document. We are not likely to get a better view of socially directed violence - what underlies it, what sets it off, how it runs its course, what follows. There are novels here, hidden in the Commission's understated prose; there are a thousand doctoral theses germinating in its statistics, its interviews, its anecdotes and 'profiles'." The report represents a beginning "on a task that beggars any other planned social evolution known to human history". (National Advisory Commission 1978, p. ix)

[From our side, the Report had its counterpart in the seminal Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare by Fox Piven and Cloward, which uses a similar class composition approach to document the imposition of social control in both the New Deal (1930s) and the Great Society Programme (1960s). The state project unmasked.]

Mao Tse Tung

And Mao, too. A huge work of wide-ranging class Inquiry. And hints as to method. For instance, the article "Oppose Book Worship", of May 1930. Uneasy with the authoritarian tone, but the man has a point.

"No Investigation, No Right to Speak. Unless you have investigated a problem, you will be deprived of the right to speak on it. Isn't that too harsh? Not in the least. When you have not probed into a problem, into the present facts and its past history, and know nothing of its essentials, whatever you say about it will undoubtedly be nonsense. Talking nonsense solves no problems, as everyone knows, so why is it unjust to deprive you of the right to speak? Quite a few comrades always keep their eyes shut and talk nonsense, and for a Communist that is disgraceful. How can a Communist keep his eyes shut and talk nonsense?

It won't do!

It won't do!

You must investigate!

You must not talk nonsense!"

The Italians

To all this we have to add the mass of documentation produced by the Italian revolutionary Left movement throughout the period of the 1960s-80s. Detailed, committed, militant research and analysis of the everyday conditions of living labour. And here was a departure. This is not the "denunciatory" style of Marx's "far-reaching investigation into facts and crimes of capitalist exploitation". Rather, the analysis is part and parcel of an everyday, capillary process of militant intervention and organisation. Leafletting, meeting, discussion, reworking of analysis, consolidation at new levels. Here we have the work of Quaderni Rossi, Potere Operaio, Autonomia, Lotta Continua etc. Buried, for the most part, in Italian-language texts that are too rarely translated.

Photography... Song...

And while we're at it, why stop at the printed word? We could include song. Woody Guthrie, singing the lives and times of the migrant workers of Dust Bowl USA. Alan Lomax, collecting blues and prison work songs. Pete Seeger and Bob Reiser with their Carry It On: A History in Song and Picture of the Working Men and Women of America:

"Beware! This is a book of history. With songs and pictures, we try to tell how the working people of this country - women and men; old and young; people of various skin shades, various religions, languages, and national backgrounds - have tried to better their own lives and work towards a world of peace, freedom, jobs, and justice for all."

And photography. For example, Sebastiao Salgado's incredible Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, which he defines as a work of "militant photography".

And Jo Spence, in Putting Myself in the Picture, where, among other things, she charts the process (a labour process, in the arena of reproduction) of her own death from cancer. Bringing the Inquiry right home into the front room, into the family:

"Photography can only attempt certain things compared with other media, but its radicality lies in the fact that we can produce, possess and circulate snapshots by ourselves, for ourselves and among ourselves. It is there... that the future of photography lies for me. If we truly want to democratise how meanings are produced in images... we could start by telling our stories in different ways..."

We are in Good Company

Elsewhere in the world there are active examples of this kind of militant Inquiry activity.

In Germany, for instance, there is a network of militants in various cities, connected by computer links, and producing a monthly national bulletin, Wildcat-Zirkular, which gives detailed reports on struggles in the various localities.

In Italy, in November last year, the group Collegamenti organised a conference in Turin, under the title Inchiesta, conricerca, comunicazione diretta ieri e oggi. Per una coscienza sociale e un intervento politico di base ("Inquiry, Co-Research and Direct Communication. For Social Awareness and Grassroots Political Intervention"). This conference dealt with the history and present practice of the Inquiry in Italy and Germany.

In France, a group of comrades around the journal Futur Anterieur have been holding regular seminars and producing materials on the changing class realities in France and Italy (see my paper for CSE Conference 1994).

In the USA, Collective Action Notes, published out of Maryland, documents struggles worldwide, and aims to build an international network of contacts.

And in Britain there are the regular bulletins produced by Counter Information and others, drawing together class struggle information from across the board.

All of these provide useful pointers. For us the project would probably be along the lines of what Wildcat is doing in Germany: To set up an intercommunicating network of militants doing more or less detailed work on class composition in their local areas; to meet as and when appropriate; and to circulate the results of our collective work.

I am happy to act as coordinator in the initial stages of any such project. At some point a national meeting should be called. If you would like to be involved in developing the idea, write to me:

Ed Emery, c/o Common Sense, P.O. Box 311,

Southern District Office, Edinburgh EH9 1SF.

A Partial Bibliography of the Workers' Inquiry:

Class Composition Analysis

Alquati, Romano, Fiat: Punto medio nel ciclo internazionale ("FIAT: Mid-Point in the International Cycle"), in Sulla FIAT e Altri Scritti, Feltrinelli, Milan 1975.

Balestrini, Nanni, Nous Voulons Tout, trans. P. Budillon, Editions du Seuil, Paris 1971. Translation of the novel Vogliamo Tutto.

Behrens, Elizabeth, "Workers' Struggles under National Socialism", trans. Peter Martin, in Common Sense 10, May 1991, pp. 49-57.

Berlin-Brandenburg Building Workers' Newsletter, No. 1, Berlin August 1994.

Big Flame, Italy 1969-70: New Tactics and Organisation, London, 1971.

Bologna, Sergio, "The Chemical Plan", unpublished translation, Red Notes, from "Il Piano Chimico", Quaderni Piacentini no. 48-9, 1973, pp. 40-56.

Bologna, Sergio, The Theory and History of the Mass Worker in Italy, trans. Peter Martin, Common Sense 11, October 1991, pp. 16-30.

Braidotti, R., Charkiewicz, E., Hausler, S., Wieringa, S., "Feminist Critiques of Science" in Women, the Environment and Sustainable Development, Zed Books, London, 1994.

Cliff, Tony, The Employers' Offensive: Productivity Deals and How to Fight Them, Pluto Press, London, 1972.

Collective Action Notes, No. 3-4, Fall/Winter 1994, Balto, Maryland.

Durham Miners' Gala Programme, Eighty-Third Annual Gala, 16 July 1966, Durham Miners' Association, Durham, 1966.

Ford Workers' Group ("The Combine"), The Ford Workers' Bulletin, Issues 1-4, 1983-8.

Fox Piven, F. and Cloward, R.A., Regulating the Poor: The Functions of Public Welfare, Tavistock, London 1972.

Gasparazzo, ill. R. Zamarin, Samona & Savelli, Rome 1972.

Informations Correspondance Ouvriere, The Mass Strike in France, May-June 1968 in Root and Branch: The Rise of the Workers' Movement, Fawcett Crest, Greenwich Conn., 1975.

Jaschok, Maria, Concubines and Bondservants, Zed Books, London, 1988.

La Cause du Peuple, Turin '69: La Greve du Guerrilla, Paris, 1969.

Lenin, Vladimir Ilych, The Development of Capitalism in Russia, Progress Publishers, Moscow, 1967, pp. 587-615.

Luxemburg, Rosa, The Mass Strike, Young Socialist Press, Ceylon, 1970.

Mao Tsetung, "Oppose Book Worship", in Selected Readings, Foreign Languages Press, Peking, 1971, pp. 40-50.

Marx, Karl, A Workers' Inquiry, Freedom Information Service, Detroit, 1973.

Marx, Karl and Engels, Frederick, Manifesto of the Communist Party, Foreign Language Press, Peking, 1970. Section 1: "Bourgeois and Proletarians", pp. 30-46.

Marx, Karl, "Germany: Revolution and Counter-Revolution", in Karl Marx: Selected Works, Co-operative Publishing Society, Moscow, 1935, pp. 39-80.

Mason, Tim, Social Policy in the Third Reich: The Working Class and the 'National Community', Berg, Providence and Oxford, 1991.

Matsui, Yayori, Women's Asia, Zed Books, London, 1989.

Mies, Maria, "Feminist Research: Science, Violence and Responsibility", in M. Mies and V. Shiva, Ecofeminism, Zed Books, London, 1993, pp. 36-54.

National Advisory Commission on Civil Disorders, Report: What Happened? Why Did it Happen? What Can Be Done? Bantam Books, New York, 1968.

Potere Operaio di Porto Marghera, Portomarghera/Montedison, Estate '68, Centro G. Francovich, Firenze, 1968.

Red Notes: A Dossier of Class Struggle in Britain and Abroad: 1974, Red Notes, London, 1974.

Report of a Court of Inquiry into the Causes and Circumstances of a Dispute Between the Ford Motor Company... and Members of the Trade Unions... ("Jack Report"), HMSO Cmnd 1999, London, 1963.

Salgado, Sebastiao, Workers: An Archaeology of the Industrial Age, Phaedon, London, 1993.

Spence, Jo, Putting Myself in the Picture: A Political, Personal and Photographic Autobiography, Real Comet Press, Seattle, 1988.

"Stadtbericht Berlin", in Zirkular no. 13, Hamburg, March 1995.

Stedman Jones, Gareth, Outcast London, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1971.

Talbot, J.-Ph. (ed.) La Greve a Flins, Maspero, Paris, 1968.

Terkel, Studs, Hard Times: An Oral History of the Great Depression, Allen Lane, London, 1970.

Tronti, Mario, "Poscritto di Problemi" in Operai e Capitale, Einaudi, Torino, 1971. Translated as "Workers and Capital" in CSE Pamphlets No. 1: The Labour Process and Class Strategies, Stage 1, London, 1976.

Various authors, Lotte di Classe in Francia, in Il Tallone del Cavaliere, No. Unico, Milano/Padova, 1994.

Watson, Bill, Counter-Planning on the Shop Floor, Little A Press, London n.d. Reprinted from Radical America Vol. 5, no. 3.

From Common Sense, No. 18, December 1995

The Concept of Power and the Zapatistas

John Holloway

1. "A new lie is sold to us as history. The lie about the defeat of hope, the lie about the defeat of dignity, the lie about the defeat of humanity". (Subcomandante Marcos in the invitation to an Intercontinental Gathering against Neo-Liberalism, La Jornada, 30/1/96).

The lie is a lie about power, and about necessity. After twenty years of neo-liberalism, it is no longer really a lie about desirability. The market optimism of the 80s has been largely replaced by a market realism: not 'everything is perfect under a market system', but 'this is the way things are and this is the way things must be, in reality there is no alternative'. 'A different society might be nice, but it is not possible'. The lie about the defeat of hope is a lie about the defeat of possibility, a lie about the power to change.

The zapatistas have a different idea of possibility, a different idea of power. This was expressed by Marcos in a comment on the dialogue between the zapatistas and the government. "This is not a fair dialogue, it is not a dialogue between equals. But in this dialogue the EZLN is not the weak party, it is the strong party. On the side of the government there are only military force and the lies spread by some of the media. And force and lies will never, never be stronger than reason. They can impose themselves for days, months or years, but history will finally put each one in its place" (Subcomandante Marcos, 5/5/95, La Jornada, 11/5/95).

Very pretty, but it's absurd! How can Marcos's declaration possibly be correct? His reference to history does not answer anything, since history is no more than the result of struggles about power. So how can we possibly maintain that the zapatistas are stronger than the Mexican government, or that reason is stronger than force and lies? To defend such an absurd statement, it would be necessary to defend an absurd theory of power.

That is surely the challenge of the zapatistas and their absurd rebellion. The zapatista rebellion is absurd. After the fall of the Berlin Wall, after the defeat of the sandinistas, after the defeat of the revolutions in El Salvador and Guatemala, when China is becoming more and more integrated into the capitalist world market, when the Cuban revolution is finding it increasingly difficult to survive in any form at all, when all the major revolutionary movements have disappeared from Latin America and most other parts of the world, on the very day that Mexico proclaims its modernity through the creation of the NAFTA, on that very day a group of indigenous peasants seize control of San Cristobal and other towns in Chiapas, many of them armed with wooden guns. Not only that, but they soon proclaim their absurd notions openly: they, a group of a few thousand indigenous rebels in the jungle of the south-east of Mexico want to change the world. What is more, most absurd of all, most important, most central to their whole absurd project, they want to change the world without taking power. And on top of that their discourse is full of jokes, of stories, of children, of dancing. How can we take such a rebellion seriously? It all seems too much of a colourful tale from a novel by Gabriel Garcia Marquez for it to be of serious relevance to us here in Europe.

I want to take the zapatistas seriously. I want Marcos to be right when he says that they are stronger than the Mexican government. I want them to be right when they say that they want to change the world without taking power. I want them to be right because I do not see any other way out of the tragedy we are living, in which about 50,000 people die each day of starvation, in which over a thousand million people live in extreme poverty. Revolution is desperately urgent, but often it appears that we are trapped in a desperately urgent impossibility. I want Marcos's declarations to be not only beautiful and poetic but to have a real theoretical and practical foundation. But wanting them to be right is not enough. If we want them to be right, we must try to understand, criticise and strengthen the theoretical and practical foundation of what they are doing.

The zapatistas pose a theoretical and practical challenge: a challenge to all the established practices and ideas of the revolutionary left or indeed of the Left in the broadest sense. As Marcos puts it in a comment on the first year of the uprising, "Something broke in this year, not just the false image of modernity sold to us by neoliberalism, not just the falsity of government projects, of institutional alms, not just the unjust neglect by the country of its original inhabitants, but also the rigid schemes of a Left living in and from the past. In the midst of this navigating from pain to hope, political struggle finds itself naked, bereft of the rusty garb inherited from pain: it is hope which obliges it to look for new forms of struggle, that is, new ways of being political, of doing politics: a new politics, a new political morality, a new political ethic is not just a wish, it is the only way to go forward, to jump to the other side". (Subcdte Marcos - citado por Rosario Ibarra, La Jornada, 2/5/95). He might also have added, "a new political theory, a new understanding of politics and of power".

2. Power is usually associated with control of money or the state. The Left, in particular, has usually seen social transformation in terms of control of the state. The strategies of the mainstream left have generally aimed at winning control of the state and using the state to transform society. The reformist left sees gaining control of the state in terms of winning elections, the revolutionary left (certainly in the leninist and guerrillero traditions) thinks of it in terms of the seizure of state power. The classic controversies between reformists and revolutionaries have been about the means of winning control of the state. The actual goal of taking state power is generally taken as an obvious prerequisite for changing society.

The attempts to transform society through the state (whether by reformist or revolutionary means) have never achieved what they set out to do. So many historical failures cannot be accounted for in terms of 'betrayal' of the revolution or of the people. The failure of so many attempts to use state power suggests rather that the state is not the site of power. States are embedded in a world-wide web of capitalist social relations that defines their character. States are incapable of bringing about radical social change simply because the flight of capital which any such attempt would cause would threaten the very existence of the state. The notion of state power is a mirage: the seizure of the state is not the seizure of power.

The attempts to transform society through the state have not just failed to achieve that end. The fixation on the state has tended to destroy the movements pushing for radical change. If states are embedded in a global web of capitalism, that means that they tend to reproduce capitalist social relations through the way that they operate. States function in such a way as to reproduce the capitalist status quo. In their relation to us, and in our relation to them, there is a filtering out of anything that is not compatible with the reproduction of capitalist social relations. This may be a violent filtering, as in the repression of revolutionary or subversive activity, but it is also a less perceptible filtering, a sidelining or suppression of passions, loves, hates, anger, laughter, dancing. The state divides the public from the private and, in so doing, imposes a division upon us, separates our public, serious side from our private, frivolous, irrelevant side. The state fragments us, alienates us from ourselves.

The problem with any left activity oriented towards the state is that it tends to reproduce the same fragmentation of the person. If power is identified with the state, then winning power is identified with the suppression of part of ourselves: with seriousness, dedication, sacrifice, the elimination of all 'irresponsibility'. In the case of reformist political parties which are oriented to winning control of the state by electoral means, the nature of the state's insertion in capitalist social relations means that there are considerable pressures on the party to project itself as serious, responsible and respectful of property, and to suppress any rank-and-file activity which does not correspond to this image. Revolutionaries do not produce the image of the state in quite the same way, but, especially where conditions are such as to make any revolutionary organisation clandestine, a revolutionary must be prepared to dedicate himself, to sacrifice, to subordinate his life to the higher goal of winning power. Although the aim may be to create a society in which the person would be whole, in which alienation would be overcome, it is assumed that in the meantime the winning of power requires the fragmentation of oneself. It is assumed that in a nasty, alienated society, the only way of taking on the enemy is to adopt the enemy's language and forms of organisation.

This way of looking at power has its most extreme expression in the identification of power with military force. The army (whether state or revolutionary) is not only a model for factory organisation but its exaggeration, the intensification of self-alienation to its extreme, the maximum subordination of normal affective life. In the idea that power is military force (and that power must be won by military force), power and dehumanisation (of self and others) are treated as practically identical.

The state-oriented tradition of organisation privileges men (and especially young men), not necessarily in the sense of any direct discrimination against women, but above all in the way that different forms of social experience are valued. Professional dedication to the revolution promotes a culture in which there is a hierarchisation of social experience and activity. Action or experience directed at the state is given priority, and other types of experience (affective relations, playing with children, sensuality etc) are accorded a secondary importance. The same separation between the public and the private, between the serious and the frivolous, which is the basis of the existence of the state, is reproduced within the revolutionary (or reformist) organisation. In the capitalist world, politics is a serious (not to say boring) business, a matter above all for the serious (not to say boring) gender, a matter that has no room for children, jokes or games. In the world of the traditional left, it is not very different.

3. If it is correct to see the idea of the revolutionary seizure of state power as an idea particularly suited to the experience of young single people, then it is easy to understand why the zapatistas abandoned their traditional notions of revolution as they became transformed from a revolutionary group into a community in arms. They have repeatedly said that they do not want to conquer state power. Time and time again, in their practice and in their declarations, they have rejected the state as a form of action.

The most fundamental example of their rejection of the state as a form of organisation is their insistence on the principle of 'mandar obedeciendo', 'lead by obeying', the idea that the leaders of the movement must obey the members, and that all major decisions should be taken through a process of collective decision making. This principle has meant constant friction in the dialogue with the government, as can be seen for example in the conflict over the issue of time. Given the bad conditions of communication in the Lacandona Jungle, and the need to discuss everything thoroughly, the principle of 'mandar obedeciendo' means that decisions take time. When the government representatives insisted on rapid replies, the zapatistas replied that they did not understand the indigenous clock. As recounted by Comandante David afterwards, the zapatistas explained that 'we, as Indians, have rhythms, forms of understanding, of deciding, of reaching agreements. And when we told them that, they replied by making fun of us; well then, they said, we don't understand why you say that because we see that you have Japanese watches, so how do you say that you are wearing indigenous watches, that's from Japan' (La Jornada, 17/5/95). And Comandante Tacho commented: 'They haven't learned. They understand us backwards. We use time, not the clock' (La Jornada, 18/5/95).

The rejection of the state is central also to the zapatistas' relations with 'civil society'. All their strategies to build a unity of action with those engaged in other forms of struggle quite explicitly bypass the state. Most recently, in the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandona Jungle, issued at the beginning of this year, in which they propose the formation of a Front of National Liberation, they make it an explicit condition for joining this front that members should renounce all aspiration to hold state office - an idea which has scandalised sympathisers both on the reformist and the trotskyist left.

4. But then what? The zapatistas say that they do not want to conquer the world, just to make it new. But that implies some concept of strength or power. If power is not defined as the state, or as military force, then what is the alternative? How can we think of the power of those without power, the face of those without face, the voice of those without voice?

The zapatistas speak of what they say as the 'word of those who are armed with truth and fire' ('la palabra de los armados de verdad y fuego'). The fire is there, but the truth comes first, not just as a moral attribute, but as a weapon: they are armed with truth, and this is a more important weapon than the firepower of their guns. Although they are organised as an army, they aim to win by truth, not by fire.

Those 'without voice, without face' are armed with truth. Their truth is not just that they speak the truth about their situation or about the country, but that they are true to themselves. Truth is dignity, having the dignity to say at last the 'Enough!' that would restore meaning to the deaths of their dead. Dignity is to assert one's humanity in a society which treats us inhumanly. Dignity is to assert our wholeness in a society which fragments us. Dignity is to assert control over one's life in a society which denies such control. Dignity is to live in the present the Not Yet for which we struggle. To be armed with truth or dignity is to assert the power of living now that which is not yet.

In the assertion that they/ we are armed with truth or dignity, the conventional concept of power is reversed. Power is not that which is , but that which is not, that which is Not Yet (as Bloch would put it). In a society in which that which is ('that's the way things are') rules, in which identity is lord, to be armed with dignity is to assert the power of non-identity. In a society based on human alienation, the zapatistas raise the banner of non-alienation, of that which is suppressed, of laughing, singing and dancing, of that which simply does not appear in the normal categories of social science, constructed as they are on the basis of the Is-ness or identity of the world.

But is this not empty, metaphysical nonsense? How can one speak of the power of that which is not yet, of non-alienation, of non-identity, of dignity and truth? History is littered with the corpses of the true and dignified, and ultimately powerless.

The appeal to that which is Not Yet would be purely metaphysical if the Not Yet did not exist in some form already. The appeal to a pre-given History, or to some Dignity, understood as a pre-given Platonic essence, does not help at all. It is only if we understand dignity, truth, non-identity, the Not Yet as already existing that we can begin to think of power in those terms. They exist, of course, not as transcendent essences, but as present refusal, as struggle, as negation of the untruth of capitalist society. Truth exists as stuggle against untruth, dignity as struggle against degradation, non-alienation as struggle against alienation, non-identity as struggle against identity, the not-yet as struggle against the present. In short, they exist as the !Ya Basta! inside all of us. This is expressed very nicely by Antonio Garcia de Leon in his prologue to one of the editions of the zapatista communiques, where he says "as more and more rebel communiques were issued, we realised that in reality the revolt came from the depths of ourselves". The power of the zapatistas is the power of the !Ya Basta!, the negation of oppression, which exists in the depths of all of us.

How do we know that the !Ya Basta! exists? We know it must exist in all of us, possibly very suppressed, always in contradictory form, but always there, not just from experience, but simply because it is an inseparable part of life in an oppressive society. We can see manifestations of it in the million different struggles that make up life in a capitalist society, from the strikes that shook France at the end of last year to the cursing of the alarm clock that tells us it is time to go to an alienating job in the mornings. But there is no way it can be measured, no way in which we can empirically define it. The fact that it exists in often unarticulated form means that there is an irreducible unpredictability in social development.

The question of the power of the zapatistas can now be reformulated as the question of how we articulate the !Ya Basta! - not their !Ya Basta! but our !Ya basta! If we think of their power in this sense, it helps us to understand why the zapatistas have not (or not yet) been suppressed militarily: it is not due primarily to their military strength, but to the extraordinary resonance of their !Ya Basta! in Mexico and throughout the world.

Thinking of the issue of power in this way also helps us to understand aspects of the zapatistas' politics. The understanding of people as already having dignity in a society which degrades them, as already having truth in an untrue society (truth and dignity not as essential qualities but as negation of degradation and untruth) is the crucial turning point in their concept of revolution. Understanding people as having dignity implies a politics of listening and not just talking (a politics of mutual recognition). Through the process of being integrated into the communities of the Lacandona Jungle, the original group of revolutionaries were forced to listen in order to communicate, they were forced to abandon the great revolutionary tradition of talking, of telling people what to think. Revolutionary politics then becomes the articulation of Dignity's struggle, rather than the bringing of class consciousness to the people from outside. From this follow two of the key phrases of the zapatista discourse - 'mandar obedeciendo' (to lead by obeying) and 'preguntando caminamos' (asking we walk). Revolution is redefined as a question rather than an answer: revolution is "revolution with a small 'r'", rather than Revolution with a capital R. It refers to the creative and imaginative articulation of dignity now, and not to a future event, the arrival at a pre-defined promised land.

The notion of dignity and of listening to people's struggles also helps to explain why the zapatistas do not call for supporters to come and join them in the jungle, but insist rather that people should struggle wherever they are in whatever way they can. In effect they say not "we are right, join us", but "we must all struggle to express our !Ya Basta!". The various political initiatives they have taken - the National Democratic Convention in Aguascalientes, the national and international consultations on the aims and future of the zapatistas, the movement of national liberation, the indigenous forum, and now the intercontinental gathering against neo-liberalism - all aim, not at building up their own membership, nor at constructing a solidarity movement, but at stimulating others to strengthen their own struggles for democracy, freedom and justice.

Their appeal is a general one, to what they call 'civil society'. They do not talk either of class struggle or of the proletariat. This has been criticised by some Marxists as reformist, but, although the concept of 'civil society' is unsatisfactory in some respects, it is understandable why the zapatistas should prefer to avoid the vocabulary of the Marxist tradition, laden as it is with a hundred years of positivist interpretation. The concept of the proletariat is particularly problematic. As usually understood, it refers to a particular group of people defined by a particular type of subjection to capital. As such, it privileges the struggles of certain people over others and certain types of struggle over others. The zapatistas' concept of !Ya basta!, on the other hand, more in keeping with Marx's own work, it seems to me, can be seen as based on the idea that the class antagonism runs through all of us, although in different ways, and as allowing a much richer concept of struggle as embracing all aspects of human activity.

In the past two years, this group of rebels in the jungle of the south-east of Mexico, born of the interaction of a group of revolutionaries with the traditions of struggle of the indigenous people of Chiapas, born in the 1990s of the horrors of world neo-liberalism which force so many people either to die in misery or to say "!Ya Basta!", has crystallised (and advanced) to a remarkable extent the themes of oppositional thought and action that have been discussed throughout the world in recent years: the issues of gender, age, childhood, death and the dead. All flow from the understanding of politics as a politics of dignity, a politics which recognises the particular oppression of, and respects the struggles of, women, children, the old. Respect for the struggles of the old is a constant theme of Marcos's stories, particularly through the figure of Old Antonio, but was also forcefully underlined by the emergence of Comandante Trinidad as one of the leading figures in the dialogue of San Andres. The way in which women have imposed recognition of their struggles on the zapatista men is well known, and can be seen, for example, in the Revolutionary Law for Women, issued on the first day of the uprising, or in the fact that it was a woman, Ana Maria, who led the most important military action undertaken by the zapatistas, the occupation of San Cristobal on the 1st January 1994. The question of childhood and the freedom to play is a constant theme in Marcos's letters and is highlighted in a recent interview as the issue that he regards as most important: "In our dream children are children and their work is to be children... I do not dream of the agrarian redistribution, of big mobilisations, of the fall of the government and elections and the victory of a left-wing party, or whatever. I dream of the children and I see them being children... We, the zapatista children, think that our work as children is to play and to learn" (interview with Cristian Calonico Lucio, 11/11/95, [not published at the time this article was written -@kör autonomedia]).

It is not that the struggle of the zapatistas - the military conflict and the prolonged dialogue with the government - has also raised these important issues. Rather these issues are central to the struggle. The struggle is not just about gaining material improvements, better housing, schools, hospitals and so on: it is about creating a world in which people can live with dignity, a mutually recognitive world in which people can relate to each other without hiding behind masks. Seen in this light, the letters of Marcos, the poetry, the theatre of Aguascalientes and the dances that punctuate all that the zapatistas do are not embellishments of a revolutionary process but central to it.

The question for us, then, is not how we can build solidarity committees, but how we can join in the process that they have started. How can we theorise and articulate our own !Ya Basta!? How can we think about the unity of our particular struggles and the struggles of the other zapatistas, those in the southeast of Mexico? How can we articulate that unity in a struggle for a society in which dignity would no longer be a struggle against degradation? It is presumably to stir up such questions that the zapatistas are calling for an Intercontinental Gathering for Humanity and against Neo-Liberalism, to be celebrated between the months of April and August in the five continents .

The zapatistas, far from being just another rebellion in some far-off land, challenge us theoretically and practically, challenge us to join in the struggle for dignity: dignity, according to Marcos in the declaration calling for the intercontinental gathering, "is that nation without nationality, that rainbow that is also a bridge, that murmur of the heart no matter what blood lives in it, that rebel irreverence that mocks borders, customs and wars".

Preguntando caminamos. Asking we walk.

March 1996

Introduction
Some of the categories that people have used in recent years to describe the changes taking place in the world of production, such as Fordism, post-Fordism and immaterial production, have shown themselves to be rather blunt instruments.1 Here I intend to deal with the use of the concepts "Fordism" and "post-Fordism" by the regulation school, which has given a particular twist to the former term, and which coined ex novo the latter. The aim of my article is to help break the conflict-excluding spell under which the regulation school has succeeded in casting Fordism and post-Fordism.

From midway through the 1970s, as a result of the writings of Michel Aglietta 2 and then of other exponents of the regulation school, including Boyer, Coriat and Lipietz, Fordism began to take on a neutral meaning, due in part to a degree of slipshod historiography, but also to the reduction of movements of social classes into mere abstraction.3

When they use the term Fordism, the regulation school are referring essentially to a system of production based on the assembly line, which is capable of relatively high industrial productivity.4 The regulationists' attention is directed not so much to the well-documented inflexibility of the Fordist process of production, to the necessary deskilling of the workforce, to the rigidity of Fordism's structure of command and its productive and social hierarchy, nor to the forms and contents of industrial conflict generated within it, but to the regulation of relations of production by the state, operating as a locus of mediation and institutional reconciliation between social forces. I shall call this interpretation "regulationist Fordism", and shall use "pre-trade union Fordism" to refer to the sense in which Fordism was generally understood in Europe from the early 1920s to the 1960s.5

Regulationist Fordism
In what follows I shall outline briefly the periodisation which the inventors of the regulationist notion of Fordism have given their idea, because this is crucial if we are to understand the ways in which it is semantically distinct from pre-trade union Fordism; I shall then sketch the basic characteristics of the latter.

According to the regulation school, Fordism penetrated the vital ganglia of the US engineering industry and became its catalysing force in a period that is undefined, but presumably in the 1920s, delivering high wages and acting as the cutting edge of the mass consumption of consumer durables. Having passed through the mill of the Great Depression and the Second World War, Fordism then provided the basis for the expansion of Keynesian effective demand in the United States, where it provided the underpinning for a "welfare" regime, and thus for a stable global social reproduction, presumably from the end of the 1940s onwards. In the 1950s, this system of production is seen as reaching out from the United States towards the countries of Western Europe, and Japan. According to the regulationist periodisation, therefore, the high season of Fordism actually turns out to be rather brief, since it converges - albeit only on paper - with Keynesianism at about the end of the 1930s; then it becomes a concrete reality at the start of the 1950s, and lasts through to the end of the 1960s, when it goes into irreversible crisis. In their view, that point sees the opening of the period - through which we are still passing - of post-Fordism.

The regulation school can justifiably claim credit for the interpretation which associates transformations in the processes of valorisation with changes taking place in the socio-political sphere, and vice-versa. It was to make this position its own, and developed it with contributions on the state apparatus and its relations with modern and contemporary capital, in the writings of Hirsch and Roth in Germany and Jessop in Britain.6 According to Jessop, the regulation school comprises four principal directions of research.7

The first direction, initiated by Aglietta, studies regimes of accumulation and models of growth according to their economic determinations, and it applied its first interpretative schema to the United States. Other studies looked at state economic formations - sometimes to examine the spread of Fordism in a given context, and sometimes to follow the particular circumstances of its development - independently from the question of the insertion or otherwise of those states within the international economic circuit.

The second direction concentrates on the international economic dimensions of regulation. It studies the various particular models of international regulation, as well as the form and extent of the complementarity between different national models of growth. This involves examining subjects such as the inclusion and/or exclusion of state and regional formations from the economic order, and the tendencies to autarchic closure and/or internationalistic openness of given countries.

The third direction analyses the overall models of the social structures of accumulation at national level. Reproduction of society depends on an ensemble of institutionally mediated practices which guarantee at least a degree of correspondence between different structures and a balance of compromise between social forces. This strand of regulationism devotes particular attention to the categories of state and hegemony, which it considers to be central elements of social regulation.

The fourth strand, the least developed of the four, studies the interdependences of emerging international structures, and various attempts to lay the basis of a world order through international institutions (which the regulationists call "regimes") aimed at establishing or re-establishing an international order.

Now, even from this summary listing of the regulation school's principal themes it becomes obvious that the centre of gravity of its interests lies in the analysis not so much of the social relations of production, but rather of the economic/state institutions which oversee them. In short, the regulation school stresses the permanence of structures, and tends to overlook human subjects, their changes and what is happening to them with the disorganisation and reorganisation of social relations.

From the start regulationism has been fascinated by the staying power of US capital post-1968, despite the United States' defeat in Vietnam. According to the regulationists, in the period after World War II one has to grant the US "the dominant imperialist position":8 it therefore becomes necessary to understand how, and thanks to what institutions its structures and those of its allied industrial countries maintained their stability. Within this hypothesis there is an underlying assumption, in which Western institutions are seen as remaining solid (extremely solid in the case of the US), while not only the institutions of the labour movement, but also living labour power as a whole appear as inescapably subjugated to the unstoppable march of accumulation: in short, in the medium and long term capital's stately progress is destined to continue, while its aporias melt on the horizon. Thus it becomes a question of studying the laws by which Western capital has succeeded in perpetuating itself. It was from within this framework that Michel Aglietta's book 9 emerged, in the year following the first oil price shock, which was also the year of Washington's political and military defeat in Vietnam.

The Uncertain Contours of Regulationist Post-Fordism
For the regulation school, post-Fordism is like a crystal ball in which, "leaving aside the still not completely foreseeable consequences of molecular and genetic technology" it is possible to read some signs of the future. Particularly in the new information technology, in telecommunications and in data processing technologies, all of which could become the basis for a "hyperindustrialisation", they see a potential for revolution in the world of production. Radically transforming work and fragmenting the "Taylorist mass worker", the "electronic revolution" restratifies labour power and divides it into a relatively restricted upper level of the super-skilled, and a massive lower level of ordinary post-Fordist doers and executors. In short, it separates and divides labour power hierarchically and spatially and ends by breaking the framework of collective bargaining.10 As a result the rhythm of accumulation becomes more intense, and there opens a perspective of a long period of capitalism without opposition - a turbo-capitalism - with a political stability that is preserved intact. The post-Fordist worker of the regulation school appears as an individual who is atomised, flexibilised, increasingly non-union, kept on low wages and inescapably in jobs that are always precarious. The state no longer guarantees to cover the material costs of reproduction of labour power, and oversees a contraction of workers' consumption. In the opinion of the regulation school it would be hard to imagine a more complete overturning of so-called Fordist consumerism, within which, it is claimed, the workforce was allegedly put into conditions of wage employment which would enable them to buy the consumer durables that they created.

If we then look at the discontinuity between Fordism and post-Fordism, it seems to derive from the failure of two essential conditions: the mode of capitalist accumulation and the failure to adjust mass consumption to the increase in productivity generated by intense accumulation.11 In the "golden years" following the Second World War, these two conditions had been satisfied. Fordism mobilised industrial capacities at both the extremes of high skilled and low skilled labour, without the system being destabilised by this polarisation; satisfactory profits were produced from mass consumption, which kept pace with growing investments.12 As from the 1960s, these twin conditions were no longer given, because investments in the commodity-producing sector in the industrialised countries grew more than productivity, generating a crisis which capital then attempted to resolve by seeking out production options and market outlets in the Third World.

According to the regulationists the consequences at the social level are enormous. The influence of the state is reduced in society; the state is pared back; the majority sector of the non-privileged cuts back on its standard of living in order to organise its own survival; there is no sign of new aggregations arising out of the ashes of the old organisations and capable of expressing a collective solidarity. For the regulationists, strikes, campaigns and conflicts at the point of production are seen in terms of a pre-political spectrum which ranges between interesting curiosities (to which university research cannot be expected to pay attention) and residual phenomena.

The Toyotophile variant
The proponents of the advent of post-Fordism discovered Toyotism as a variant of post-Fordism towards the end of the 1980s.13 In the 1960s, the West began belatedly to take account of the expansion of Japanese capitalism.14 At that time it was understood as a phenomenon which combined shrewd commercial strategies with an endemic conformism and inadequate social policies. 15 On the Left there were some who - correctly, and before their time - saw in Japanese expansion new hegemonic temptations for Japan in East Asia.16 Some years later, an admirer of the country's rate of economic growth drew attention to the regular increase in Japan's standard of living and the way in which the Japanese absorbed the oil price "shocks" of the 1960s.17 There were also those who issued warnings about the regimentation of Japanese society, and about its incipient refusal of the rules dictated by the West. 18 Meanwhile there was something of a fashion for Japanese authors who supplied the West with dubious but easy explanations of the rise of Japan on the basis of its cultural and religious ways of life.19

In the 1980s the debate entered the public domain with the publication of a number of important works on Japan's economic structures, despite the growing hostility of Western commercial interests and subsequent gratuitous attacks on the Japanese industrial system in the media.20 However, still in the 1980s, a number of studies by Japanese economists and sociologists that had been translated into English went almost unobserved.21 Even the book by the main inventor and propagator of the word "Toyotism", Tai'ichi Ohno, 22

In the early 1990s, thanks principally to the book by Coriat,23 in continental Europe too the focus of the debate on Japanese industry shifted from cultural motivations to business strategies; other earlier and worthwhile contributions had aroused less interest. According to Coriat, the lessons emanating from the Toyota factories introduced a new paradigm of productivity, whose importance was comparable to those of Taylorism and Fordism in their time. Thus Toyotism comes into the limelight in the guise of a post-Fordism that is complete and by now inevitable. Toyotism is seen as the fulfilment of a tendency to a new form of rationalisation, a rationalisation which had certainly dawned with the category of post-Fordism, but which, in the West, had appeared vague, not yet taking concrete form in a specific form of production and a consolidated social space. In Toyotism however, we are told by Coriat, post-Fordism is realised not only as an ensemble of attempts to rationalise and reduce production costs, but also as a major experiment in new and more advanced relations of production - in fact of a new sociality which might prefigure new forms of industrial democracy. In Coriat's book the West remains in the background, but if we transferred our attention from the delicate balance of productivity in Japan to its European variant, the diffuse factory, we would find an informal Toyotism already operating there, based on individual work contracts. For example, in the celebrated Italian industrial districts, we would find the employers in the "diffuse factory" attempting to set up individual relationships with their workers in order to break down systems of collective bargaining.

According to the Toyotist vulgate, the new system of productivity emerged principally as a result of endogenous demand factors during and after the boom of the Korean War (1950-53), as "just-in-time" production, and thus in large part as an attempt to reduce lead times and cut the workforce.24

What is new about Toyotism is essentially the elements of "just-in-time" production and prompt reaction to market requirements; the imposition of multi-jobbing on workers employed on several machines, either simultaneously or sequentially; quality control throughout the entire flow of production; real-time information on the progress of production in the factory; information which is both capillary and filtered in an authoritarian sense, in such a way as to create social embarrassment and drama in the event of incidents which are harmful to production. Production can be interrupted at any moment, thus calling to account a given work-team, or department, or even the whole factory. Any worker who shows a waged-worker's indifference to the company's productivity requirements, and therefore decides not to join "quality control" groups etc, is stigmatised and encouraged to leave. From Coriat we learn that in the interplay of "democracy" and "ostracism", the group may enjoy a measure of democracy, but the person stigmatised will certainly enjoy ostracism. In the interests of comprehensiveness, in his description of the wonders of Toyotism Coriat25 devotes a laconic note to Satochi Kamata, the writer who went to work in Toyota in 1972 and whose experiences were reflected in the title of his book: Toyota, the Factory of Despair.26

Toyotism has a number of advantages for the regulation school as regards Western managerial perspectives, even though the Japanese advantage in productivity is showing itself to be tenuous, despite the propagandistic aura that has surrounded it in the West.27 First of all, it is an experiment that is geographically remote and commercially successful, inasmuch as it defines a route to accumulation (albeit in conjunctures that are both pre-war and war-based, and not at all in conditions of peace, as the enthusiasts of Toyotism would like to have us believe). In the second place, Toyotist methods seem to contradict the growing process of individualisation, which is often given as the reason for the endemic resistance from Western workforces to massification and regimentation. Thirdly, Toyotism is the bearer of a programme of tertiarisation of the workforce, the so-called "whitening" of the blue-collar worker, which, while it actually only involves a rather limited minority of workers, nonetheless converges with the prognosis for a dualistic restratification of the workforce which the post-Fordists consider inevitable.

Pre-trade union Fordism
What was the reality of Fordism for those workers who experienced it at first hand? Put briefly, Fordism is an authoritarian system of production imposed "objectively" by the assembly line, operating on wages and working conditions which the workforce is not in a position to negotiate collectively. Pre-trade union Fordism, with its use of speed-up, armed security guards, physical intimidation in the workplace and external propaganda, in the 1920s and 1930s was one of the key elements in the slow construction of the world of concentration camps which put out its claws initially in Stalin's Soviet Union and which would soon put out claws in Nazi Germany too. By the opposite token, even during the Depression, the US witnessed a continued, and even strengthened, democratic grass-roots way of doing things which aimed at the building of the industrial union, and which laid siege to Fordism, and brought it down. In the twenty years preceding the unionisation of Ford in 1941, the company's managers and goon squads conducted anti-worker repression, with beatings, sackings and public relations operations. One day perhaps we will be able to be more detailed than Irving Bernstein when, speaking of the main Ford plant of that period, he wrote: "The River Rouge... was a gigantic concentration camp founded on fear and physical assault".28 The fact is that the Fordist mania for breaking down the rhythms of human activity in order to crib and confine it within a rigid plan at the worldwide level was defeated in the United States, but in the meantime it had already made its way across to a Europe that was in flames. One could argue that in the twentieth century the assembly line is, together with totalitarian state systems and racist nationalism, one of the originating structures which broadly explain the concentration-camp crimes perpetrated on an industrial scale. By this I mean that in pre-trade union Fordism, and in Taylorism before it, there was not already contained in potentiality its opposite: not the superiority of work "to capital" as in Abraham Lincoln; nor the construction of the CIO industrial union; nor the fall of the racism and male dominated division of labour; nor even less the right to strike. Fascism and Nazism were not in their origins the losing versions of Fordism, but were forced to become such thanks to the social and working-class struggles of the 1930s in the United States - struggles which had already stopped a ruling class that was set on a course of corporatist solutions at the time of the formation of the first Roosevelt government in 1932-33.

As we know, in the United States the assembly line dates from way back. The process of series production of durable goods in the twentieth century was built on the American System of Manufactures, the method of production by interchangeable parts which was already operating in US industry in the nineteenth century.29 Ford's experiment in his factories is a crucial moment in this series production, inasmuch as it applies it to a consumer durable, the motor car, which had been a luxury object in the early years of this century, even in the United States. By so doing, Ford structured an increasingly broad-based and pressing consumer demand, which in its turn legitimated among public opinion the authoritarian measures so typical of the Ford factories in the period stretching from the early part of the century to the eve of World War II.

I use the word "authoritarian" advisedly to describe the Ford experiment, because in its way it was both more authoritarian and - especially - more grounded than the proposals that had been advanced by F.W. Taylor twenty years previously. The worker who works for Ford is an individual who produces the means for a multiplication of the points of contact between individuals, 30 but paradoxically he produces it precisely thanks to his own imprisonment for hours on end at the point of production, where he is deprived of the right of movement to an extent hitherto unheard of, just as the woman employed on his daily reproduction is bound to the rhythms of industrial production while at the same time confined to the social twilight of domestic labour. The worker is also deprived of the right of speech, because - in this respect Fordist disciplining goes one stage further than Taylorism - the rhythm of his working day is set not so much by direct verbal orders from a superior, as by a pre-ordained tempo set by the factory's machinery. Communication and contact with his peers was minimised and the worker was expected simply to respond automatically and monotonously to the pace set by a totalitarian productive system. By no means the least of these factors of isolation were the linguistic barriers which immigrant workers brought as a gift to Ford, and which the company maintained and deliberately exacerbated for four decades on end, fomenting bitter incomprehensions and divisions. These were lessened only with the passing of time, by daily contact between workers, by the effects of the Depression, and by the organisational efforts - apparently defeated from the start, but nevertheless unstinting - of the minority who fought for industrial unionism during the 1920s and 1930s.

As we know, right from its establishment in 1903, the Ford Motor Company would not tolerate the presence of trade unions: not only the craft unions or industrial unions, but even "yellow" or company unions. Trade unions remained outside the gates of Ford-USA right up till 1941. Wages became relatively high for a period with the famous "five-dollar day" in January 1914, but only for those workers whom Ford's Sociological Department approved after a minute inspection of the intimate details of their personal and family lives - and then only in boom periods, when Ford was pressurised by the urgent need to stabilise a workforce which was quitting its factories because of the murderous levels of speed-up. 31 The plan for total control of workers and their families went into crisis after America's entry into the war in 1917; thereupon surveillance began the more detailed use of spies on the shop floor. In the recession following on World War I, the wages of the other companies were tending to catch up with wages at Ford, and Ford set about dismantling the forms of welfare adopted in the 1910s. In February 1921, more than 30 per cent of Ford workers were sacked, and those who remained had to be content with an inflation-hit six dollars a day and further speed-ups.

Ford's supremacy in the auto sector began to crack halfway through the 1920s, when the managers at General Motors (in large part refugees from Ford and its authoritarian methods), definitively snatched primacy in the world of auto production. Rather than pursuing undifferentiated production for the "multitudes", as Henry Ford called them, General Motors won the battle in the name of distinctiveness and individuation, broadening its range of products, diversifying, and introducing new models on a yearly basis. From the end of the 1920s, and up till unionisation in 1941, the Ford Motor Company was to be notorious for its wages, which were lower even than the already low wages in the auto sector in general.32

The fact of the company having been overtaken by General Motors, and Ford's financial difficulties, were not sufficient to break pre-trade union Fordism in the United States: it took, first, the working-class revolts and the factory sit-ins of the 1930s, and then the unionisation of heavy industry, to bring about the political encirclement of the other auto manufacturers, and, finally, of Ford, to the point where it eventually capitulated to the United Auto Workers union following the big strike in the Spring of 1941. Pre-trade union Fordism dissolved at the point when, faced with attacks by the company's armed security guards, the picketing strikers instead of backing down increased in numbers and saw them off. It was a moment worth recalling with the words of Emil Mazey, one of the main UAW organisers: "It was like seeing men who had been half-dead suddenly come to life". 33

With the signing of the first union contract in 1941, not only did Ford line up with the other two majors in the auto industry, General Motors and Chrysler, but it even outdid them in concessions to the UAW. Ford was then saved from bankruptcy a second time only thanks to war orders from the government. Already in the course of the Second World War it had been attempting to strengthen the trade union apparatus in the factory, to bring it into line with the company's objectives. As from 1946, a new Ford management set about a long-term strategy to co-opt the UAW and turn it into an instrument of company integration. Thus was Fordism buried. If, by Fordism, we mean an authoritarian system of series production based on the assembly line, with wages and conditions of work which the workforce is not in a position to negotiate by trade union means - Fordism as it was generally understood by labour sociologists in the 1920s and 1930s - then Fordism was eliminated thanks to the struggles for industrial unionism in the United States in the 1930s, which were crowned by the imposition of collective bargaining at Ford in 1941. As for the dictatorial tendency to deny the workforce discretionality in the setting of work speeds, and the imposition of work speeds incorporated into machinery, these were far from disappearing with the end of pre-trade union Fordism; if anything, by the late 1990s they become more pressing than ever, precisely in the face of the growth in the productive power of labour and the advent of computer-controlled machinery - but that now takes us a long way from pre-trade union Fordism.

We may or may not choose to see these tendencies as a chapter in a far broader movement of rationalisation which began with the American System of Manufactures and which has not yet fully run its course. In any event, the overall drive to command over worktimes through the "objectivity" of machinery 34 was incubated by other large companies before Ford, explodes with the diffusion of the Fordist assembly line, but is not at all extinguished with its temporary defeat at the end of the 1930s. In fact it seems to impose itself with renewed virulence even in the most remote corners where capitalism has penetrated.

Global post-Fordism and Toyotism
As for the category of post-Fordism, in its obscure formulation by the regulation school, it then opened the way to a number of positions which seemed to be grounded in two unproven axioms: the technological determinism of small-series production which, since the 1960s, is supposed to represent a major break with large series production in the manufacture of consumer durables; and the recent discovery of the productivity of communication between what they choose to call the "producers" in industry.35

The first axiom derives from the assertion that material production in general (even in engineering - which is more discontinuous than flow production) today proceeds by small series, because, thanks to the increasing flexibility of machine tools, beginning with the numerical control machinery of the 1950s, it has become easier to diversify products, in particular in the production of consumer durables. This diversification makes it possible to meet the needs of consumers seeking individuality, but also to mould people's tastes and to offer them the little touches and personalising elements that pass for expensive innovations. In short, this tendency is merely a strengthening of the drive to diversification which General Motors had attempted and promoted right from the 1920s, and which enabled it to beat Ford at a time when Henry Ford was saying that his customers could have any colour of car that they wanted as long as it was black. Mass production had only in appearance moulded the mass-worker (a term which is used, but also abused, in identifying changing historical figures in class composition). In some departments of Ford's biggest factory, River Rouge, the Ford silence was broken by the "Ford whisper", or by "discourse by hand signals", one of the elements of working-class resistance up until the decisive confrontation of 1941.36 Despite the fact that workers had to wear identical blue overalls, and despite the fact that they were not given permission even to think, it was plain that the "producers" had minds which aspired to individuation, not to a universal levelling. We were reaching the end of the levelling battle for an equality "which would have the permanence of a fixed popular opinion".37 Towards the end of the 1920, Henry Ford found himself for the first time in serious financial difficulties, arising out of his insistence on the single-colour Model T. It is worth noting that in the Ford factories, even in the dark years of the 1930s, there were workers willing to risk the sack by buying a General Motors car.38 Thus, within the auto industry, it was General Motors in the 1920s that invented and brought about a flexible production that matched the needs of the times.39 Its diversified vehicles were produced by means of a "commonalisation" of machine tools and of the main components of the finished auto. The basis of economies of range was economies of scale. The advent of variety in production did not have to wait for Toyotism, as C. Wright Mills was well aware in the early 1950s, when he denounced the manipulating interplay between mass tastes and "personal touches" in the products of his time.40

Furthermore, it is taken as real that Toyotism had already broken with "Fordism" in the 1950s and 1960s, because it needed to be flexible in order for its auto production to cope with a demand that was somewhat diversified. Even the prime advocate of Toyotism41 makes this clear, and a number of Western researchers, including Coriat, have propagated its myth. The fact was that in the post-War period, Toyota, as was the case with Nissan, was relatively inexperienced as a producer of vehicles; it had begun production only in 1936, and had quickly learned to build itself an oligopolistic position which contributed to the dislodging of Ford and General Motors from Japan a bare three years later. After 1945, with the Toyoda family still at the helm, the company focused on large series production, which was exported, and then also produced abroad. The continuity not with regulationist Fordism but with the US auto sector turns out to be far stronger than the Toyotophile vulgate would be willing to admit.

After a difficult period of post-War reconversion, Toyota tried the path of the cheap run-about (the Toyotapet), and experienced major strikes in 1949 and 1953. It was saved principally by the intransigence of Nissan, when they destroyed the Zenji auto union, but also thanks to United States orders arising out of the Korean War. Subsequently, and for a further twenty years to come, Toyota's range of products, and those of the other Japanese auto companies, was restricted to a very limited number of models. Up until the 1960s the defective quality of these models meant that exports were not a great success. Faced with this lack of success, there began a phase of experimentation based on using multi-jobbing mobile workteams on machine tools with variable programming, and on attention to quality with a view to exports.42 It was the success of one single model (the Corolla runabout) in the 1970s that laid the basis for a diversification of production, and not vice-versa; and it was a success that Toyota was able to build on abroad as well as at home, where the market was far less buoyant. Up until the 1980s, the variety of Toyota models was prudently limited, and only in the 1980s, when the domestic market experienced a standstill, did the company expand their range of production with a view to winning new markets overseas. Thus it was not the need for a variety of models, but the mobilisation of the workforce after a historic working-class defeat that explains Mr Ohno's experiments at Toyota. The principal novelty of his experiments was that whereas General Motors in the 1920s had been content to have several ranges of cars built on separate lines, Toyota created work teams that could be commanded where and when necessary, to multi-jobbed labour on the production of a variety of models along the same assembly line.

As for "just in time" production, this had already been experimented with, in its own way, by the auto industry in the United States in the 1920s, and even after the Depression. The layoffs without pay, which were so frequent in the 1920s, and even more so during the Depression, because of the seasonal nature of demand, was one of the battlefields that was decisive in the creation of the auto union in the United States.43 In the 1936-37 showdown between the UAW and General Motors, the union was victorious on the planning of stocks and on the elimination of seasonal unemployment. Perhaps those who sing the praises of "just in time" production could take a page or two out of the history of Detroit in the 1930s, or maybe a page from the history of the recent recurring strikes in Europe and the US by the independent car-transporter drivers operating within the cycle of the auto industry, who are actually the extreme appendages of the big companies.

As regards the second thesis, the supporters of the notion of post-Fordism claim that production now requires, and will continue to require, ever-higher levels of communication between productive subjects, and that these levels in turn offer spaces of discretionality to the so-called "producers", spaces which are relatively significant, compared with a past of non-communicating labour, of "the silent compulsion of economic relations"44 of the modern world. This communication is supposed to create an increasingly intense connectivity between subjects, in contrast with the isolation, the separateness and the silence imposed on the worker by the first and second industrial revolutions. While it is certainly true that processes of learning in production ("learning by doing") have required and still require a substantial degree of interaction, including verbal interaction, between individuals, it remains the case that from Taylorism onwards the saving of worktime is achieved to a large extent through reducing to a minimum contact and informal interaction between planners and doers. Taylorism tried, with scant results, to impose a planning in order to increase productivity, depriving foremen and workers of the time-discretionality which they assumed by negotiating informally and verbally on the shop floor. However, in the era of pre-trade union Fordism it should be remembered that in the periods of restructuring of the factory, of changes of models and of technological innovation, the "whispering" of restructuration was not only productive, but was actually essential to the successful outcome of the operation. Anyway, the silence imposed by authority and the deafening noise of development is what dominates the auto industry through to the mid-1930s.45 But the disciplining of silence and of the whisper within the channels of capital's productive communication - is this not perhaps also a constitutive characteristic of the modern factory? On this point, one might note that industrial sociology, as a discipline, was built on the concealing of the communicative dimension and on the rejection of any analysis of the processes of verbal interaction in the workplace. It is not a mere distraction. Here we have only to remember the words of Harold Garfinkel:

There exists a locally-produced order of work things; [...] They make up a massive domain of organizational phenomena; [...] classic studies of work, without remedy or alternative, depend upon the existence of these phenomena, make use of the domain, and ignore it. 46

As for the tendency to impose speed-up in totalitarian fashion, this certainly did not disappear with the demise of pre-union Fordism; if anything it is even more in evidence in this tail-end of the twentieth century, precisely in the face of the strengthening of the productive powers of labour. In fact the tendency now assumes some of the characteristics of the pre-union Fordism of the Roaring Twenties: a precariousness of people's jobs; the non-existence of health care schemes and unemployment benefits; cuts not only in the real wage but also in money wages; the shifting of lines of production to areas well away from industrially "mature" regions. Also working hours are becoming longer rather than shorter. In the whole of the West, and in the East too, people are working longer hours than twenty years ago, and in a social dimension from which the regulatory power of the state has been eclipsed. The fact that people are working longer hours, and more intensively, is also thanks to the allegedly obsolete Taylorist chronometer and the "outmoded" Fordist assembly line. Ironically, precisely for France, which is where the regulationist school first emerged, precious data, non-existent elsewhere, show that work on assembly lines and subject to the constraint of an automated pace of production is on the increase, in both percentage terms and absolute terms: 13.2 per cent of workers were subjected to it in 1984, and 16.7 per cent in 1991 (out of, respectively, 6,187,000 and 6,239,000 workers).47

In the 1950s and 1960s - the "golden years" of Fordism as Lipietz calls them - the international economy under the leadership of the United States pushed the demand for private investment, even more than the consumption of wage goods. What had appeared to be a stable system began to come apart from the inside, because at the end of the 1960s the class struggle, in its many different forms, overturned capital's solid certainties as regards the wage, the organisation of the labour process, the relationship between development and underdevelopment, and patriarchy. If one does not understand the radicality of this challenge, it becomes impossible to grasp the elements of crisis and uncertainty which characterised the prospects for capital's dominion in the twenty years that followed.48 The dishomogeneity of the reactions - from the war of manoeuvre against blue collar workers in the industrialised countries, through to capitalism's regionalisation into three large areas (NAFTA, European Union and Japan) and to the Gulf War - denote not the transition to a post-Fordist model, but a continuous recombination of old and new elements of domination in order to decompose labour power politically within a newly flexibilised system of production.

Conclusions
The regulation school looks at the implications of this recombination from capital's side, seeing capital as the centre and motor of the overall movement of society. Hirsch and Roth speak in the name of many when they state that "it is always capital itself and the structures which it imposes 'objectively', on the backs of the protagonists, that sets in motion the decisive conditions of class struggles and of processes of crisis".49 Thus it is not surprising that the conclusions that the regulationists draw from their position tend to go in the only direction which is not precluded for them: namely that conflict against the laws of capitalist development has no future, and also that there is no point in drawing attention to the cracks in the edifice of domination. Paraphrasing Mark Twain, one might say that if the regulationists have only a pan-Fordist hammer, they will see only post-Fordist nails to bang.

In taking up this position, not only do the regulationists deny themselves the possibility of analysis of conflictual processes both now and in the future, but they also exclude themselves from the multi-voiced debate which is today focussing on social subjects. 50 This is the only way in which one can explain the regulationists' reduction of the working class in the United States to a mere Fordised object,51 even in its moments of greatest antagonistic projectuality as it was expressed between the Depression and the emergence of the Nazi-Fascist new order in Europe. And given the limits of its position, regulationism is then unable to understand how this working class contributed decisively in the placing of that selfsame United States capitalism onto a collision course with Nazism and fascism. Pre-union Fordism was transient, but not in the banal (but nonetheless significant) sense of Henry Ford financing Hitler on his route to power and decorating himself with Nazi medals right up until 1938, but because what overturned the silent compulsion of the Fordised workforce was the workforce itself, in one of its social movements of self-emancipation - a fact of which the regulationists are not structurally equipped to understand the vast implications at the world level, and for many years to come, well beyond the end of World War II.

As regards today's conditions, what is important is not the examination of the novelties following on the collapse of various certainties in the wake of the fall of the Berlin Wall, but the possibility or otherwise of avoiding the inevitability of the passage to a "post-Fordist" paradigm in which labour power figures once again as a mere object and inert mass. As Peláez and Holloway note, the insistence with which the regulationists invite their audience to look the future in the face arouses a certain perplexity.52 After all, a belief in the marvels of technology within the organisations of the labour movement has led to epic defeats in the past. What is at stake here is not just the inevitability or otherwise of a system - the capitalist system - which has too many connotations of oppression and death to be acceptable, but even the possibility of any initiative, however tentative, on the part of social subjects. What is at stake here is the possibility of resisting a preconstituted subordination of labour power to the inexorable New Times that are imposed in part, certainly, by the computer chip, but also by powerful intra-imperialist hostilities, which for the moment are disguised behind slogans such as competition and free trade.

What the present leads us to defend is the indetermination of the boundaries of conflictual action. We shall thus have to re-examine a means or two, with a view to clearing the future at least of the more lamentable bleatings.

Up until now the decomposition and anatomisation of labour-power as a "human machine" has been a preparatory process of the various stages of mechanisation; it is a process which capitalist domination has constantly presented as necessary. The point is not whether post-Fordism is in our midst, but whether the sacrifice of "human machines" on the pyramids of accumulation can be halted.

Translator's Note
FG has a long-standing interest in Ford. A key text was the extended article "Ford Britannica: formazione di una classe operaia". This was printed in the volume Operai e Stato (1972), which brought together crucially important texts - see Note 5 above - most of which have since been translated for limited circulation. FG's piece on Ford was published by Red Notes (1976), together with useful archive material. The translation was a touch free, so the author frowned on further circulation. This was a shame, since the article embodies a good approach for class composition analysis.

Equally important, methodologically, was Romano Alquati's study of FIAT - "Sulla FIAT - punto medio nel ciclo internazionale". This pamphlet also provides a viable structure for a class composition approach. Although it predates the Gambino piece, it has never been published in English.

Coming right up to date and in direct line of continuity, the latest issue of Futur Antérieur, the journal published by an Italo-French group of comrades in Paris, prints a major series of "Reflections on the Struggle of November-December 1995", in which class composition analysis is used to understand the social upheavals shaking France and the new structures of productive labour that are being formed.

Each of the above materials, if published in English, would give useful indications of form, content and method for analysis of our own present realities.
E.E.

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REVELLI, Marco (1995), Economia e modello sociale nel passaggio tra fordismo e toyotismo, in INGRAO, Pietro e Rossana ROSSANDA, Appuntamenti di fine secolo, Roma, Manifestolibri, pp. 161-224.

ROMER, Samuel (1933), "The Detroit Strike", The Nation (vol. 136, no. 3528), 15 February 1933, pp. 167-168.

SINZHEIMER, Hugo (1925), Europa und die Idee der wirtschaftlichen Demokratie, in Europas Volkswirtschaft in Wort und Bild. Beiträge zur Wirtschaftserkenntnis, hrsg. von der "Frankfurter Zeitung", 1925-26, pp. XVII-XVIII, now in same author, Arbeitsrecht und Arbeitssoziologie. Gesammelte Aufsátze und Reden, ed. O. Kahn-Freund and Th. Ramm, Frankfurt-Köln, Europäische Verlaganstalt, 1976 ("Schriftenreihe der Otto Brenner Stiftung", 4), 2 Bde., Bd. 1, pp. 221-225; L'Europa e l'idea di democrazia economica, trans. Sandro Mezzadra, Quaderni di azione sociale, XXXIX, No. 2 (1994), pp. 71-74.

SOUYRI Pierre-François (1994), "Un nouveau paradigme?", Annales, vol. 49, No. 3 (May-June), pp. 503-510.

VAN WOLFEREN, Karel, (1989), The Enigma of Japanese Power, New York, N.Y., Knopf.

VOGEL, Ezra (1979), Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press.

• 1For a timely critique of the term "immaterial production", see Sergio Bologna, "Problematiche del lavoro autonomo in Italia" (Part I), Altreragioni, no. 1 (1992), pp. 10-27.
• 2 Michel Aglietta, (1974), Accumulation et régulation du capitalisme en longue période. L'exemple des Etats Unis (1870-1970), Paris, INSEE, 1974; the second French edition has the title Régulation et crises du capitalisme, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1976; English translation,A Theory of Capitalist Regulation: the US Experience, London and New York, Verso, 1979; in 1987 there followed a second English edition from the same publisher. The link between the category of Fordism and that of post-Fordism may be considered the term "neo-Fordism", proposed by Christian Palloix two years after the publication of the first edition of Aglietta's book. Cf. Christian Palloix, "Le procés du travail. Du fordisme au neo-fordisme", La Pensée no. 185 (February 1976), pp. 37-60, according to whom neo-Fordism refers to the new capitalist practice of job enrichment and job recomposition as a response to new requirements in the management of workforces.
• 3For the regulationist interpretation of Fordism prior to 1991, see the fundamental volume edited by Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway, Post-Fordism and Social Form: A Marxist Debate on the Post-Fordist State, London, Macmillan, 1991, which contains the principal bibliographical references for the debate. For the regulation school see, among others, the following works: Robert Boyer, La théorie de la régulation: une analyse critique, Paris, La Découverte, 1986; Robert Boyer (ed.),Capitalismes fin de siécle, Paris, Presses Universitaires de France, 1986; Alain Lipietz, "Towards Global Fordism?", New Left Review no. 132 (March-April 1982), pp. 33-47; Alain Lipietz, "Imperialism as the Beast of the Apocalypse", Capital and Class, no. 22 (Spring 1984), pp. 81-109; Alain Lipietz, "Behind the Crisis: the Exhaustion of a Regime of Accumulation. A 'Regulation School Perspective' on Some French Empirical Works", Review of Radical Political Economy, vol. 18, no. 1-2 (1986), pp. 13-32; Alain Lipietz, Mirages and Miracles: the Crisis of Global Fordism, London, Verso, 1987; Alain Lipietz, "Fordism and post-Fordism" in W. Outhwaite and Tom Bottomore (eds.), The Blackwell Dictionary of Twentieth-Century Social Thought , Oxford, Blackwell, 1993, pp. 230-31; Benjamin Coriat, Penser á l'envers. Travail et organisation dans l'entreprise japonaise, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1991; Italian translation, Ripensare l'organizzazione del lavoro. Concetti e prassi del modello giapponese, Bari, Dedalo, 1991, with introduction and translation by Mirella Giannini.
• 4I say "relatively high productivity" because the assembly line has not always produced results. For example, the Soviet Fordism of the first two five-year plans (1928-32, 1933-37) was the object of some experimentation, particularly on the assembly lines of the Gorki auto factory (thanks in part to the technical support of Ford technicians), but productivity turned out to be about 50 per cent lower than that of Ford's US factory. Cf. John P. Hardt and George D. Holliday, "Technology Transfer and Change in the Soviet Economic System", in Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Technology and Communist Culture: the Socio-Cultural Impact of Technology under Socialism, New York and London, Praeger, 1977, pp. 183-223.
• 5In his "Fordism and post-Fordism", op. cit., p. 230, Lipietz maintains incorrectly that the term "Fordism" "was coined in the 1930s by the Italian Marxist Antonio Gramsci and by the Belgian socialist Henri de Man". Lipietz is obviously referring to "Americanismo e fordismo" (1934) in Antonio Gramsci, Quaderni del carcere,vol. 3. ed. Valentino Gerratana, Torino, Einaudi, 1975, pp. 2137-81, a series of notes in which Gramsci takes account, among other things, of a book by de Man which does not directly discuss Fordism. The first edition of de Man's work appeared in Germany in 1926: Hendrik de Man, Zur psychologie des Sozialismus, Jena, E. Diederichs, 1926 and, after a partial French translation which appeared in Brussels in 1927, a complete translation was published under the title of Au delá du Marxisme, Paris, Alcan, 1929, based on the second German edition published by Diederichs (1927). For his prison notes on "Americanism and Fordism", Gramsci had the Italian translation of the French edition published by Alcan: Henri de Man, Il superamento del marxismo, Bari, Laterza, 1929. In Europe the term "Fordism" pre-dates de Man and Gramsci, and was already in use in the early 1920s; cf. in particular Friedrich von Gottl-Ottlilienfeld, Fordismus? Paraphrasen über das Verhältnis von Wirtschaft und Technischer Vernunft bei Henry Ford und Frederick W. Taylor, Jena, Gustav Fischer, 1924; H. Sinzheimer, "L'Europa e l'idea di democrazia economica" (1925),Quaderni di azione sociale XXXIX, no. 2 (1994), pp. 71-4, edited and translated by Sandro Mezzadra, whom I thank for this reference. In his article cited above, Lipietz states equally erroneously that "in the 1960s the term was rediscovered by a number of Italian Marxists (R. Panzieri, M. Tronti, A. Negri)". In Italy the discussion of Fordism was addressed, taking a critical distance from Gramsci, in the volume of Romano Alquati's writings, Sulla FIAT e altri scritti, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1975, which brought together texts from the period 1961-1967, and in the volume by Sergio Bologna, George P. Rawick, Mauro Gobbini, Antonio Negri, Luciano Ferrari-Bravo and Ferruccio Gambino, Operai e Stato: Lotte operaie e riforma dello stato capitalistico tra rivoluzione d'Ottobre e New Deal, Milano, Feltrinelli, 1972, which contained the proceedings of a conference held in Padova in 1967.
• 6See in particular, in Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway (eds.) Post-Fordism and Social Form, op. cit., the essay by Joachim Hirsch, "Fordism and post-Fordism: The Present Social Crisis and its Consequences", pp. 8-34, and the two essays by Bob Jessop, "Regulation Theory, Post-Fordism and the State: More than a Reply to Werner Bonefeld", pp. 69-91; and" Polar Bears and Class Struggle: Much Less than a Self-Criticism", pp. 145-69, which contain further bibliographical references.
• 7Bob Jessop, "Regulation Theory, Post-Fordism and the State", op. cit., pp. 87-8.
• 8Joachim Hirsch, "Fordism and Post-Fordism: The Present Social Crisis and its Consequences", op. cit., p. 15.
• 9Michel Aglietta (1974), Accumulation et régulation du capitalisme en longue période. Exemple des Etats Unis (1870-1970) , Paris, INSEE, 1974.
• 10Joachim Hirsch, "Fordism and Post-Fordism: The Present Social Crisis and its Consequences", pp. 25-6.
• 11Alain Lipietz, "Towards Global Fordism", New Left Review, no. 132 (March-April 1982), pp. 33-47.
• 12Ibid., pp. 35-6.
• 13On this development, cf. the review by Giuseppe Bonazzi, "La scoperta del modello giapponese nelle società occidentali", Stato e Mercato , no. 39 (December 1993), pp. 437-66, which discusses the variously critical reception of the Japanese model within Western sociology; more briefly and in more general terms, cf. Pierre-François Souyri, "Un nouveau paradigme?", Annales, vol. 49, no. 3 (May-June 1994), pp. 503-10.
• 14Robert Guillain, Japon, troisiéme grand, Paris, Seuil, 1969; Herman Kahn, The Emerging Japanese Superstate, Minneapolis, Minn., Hudson Institute, 1970.
• 15Robert Brochier, Le miracle économique japonais, Paris, Calmann-Lévy, 1970.
• 16Jon Halliday and David McCormack, Japanese Imperialism Today: Co-prosperity in Greater East Asia, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973.
• 17Ezra Vogel, Japan as Number One: Lessons for America, Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press, 1979.
• 18Karel Van Wolferen, The Enigma of Japanese Power, New York, N.Y., Knopf, 1989.
• 19Chie Nakane, Japanese Society, London, Weidenfeld & Nicholson, 1970; Italian translation, La societá giapponese, Milan, Cortina. Michio Morishima, Why Has Japan "Succeeded"?, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press; Italian translation, Cultura e technologia nel successo giapponese, Bologna, Il Mulino, 1984.
• 20Jean-Loup Lesage, Les grands sociétés de commerce au Japon, les Shosha, Paris, PUF; Chalmers Johnson, MITI and the Japanese Miracle: the growth of industrial policy, 1925-75, Tokyo, Tuttle, 1986.
• 21 Masahiko Aoki, The Economic Analysis of the Japanese Firm, Amsterdam, Elsevier, 1984; Kazuo Koike, Understanding Industrial Relations in Modern Japan,London, Macmillan, 1988.
• 22Tai'ichi Ohno, Toyota Seisan Hoshiki [The Toyota Production Method], Diamond Sha, 1978; English translation, The Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-scale Production, Productivity Press, Cambridge, Mass.; French translation, L'esprit Toyota, Paris, Masson, 1989; Italian translation, Lo spirito toyota, Torino, Einaudi, 1993. was only translated and distributed in the West at the end of the 1980s, at a point when the world of Japanese industry was becoming one of the key focuses for discussions of industrial productivity.
• 23Benjamin Coriat, Penser á l'envers. Travail et organisation dans l'entreprise japonaise, Paris, Christian Bourgois, 1991; Italian tranlation, Ripensare l'organizzazione del lavoro. Concetti e prassi del modello giapponese, Bari, Dedalo, 1991.
• 24Benjamin Coriat, Ripensare l'organizzazione del lavoro, op. cit., pp. 32-3.
• 25Benjamin Coriat, Ripensare l'organizzazione del lavoro, op. cit., p. 85.
• 26Satochi Kamata, Toyota, l'usine du désespoir, Paris, Editions Ouviriéres, 1976; English translation, Japan in the Passing Lane: Insider's Account of Life in a Japanese Auto Factory, New York, N.Y., Unwin Hyman, 1984. By the same author, L'envers du Miracle, Paris, Maspéro, 1980.
• 27Ray and Cindelyn Eberts, The Myths of Japanese Quality, Upper Saddle, N.J., Prentice Hall, 1994.
• 28Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years: A History of the American Worker 1933-1941, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1969, p. 737.
• 29David A. Hounshell, From the American System to Mass Production (1800-1932), Baltimore and London, the Johns Hopkins University Press, 1984.
• 30Karl Marx, Grundrisse: Foundations of the Critique of Political Economy, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1973, p. 265: "Society does not consist of individuals, but expresses the sum of interrelations, the relations within which these individuals stand.
• 31Stephen Meyer III, The Five Dollar Day: Labor Management and Social Control in the Ford Motor Company, 1908-1921, Albany, N.Y., State University of New York Press, 1981, in particular pp. 96-202.
• 32Joyce Shaw Peterson, American Automobile Workers, 1900-1933, Albany, N.Y., State University of New York, 1987. As Samuel Romer wrote in "The Detroit Strike", The Nation (vol. 136, no. 3528), 15 February 1933, pp. 167-8: "The automobile industry is a seasonal one. The factories slow down production during the fall months in order to prepare the new yearly models; and the automobilie worker has to stretch the 'high wages' of eight months to cover the full twelve-month period." Cf. also M.W. La Fever (1929), "Instability of Employment in the Automobile Industry", Monthly Labor Review, vol. XXVIII, pp. 214-17
• 33Bernstein, Turbulent Years, op. cit., p. 744.
• 34David Noble, "Social Choice in Machine Design", in Andrew Zimbalist, Case Studies on the Labor Process, New York, Monthly Review Press, 1979, pp. 18-50.
• 35An updated synthesis of these positions is to be found in Marco Revelli's essay, "Economia a modello sociale nel passaggio tra fordismo e toyotismo" in Pietro Ingrao and Rossana Rossanda, Appunti di fine secolo, Rome, Manifestolibri, 1995, pp. 161-224.
• 36Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years, op. cit., p. 740.
• 37Karl Marx, Capital, vol.1, Harmondsworth, Penguin, 1976, p. 152.
• 38Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years, op. cit., p. 740.
• 39While not belonging to the regulation school, there are two admirers of the Italian industrial districts who presented flexible production as an innovation typical of the 1970s. Here the reference was not to Japan, but to the eastern part of the Po Valley plain: J. Michael Piore and Charles F. Sabel (1983), The Second Industrial Divide: Possibilities for Prosperity, New York, N.Y., Basic Books; Italian translation, Le due vie dello sviluppo industriale. Produzione di massa e produzione flessibile, Torino, ISEDI, 1987.
• 40Charles Wright Mills, "Commentary on Our Culture and Our Country", Partisan Review, vol. 19, no. 4 (July-August 1952), pp. 446-50, and in particular p. 447.
• 41Tai'ichi Ohno, Toyota Seisan Hoshiki [The Toyota Method of Production], op. cit.
• 42Marie-Claude Belis Bourguignan and Yannick Lung (1994), "Le Mythe de la variété originelle. L'internationalisation dans la trajectoire du modéle productif japonais",Annales, 49, 2 (May-June), pp. 541-67.
• 43M.W. La Fever, "Instability of Employment in the Automobile Industry", op. cit., pp. 214-17. Cf. also note 31 above.
• 44Karl Marx, Capital, op. cit., p. 899.
• 45Joyce Shaw Peterson, American Automobile Workers, 1900-1933, op. cit., pp. 54-6; Irving Bernstein, Turbulent Years, op. cit., p. 740.
• 46Harold Garfinkel (ed.), Ethnomethodological Studies of Work, London and New York, Routledge & Kegan Paul, 1986, p. 7.
• 47Anon., Alternatives Economiques, May 1994, on the DARES data: Enquétes spécifiques Acemo: Enquétes sur l'activité et les conditions d'emploi de main-d'oeuvre. My thanks to Alain Bihr for this reference.
• 48See the indispensable "Contribution by Riccardo Bellofiore: On Pietro Ingrao and Rossana Rossands, Appunti di Fine Secolo", pub. Associazione dei Lavoratori e delle Lavoratrici Torinesi (ALLT), 24 November 1995.
• 49Joachim Hirsch and Roland Roth, Das neue Gesicht des Kapitalismus, Hamburg, VSA, 1986, p. 37
• 50On this theme see Peter Miller and Nikolas Rose, "Production, Identity and Democracy", Theory and Society, vol. 24, no. 3 (June 1995), pp. 427-67.
• 51During the first two five-year plans under Stalin, the workers on the assembly lines of the Gorky auto factory were referred to as "the Fordised" (fordirovannye) by the Soviet authorities.
• 52Eloina Pelàez and John Holloway, "Learning to Bow: Post-Fordism and Technological Determinism", in Werner Bonefeld and John Holloway (eds.), Post-Fordism and Social Form, op. cit., 1991, p. 137.

vis - Ã - vis 4, Winter 1996

1. Introduction: The autonomy of the economy

Globalization, like capitalist exploitation, is not something new. Capitalism, as Braudel reminds us, has always been global. However, what is certainly new is the form, the context and the strategic reasons of this globalization. It is from these that we need to start if we are to clarify the strengths and weaknesses of those contemporary processes before which everyone seems so impotent; before which the residual radicalism of many parties of the European left turns into cynical fatalism and submission. Globalization is the globalization of many things. Borders have certainly fallen: not for masses of emigrants (who are increasingly illegal), but for TV images, cultural discourses, political projects; for flows of money, commodities, and productive cycles. Money - commodity - information - production are the elements through which the global factory is built in new forms, and to which echoes the chorus of submission in the name of "responsibility" and "realism". Spaces of manoeuvre have increasingly been limited by budget constraints, and these in turn are constrained by a global system - in the form of international treaties, or "objective" economic and financial mechanisms - apparently external to the realm of national politics.

It certainly seems paradoxical to discover that the satisfaction of needs are more constrained by the productive system of today, which produces more absolute wealth with higher productivity levels, than in the "golden age" of reformism. Then again, perhaps this is only a paradox for those who continue - despite the silence of official economic science - to insist upon interrogating the economic system from the point of view of human needs. If we examine it instead from the point of view of profit, there is no contradiction. A simple equation - say Marx's notion of the rate of profit - would be enough to verify that if the "immateriality" of labour increases relatively, if the proportion of sophisticated machines forming constant capital increases over living labour, then the ratio between surplus value and variable capital must be increased for the rate of profit to remain constant. And if we identify the rate of exploitation in terms of the rate of social exploitation, it is clear that not only wages, but also social expenditures forming social variable capital, must be targeted by capitalist strategies if the rate of profit is to be maintained or accumulation increased. To this end the productivity of waged and unwaged workers in industries and social services, of those working in schools and universities, of those involved in labour of reproduction etc., must increase. In many of these cases, this means an increase in the intensity of labour. So much for the death of Marx.

It seems, therefore, that the pervasiveness - across the most disparate social spheres - of economic discourse as budget constraint is the product of the generalised difficulty of capitalist accumulation at a social level. This pervasiveness, which has become the substance of mass cultural and political discourse, reflects a desperate attempt to impose the hegemony of capitalist values upon every aspect of human and social existence, and is a further step towards that Great Transformation that Karl Polanyi denounced as illusory and untenable.

>From this source, too, springs the hegemonic role assumed by technocrats and technocratic certainties. As Pierre Bordieu noted in an article against Juppé (Libèration 14 December 1995) "the technocrats arrogantly ascribe to themselves reason, modernity and reform, and with a wave of the hand ascribe irrationality, anachronism and conservative inertia to the common people." It would be mistaken to think that these "kings of technocracy" are simply the so - called apolitical technicians who have governed Italy in the past few years. Rather they are the "genuine" politicians: those who, having reduced the room for manoeuvre in the face of economic globalization, are increasingly obliged to conform to the strict "objective" criteria of economic management demanded by the "objective" constraints imposed by the international economy. Basically, Bill Clinton is a good technician to the extent that he accepts the principle of public spending cuts and a balanced budget. He is also a good politician if he is able to mediate between a range of different interests whilst managing this reduction. For the same reason, Italy's Dini or Britain's Major are good technicians or politicians. Juppé has proved to be a good technician but a terrible politician, because in order to manage "the" sacred principle of public debt reduction, he opened the door to an explosive social conflict. After all, what is a technocrat? A good technocrat is someone who knows how to do the job, in circumstances where the nature of the job as such is held to be impartial, above question. A good economist in the finance minister's seat is simply someone who champions cuts to social spending. The fetishistic character of technicism lies in the way it abstracts from its social nature, embracing instead the presumed objectivity and impartiality of economic discourse. Technicism is the ultimate mental state for the legitimation of those processes that seek to make the economy into the great Leviathan, the unchangeable and unquestionable constraint facing all political and cultural subjectivity, a constraint that subsumes everything. Viewed through the lenses of the philosophers and ideologists of technicism, the economy becomes autonomous. Not in the sense of an economic determinism, of the economy determining political processes etc., but rather that the economic priorities dictated by technocratic discourse, and which now encompass every sphere of life, are themselves considered to be the constraint which must be imposed. In other words, economic discourse becomes the meta - principle of an epoch, the "pre - analytical vision" - not of a particular trend in scientific thought (as it was for Schumpeter), but of life itself, in all of its possible manifestations.

Autonomy of the economy therefore: the liberal right as the prophet of this autonomy, and the left - also liberalist - as a loyal convert, albeit one marked by the original sin of past membership in another religion. For the right, autonomy of the economy means the active promotion of institutional constraints, be these the Maastricht criteria of convergence as the basis of European monetary union, IMF structural adjustment programs, or active policies to deregulate the market. For the left, autonomy of the economy means accepting these constraints as a starting point from which to allow the national economy to assume more human and intelligent forms of the competitive game. It is no coincidence in this regard that the educational system has become one of the priorities of the European left. But to what end? Perhaps to provide a better basis for the free development of subjects? Hardly. Rather, its aim is to improve competitiveness on the international market.

Let's briefly examine some facets of this autonomy of the economy, of this totalizing constraint that goes under the name of globalization: firstly finance, and then the question of the productive cycle.

2. Financial globalization and public spending cuts

To begin with, there is the globalization of monetary and financial markets. Here the data is clear and unquestionable. For example, the Federal Bank of New York, one of the 12 organizations which comprise the US Federal Reserve, has recently estimated that the daily value of transactions in foreign exchange is 650 million dollars within the Tokyo, New York and London markets alone. Other estimates place the value up to a trillion dollars. The important thing, however, is the composition of these transactions, almost 18% of which are the result of international commerce and investment (for example, if the USA imports electronic products from Japan, they need to pay in yen and therefore to exchange dollars for yen). The other 82 percent of these transactions is pure and simple speculation, aimed at making a profit from the movement of exchange rates. While the profit per unit of each currency is low, being measured in tenths or hundredths of a dollar, the enormity of the volume involved means that profits (or losses) are very high. Even small deviations in the rate of interest or other factors that affect the profit expectations of the speculators can cause the flow in real time of huge masses of money, a flow that in turn produces fluctuations in the exchange rate and thus constitutes a constraint upon the economic policies of various national governments. In this regime, the power of the market seems huge, a power before which national governments must surrender their traditional instruments of economic management.

Who or what is the target of international financial speculators? We know that speculative attacks are directed against the currencies of those countries that do not rigidly control public finance: those governments that give into pressures on social expenditure, that display weakness in the management of financial reconstruction programs. If a country is not on the path of budget restructuring, of public spending cuts (especially to those components which enter into the social wage), it becomes paralysed by capital outflow, by the collapse of the national currency's exchange rate, by an increase in imports. It finds itself, therefore, in a situation wherein imports prove inelastic in price terms, where inflationary push increases, and where the real income of workers - an income that is less and less indexed to inflation - begins to fall. If, on the other hand, a country has begun a "healthy restructuring" of the public budget, and if substantial cuts to the welfare state have been introduced successfully, then it finds itself rewarded, with the loyalty of international speculators guaranteed and its currency stabilized. In this way, the competitiveness lost through a strong currency is counterbalanced by supply - side policies, productivity increases, and the reduction of labour costs. It seems obvious, if seldom acknowledged, that from the point of view of the proletariat, from the point of view of waged and unwaged workers, from the point of view of those whose experience of the economy is simply that of living out the work of production and reproduction, together with the satisfaction of needs through the wage (social and otherwise), the alternative posed by the globalization of international finance is a false one. In the first case, what has not been lost with cuts in public spending is lost through more unemployment and income - eroding inflation. The possible export push caused by the devaluation of money here is little compensation, since its effect is both small and concentrated in those geographically limited production sectors that are geared towards export. In the second case, what has been lost with the cuts in public spending is not won back either through the speedup of work and life rhythms demanded by international competitiveness, or through cuts in social spending and decelerating employment growth (which is increasingly the only source of workers' income).

It is clear, therefore, that this financial constraint has a class significance, being functional to the management of a country's rate of exploitation. It seems to me, then, that behind the common sense acceptance of the second alternative imposed by financial globalization, there lies the recognition by international capital of something very simple. This is that the factory, the place of production of capitalist social relations, has become identified with society, and that competition between different national capitals - yes, "national capitals" - must be played out in terms of the intensification of labour within production and reproduction. It is certainly true, as Revelli (1995: 168 - 169) reminds us in a recent essay, that unlike during the Fordist period, capital no longer seems to have a nation, in the sense that the space of the nation and that of politics no longer coincide. This is so because globalization processes have limited national sovereignty by reducing national governments' room of manoeuvre over monetary and fiscal policies. At the same time, it is also true that national states have not exhausted their functions of policing and planning labour power. In fact, these functions have now become their central strategic pivot. The management of public spending cuts is not symptomatic of a lack of national economic policy, but rather the opposite. The state tends increasingly to manage the variable capital of a nation, managing the social wage by guaranteeing the shift to private forms of pensions etc. This entails the creation of savings that can be invested in the stock exchange and in speculative flows, through the privatisation (and therefore commodification) of essential services - such as education - according to the criteria of international competition. Furthermore, all of this is often done in collusion with private firms (Ovetz 1996). In this context, economic policies enacted within individual national realities are presented as adaptations to an external objectivity, and national governments become the prophets of capitalist constraints said to be external, objective and immutable.

As constraints or external forces controlling social variable capital, both financial globalization and the free flow of capital share the same strategic aims as the Maastricht treaty in Europe, or the hobbling of indebted Southern countries by the IMF: namely, the increase of surplus value and the reduction of social variable capital.(1) As for the Maastricht treaty's efforts to create a European currency, it is clear that the target ratios of Deficit/GNP at 3% and Debt/GNP at 60% set for individual states must be understood as a conscious policy of attacking public expenditure, especially its social component. It is also true that, to date, none of the European countries - Germany included - have fulfilled the requirements for European Monetary Union set out in the strict (and orthodox) interpretation of the Maastricht treaty. The near future, therefore, will see either a strategic retreat on other objectives, or else a more massive attack upon public spending at the European level.(2) The next two years are therefore of crucial importance in defining the relation between classes in Europe. In this sense, the recent struggles in France and Belgium are an indication of how things are moving in a direction that is fruitful and promising, and how such constraints can actually be "deconstrained".

It is also worth remembering the strategic meaning of a single European currency. Immediately after the explosion of conflict in France, The Economist noted, in an article only somewhat paradoxically entitled "France prepares for EMU",

if Germany succeeds in imposing strict fiscal limits on other single currency countries, all the burden of adjustment in a recession will fall on output and jobs. The only policy instrument then left to national governments will be microeconomic ones (such as, for example, structural changes to labour markets) (Economist 1995, December 9th: 11).

What is anticipated, then, is an European zone in which the whole weight of recessionary mechanisms falls upon the labour market and labour processes, in which the macroeconomic buffers used to smooth the cycle during the Keynesian era are abandoned, in which trade union and government spaces of mediation are consequently also reduced - a situation, in other words, wherein the continuous restructuring of capitalist relations of production becomes the only manageable variable in the competitive battle between economic blocks.

The distinction between capital flows as represented by the globalization of international finance, and those imposed by constraints such as the Maastricht treaty or IMF dictat, is more formal than substantial. If the latter clearly represents an institutional constraint, the free flow of capital via financial globalization is equally the product of precise political choices by Western governments. Gramsci comes to mind here with his observation that "liberalism too is a form of state 'regulation', introduced and maintained through coercion and legislation: it is a fact of conscious will, a will conscious of its own ends, rather than the automatic, spontaneous expression of an economic fact" (Gramsci 1994: 152). Here, then, can be found capital's theoretical and political understanding of "constraints". From this point of view, here and now, the alternatives are either liberalism - that is, a strategy to increase the social rate of exploitation - or the reduction of the social rate of profit. From this point of view, a Keynesian - style management of capitalism has become unthinkable, not so much because an increase in demand will not increase employment, but rather because Keynesian policies presuppose a social structure able to engender institutionalised productivity deals between labour bureaucracies and employers, able to subordinate the social rate of exploitation to economic growth. This social compact, this class composition, has gone forever, destroyed through restructuring after it became a political composition and began to threaten capital. Its dismantling also destroyed the material base of any joint (union - employer) management of the rate of exploitation. At the microeconomic level, and in the face of a restructuring based upon the growth of capital's technical composition, "the battle against public debt" is mainly a battle to reduce social variable capital and to increase the social rate of exploitation - this is the old adage behind the mystifications used to legitimise the cuts.

And there have been many mystifications. For example, the high public debt in Italy is really nothing more than the combined result of fiscal evasion by privileged social strata, financial aid to those firms which restructured themselves at the expense of the workforce, clientelism, and interests on debt (Fumagalli 1994). A real Welfare state, after all, has never existed in Italy. In other countries, such as the United States, the enormous public debt of the 1980s was the combined product of anti - inflationary policies (that is, the capitalist management of the crisis of Keynesianism), tax cuts for companies and high income groups, an increase in military spending, and an increase in interest payments (itself caused by interest rate rises that had provoked, at the beginning of 1980s, a recessionary phase aimed at helping anti - worker restructuring) (Cleaver 1981; Heilbroner 1989). This is the kind of public debt that governments want the great majority of the population to pay.

It's obvious that any reduction of public debt causes, through a multiplier effect, a reduction of economic growth and therefore employment. It has been estimated that were all European countries to conform to the Maastricht criteria, there would be cuts in expenditures equivalent to 1/5 of the European GNP in 1994. This of course would have catastrophic effects in employment. It is also obvious that the reduction of the deficit/debt could be obtained through cuts in military expenditures and increased taxation upon the richest part of the population (this could also compensate for the losses in income endured in recent years by the great majority of the population). It is also well known that the public debt is not so great as to justify cuts in social expenditures. Indeed, if government capital expenditures are distinguished from government current expenditure and adjusted for inflation, the deficit reduces notably (Bellofiore 1993). It has also been established that the greater part of interest is owed to enterprises and high income families, in the United States even more than in Italy (Heilbroner & Berstain 1989), so that a healthy moratorium or annulment of debt would be in the interest of most. All this is obvious, but the alternative is never raised in the debate. The constraint is clear, and the equation has only one unknown: how much should social expenditure be reduced in order to meet public debt? Or, how can the social security system be restructured so that it weighs less heavily upon on the state budget?

Let's take the example of pensions. The British prime minister, the Tory John Major, regularly attacks his Labour colleague Tony Blair, accusing him of fomenting the "politics of envy" when - in the face of widespread popular discontent - he timidly points the finger at the scandalously enormous profits made by recently privatised firms over the last few years (a privatization, moreover, that has not been followed by any significant reduction in prices or increase in service quality). The "politics of envy" seem instead to be embraced by those Italian and French commentators scandalised at the relatively short working life of some groups of workers in the public sector. But what is so unfair about retiring at the age of 50 or 40? If this is unfair to those who must work until 65, then we should simply adjust the retirement age downwards. Little if any of this perspective, however, has made it into the debate. The "conventional wisdom" proposed instead by the press and TV networks is that the current difference in conditions is unfair.In highlighting this, though, they all reach the same conclusion, which is that everybody should retire at 65, since to level the retirement age downwards would be irresponsible given the public debt. Keeping for a moment to the theme of pensions, there is also the classical argument that, demographically speaking, the number of workers paying contributions is declining, while the number of pensioners benefitting from them is on the rise. From here stem all the proposals to lengthen people's working life and working day, to abandon inter - generational solidarity, and to promote private and integrative pensions. The validity of this argument, as with all economic arguments, is limited to the set of assumptions made - in other words, to what is left out of the picture. In this case, a very simple historical fact is overlooked. If it is true that the number of young workers has fallen in relation to those who are now retired, it is also true that the social productivity of the former has increased. Since the difference between labour productivity and wage rates allows us to estimate the rate of exploitation in the form of profit per hour, it is clear that in principle one could comfortably "support" the growing number of the elderly by eroding profits.(3)

The true question of pensions, one which is strategic for capital, seems therefore to be firstly, the attempt, through the introduction of private pensions and thus investment funds, to increase the link between workers' savings and capitalist investment. Since workers' savings are simply postponed consumption, which in the hands of today's bankers become capital that can be loaned out in the production process, it follows that, secondly, the strategy on the pension front tends at any given time towards increasing the quantity of available capital that can be thrown into the valorization process. In doing so, however - and here is my third point - this strategy also tries to link the fate of workers increasingly to the prospects of capitalist accumulation. The higher the social conflict, the more that the financial Leviathan makes share prices fall, the more the value of workers' "capital" - which from their point of view is simply future consumption - falls. Once internalized, this link may serve to restrain conflict. For example, were share price to fall, today's workers who contribute to private pensions would have to "invest" an increasing amount of capital in order to guarantee a given future consumption. So, while the question of pensions is simply one of the many themes concerning the current restructuring process, attempts to "reform" it tend to increase the rate of social exploitation, to attack current consumption and increase the length of people's working lives, and to mobilise the active subjectivity of workers in a capitalist sense, by attempting to transform all citizens into careful and anxious readers of the daily stock exchange bulletins, an activity which was once the preserve of a privileged and wealthy minority.

3. Globalization of production processes

A second meaning generally associated with the term "globalization" concerns production. There is no doubt that in the last twenty years, the process of restructuring in the North that followed the social conflict of the 1970s has led to the establishment of production lines in parts of the world where lower wages and a greater intensity of work guarantee higher profit margins for international enterprises. This phenomena can be described as a leopard - skin spread of manufacturing concerns to the South of the world, housed in free - export zones created by local governments which guarantee to transnational companies favourable fiscal terms, the use of infrastructures, and a large reservoir of very cheap labour power, itself made available through "enclosure" policies directed against traditional forms of economic activity.

While South Korea, Taiwan, Mexico, Malaysia, Haiti and Brazil are the countries with the highest numbers of workers in such areas, the industrial triangles in the south of China have developed at a remarkable rate over the last decade. The majority of industries in these areas are owned by big transnational companies, and the majority of workers are employed in the electronic, textile, and clothing sectors. And while the total numbers employed in these areas is not enormous, the figures have grown significantly in recent years. Total employment in Mexico's Maquiladoras, for example, has gone from 110,000 in 1980 to 500,000 in 1992, while in Asia about 700,000 workers are employed in the free - export zones. What is significant is the proportion of female workers involved. In Asia these are mostly unmarried women aged between 17 and 23, with the highest densities being 88% in Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Malaysia, and around 75% the South Korea and the Philippines. Often there is a widespread use of "training contracts" as a way of paying only 60% of the local minimum wage, with workers repeatedly fired and re - hired, as a way of guaranteeing for the employer a permanent cut in wage costs (Knox and Agnew 1991).

Table 1 summarises occupational changes in manufacturing industry in some key areas of the world economy. Although the loss of 9 million jobs in the North has not been completely offset by the increase of 6 million in Latin America and Asia, the table clearly shows a structural shift within the international division of labour. The limitations of this comparison should also be noted, since no data has been included for Africa (which apart for South Africa is not, in any case, particularly relevant to a discussion of international manufacturing), China and other countries of East Asia. As has been mentioned, an important aspect is that of gender composition. In Table 2 the ratio of female to male workers in manufacturing industries between 1984 and the early 1990s is set out - a ratio which, apart from India and Brazil, is higher in developing countries than in those of the North. In Malaysia, Singapore, and Sri Lanka, the number of women waged workers has overtaken that of men, while in Thailand the number is almost identical. In many instances, this has meant a conscious choice by the companies concerned to hire relatively young women, since these workers are considered more submissive. Furthermore - and especially in the textile industry, where the use of fixed capital is often modest - it is relatively easy for employers to react to any worrying signs of workers' struggles by closing their plants and relocating elsewhere. As The Economist notes, "the clothing industry uses little capital and is very mobile. All you need is a shed, some sewing machines, and lots of cheap nimble fingers" (Economist 1987: 67).

Table 1 - Wage employment in manufacturing (millions of people)

	1974	1984	1993	% 1974 - 84	% 1984 - 93
North America	22	21.3	19.8	- 3.18
- 7.04
Japan	12	12.1	13.7
+ 0.8	+ 13.2
Western Europe	35.2	28.3 (5)
26.5 (6)	- 19.6	- 6.3
Total Centre	69.2
61.7	60	- 10.8	- 2.75
South Asia
5.6	6.4	6.5	+ 14.3	+ 1.56
S - E Asia	6.3	6.4 (7)	9 (8)	+ 1.6	+ 40.6
Latin America	7	7.6 (9)	9.5 (10)
+ 8.6	+ 25
Total Periphery	18.9	20.4
25	+ 7.9	+ 22.5

Table 2 - Ratio of female to male manufacturing workers (11)

	1984	1993 (12)
USA
0.48	0.48
UK	0.41	0.43
ITALY	0.49	0.49
GERMANY	0.41
0.41
JAPAN	0.54	0.55
CHINA
0.67	0.81
HONG KONG	1.02	0.8
INDIA	0.1	0.1
SOUTH KOREA	0.61
0.65
MALAYSIA	0.81	1.04
PHILIPPINES
0.64	0.66
SINGAPORE	1.06	1.11
SRI LANKA	0.6	1.36
THAILAND	0.72
0.98
BRAZIL	0.32	0.37

We should not be deceived by this very broad picture, since current changes are more complex than a simple move of the Fordist factory from North to South. At least two further pieces of data demand consideration. To begin with, none of the big transnational corporations can at present be truly defined as global. Of the one hundred transnational corporations on the Fortune list,

around forty firms generate at least half of their sales abroad; less than twenty maintain at least half of their production facilities abroad; with very few exceptions, executive boards and management styles remain solidly national in their outlook; with even fewer exceptions, R&D remains firmly under domestic control; and most companies appear to think of a globalization of corporate finances as too uncertain (Ruigrok and van Tulder 1995: 159).

Secondly, the great majority of investment flows between nations occur within the triad of US - Europe - Japan. According to the data of one United Nations agency, four - fifths of the movement of international capital during the 1980s occurred in these regions. And although the yearly economic growth rate of foreign investment in developing countries has almost doubled in recent times, it is also true that the amount of foreign investment in developing countries has fallen from 25% of the world total (1980 - 84) to 19% (1985 - 89) (UNCTC 1991: 10).

As some researchers have suggested, this data means that "globalization," rather than being a given reality to which we must submit ourselves, is actually a strategic objective, and therefore capable of failure (Ruigrok and van Tulder 1995: 175). Moreover, there currently seem to be two alternative "global" strategies for reaching this objective (Ruigrok and van Tulder 1995: 178 - 182). The first of these, globalization in the strict sense of the word, aims at establishing an international division of labour within the transnational corporation through a vertical integration of the production process. The production cycle, in other words, will be globally subdivided according to criteria of comparative costs. Forms of production that are labour - intensive and in need of little capital are destined for low wage areas, while the production of those components that require sophisticated technologies or high value - added services will instead be concentrated in areas that offer a suitable structure and environment. This strategy, then, very much resembles the old Fordist one, but now deployed in new forms and contexts. The factory becomes the global factory, in which the different production departments are spread throughout the world. As a consequence, the geographical dispersal of different types of workers within the wage hierarchy constitutes a barrier to the circulation of struggles. To the extent that production is still concentrated in the countries of origin, this global strategy serves to threaten and discipline the bargaining power of the internal domestic working class.

The second global strategy, called "glocalization", aims at an inter - firm division of labour within enterprises that remains confined to the triad of the US, Japan and Europe. This alternative strategy is based more upon a Toyotist than a Fordist managerial philosophy, with firms trying to "glocalize" through the subcontracting of productive cycles and the structured control of supplier networks (outsourcing). For this reason, this strategy is based largely upon the presence within the global North of de - regulated labour markets and a flexible labour force.

A couple of observations follow on from the fact that the processes of globalization are centred around these two strategies. First, globalization and glocalization produce contradictory effects. For example, the first tends to promote international trade together with the international division of labour, while the second, being concentrated within particular blocks, tends to reduce them. This indicates that the world economy is not subject to one dominant structural dynamic, given that the hierarchical integration of North and South, which follows on from globalization, or the dichotomy between development in the North and underdevelopment in the South, which follows on from glocalization, are both possible scenarios, depending upon which strategy prevails. This in turn depends, of course, upon the relative difficulty of implementing each strategy in the face of a spreading revolt within the South against work rhythms and low wages, and within the North against casualization and cuts to welfare benefits.

Secondly, the interaction between these two strategies tends to accelerate the geographical diffusion of the dichotomy between development and underdevelopment. Taken as a whole, then, the current trends don't seem to point to a worker subject with homogeneous work and employment conditions, let alone to a clear distinction between workers of the North and those of the South. The vertical integration strategy deployed by globalizing firms exploits the lower wages of the Third World, and uses them as a bargaining chip to push down workers' wages in their home country. Furthermore, it also exploits the skilled workers of the South: those engineers, technicians, and programmers who are increasingly entering the ranks of the transnational corporations at only a fraction of the costs of their Northern counterparts.(13) The horizontal nature of the glocalisation strategy is based upon the dichotomy between a Toyotist management of labour power in the "mother corporation" (workers' participation, quality, etc.), and the use of territorially dispersed, subcontracted labour power. The latter in turn is based upon a de - regulated labour market that induces the workers to greater competition and flexibility. The net result of the interaction between these strategies of globalization and glocalization is the simultaneous presence of development and underdevelopment in the same country, region, city - or even neighbourhood.

The erosion of the social fabric, the increase in poverty and marginalisation produced by cuts to public spending can become functional to accumulation, especially so far as the strategy of glocalization is concerned. This strategy can even capitalise to some degree upon the lack of social cohesion, when the increase in marginalisation leads to the construction of prisons as outsourced, forced labour camps. This is already a reality in the United States. Faced with an explosion in detainee numbers, prisons managed by private companies expanded by 500% between 1985 and 1995, making theirs one of the most lucrative of businesses. Once guaranteed a state subsidy, the companies managing prisons can concentrate upon cutting costs and maximising profits. Here are some cases taken from the PEN - L Internet discussion list:

* the majority of workers from a furniture company (Michigan Brill Mfg. Co) lose their jobs and $5.65 hourly wage, while the inmates of the state prison are hired instead with a wage ranging from 56 to 80 cents an hour.

* In Texas, about 100 inmates of the private prison in Lockhart assemble electronic components for industrial giants such as IBM, Dell and Compaq, production performed by an Austin firm before its closure. The prisoners earn the minimum wage and no other benefits.

* In Ohio, the inmates of the Ross County's prison were assembling car parts for Honda, until the United Auto Workers union succeeded in stopping the operation. Now the inmates assemble toys and input data in computers.

* Juvenile prisoners answer the telephone and take bookings for TWA near Santa Barbara. The inmates in San Quintino input data in computers for private companies.

* Staff at the prison in Pendletone Oregon manage the company Oregon Corrections Industries, Unigroup, where the inmates produce jeans with the brand name "prison labor".

Third, these strategies depend - at least for part of the production process, and in some of its geographical locations - upon the active participation of workers in quality control, in product innovation, in production design, and in the self - management of the firm's use of their labour power. In the words of Marco Revelli,

The Japanese industrialists of the post - Fordist era and their Western emulators . . . think it "fortuitous" that workers remain human beings. They can afford to solicit their employees "to think", "to re - humanise themselves", because they are convinced that they possess a monopoly upon human nature (and that the "commodity that works" is the only possible way of being human). Thought born in the universe of the factory is inherently conformist and directed towards the goals of production (1995: 192).

Unfortunately for the philosophy of these post - Fordist managers, their employees have a rather different opinion. The results of a survey recently taken among 1500 hundred workers and managers by Kepner - Tregoe, a U.S. consultant firm, have been so shocking that it was decided to have them checked again by another group of consultants. The results clearly show that every aspect of the philosophy of workers' participation is matched by a disenchanted cynicism amongst workers. Kepner - Tregoe's president, T. Quinn Spitzer, had this to say: "The vitriolic response was amazing . . . Workers don't like their companies, and there is a fundamental social change going on in this country regarding workplace relations . . . The workers hear the verbiage about how 'our people are the most important asset we have' and they want to throw up." (quoted in Collective Action Notes 1996).

Fourth, both globalisation and glocalisation are based upon a labour power which is presently disorganised, especially at the international level. Despite this, the low wages in the labour intensive parts of the global factory engendered by globalization are the targets of movements and struggles that seem to replicate, at an accelerated pace, the high points of class struggle in the Fordist West.(14) And while the Fordist factory of the North had emerged hand in hand with a wage policy which attempted to recuperate workers' antagonism - just think of Ford's $5 day scheme in 1914 - in the South wage increases have mostly been the product of workers' struggles. Table 3 compares International Labour Office strike data from some of the countries of the world's South. As can be seen, apart from the case of the Philippines, where the period 1984 - 1988 coincided with struggles against the Marcos regime, the developing countries sampled have witnessed a growth of industrial class conflict, against its apparent stagnation in the United States. These figures must be treated with caution, however, since they report only official strikes.

Table 3 - Numbers of strikes (average working days lost for strikes, thousands)

	1984 - 88	1989 - 93	% rates of change
USA	7257.82	7001.76	- 3.52
NIGERIA
225.66	1414.86(15)	+ 527
MEXICO	1436.6
1636.58	+ 13.87
HONG KONG	2.8612	5.2934
+ 84. 9
INDONESIA	165.0534	811.59(16)	+ 391.7
SOUTH KOREA	2500.78	3386.42	+ 35.41
MALAYSIA
16.59	74.72	+ 350.27
PHILIPPINES	2287.16
974.57	- 57.38
SRI LANKA	164.57	286.86
+ 74.30
THAILAND	96.78	155.34	+ 60.50

This growth of the workers' movement within the Fordist parts of the South forces transnational corporations towards a greater mobility, insofar as that is possible. So, if American clothing factories such as Levis or Nike subcontract large parts of their production process to countries like South Korea, these in turn subcontract to Chinese or Indonesian factories, where wages are lower, and the workers' movement does not yet pack the punch of its South Korean counterpart. Finally, one also has to bear in mind here the possible effects of social antagonism within the cycle of high - tech capital upon a range of geographical areas (Witheford 1995).

As for the strategy of glocalisation, based upon the flexibility of work in the North, two examples - one from Paris, the other from Liverpool - seem worthy of mention. In the first, the massive working class response to Juppé's measures during December 1995 again raises the spectre of rigidity against the strategy of flexibility. In the second, an ongoing action by English dock workers is significant for a number of reasons: because it opposes their bosses' decision to use legally guaranteed forms of flexibility and to fire workers who had struck against casual labour, and because the strikers are bypassing the law against sympathy strikes in UK through the concrete solidarity of Canadian, US, Israel, Australian, Spanish, Italian, Portuguese, and other dock workers who are actively boycotting ships coming from Liverpool. This is a concrete example of how the struggle against elements of flexibility can throw up a global working class response. Not only this, but as the mobilisation in the early 1990s of hundreds of groups in Mexico, US, and Canada against NAFTA has shown, this struggle is trying to make use of communication technologies and the Internet both to accelerate and organise the circulation of struggles, and to confront capitalist strategies of globalization with an equally global antagonism.

4. Conclusion

Within current common sense, the word "globalization" is associated with a perception of the fate of contemporary societies as fixed, immutable and given. If there is some space for changes, these are nonetheless confined to what is necessary for adaptation to global competition's new rules of play, or for the fine - tuning of the budget. But it seems impossible to contemplate radical changes, even within the hypothetical horizon of parties belonging to opposing camps. The ideology of the "failure of communism" (read state capitalism) is used here to taint as fanciful any attempt to think beyond the basic assumptions that constitute the most expeditious tallying of life in pursuit of accumulation. With all its dependence upon subjectivity and creativity, modern capitalism can only promote a political culture characterised by the absence of "radical" imagination, by the absence of an alternative vision of existence - not in the distant future, but here and now, where the present material and subjective bases could render it conceivable, if not actualisable.

It seems to me that the picture of globalization set out in this paper is quite different from that static, given, incorruptible and immovable one presupposed in political debates and offered up in the common places of traditional channels of information. Our picture illustrates that the globalization of both finance and production processes is a strategy, and thus subject to failure. Furthermore, it seems that we need to respond in two ways to the passive acceptance of the economy's autonomy. Firstly, with autonomy from the economy, with a critical and radical thought that refuses to accept the basic assumptions imposed by a representation of the world finalised in the elaboration of strategies for the maintenance of the current system of affairs. Secondly, with the economy of autonomy, economy understood here not as a system of capitalist relations, but as an alternative system of social relations, definition of needs and of human modes for their satisfaction, given the current material and subjective bases. In short, against the false realism of economic fetishism we have to recover a utopian discourse, in thought as well as in antagonistic and constitutive practice. Through an interesting play on words, the word utopia is defined in English as no/where - no place. But this could also be read as now/here - here and now. Utopia therefore not as an alternative model, not as a party program or a plan in search of subjects to subordinate, but rather as an open and inclusive horizon of thought, as antagonistic practice and communication. If theoretical and political recomposition must occur as a heterogeneity of antagonistic themes, and thus of subjects - labour, production, reproduction, race, gender, health, environment, education etc. - then this entails a discourse which to those who manage the Great Leviathan will necessarily seem "utopian": that is, as a discourse centred around the needs and aspirations of real human subjects, uncoupled from the priority of social relations which take the form of despotic things.

References

Bello, Walden and Stephanie Rosenfeld (1992) Dragons in Distress. Asia's Miracle Economies in Crisis. London: Penguin. Bellofiore, Riccardo (1993) 'Per una ripresa alternativa dello Stato Sociale', Bozze 3, September. Cleaver, Harry (1981) 'Supply - Side economics: splendori e miserie', Metropoli 7, December. Cleaver, Harry (1988) 'Close the IMF, abolish debt and end development: a class analysis of the international debt crisis', Capital and Class 39. Coates, Ken and Stuart Holland (1995) Full Employment for Europe. Nottingham: Spokesman. Collective Action Notes (1996) 9 Jan - Mar. (POB 22962. Baltimore, MD 21203, USA. E - mail: [email protected]). Fumagalli, Andrea (1993) 'L'economia italiana sotto il gioco di Maastricht', in L. Berti and A. Fumagalli, L'antieuropa delle monete. Roma: Manifestolibri. Gramsci, Antonio (1994) Scritti di economia politica. Torino: Bollati Boringhieri. Heilbroner, Robert and Peter Bernstein (1989) The Debt and the Deficit. False Alarms/Real Possibilities. New York: W.W. Norton & Co. Knox, Paul e John Agnew (1992) The Geography of the World Economy. Harlow: Longman. Ovetz, Robert (1996) 'Student Struggles and the Global Entrepreneurialization of the Universities', Capital and Class 58, Spring. Revelli Marco (1995) 'Economia e modello sociale nel passaggio tra fordismo e toyotismo', in Pietro Ingrao and Rossana Rossanda, Appuntamenti di Fine secolo. Roma: Manifestolibri. Ruigrok, Winfried and Rob van Tulder (1995) The Logic of International Restructuring. London: Routledge. UNCTC (United Nations Industrial Centre on Transnational Corporations) (1991) World Investment Report 1991: The Triad in Foreign Direct Investment. New York: United Nations. Witheford, Nick (1995) 'Cycle & Circuit of Struggle in High - Technology Capitalism', Common Sense 18.

Notes

(1) See Cleaver (1988) for a general class analysis of the debt crisis and IMF policies. To my knowledge, we still lack a similar class analysis of the most recent developments of the debt crisis and, in particular, of the development of financial crisis following the beginning of the Zapatista rebellion in 1994.

(2) This article was written before German chancellor Kohl's announcement late in April 1996 of a cut of 70 million marks to public spending, and before most of the discussion about possible elastic interpretations of the Maastricht criteria. The former steps up the battle against public spending, the latter concedes to popular pressure against cuts: Europe's fate is still to be decided on the ground.

(3) Furthermore, the pensioners of today are the workers of yesterday who, whatever the balance between their past social insurance contributions and the pensions they receive, have created more wealth than they have been paid.

(4) North America = USA and Canada. Western Europe = Austria, Netherlands, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Sweden. South Asia = India and Sri Lanka (1984 and 1993), India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh (1974). South East and East Asia = Hong Kong, Republic of Korea, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan (only for 1974). Latin America = Mexico, Brazil, Venezuela. Source: Knox and Agnew (1992) and my updates.

(5) Holland 1987.

(6) Austria 1989, Belgium 1991, Germany, Italy and Sweden 1992.

(7) Thailand 1985.

(8) Malaysia 1991.

(9) Mexico 1985.

(10) Brazil and Venezuala 1990.

(11) Source: Knox e Agnew (1992) e my updates.

(12) Italy 1992, Germany 1992, China 1991, India 1989, Malaysia 1991, Singapore 1990, Sri Lanka 1991, Thailand 1990, Brazil 1990.

(13) "A top - level scientist at a major American corporation would cost at least $250,000, including salary, benefits, and overhead. The same calibre of talent could be had in the East for one - tenth the cost" (Reich 1991: 124; from J. Holusha, "Business Taps the East Bloc's Intellectual Reserves," The New York Times, February 20, 1990, pp. A1, D5).

(14) Just as the mass worker in these regions has been created at an accelerated pace, so too are the forms of struggles and levels of confrontation typical of the mass worker reproduced at a faster pace than those seen in the Western countries. A case in point is South Korea. "In Korea, labor's attitude bordered on the insurrectionary, making nearly impossible the institutionalization of Western - style bargaining processes . . . precisely because labor and other groups had been strongly repressed in the pursuit of high - speed development, political decompression did not lead to the creation of a new consensus around the traditional strategy of growth but to a politics of polarized struggle over the distribution of income, sectoral priorities, the trade - off between environmental and economic priorities, and the direction of development itself" (Bello and Rosenfeld 1992).

(15) 1989 - 92.

(16) 1989 - 92.

Libcom note: Text below is p5-p13 of an article from Common Sense #22. The full article extends to p37. The full piece is available in PDF form at that link and also in text form here on Libcom.

In January 1994, in the south eastern state of Chiapas in Mexico, news of the Zapatistas armed revolt composed mainly of Indian peasants, travelled all over the world bringing about an explosion of interest and information on Mexico because the rebellion was automatically connected with the Mexican revolution. In this text we undertake an analysis of the class struggles in Mexico since the beginning of the century up till now, which includes a critical presentation of the guerilla movement of the Zapatistas. Among last year's events, a presentation of the "National Democratic Convention" was decided upon, not only because its character transcends the boundaries of Chiapas but also because it is indicative of the political direction of the class struggle. More than a year later nothing has been concluded. Whereas the Zapatistas still constitute a considerable force, the recent devaluation of the peso and the attempted military repression of the movement, has created a deeper crisis of class relations in Mexico.

The following analysis is from a viewpoint which goes beyond the outdated anti-imperialist distinctions of a "First World" and a "Third World". The Capitalist International, the only class unfortunately that has the clearest class consciousness, has seen to that. This class wouldn't have won until now if it hadn't imposed itself on "underdeveloped" and "developed" countries simultaneously. Because to every privatization in West Europe there corresponds a new wave of immigrants from East Europe; to every temp worker there's a former "priviliged" one and to every homeless person in North America there's a landless peasant in South America. It is against this class that the Chiapas ejidatarios rebel, and their struggle has a universal dimension which transcends south east Mexico. It's in fact the same struggle that takes place everywhere already, with different intensity and forms, against immiseration and alienation. If we have managed to show this, then we think we have contributed not only to the Chiapanecos' fight, but to our own.

THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION (CONVENTION NATIONAL DEMOCRATICA-CND), SAN CRISTOBAL, CHIAPAS - AGUASCALIENTES, LACANDONA JUNGLE, 6-9 August 1994.
"Zapata vive, la lucha sigue!"

In June 1994 in their Second Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle, the EZLN addressed an invitation to the National Democratic Convention for the purpose of introducing propositions about a transitional government and a new constitution. EZLN's sub-commander Marcos intensified his letter-writing mania inviting Mexican personalities within the left and center-left spectrum. Due to the Zapatista's appeal to "Civil Society" the range of those who finally participated was quite big: non-government organisations in general, leaders of peasant and Indian organisations, members of "independent parties", a few academics, union delegates, feminists, a few businessmen, lesbians, homosexuals, members of organisations in defense of the vote and naturally journalists or fake journalists (like myself). The organising committee of the CND consisted of Zapatistas delegates and various other organisations (the "Caravan of the Caravans", the "Chiapanecos Assembly for Democracy" etc with a dominant view in favour of the elections).

On Saturday 6th of August in San Cristobal Mesas-workshops were formed to discuss the "peaceful transition to democracy, the elections, the formation of a National Project and the defense of the vote". In spite of the great majority of supporters of the oppositional PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and the prevalent tendency in favour of the elections there was a general distrust of the parties and a minority (1) against the elections and in favour of the formation of a National People's Assembly --a Transitional Government-- consisting of peasants, workers and Indians.

Among the demands of the Mesas (to which the majority agreed) the following ones were included: SalinasÆ resignation, expulsion of members of the PRI (Patry of Institutional Revolution, the government party) from administrative posts, mobilisation against a possible electoral fraud, political trial of Salinas, electoral reform for the representation of the Indians and all the ethnic groups, recognition of the EZLN as a belligerent force, breaking up the system of National Security, non-assumption of office of any candidates in case of high abstention, expulsion of the army from the states of Chiapas, Guerrero amd Michoacan and satisfaction of the 11 demands of the EZLN. All were almost devoutly accepted by the Mesas. The same atmosphere of confusion, recrimination, vexation and euphoria that prevailed on Saturday evening in San Cristobal with thousands of people bustling in and out of the Mesas and discussing in circles in the streets while songs were heard (and tourists were complaining about the sudden lack of rooms) would prevail even more intensely in the jungle.

6 or 7 thousand people -in hundreds of buses- in the drive towards Aguascalientes (2) passed through Mexican army outposts and then through regions controlled by the Zapatistas. Swarms of clapping and cheering Indians could be seen everywhere along the road, many of those holding posters of Zapata and placards with slogans in favour of fair elections.

During the descent to the jungle enthusiasm gave way to exhaustion (the last ones to arrive in Aguascalientes had journeyed for about 24 hours) and then the excitement on first contacting the Zapatistas at their outpost. At last in Aguascalientes Fitzcarraldo's Ship came into view: for 28 days, 600 Zapatistas had constructed this gigantic amphitheatre, made of tree trunks and covered by a huge tent, surrounded by hundreds of smaller tents. Above the stage two Mexican flags were hanging, behind it the honoured guests were seated and the place was full of posters with subjects from the Mexican Revolution. There was a colourful and diverse crowd from elderly, veteran co-fighters of Emiliano Zapata's original army, to young punks, to contemporary armed Zapatistas scattered all over, to reporters armed with cameras; all in an atmosphere of confusion, exuberance, turmoil and comings and goings beneath the hot tropical sun. Angry protests were caused when a mural appeared on the stage depicting Marcos and Zapata on horseback shaking hands and beneath them Cardenas with the bishop of Chiapas Samuel Ruiz (3). Protests from many sides led to the withdrawal of the painting.

Around evening Marcos' appearence on stage set off an outburst of chanting: "Marcos, our friend, the people are with you!", "Transitional Government and a new constitution", "Long live Ramona and Ana Maria" (women Zapatistas), "Long live Self-government by the Indians", "Let the National Convention be an electoral force" but by way of a reply: "All against the electoral farce". Songs about Zapata could be heard as well as the guevarist anthem of the 70Æs "Dressed in olive green, politically alive, comrade, you haven't died, we'll take revenge for your death". Marcos announced the presiding committee of the CND and called upon commander Tacho to speak, who declared that the EZLN give Aguascalientes over to the CND. He also presented the people's committees of the EZLN, the civil guards, Indian women, men and children with scarves on their faces and staves in their hands -one of the most touching moments of the Convention. Afterwards, Marcos presented the EZLN army, whose gun-barrels had white bands around them, indicating that "these guns are not to confront the "Civil Society", but paradoxically, they wish to become useless". Marcos' speech, a mixture of sentimentalism, patriotism, poetry and populism was received reverentially and in dead silence by the audience. After exulting at the large CND attendance, Marcos went on: "thanks to the EZLN having mobilized parts of society which had until recently been sunk in apathy and inability to get over their localisms", he made clear that the EZLN, "(do not expect from the CND) a civil arm... a civil pretext for war...or for submission...nor the dubious honour of a historical vanguard, of the numerous vanguards that made us suffer... We expect from the CND the opportunity to search for and find those to whom we will hand over the flag that we found deserted and forgotten in the palaces of power... To struggle so that all Mexicans will recognize it as their own, to become the national flag again, your flag, companeros... We hope that there will be enough maturity at this CND, so that this place will not be converted into a terrain for settling internal accounts, something sterile and emasculated... We are moving aside but we are not leaving. We hope that the horizon will open up so that we will not be necessary anymore, we the dead since always, who have to die again in order to live. We hope that this CND will give us an opportunity, the opportunity we were denied by those who govern this country, to return to our subterranean life with dignity after we have fulfilled our duty. The opportunity to return to silence, to the night out of which we came, to the death we lived in, the opportunity to disappear in the same way we appeared, one morning, without a face, without future. To return to the depths of history, of the dream, of the mountains..."

Amidst a deluge of applause, Marcos left the stage giving the Mexican flag to Rosario Ibarra (president of the CND and the FNCR, National Front Against Repression, a leftist organisation). These moments of patriotic effusions were soon followed by a real storm; a tropical rain storm that swept over everything. Despite the witticisms subverting the original slogans: "Zapata lives, the struggle goes on" becoming, 'Zapata lives, the rain goes on" -and the few brave ones who half-naked were sloshing about in the mud- it meant the sudden end of the first day of the CND in the jungle. The next day after several participants gave speeches that were no more than greetings and a minimal agreement on mobilizations against a possible election fraud was finalized, there followed MarcosÆ press conference. Confident like a pop star and evasive like a politician, he answered various questions ironically. He expressed again the EZLN's wish for a dignified peace and to make efforts to contact other guerilla armies in the country. To his question if he would take off his mask, Marcos replied, "Yes, if you want it. You tell me". The cries of "NO!" confirmed that the Marcos symbol should remain masked in order to preserve the legend and, in no way, becoming an ordinary, recognizable mortal.

So, in this mish mash of people; in this "Civil Society" in a festive and tense atmosphere somewhere between a rave-up and a political meeting; in this National Convention that wasn't really much of a convention at all, there actually was confirmed a vague and abstract will for "change", "democracy" and "peace". It was a symbolic gesture just before the elections. A manifestation of patriotism and reformism, contradictory expectations and general promises amidst the loud "Viva!".

FROM THE REVOLUTION (1910-1920) ...
"You take Revolucion to the end, turn right and you are on Reforma".

Mexican joke referring to the streets one takes to reach Downtown Mexico City.

At the end of the previous century the Porfiriato, Diaz's dictatorship, combined an expanding capitalist growth with an oligarchic-dictatorial state. Capital's dominance through domestic and foreign monopolies, the centralisation of economy and political power on a national scale caused the gradual disintegration of the old traditional, feudal structures. The new bureucrats and technocrats (the Positivists and Social Darwinists) provided the ideology necessary for the concentration of capital and the coordination of local big landowners with central political power.

Agriculture, subsumed by capital was creating an increasing class of rural proletarians consisting of landless peasants, unemployed or farm workers alongside peons and immiserated Indian communeros. On the other hand, small-scale land owners became increasingly disadvantaged with the onset of large-scale units of production. The working class, concentrated in the north because of the high degree of investment there, consisted of independent artisans, the main body of the industrial proletariat and a relatively better paid skilled section. The artisans taking one blow after the another over a period of time gradually united with the rest of the workers who, in their turn, took to strike action or more violent revolts which were ruthlessly crushed.

The edifice of the Porfiriato started to shake due to a multiform discontent reflecting different and conflicting interests which later took the form of an armed revolt. The conflict within the bourgeoisie between its (mainly northern) industrial-financial sector and the more traditional, local big landowners, a conflict which represented the antithesis of the bourgeois-democratic project to oligarchy and authoritarianism; the discontent of the petite-bourgeoisie in the face of the monopolies; the rage of the proletariat and the communeros and the ambitions of the intellectuals who were suffocated within the repressive regime were the basic reasons for the explosion which followed.

Emanating from the modern industrial-financial bourgeoisie, Madero came to power supported by Villa, his initial admirer, and Zapata. The latter, an uncompromising fighter for agrarian reform, faced with Madero's "betrayal" (i.e. his loyal adherence to his class) called for the continuation of the revolution, issuing in November 1911, his Ayala Plan (4). Against General Huerta's dictatorship (1913-14) a loosely united front was formed consisting of three forces: Zapatistas in the south, composed mainly of ejidatarios or landless peasants with a communal social tradition, Villa's army in the north composed chiefly of petite-bourgeois and proletarians and the Constitutionalists who represented the middle-classes, some landlords and even some proletarians and peasants who believed in their socialist propaganda (5). The Convention at Aguascalientes in 1914, where these three armies met, proved the impossibility of their alliance.

Beside the legendary figures of a controversial Villa, and a fervent Emiliano Zapata whose indomitable proletarian consciousness combined a romantic nationalism with faith in a democratic government which would make real the popular vision of revolutionary change and agrarian reform, the internationalist, anarcho-communism of Ricardo Flores Magon stands out. Starting as a liberal, Magon gradually formed his anarchist ideas (which for tactical purposes he did not openly declare until 1910) and tried to turn the political revolution into a social revolution. Organizing strikes and revolts, influencing and agitating amongst workers and peasants mainly in northern Mexico (and having taken over the northern part of the state of Baja California) the Mexican Liberal Party (the PLM) founded by Magon, not only ignited many land expropriations and seizures of the means of production but also gave such actions a clear communist perspective, as can be seen in the 1911 manifesto.

The outcome of the class war was determined by the alliance made between the powerful workers' union, the Casa del Obrero Mundial (espousing an anarcho-syndicalist and corporate socialist ideology) and the Constitutionalists in exchange for promises of financial support and the satisfaction of some demands of the workers. Among the motives of the workersÆ class alliance one cannot ignore their discontent with Zapatistas' religiosity and Villistas' brutality, whose increasing militarism had turned them into professional soldiers.

After the crushing of the Zapatistas, the Villistas and the PLM, the 1917 constitution crystallized the dominant nationalist, anti-imperialist and socialist/populist ideology of the post-revolutionary Mexican state (6). Some of its reformist articles which provided for anti-clerical measures, agrarian reform and labour rights had constituted part of the 1906 programme of the PLM. It was the triumph of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie over the peasants and workers and, ever since, it would make use of the content of the revolution in its own interests.

The enslavement of the working class by the state through limited concessions inaugurated a long practice of populism combined with repression and submission to the state. Alongside a defeated peasantry and a crippled working class an expanding petite-bourgeoisie started forming which benefited from state priviliges. During the Revolution military men, bureaucrats, intellectuals and union leaders emerged, who later staffed the new state mechanism. This new bourgeois-bureaucratic state was legitimized with "Revolution" as its ideological banner recuperating and distorting its content. "Revolution" as a myth became the unifying ideology of the state domination in the 20th century.

...TO THE MODERN STATE
"We want a liberal, democratic and nationalist government...the concesssions to labour are granted within the economic possibilities of the capitalist sector". Lazaro Cardenas

When the sound of the last revolutionary guns had died away, the Mexican state faced the double need of its reinforcement and capitalist development. The problem of controlling foreign capital (setting up the Banco de Mexico was the first act of co-operation between Mexican and foreign capital) and the class struggle that constantly intensified in the face of state manipulation, together with the corruption of the official labour leaders and the 1929 crisis, meant things couldnÆt wait any longer. The still unfulfilled promises of the Mexican Revolution threatened the legitimacy of the successive governments and the state in general as a vehicle of its ideology.

With Lazaro Cardenas' "socialistic" rhetoric and populist practises, in 1934 Mexico enters the period of state-regulated capitalism, a strategy already in use in America and Europe. The necessity of reformism which meant concessions to peasants and workers, nationalisations of selected sectors, redefinition of the conditions of the imperialist intervention, discipline of the recalcitrant unproductive landlords and "comprador" bourgeoisie heightened the "popular" role of the state. At the same time it satisfied the interests of the modern bourgeoisie.

The "politics of the masses" consolidated the corporate state that absorbed "Civil Society". The strengthened national political party (7) has acted ever since as a powerful administrative committee organizing and dividing society into separate constituencies that depend on it; class struggle became "legalized" through the recognition of the labour movement as an official, national one: the powerful until today CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers) was formed. CNC (National Peasant Confederation) was also formed and the "popular sector" of the party consisted of state employee unions, women's and youth organisations.

The consolidation of the democratic-capitalist ideology of the "common interest" became possible through the creation of a climate of "national unity" thanks to Cardenas' "anti-imperialist" politics. This climate reached its height when the mainly American and English-controlled oilfields were expropriated in 1938. The limited agrarian reform laid the basis for state-regulated capitalist agriculture. Land redistribution (through the expropriation of many unproductive latifundias) and the granting of state credits aimed at aiding small private farms so that the national market could be expanded. However, the intention was the support of the largest and most productive landholdings under state regulation. In 1940, at the end of Cardenas' presidency, his "socialist" politics had produced the following results regarding agricultural production: over 60% of the peasants were either landless or owners of inadequate plots of lands or ejidatarios trying to compete with big owners of fertile lands, capital and technology. Ejidatarios were forced gradually to let their holdings to those big landowners and work the land on their behalf. This led to the flourishing of neolatifundismo precisely in those areas of agrarian reform.

In general, during Cardenas's period the basis of the modern state was laid blunting class conflicts through the combined social-patriotic politics of concessions and repression. Starting in this period, the practise of populism and corporativism would form a historical continuity on the state and ideological level that holds until now.

BETWEEN THE SCYLLA OF CAPITAL AND THE CHARYBDIS OF IDEOLOGY
Cardenas' reforms and the modernization of capitalist development soon bore fruit. The twenty year period (1940-1960), just before the tumultuous appearance of the first threatening radical movements, is the one with the biggest and most rapid capital accumulation. The role of the state becoming more and more authoritarian and technocratic is crucial to this concentration of capital. Industrialization took a different course from the still colonized economies of Latin America (8).

With the "Green Revolution" there begins the modernization of agricultural production, which increaces six-fold between 1940 and 1975. The programmes of the "Green Revolution" (a capitalist rationalization) financed by the World Bank (and initially by the Rockfeller Foundation) expressed the state's need both to control the fragile social relations in the countryside and to organize a cheap food supply for the hordes of the proletarians in the cities. This process took place not only in Mexico but also in other countries where the agrarian question was vital (India for example). Initially, regions in the north were selected where "revolutionary" landlords possessed vast quantities of land (10). A series of loans to pay for modern technological input (from irrigation to chemical fertilizers) caused not only the intensification of cultivation and the increase of productivity but also the replacement of traditional crops with new ones for export. The onerous terms of credits for the aquisition of the means of production led ejidatarios or minifundistas (small-scale landholders) to immiseration or to bankruptcy. Many got forced off their land, becoming part of the "surplus population" known since the first enclosures in history and always present when "agrarian reform" takes place, becoming suitable for multiple purposes: as a reserve army, as an industrial proletariat, or, as land labourers. Besides the forced land expropriations, which added to the possessions of the landlords, another usual practice was the periodical parcelization of ejidos. This functioned as an absorber of social unrest since it maintained the idea of revolutionary land disribution.

On the whole the state's ability to present itself as a guardian of the ideas of the Mexican Revolution explains the relative political stability of the decades after the "pioneer" CardenasÆ presidency as well as the recuperation of the social movements. The revolutionary heritage of the peasants and the workers was taught through the state educational system and the state invoked it as its own mother and that's why it assumed the role of its defender (10). When the proletarians did not content themselves with state recognition of their contribution to the making of a "powerful, independent" state and showed vigorously their ingratitude they were turned automatically into "enemies of the Revolution" and "anti-patriots". However, the systematic propaganda of the national-democratic advances gave results: many peasants, workers, petite-bourgeois believed that the big trade unions CTM, CNC and the "popular sector" really represented them.

Interchanging with the unitary ideology of national interest, class harmony and populism other divisive ideologies dominate Mexican society: Indianism (Indigenismo) and that patriarchical Mexican inclination towards machismo. Saint, whore and cheap worker are the three basic roles the Mexican woman is called upon to assume (whereas Mexican capitalism promotes feminism, at the same time, sexism is reinforced -a common practice everywhere).

Indianism, the official recognition of the Indian heritage, was one of the contradictory achievements of the Revolution. It holds a central place in Mexican nationalism (all too often the invocation of the Indian heritage is overestimated as against the dominant mestizo composition of the Mexican people or conflicts with the more conservative, pro-Spanish religious tendencies). Behind the hypocritical ideological mask of the "national heritage", that runs through Mexican history, there lies the state effort to destroy and assimilate the Indian culture within the national commodity economy. Since 1948, INI (National Indian Institute) serves as a channel for the legalization of Indians' exploitation by caciques (11), bosses, recruiters of migrant labourers, moneylenders, merchants, landlords and their thugs. According to anthropologist Marcela Lagarde "INI programmes are directed and planned by anthropologists who proclaim themselves to be for the Indian, but whose end is that he cease to be one" (see Cockroft, p. 147-148).

In January 1994, in the south eastern state of Chiapas in Mexico, news of the Zapatistas armed revolt composed mainly of Indian peasants, travelled all over the world bringing about an explosion of interest and information on Mexico because the rebellion was automatically connected with the Mexican revolution. In this text we undertake an analysis of the class struggles in Mexico since the beginning of the century up till now, which includes a critical presentation of the guerilla movement of the Zapatistas. Among last year's events, a presentation of the "National Democratic Convention" was decided upon, not only because its character transcends the boundaries of Chiapas but also because it is indicative of the political direction of the class struggle. More than a year later nothing has been concluded. Whereas the Zapatistas still constitute a considerable force, the recent devaluation of the peso and the attempted military repression of the movement, has created a deeper crisis of class relations in Mexico.

The following analysis is from a viewpoint which goes beyond the outdated anti-imperialist distinctions of a "First World" and a "Third World". The Capitalist International, the only class unfortunately that has the clearest class consciousness, has seen to that. This class wouldn't have won until now if it hadn't imposed itself on "underdeveloped" and "developed" countries simultaneously. Because to every privatization in West Europe there corresponds a new wave of immigrants from East Europe; to every temp worker there's a former "priviliged" one and to every homeless person in North America there's a landless peasant in South America. It is against this class that the Chiapas ejidatarios rebel, and their struggle has a universal dimension which transcends south east Mexico. It's in fact the same struggle that takes place everywhere already, with different intensity and forms, against immiseration and alienation. If we have managed to show this, then we think we have contributed not only to the Chiapanecos' fight, but to our own.

THE NATIONAL DEMOCRATIC CONVENTION (CONVENTION NATIONAL DEMOCRATICA-CND), SAN CRISTOBAL, CHIAPAS - AGUASCALIENTES, LACANDONA JUNGLE, 6-9 August 1994.

"Zapata vive, la lucha sigue!"
In June 1994 in their Second Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle, the EZLN addressed an invitation to the National Democratic Convention for the purpose of introducing propositions about a transitional government and a new constitution. EZLN's sub-commander Marcos intensified his letter-writing mania inviting Mexican personalities within the left and center-left spectrum. Due to the Zapatista's appeal to "Civil Society" the range of those who finally participated was quite big: non-government organisations in general, leaders of peasant and Indian organisations, members of "independent parties", a few academics, union delegates, feminists, a few businessmen, lesbians, homosexuals, members of organisations in defense of the vote and naturally journalists or fake journalists (like myself). The organising committee of the CND consisted of Zapatistas delegates and various other organisations (the "Caravan of the Caravans", the "Chiapanecos Assembly for Democracy" etc with a dominant view in favour of the elections).

On Saturday 6th of August in San Cristobal Mesas-workshops were formed to discuss the "peaceful transition to democracy, the elections, the formation of a National Project and the defense of the vote". In spite of the great majority of supporters of the oppositional PRD (Party of the Democratic Revolution) and the prevalent tendency in favour of the elections there was a general distrust of the parties and a minority (1) against the elections and in favour of the formation of a National People's Assembly --a Transitional Government-- consisting of peasants, workers and Indians.

Among the demands of the Mesas (to which the majority agreed) the following ones were included: Salinas' resignation, expulsion of members of the PRI (Patry of Institutional Revolution, the government party) from administrative posts, mobilisation against a possible electoral fraud, political trial of Salinas, electoral reform for the representation of the Indians and all the ethnic groups, recognition of the EZLN as a belligerent force, breaking up the system of National Security, non-assumption of office of any candidates in case of high abstention, expulsion of the army from the states of Chiapas, Guerrero amd Michoacan and satisfaction of the 11 demands of the EZLN. All were almost devoutly accepted by the Mesas. The same atmosphere of confusion, recrimination, vexation and euphoria that prevailed on Saturday evening in San Cristobal with thousands of people bustling in and out of the Mesas and discussing in circles in the streets while songs were heard (and tourists were complaining about the sudden lack of rooms) would prevail even more intensely in the jungle.

6 or 7 thousand people -in hundreds of buses- in the drive towards Aguascalientes (2) passed through Mexican army outposts and then through regions controlled by the Zapatistas. Swarms of clapping and cheering Indians could be seen everywhere along the road, many of those holding posters of Zapata and placards with slogans in favour of fair elections.

During the descent to the jungle enthusiasm gave way to exhaustion (the last ones to arrive in Aguascalientes had journeyed for about 24 hours) and then the excitement on first contacting the Zapatistas at their outpost. At last in Aguascalientes Fitzcarraldo's Ship came into view: for 28 days, 600 Zapatistas had constructed this gigantic amphitheatre, made of tree trunks and covered by a huge tent, surrounded by hundreds of smaller tents. Above the stage two Mexican flags were hanging, behind it the honoured guests were seated and the place was full of posters with subjects from the Mexican Revolution. There was a colourful and diverse crowd from elderly, veteran co-fighters of Emiliano Zapata's original army, to young punks, to contemporary armed Zapatistas scattered all over, to reporters armed with cameras; all in an atmosphere of confusion, exuberance, turmoil and comings and goings beneath the hot tropical sun. Angry protests were caused when a mural appeared on the stage depicting Marcos and Zapata on horseback shaking hands and beneath them Cardenas with the bishop of Chiapas Samuel Ruiz (3). Protests from many sides led to the withdrawal of the painting.

Around evening Marcos' appearence on stage set off an outburst of chanting: "Marcos, our friend, the people are with you!", "Transitional Government and a new constitution", "Long live Ramona and Ana Maria" (women Zapatistas), "Long live Self-government by the Indians", "Let the National Convention be an electoral force" but by way of a reply: "All against the electoral farce". Songs about Zapata could be heard as well as the guevarist anthem of the 70's "Dressed in olive green, politically alive, comrade, you haven't died, we'll take revenge for your death". Marcos announced the presiding committee of the CND and called upon commander Tacho to speak, who declared that the EZLN give Aguascalientes over to the CND. He also presented the people's committees of the EZLN, the civil guards, Indian women, men and children with scarves on their faces and staves in their hands -one of the most touching moments of the Convention. Afterwards, Marcos presented the EZLN army, whose gun-barrels had white bands around them, indicating that "these guns are not to confront the "Civil Society", but paradoxically, they wish to become useless". Marcos' speech, a mixture of sentimentalism, patriotism, poetry and populism was received reverentially and in dead silence by the audience. After exulting at the large CND attendance, Marcos went on: "thanks to the EZLN having mobilized parts of society which had until recently been sunk in apathy and inability to get over their localisms", he made clear that the EZLN, "(do not expect from the CND) a civil arm... a civil pretext for war...or for submission...nor the dubious honour of a historical vanguard, of the numerous vanguards that made us suffer... We expect from the CND the opportunity to search for and find those to whom we will hand over the flag that we found deserted and forgotten in the palaces of power... To struggle so that all Mexicans will recognize it as their own, to become the national flag again, your flag, companeros... We hope that there will be enough maturity at this CND, so that this place will not be converted into a terrain for settling internal accounts, something sterile and emasculated... We are moving aside but we are not leaving. We hope that the horizon will open up so that we will not be necessary anymore, we the dead since always, who have to die again in order to live. We hope that this CND will give us an opportunity, the opportunity we were denied by those who govern this country, to return to our subterranean life with dignity after we have fulfilled our duty. The opportunity to return to silence, to the night out of which we came, to the death we lived in, the opportunity to disappear in the same way we appeared, one morning, without a face, without future. To return to the depths of history, of the dream, of the mountains..."

Amidst a deluge of applause, Marcos left the stage giving the Mexican flag to Rosario Ibarra (president of the CND and the FNCR, National Front Against Repression, a leftist organisation). These moments of patriotic effusions were soon followed by a real storm; a tropical rain storm that swept over everything. Despite the witticisms subverting the original slogans: "Zapata lives, the struggle goes on" becoming, 'Zapata lives, the rain goes on" -and the few brave ones who half-naked were sloshing about in the mud- it meant the sudden end of the first day of the CND in the jungle. The next day after several participants gave speeches that were no more than greetings and a minimal agreement on mobilizations against a possible election fraud was finalized, there followed Marcos' press conference. Confident like a pop star and evasive like a politician, he answered various questions ironically. He expressed again the EZLN's wish for a dignified peace and to make efforts to contact other guerilla armies in the country. To his question if he would take off his mask, Marcos replied, "Yes, if you want it. You tell me". The cries of "NO!" confirmed that the Marcos symbol should remain masked in order to preserve the legend and, in no way, becoming an ordinary, recognizable mortal.

So, in this mish mash of people; in this "Civil Society" in a festive and tense atmosphere somewhere between a rave-up and a political meeting; in this National Convention that wasn't really much of a convention at all, there actually was confirmed a vague and abstract will for "change", "democracy" and "peace". It was a symbolic gesture just before the elections. A manifestation of patriotism and reformism, contradictory expectations and general promises amidst the loud "Viva!".

FROM THE REVOLUTION (1910-1920) ...
"You take Revolucion to the end, turn right and you are on Reforma".
- Mexican joke referring to the streets one takes to reach Downtown Mexico City.

At the end of the previous century the Porfiriato, Diaz's dictatorship, combined an expanding capitalist growth with an oligarchic-dictatorial state. Capital's dominance through domestic and foreign monopolies, the centralisation of economy and political power on a national scale caused the gradual disintegration of the old traditional, feudal structures. The new bureucrats and technocrats (the Positivists and Social Darwinists) provided the ideology necessary for the concentration of capital and the coordination of local big landowners with central political power.

Agriculture, subsumed by capital was creating an increasing class of rural proletarians consisting of landless peasants, unemployed or farm workers alongside peons and immiserated Indian communeros. On the other hand, small-scale land owners became increasingly disadvantaged with the onset of large-scale units of production. The working class, concentrated in the north because of the high degree of investment there, consisted of independent artisans, the main body of the industrial proletariat and a relatively better paid skilled section. The artisans taking one blow after the another over a period of time gradually united with the rest of the workers who, in their turn, took to strike action or more violent revolts which were ruthlessly crushed.

The edifice of the Porfiriato started to shake due to a multiform discontent reflecting different and conflicting interests which later took the form of an armed revolt. The conflict within the bourgeoisie between its (mainly northern) industrial-financial sector and the more traditional, local big landowners, a conflict which represented the antithesis of the bourgeois-democratic project to oligarchy and authoritarianism; the discontent of the petite-bourgeoisie in the face of the monopolies; the rage of the proletariat and the communeros and the ambitions of the intellectuals who were suffocated within the repressive regime were the basic reasons for the explosion which followed.

Emanating from the modern industrial-financial bourgeoisie, Madero came to power supported by Villa, his initial admirer, and [Emiliano] Zapata. The latter, an uncompromising fighter for agrarian reform, faced with Madero's "betrayal" (i.e. his loyal adherence to his class) called for the continuation of the revolution, issuing in November 1911, his Ayala Plan (4). Against General Huerta's dictatorship (1913-14) a loosely united front was formed consisting of three forces: Zapatistas in the south, composed mainly of ejidatarios or landless peasants with a communal social tradition, Villa's army in the north composed chiefly of petite-bourgeois and proletarians and the Constitutionalists who represented the middle-classes, some landlords and even some proletarians and peasants who believed in their socialist propaganda (5). The Convention at Aguascalientes in 1914, where these three armies met, proved the impossibility of their alliance.

Beside the legendary figures of a controversial Villa, and a fervent Emiliano Zapata whose indomitable proletarian consciousness combined a romantic nationalism with faith in a democratic government which would make real the popular vision of revolutionary change and agrarian reform, the internationalist, anarcho-communism of Ricardo Flores Magon stands out. Starting as a liberal, Magon gradually formed his anarchist ideas (which for tactical purposes he did not openly declare until 1910) and tried to turn the political revolution into a social revolution. Organizing strikes and revolts, influencing and agitating amongst workers and peasants mainly in northern Mexico (and having taken over the northern part of the state of Baja California) the Mexican Liberal Party (the PLM) founded by Magon, not only ignited many land expropriations and seizures of the means of production but also gave such actions a clear communist perspective, as can be seen in the 1911 manifesto.

The outcome of the class war was determined by the alliance made between the powerful workers' union, the Casa del Obrero Mundial (espousing an anarcho-syndicalist and corporate socialist ideology) and the Constitutionalists in exchange for promises of financial support and the satisfaction of some demands of the workers. Among the motives of the workers' class alliance one cannot ignore their discontent with Zapatistas' religiosity and Villistas' brutality, whose increasing militarism had turned them into professional soldiers.

After the crushing of the Zapatistas, the Villistas and the PLM, the 1917 constitution crystallized the dominant nationalist, anti-imperialist and socialist/populist ideology of the post-revolutionary Mexican state (6). Some of its reformist articles which provided for anti-clerical measures, agrarian reform and labour rights had constituted part of the 1906 programme of the PLM. It was the triumph of the liberal wing of the bourgeoisie over the peasants and workers and, ever since, it would make use of the content of the revolution in its own interests.

The enslavement of the working class by the state through limited concessions inaugurated a long practice of populism combined with repression and submission to the state. Alongside a defeated peasantry and a crippled working class an expanding petite-bourgeoisie started forming which benefited from state priviliges. During the Revolution military men, bureaucrats, intellectuals and union leaders emerged, who later staffed the new state mechanism. This new bourgeois-bureaucratic state was legitimized with "Revolution" as its ideological banner recuperating and distorting its content. "Revolution" as a myth became the unifying ideology of the state domination in the 20th century.

...TO THE MODERN STATE
"We want a liberal, democratic and nationalist government...the concesssions to labour are granted within the economic possibilities of the capitalist sector" - Lazaro Cardenas
When the sound of the last revolutionary guns had died away, the Mexican state faced the double need of its reinforcement and capitalist development. The problem of controlling foreign capital (setting up the Banco de Mexico was the first act of co-operation between Mexican and foreign capital) and the class struggle that constantly intensified in the face of state manipulation, together with the corruption of the official labour leaders and the 1929 crisis, meant things couldn't wait any longer. The still unfulfilled promises of the Mexican Revolution threatened the legitimacy of the successive governments and the state in general as a vehicle of its ideology.

With Lazaro Cardenas' "socialistic" rhetoric and populist practises, in 1934 Mexico enters the period of state-regulated capitalism, a strategy already in use in America and Europe. The necessity of reformism which meant concessions to peasants and workers, nationalisations of selected sectors, redefinition of the conditions of the imperialist intervention, discipline of the recalcitrant unproductive landlords and "comprador" bourgeoisie heightened the "popular" role of the state. At the same time it satisfied the interests of the modern bourgeoisie.

The "politics of the masses" consolidated the corporate state that absorbed "Civil Society". The strengthened national political party (7) has acted ever since as a powerful administrative committee organizing and dividing society into separate constituencies that depend on it; class struggle became "legalized" through the recognition of the labour movement as an official, national one: the powerful until today CTM (Confederation of Mexican Workers) was formed. CNC (National Peasant Confederation) was also formed and the "popular sector" of the party consisted of state employee unions, women's and youth organisations.

The consolidation of the democratic-capitalist ideology of the "common interest" became possible through the creation of a climate of "national unity" thanks to Cardenas' "anti-imperialist" politics. This climate reached its height when the mainly American and English-controlled oilfields were expropriated in 1938. The limited agrarian reform laid the basis for state-regulated capitalist agriculture. Land redistribution (through the expropriation of many unproductive latifundias) and the granting of state credits aimed at aiding small private farms so that the national market could be expanded. However, the intention was the support of the largest and most productive landholdings under state regulation. In 1940, at the end of Cardenas' presidency, his "socialist" politics had produced the following results regarding agricultural production: over 60% of the peasants were either landless or owners of inadequate plots of lands or ejidatarios trying to compete with big owners of fertile lands, capital and technology. Ejidatarios were forced gradually to let their holdings to those big landowners and work the land on their behalf. This led to the flourishing of neolatifundismo precisely in those areas of agrarian reform.

In general, during Cardenas's period the basis of the modern state was laid blunting class conflicts through the combined social-patriotic politics of concessions and repression. Starting in this period, the practise of populism and corporativism would form a historical continuity on the state and ideological level that holds until now.

BETWEEN THE SCYLLA OF CAPITAL AND THE CHARYBDIS OF IDEOLOGY
Cardenas' reforms and the modernization of capitalist development soon bore fruit. The twenty year period (1940-1960), just before the tumultuous appearance of the first threatening radical movements, is the one with the biggest and most rapid capital accumulation. The role of the state becoming more and more authoritarian and technocratic is crucial to this concentration of capital. Industrialization took a different course from the still colonized economies of Latin America (8).

With the "Green Revolution" there begins the modernization of agricultural production, which increaces six-fold between 1940 and 1975. The programmes of the "Green Revolution" (a capitalist rationalization) financed by the World Bank (and initially by the Rockfeller Foundation) expressed the state's need both to control the fragile social relations in the countryside and to organize a cheap food supply for the hordes of the proletarians in the cities. This process took place not only in Mexico but also in other countries where the agrarian question was vital (India for example). Initially, regions in the north were selected where "revolutionary" landlords possessed vast quantities of land (10). A series of loans to pay for modern technological input (from irrigation to chemical fertilizers) caused not only the intensification of cultivation and the increase of productivity but also the replacement of traditional crops with new ones for export. The onerous terms of credits for the aquisition of the means of production led ejidatarios or minifundistas (small-scale landholders) to immiseration or to bankruptcy. Many got forced off their land, becoming part of the "surplus population" known since the first enclosures in history and always present when "agrarian reform" takes place, becoming suitable for multiple purposes: as a reserve army, as an industrial proletariat, or, as land labourers. Besides the forced land expropriations, which added to the possessions of the landlords, another usual practice was the periodical parcelization of ejidos. This functioned as an absorber of social unrest since it maintained the idea of revolutionary land disribution.

On the whole the state's ability to present itself as a guardian of the ideas of the Mexican Revolution explains the relative political stability of the decades after the "pioneer" Cardenas' presidency as well as the recuperation of the social movements. The revolutionary heritage of the peasants and the workers was taught through the state educational system and the state invoked it as its own mother and that's why it assumed the role of its defender (10). When the proletarians did not content themselves with state recognition of their contribution to the making of a "powerful, independent" state and showed vigorously their ingratitude they were turned automatically into "enemies of the Revolution" and "anti-patriots". However, the systematic propaganda of the national-democratic advances gave results: many peasants, workers, petite-bourgeois believed that the big trade unions CTM, CNC and the "popular sector" really represented them.

Interchanging with the unitary ideology of national interest, class harmony and populism other divisive ideologies dominate Mexican society: Indianism (Indigenismo) and that patriarchical Mexican inclination towards machismo. Saint, whore and cheap worker are the three basic roles the Mexican woman is called upon to assume (whereas Mexican capitalism promotes feminism, at the same time, sexism is reinforced -a common practice everywhere).

Indianism, the official recognition of the Indian heritage, was one of the contradictory achievements of the Revolution. It holds a central place in Mexican nationalism (all too often the invocation of the Indian heritage is overestimated as against the dominant mestizo composition of the Mexican people or conflicts with the more conservative, pro-Spanish religious tendencies). Behind the hypocritical ideological mask of the "national heritage", that runs through Mexican history, there lies the state effort to destroy and assimilate the Indian culture within the national commodity economy. Since 1948, INI (National Indian Institute) serves as a channel for the legalization of Indians' exploitation by caciques (11), bosses, recruiters of migrant labourers, moneylenders, merchants, landlords and their thugs. According to anthropologist Marcela Lagarde "INI programmes are directed and planned by anthropologists who proclaim themselves to be for the Indian, but whose end is that he cease to be one" (see Cockroft, p. 147-148).

LOS OLVIDADOS - DECOMPOSITION AND RECOMPOSITION OF THE PROLETARIAT
Rapid industrialization and domestic immigration after 1950 gradually meant the urban proletariat assuming a central role in class struggle increasing its industrial share to 25% of the economically active population. Altogether, the total of salaried workers rose from 46% in 1950 to 75% in 1982. With less than quarter of wage labourers unionized and with the "comparative advantage" of extremely low wages (only after wildcat strikes in 1974, did wages manage to exceed to a great extent their 1939 level, only to come tumbling down again after 1976) Mexican capitalism reproduces accumulation at one pole and misery at the other.

The first wave of strikes between 1958 and 1962 mainly in the public sector (railways, petroleum) sparked resistance in other sectors (education, agriculture) and ridiculed various marxist drivel about an "underdeveloped third-world" proletariat. It also forced international capital to invest in new sectors (the auto-industry) initially in Mexico City and then in the north - in the same way Detroit had been previously abandoned - when it confronted the workers' insurgence in the 70's reinforcing the industrial zone of the maquiladora camps (12).

Through compulsory or "legal" land expropriations landless peasants swarm into the cities, particularly the capital. A vast lumpen-proletariat composed of unemployed, underemployed and temporary workers is constantly moving within the agricultural, industrial, commercial and service sectors. While this perpetual mobility brings on the one hand workers in the black economy closer to the unionized ones, on the other hand, it undermines the benefits of the better organized industrial proletariat.

Olvidados (the forgotten ones), those crowded in the "lost cities" of Mexico City, in the colonias proletarias (in the larger metropolitan area of Mexico City half the population lives in these slums), work mainly in small owners' workshops, in hundreds of thousands small sweatshops assembling furniture, and making shoes, clothing etc. Capital controls them both through the supply of raw materials and the sale of the finished products. These workshops are more profitable for capital because the wages are extremely low and the splintering of the workers does not allow for any organized resistance. In 1970, the World Bank programmes "Investments in the Poor" tried through credits to further integrate these neighbourhood workshops into monopoly capital.

The state role in the geographical concentration of this lumpen-proletariat and in the organization of its political behaviour (manipulating the leaders of community movements) was always vital: it regulated its local markets, it organized a phoney petite-bourgeois network of petty-trade and it provided for rudimentary social services (state-run cheap food stores, minimal health care, schemes of land and housing distribution to the homeless etc).

However, the subjective dimension of the recomposition of the proletarians must not be ignored. A general class culture is constantly confirmed either through riots or other dynamic mobilizations. A relatively recent example is Tepito slum, in the centre of Mexico City: after the earthquake in 1985 the inhabitants formed autonomous organizations, occupied their rented houses and forced the government to withdraw its development plans aimed at the gentrification of the area and consequently their evacuation. Tepitanos, known for their outdoor festivals, their everyday practical refusal of work, their solidarity and their communal traditions proved that the colonias proletarias are sometimes disfunctional for the state. That's why when the recuperative practice comes to a deadlock, BARAREM arrives (paramilitary assault squad specialized in driving off "land invaders"). (13)

INSURGENCIA OBRERA - WORKERS' INSURGENCY 1973-1977
At the end of the 60's, a student/youth rebellion began expressing a belief (to the very letter) in the nationalist ideology taught in schools and propagandized by the PRI. Zapata, Magon and Cardenas became symbols of a "national change" which was made materially visible only in the form of statues and busts in plazas everywhere. The end of the student democratic movement came with the massacre in the Plaza of Three Cultures in Mexico City on the 2nd of October in 1968. The participation of many proletarians and peasants in that drenched in blood demonstration (perhaps there were about 500 dead protesters) was an indication of the insurgency that was soon to follow. Guevarism was also a very widespread ideology at the beginning of the 70's and was the basic inspiration behind many urban guerilla groups which by 1975 had been broken up.

Despite some limited populist reforms during the early Echeverria presidency (1970-1976) the industrial proletariat starting turning against the state union leaders, the so-called charros. We are talking about relatively well-paid, militant workers concentrated massively in state industrial sectors, that formed the reformist "Democratic Tendency" within the CTM. During this period the first independent unions emerged chiefly in the automobile sector (some of which were recuperated in the early 80's and their leaders became like a red rag to a bull for the coming radical rank and file movement). A series of wildcat strikes spread a spirit of struggle, on the one hand, in rural Mexico igniting land occupations and efforts at unionizing farm workers, and on the other hand, in metropolitan barrios inciting the marginal proletariat to angry mobilizations. In this period, with the "Democratic Tendency", acting as its spearhead, the workers' movement was hit by the inconsistency of its militancy vis-a-vis their respect for the "nation and the presidential institution". Also the army repression, the lay-offs and the austerity measures imposed by the state and the IMF (through a loan in 1976) and the 100% devaluation of the peso, meant the workers' movement died down only to give way to something new. On the other hand, the PRI was forced to meke political constitutional reforms in 1976 (legalizing the CP, increasing minority seats in the Chamber of Deputies to 100 and permitting opposition parties to participate in national elections) in its efforts to confine class struggle within the political arena and thus to disarm it.

THE UNBEARABLE "CLASSNESS" OF DEBT: DEBT CRISIS AS A CRISIS OF CLASS RELATIONS
Mexico was not of course the only field of class struggle in the 70's. In America and Europe (the eastern one included) wildcat strikes as well as the increasing refusal of work brought about the end of Keynesianism. The fuel of capital's counter-attack was oil, the so-called "energy crisis" of 1973. The planned increase in the price of oil paved the way for the simultaneous decomposition of the working class (the curtailment of the welfare state, wages cuts, unemployment) and recomposition of terrestrial capital accumulation (profiting energy multinationals, finance capital and the oil-exporting states). The recycling of petrodollars financed later the capitalist strategy of automation and introduction of high technology in industries in the west, and what is of importance here, petrodollars were the capital for the loans that generated later the debts (14). In the same period in Mexico capital flows in (through loans) for industrial expansion and the policing of the proletariat, especially after the massacre in 1968. The discovery of oil in Chiapas was of immense importance; Mexico becomes the Arabia of the Caribbean.

At the beginning of the 80's the resurgent class struggle in Mexico took on a more anti-state and anti-party character. Along with the loans working class demands for a slice of oil revenues increased. In early 1981, for the first time for many years, real wage hikes were gained that consequently led to a wider radicalization. Tensions within independent unions intensified and the official union leaders (charros) tried to outflank, though only verbally, the workers' militant demands. Threatened by the pressure of a rank and file movement they begged capitalists to give in stressing the importance of their role. "If we change tactics or abandon the workers to their luck, employers won't have time to realize what will happen: imagine a mob let loose on the streets, out of control", says Velasquez, CTM boss, in March 1982. Just a few months later, in August 1982, the change in international capital's strategy would dispel his apprehension.

What's widely known as "monetarism" or "Thatcherism" is a capitalist restructuring not based on the previous decade's "energy crisis" but on the "debt crisis". Interest rate increases, the investment strike and austerity measures in western economies bringing about a downturn in world trade as well as a decline in the price of oil after 1979, caused Mexico's debt (together with other countries) to increase astronomically. The Mexican government declared a moratorium on the repayment of debts inaugurating the international "debt crisis". The role of the IMF from Africa to Asia becomes decisive: the vicious circle of loans and debts (new loans for the repayment of the old ones) is accompanied with the World Bank's "Structural Adjustment Programmes" which is the more decent name of the restructuring of class relations through privatizations, unemployment, austerity and immiseration. Between 1982 and 1984, 66 countries of the so-called Third World agreed to austerity programmes imposed by the IMF with a pretext about the "restoration of the balance of payments". In essence it is a new political strategy for the reorganization of the relations between international capital and nation-states and the international decomposition of the proletariat. The "debt crisis" becomes a functional means for the control of national economies and capitalist discipline. The case of Mexico is a typical example, where the "debt crisis" caused a chain reaction: IMF intervention; the implementation of austerity programmes, to which the PRI technocrats adhered eagerly; severe cutbacks of the welfare state and encouraging the growth of the maquiladoras zones. This last one helped many north American industries transfer to the south causing the decomposition of both the Mexican and the American proletariat (for example, General Motors in December of 1991 planned to fire thousands of its American workers while at the same increasing the number of its workers in the maquiladora zone, blackmailing its remaining American workforce into accepting longer hours and lower wages).

The integration of Mexican capital with international capital imposes a restructuring of class relations and proves that the "debt crisis" is in effect a productive crisis and therefore, not an obstacle to capitalist development. Debt repayment which is presented as the objective is nothing more than an excuse for an attack on working class struggles and the violent restoration of self-sacrificial ethics in favour of "the national cause", starting, for example with the donation of 1% of workers' salaries to the government, as the CTM asked for in 1982 in chorus with some leftist parties. This practice characterizes the entire 80's decade until today blackmailing the consent to undermining the welfare state, to unemployment and privatizations, all packaged as solutions to the "national problem".

THE THEOLOGY OF NEOLIBERALISM
In the 80's, the prevalent technocratic PRI fraction implemented the IMF-dictated "Structural Adjustment Programmes" to the letter. Over 500 state corporations were privatized and until the early 90's less than 400 had remained under state administration. Some of the most important moments of capital's assault were the subjugation of the independent union at Uramex (state uranium corporation) in 1984, the closure of DINA-Renault in 1986 (after strikes against its privatization), lay-offs at the state oil corporation Pemex, the sale of the state telephone company Telemex, the restructuring of the textile industry... The two sectors of particular importance for the state are the automobile industry in the north (which presents the most rapid development worldwide) and oil in the south. What is notable about the class struggle during the 80's and the early 90's is the emergence of a young unskilled proletariat, not only because it became the main prey of restructuring plans but because of its struggle within some independent unions against the leadership. In Volkswagen, in 1992, a rank and file movement threw out the contract signed by the leadership of their independent union with management which had provided for new flexible work relations. A strike followed which after one month was finally defeated. The management had fired all 14,000 workers only to take them back on again minus 1,500 (who, "accidentally", were the most militant ones) having managed to impose even more unfavourable conditions.

In an attempt to recuperate and check the resurgent movements Salinas' government introduced a policy of concertation (reconciliation) tempting some independent unions to return to the CTM, having substituted some "particularly" corrupt charros, but resorting to violence as well, perhaps more than it wished to. According to the same practice of recuperation and control, PRONASOL (National Programme of Solidarity) was introduced in the late 80's funded by the World Bank and through the sale of Telemex and other former state corporations. This model of "restructuring with a human face" provides sums of money for cheap food, loans to peasants and women's micro-companies, funds for schools, university scholarships, property titles to urban squatters, construction of hospitals and funding infrastructure projects (roads, electrification, dams, draining of lakes etc).

Especially Chiapas in 1993 received more than 100 million dollars in grants. Apart from PRI's electoral benefits through this "decentralizing" methodology, the "participatory" character of these projects was promoted -projects virtually creating the necessary infrastructure paving the way for modern capitalist development in accordance to NAFTA- whereby poor peasants and workers are forced to work at a minimum cost to the state, thereby temporarily alleviating the most painful consequences of capitalist restructuring. Through PRONASOL, a wide spying network was also organised to immediately deal with any possible agrarian movements as it was practised through previous World Bank programmes (e.g. PIDER, c/f next chapter). In general it's part of a long-standing tradition of recuperation/exploitation by the Machiavellians of the PRI - these scientists of manipulation and repression.

The course taken by the PRI integrating the Mexican economy with international capital undermines its own ideological legitimacy: in 1992, article 27 of the constitution, which protected, inter alia, the right to possess a holding on communal land ,the ejidos, was modified. This modification of one of the most representative outcomes of the Mexican Revolution intensifies the ever constant proletarianization of the peasantry bringing with it the new enclosures.

RURAL MEXICO AND THE NEW ENCLOSURES
"Banco Rural is our patron (boss). We're the workers and we don't even get a wage or have a labour union" - a group of ejidatarios in Michoacan, 1981
Within the peasantry, the ejidatarios take the brunt of the assault of capitalist restructuring and are at the centre of class antagonism (setting in motion, now with the Zapatistas, an organized armed struggle). Ejidos are communal lands, mostly Indian, belonging to the community and the village (the pueblo). Their farming is collective - or was so formerly (15). This ancient Indian communal system (in which the collective cultivation, irrigation, harvesting and the widespread mutual aid was a rule) existed before colonialism and survived within the context of feudalism which was transplanted from Europe. The ejidos were small tracts of land on conquistadores' estates and out of the latter, throughout the generations, creole landowners (the hacendados) emerged who increasingly encroached on large parts of Indian land turning the ejidatarios into peons. The communal system continued to exist after Independence and the Mexican Revolution but, on the other hand, the number of rancheros - the independent small-scale farmers - increased, too. The ejidatarios or communeros were the social base of the Zapata movement, a source of inspiration for Magon and a reference point for Kropotkin in "Mutual Aid".

Article 27 of the 1917 constitution protects communal land and forbids ejidos' alienation and mortgage. This article also provides that it is within the discretion of the state to nationalize the lands. It authorizes all Mexican states to set a maximum limit to the amount of land owned by an individual or a co-operative. Moreover it protects private land. Since the beginning of the century, the ejidos were already divided into family holdings (today, less than 10% is collectively cultivated). Given the expansion of the capitalist agricultural production with the help of all governments, capitalist competition, the lack of technology, debts, the brutal force of the landowners' private armies and state compulsion (through loans or "modernization" programmes) the dwindling of the communal land is easily explained.

The various agrarian reforms have left the ejidatarios and the minifundistas with less than 30% of the cultivable land, mostly arid and less fertile. Of course, the official accounts raise the number to 43%. Today more than 80% of those who cultivate the 25,000 ejidos are, at the same time, self-employed, proletarians working as day-labourers for landlords, wandering about the country looking for a job, often forced into domestic migration or going abroad. At the same time there is a permanent rural proletariat that constitutes 12% of the workforce in the countryside.

The "Green Revolution" in the south was relatively delayed compared with the north. Until the 70's, the plan for the south was not development but maintaining less modern social relations whereby landlords were traditionally more interested in primary accumulation than pursuing one on an extended scale -rather reminiscent of the hacendados of the past century- and a mass of farm-labourers, peones, ejidatarios or small holders, often lived in abject poverty.

During the 70's, the World Bank initiated the "Investments in the Poor" project. The PIDER programme (the Integrated Programmes for Rural Development) established big agri-businesses, using peasant labour and financial technical input. "Traditional" Indian smallholders were subordinated to capital through a series of loans and the enforced cultivation of particular crops ready for cheap food processing for export. Their inability to pay off the debts led to the reduction of their land, while on the other hand they had to intensify their subsistence farming (16).

During the 80's, new World Bank programmes (LDA, SAM) approved by the state union of peasants (CNC) led to further expropriations of the ejidos by the large agri-businesses via promotion of the "collaboration" between landlords investing capital in the means of production and ejidatarios providing land and labour.

In the early 90's the most striking feature of rural Mexico is proletarianization and the simultaneous maintenance of subsistence farming and self-employment. Most ejidatarios cultivate their own land to sustain themselves, or on behalf of rentiers and work at the same time as land-labourers or engage in domestic handicraft. They are virtually proletarians disguised as peasants. However, the reform of article 27 in 1992 shows that even this state of semi-proletarian employment does not satisfy capital's demands. The ejidos, only in theory belonging to the ejidatarios, are now virtually expropriated (17). With the acceptance of the production norms set by NAFTA, even the memory of the slogan "The land to the tiller!" must be wiped out. The enclosures, which, according to Marx, constituted the basic process of primary capital accumulation marking the starting point of capitalism in England through forced land expropriations aiming at "liberating" the peasants from the means of production and thus becoming "free" wage workers, are still continuing. The new expropriators, the accountants of the IMF and the PRI, under the pretext of the repayment of the debts, dispossess the peasants of communal land rendering them landless and intensifying capitalist exploitation.

However, the state and capital wouldn't have been able to impose their control without the collaboration of caciquismo, the traditional system mediating social relations in the countryside. Caciques were the Indian leaders who cooperated with the colonialists. Nowadays, whether Indians or mestizos, they are usually political leaders or local magnates, intermediaries between the state and the peasants. The latter consider them as "capable" leaders, "servants of the people", and the caciques, giving out loans or doing "favours" using paternalistic and populist means, manage through political patronage and public relations to defuse or divert class antagonisms, obstructing the explosion of class consciousness and thus fostering state tutelage. Race often takes precedence over class (Indians against mestizos) sharpening internal antagonisms among the poor which are often worked on through the mediation of the caciques. Many agrarian movements and organizations promoting this ideology of "popular interest" ended up as arms of the state, through the co-optation of their charismatic leaders, who took advantage of their representative power over the peasants.

MORE FACTS ON THE STATE OF CHIAPAS
Chiapas differs from the rest of Mexico only in the degree of poverty afflicting the ejidatarios and the minifundistas. Poverty worsened due to the state development programmes introduced to exploit the natural resources of the state (timber, oil). On the other hand, since the mid-60's, 150,000 landless Indians (Tzotzil, Tzeltal, Chol, Sekema and Tojolabal) were allowed to settle and they were given the right to cultivate land in the Lacandona jungle. These tracts of cleared forestland were later bought or forcetaken by the rich landlords and the ranchers, or abandonded by the Indians themselves because the soil was unsuitable for long term cultivation.

The expansion and intensification of cattle ranching, logging and oil exploration in the 70's aggravated the competition for land and tens of thousands of peasants were pushed off their holdings and were turned into land-labourers. The situation worsened since the landlords hired temporary land-labourers from Guatemala, with even lower wages (especially in the mid-80's with the arrival of 80,000 Guatemalan refugees).

Efforts at social organization and resistance have been made by the church, inspired by Liberation Theology, and by a broad, rank and file union movement of teachers, the hijos de campesinos , the children of the peasants. In 1989 a decree banned forest exploration and the government eliminated coffee subsidies -just two other causes that added to Chiapas' increasing social tension. The implementation of PRONASOL didn't really ease things, although Chiapas served as a model for this "poverty alleviation" programme.

NAFTA, GATT AND WTO: JUST WHAT'S BEHIND THESE JARRING ACRONYMS?
Perhaps nowadays we are closer to the verification of Marx's theory about "the immiseration of the working class", "the universal competition among workers", "the expansion of the world market", "the mobility of the capacity to labour and the fluidity of capital", especially if we examine what the above-mentioned initials mean.

GATT and NAFTA's declaration re the "liberalization of trade" allows in other words, capital's unlimited liberty of movement and increased political control. Gatt, like the World Bank and the IMF is a Bretton Woods institution. Bretton Woods was the post second world war meeting place in 1944, of capital's representatives from the US, Britain, France and the USSR. Its intention was to coordinate efforts to avoid crises like the one in 1929 and inter-imperialist wars. GATT, formalized in 1948, has been modified a lot since then and effectively functions in more than 100 countries. The 8th round of the Negotiations took place in Uruguay in 1986 adding to GATT provisions which were rather more than simple tariff reductions. They impose rules which override national laws that regulate domestic markets and labour (environmental restrictions, collective bargaining, agricultural products subsidies) considering them as "trade barriers". The multinational corporations enjoy even more favourable terms for investing in countries where labour costs are lower and the environmental laws less restrictive.

NAFTA eliminates state subsidies for agricultural products and it is estimated that in Mexico 2 to 12 million jobs in agriculture will be lost, which will add to the migratory flow northwards. NAFTA (now effective between Canada, US and Mexico and intended to include many Latin American and Asian countries in the future) is virtually completing the process of global capital integration. Side agreements were made to give NAFTA a democratic facade: there were formed trinational labour and environmental commissions of state bureaucrats, charged with the settlement of disputes regarding the implementation of NAFTA provisions. However, labour laws concerning collective bargaining, the right to strike and unionize are not subject to these commissions' jurisdiction.

In this rock bottom race, capital will flow into Mexico as surely as the deindustrialization of America will continue (especially regarding car, textile and food industries). The PRI has already paved the way for capital's welcoming reception through the dismantling of the welfare state, unemployment, flexible work relations and the recent devaluation of the peso.

This devaluation, that took place a few days after the deployment of the Zapatistas in 38 communities in Chiapas, cannot be explained irrespectively of the fear of class struggle spreading in other areas of Mexico, and above all it is essentially connected with the general crisis in the country as we have described it so far. Monetary issues are nothing but the mystified form of social issues regarding production and wages. Capital is cutting wages on a national scale by devaluating the currency. This move is at the same time defensive and offensive. Offensive, because wage reductions and the further privatizations demanded as precondition for new loans, plus a 40% increase in interest rates which will bring about the collapse of a 30% of small and medium-size businesses, aim at creating better conditions for future investments. At the same time, the myth is spreading that state coffers are empty and that "sacrifices are necessary" for the repayment of the new loans.

More than a year after the implementation of NAFTA in Mexico, the process of restructuring is intensifying. 99% of the strikes in 1994 were declared either non-existant or illegal and in many cases lay-offs followed, mostly in the car, textile, iron and coal industries and in the maquiladoras sector.

The World Trade Organization (WTO) is aiming at "achieving a greater coherence in global economic policy-making", according to its founding document (1986), along with the World Bank and the IMF. Having a "legal personality" the WTO will ensure the conformity and the integration of national economies within the global one according to the GATT rules.

Even talking about "national economic planning" is difficult since what is known as the Nation-State undergoes a serious crisis caused by the agreements and institutions of the Capitalist International. The expansion of the commodity economy -as a result of the defeat of class struggles over the previous decades- brings about decomposition of an intense kind for the Mexican and american proletariat and, in the future, (if it hasn't already) could result in capitalism forcing the abolition of borders, undermining the Nation-State. However, this undermining is inevitably damaging the representative capacities of the political bureaucracies. For example the PRI has not remained in power for 66 years as an elected representative of capital, but as an elected representative of "Civil Society", of the "Mexican nation". While pretending to be powerless to oppose the IMF and the World Bank it is forced to deflate its own nationalist blustering, to undermine its own nationalist foundation, to repeal gradually the constitution, the very source of its legitimacy. As a guardian of the "achievements" of the Mexican Revolution (in reality, the defeat of the peasants and workers as they themselves found out later, at the same time as some rights and demands were statutorily secured) and the populist measures of Cardenas, the PRI should seek the consent of "Mexican citizens" posing as providing for the "common interest" (18). Yet being forced to do this in ways less and less persuasive -especially since the days of the "debt crisis" and now with NAFTA- it is causing increasing disaffection. Within the PRI, the dominant technocratic faction, oriented towards integrating Mexican with global capital, is already being attacked by those factions hesitant about innovation; those that are "traditional", "corrupt" and "backward". The assasination of Colosio, who was in charge of PRONASOL, was followed by the assasination of Massieu, the general secretary of PRI -both close associates of the former president, Salinas.

Amidst these "sordid family quarrels" as Marx described inter-capitalist antagonisms, an uprising that started more than a year ago is continuing, carrying with "the wind picking up from below", all its weaknesses.

THE ZAPATISTAS WITHOUT A MYTH
The difficulty of analysing a movement like the Zapatistas is not only due to the fluidity of the situation in Chiapas. The very meaning of their words and tactics was gradually unfolding before our eyes as we were trying to connect it with their strategy and Mexican reality in general.

As a national-liberation army, with their First Declaration from Lacandona Jungle in December 1993, they declared war on the Mexican government ready to advance to the capital claiming, as Indians and Mexicans at the same time, their historical continuity with all national and popular struggles since Colonialism. They published then the "Revolutionary Laws of the Liberated Territories", their social and political programme. After the truce agreed by them and the national army on the 12th of January 1994, they sat down at the "dialogue" table with the government presenting their 34-points-demands with an emphasis on political demands of a national character. In mid-March they walked out of the negotiations publishing their Second Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle, in which, addressing the "Mexican people", they proposed a National Democratic Convention for the submission of "propositions about a transitional government and a new constitution".

The PRI under the pressure of the EZLN and the class struggle it had sparked off, suspended the Minister of the Interior and the governor of Chiapas and made a kind of electoral reform allowing for the presence of foreign observers during the elections held on the 21st of August. According to the official electoral results the PRI received 48% of the vote, the PRD 16% and the right-wing PAN 26%. In Chiapas, Eduerdo Robledo Rincon of the PRI "won" with 51% of the vote and the PRD-supported Amando Avendano followed with 34% having adopted the EZLN's 11-points. After the PRI's electoral victory, the EZLN denounced the fraud and called on people to engage in civil disobedience and mobilize in peaceful protest. Avendano formed a parallel government in December supported by a large part of the peasants in Chiapas, the EZLN themselves and the majority of the National Democratic Convention, which at its second meeting in October, demanded the termination of the PRI government. Bishop Ruiz formed CONAI (National Commission for Mediation) in the same month to start new negotiations while land occupations in Chiapas by dozens of peasants' organizations intensified. On the other hand, the police as well as the big landowners' "white guards" violently evicted people from occupied areas. On the 19th of December, the EZLN advanced over a wide part of Chiapas occupying 38 municipalities only to return again to the jungle. The national army, after having already tightened the noose around the zone liberated by the Zapatistas since autumn 1994, invaded it in mid-February 1995 in order to arrest their leaders. After large solidarity demonstrations in Mexico City and lest class struggle should extend beyond Chiapas' boundaries, the army curtailed its advance and the government announced it was withdrawing its proclamation, characterizing the EZLN's leaders as "outlaws" and that it was ready to start negotiations. Despite opposition to the hardline policy and the army repression, the army's presence remained suffocating and when it deployed terrorist tactics many peasants took refuge in the jungle. In the abandoned villages the government settled poor and landless peasants from other areas. Up till now the situation is still explosive and uncertain...

What we're attempting here is a critical presentation and assessment of the movement avoiding the trap of radical journalism or being just another uncritical solidarity committee. To anyone hastening to accuse us of callousness because of the escalation of the Mexican governments' violence, we will retort that our point of view leaves behind an over-emotional approach that forbids thought, as well as a temporary fascination with just another case, the Zapatistas this time, which will move us for a while to pass onto something else later. We want to approach class struggle from an internationalist angle. We try to analyse how it is mediated by abstract democratic politics and what are the obstacles the insurgents themselves put in their way. Precisely when class struggle becomes intense one must attempt a critique that leaves behind glorification and uncritical identification. This is the best contribution to a rebellion that simply cannot be confined within Chiapas' or Mexico's boundaries. So, let's get down to the essentials:

The EZLN constitutes now the most organised political form of class struggle in Mexico and has helped in an explosion of land occupations in Chiapas and to resurgence of antagonism around the social question in this state. There is a great tradition of peasant movements in Mexico that's led to this outburst and, of course, it's not down to the intelligence of the EZLN's much publicized leaders, Marcos or Tacho, who have become the idols of leftists, "progressive thinkers" and the mass media. Since Colonialism many Indian guerilla movements (Mayas in Yucatan, Yopes in Guerrero, Chichimeca in the north, Yaquis in Sonora, Mixtec in Oaxaca, Tzeltal in Chiapas, Huasteca in Veracruz, Hidalgo and San Luis Potosi) resisted land seizures, and thus becoming slaves or wage labourers, regionally rather than nationally. During the Mexican-american war resistance was conducted with guerilla tactics by agrarian and worker movements, whose aims ranged from social banditry, land takeovers to free peasant communities. After the Mexican Revolution, in the mid-40's until 1962, Ruben Jaramillo's movement in the state of Morelos -once Zapata's co-fighter and member of the CP- propagated "Land and Liberty" by deed. In the early 60's guevarist marxists, peasants, workers, intellectuals, artists and liberal politicians rallied around the agraristas, peasant militants demanding land reform, forming MLN (Movement for National Liberation) for the revitalization of the Mexican Revolution. Later, many peasants, ex-members of the MLN organized a guerilla army in Guerrero under the leadership of the teacher Vasquez. In the 70's dozens of urban and peasant guerilla groups emerged, mainly of guevarist ideology (the "Party of the Poor" of Lucio Cabanas etc) and now several armed peasant movements are active in rural Mexico (in November 1993 a meeting of 52 armed groups took place in Guerrero under the auspices of the "Guerilla General Coordinate"!).

One of the basic reasons that the Zapatistas as a guerilla movement monopolize attention and sympathy, apart from the coverage they get by the media, is the re-adjustment of their former guevarist ideology and the adoption of the dominant, nowadays, democratic pluralistic ideology: "The EZLN was born having as points of reference the political military organizations of the guerilla movements in Latin America during the sixties and seventies...political-military structures with the central aim of overthrowing a regime and the taking of power by the people in general...(the indigenous people) needed military instruction, and we needed the support of a social base...", says Marcos in his interview by the Mexican anarchists Amor y Rabia and goes on "We are proposing a space, an equilibrium between the different political forces in order that each position has the same opportunity to influence the political direction of this country...This is why we propose democracy, freedom and justice -justice in order that certain material conditions are satisfied so that people have an opportunity to participate in the political life of the country...we are talking about a democratic space where the political parties, or groups that aren't parties, can air and discuss their social proposals".

However, he adds enigmatically "...We are saying that yes, we do have our idea of how the country should be", something that is repeated in their Second declaration "...the EZLN has a vision about the country. The EZLN's political maturity as the expression of the feelings of part of the nation lies in that it does not wish to impose its vision on the country". Trying to guess what this vision is, is quite pointless, so let's see something more unequivocal by EZLN, a part from their "Revolutionary Laws of the Liberated Territories". According to their "Revolutionary Agrarian Law":

"...Third: All poor-quality land in excess of 100 hectares and all good-quality land in excess of 50 hectares will be subject to the revolutionary agricultural law. The landowners whose lands exceed the afore-mentioned limits will have the excess taken away from them and they will be left with the minimum permitted by this law. They may remain as small landholders or join the cooperative peasants' movement, peasant societies, or communal lands.

Fourth: Communally-held land and the land of popular cooperatives will not be subject to agrarian reform, even though they exceed the limits mentioned in the third article of this law.

Fifth: The lands affected by this agrarian law will be distributed to the landless peasants and the agricultural labourers who thus request it as collective property for the formation of cooperatives, peasant societies or agricultural production/livestock collectives. The affected lands should be worked collectively.

Sixth: The collectives of poor, landless peasants and agricultural labourers, men, women, and children without land title, or who have land of poor quality, will have the right to be the first to request land.

Seventh: In order to better cultivate the land for the benefit of the poor peasants and the agricultural labourers, the expropriation of large estates and agricultural/livestock monopolies will include the expropriation of means of production such as machinery, fertilizer, stores, financial resources, chemical products and technical expertise. All of these means should pass into the hands of the poor peasants and agricultural labourers, with special attention given to groups organised in cooperatives, collectives and societies...

Tenth: ...When a region doesn't produce some product, it will trade justly and equally (sic) with another region where it is produced. Excess production can be exported to other countries if there is no national demand for the product.

Eleventh: Large agricultural businesses will be expropriated and passed to the hands of the Mexican people, and will be administered collectively by the workers of those businesses...

Sixteenth: The peasants that work collectively will not be taxed. Nor will the ejidos, cooperatives or communal lands be taxed. From the moment that this revolutionary agrarian law is implemented, all debts...are forgiven".

Such an agrarian programme -the most radical piece EZLN has published until now- does not oppose private property nor market economy and put in the overall context of the "Revolutionary Laws" which provide for:

--respect for a "freely elected" representative government, --stocks to workers in proportion to the number of years they have worked,

--nationalizations of unproductive industries and businesses,

--dual power, with the Zapatistas as self-proclaimed supervisors of the revolutionary process, its participatory, social-democratic character appears more clearly.

In juxtaposition, we will remind the anarchists and libertarians who rushed into embracing EZLN uncritically, Magon's anarcho-communist programme, and in particular some excerpts from PLM's Manifest of 23rd of September 1911 about generalized expropriation (19):

"Thus humanity remains divided into two classes whose interests are diametrically opposed -the capitalist class and the working class...Between these two social classes there cannot exist any bond of friendship or fraternity, for the possessing class always seeks to perpetuate the existing economic, political and social system which guarantees it tranquil enjoyment of the fruits of its robberies, while the working class exerts itself to destroy the iniquitous system and institute one in which the land, the houses, the machinery of production and the means of transportation shall be for the common use... Expropriation must be pursued to the end, at all costs, while this grand movement lasts...acts of expropriation must not be limited to taking possession of the land and the implements of agriculture alone. There must be a resolute taking possession, of all the industries by those working in them, who should bring it about similarly that the lands, the mines, the factories, the workshops, the foundries, the railroads, the shipping, the stores of all kinds and the houses shall be in the power of each and every one of the inhabitants, without distinction of sex... Everything produced will be sent to the community's general store, from which all will have the right to take what their necessities require, on the exhibition proof that they are working at such and such an industry. The human being aspires to satisfy wants with the least possible expenditure of effort, and the best way to obtain that result is to work the land and the other industries in common. If the land is divided up and each family takes a piece there will be grave danger of falling anew into the capitalist system... Of course there will be enough for each to have his own house and a ground plot for his own pleasure... Let each, according to his temperament, tastes, and inclinations choose the kind of work that suits him best, provided he produces sufficient to cover his necessary wants and does not become a charge on the community... It is for you, then, to choose. Either a new governor -that is to say, a new yoke- or life-redeeming expropriation and the abolition of all imposition, be that imposition religious, political or of any other kind".

Despite its reformist, social-democratic character, the EZLN's agrarian programme is opposed to Chiapas' big landowners, as well as to the strategy of international capital, since communalism, small-scale ownership or nationalizations (especially giving NAFTA's existence) are obstacles in its way. In this law, as well as in the EZLN's other laws about women's equality, labour, industry and commerce, the explosive potential of social revolution is inherent in an alienated form, and however limited to Chiapas and to the ejidatarios, this revolt expresses the universal demand of the uprooted individual separated from true community, human nature.

Deprived of human community by the Mexican state and international capital through the New Enclosures, the ejidatarios reaffirm community anew occupying land and expropriating the means of production -something they did before the EZLN's existence and now with the help of the latter's armed struggle, carry on doing so even more dynamically. If we consider that the New Enclosures constitute an attack against the communal control of the means of subsistence, then, they are not aimed only at Chiapas' ejidatario or generally the peasants of the so-called "Third World". They affect the "First World" as well, intensifying the mobility of labour, fostering emigration and causing social-democracy to retreat almost to the point of capital's total domination. In this respect, the rebellion in Chiapas, "the expropriation of the expropriators" has a universal dimension that transcends the local social uprising of the semi-proletarian peasants. However, at the same time, while the EZLN wishes to give to this rebellion a supposedly more general and wider character, it limits it, on the contrary, within national and political frames. In their First Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle they made clear that they struggled for the right to "...freely and democratically elect our political representatives..." and went on to mention that through their struggle they applied article 39 of the constitution which reads: "National Sovereignty essentially and originally resides in the people. All political power emanates from the people and its purpose is to help the people. The people have, at all times the inalienable right to alter or modify their form of government". This article, part of the constitution of every modern Democracy, inspires the EZLN who want to apply it to the very letter.

In their 34 points-demands addressed to the government they demanded inter alia: "Free and democratic elections with equal rights and obligations for all political organizations contending for power, true liberty to choose one or another proposal and respect for the will of the majority. Democracy is a fundamental right for all Indigenous and non-Indigenous people. Without democracy there can be no liberty, justice or dignity and without dignity there is nothing". In their Second Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle, the EZLN reject the government's electoral reform because "...it perpetuates the seizing of the popular will", and they repeat their wish for "...a political solution which could lead to a peace with dignity and justice" and address an invitation to the "independent and progressive ones for a national dialogue, for a peace with democracy, liberty and justice", they talk about "...Civil society (which) assumed the responsibility to protect the country" and stress the fact that "(we should provide)...so that those who govern, govern obeying". So they address "Civil Society", proposing to "all the independent political parties to condemn the limitation and deprivation of people's civil rights during the last 66 years and to demand the formation of a transitional democratic government". The EZLN's pluralistic, national-democratic and populist ideology reaches a climax when they declare that "Within the framework of the new political relations, the different propositions about the system and the orientation (socialism, capitalism, social-democracy, liberalism, christian-democracy etc[!] ) should convince the majority of the people of the correctness of their programmes".

One would suppose that the EZLN's language is completely outdated if the Mexican state, an authoritarian democracy, wasn't patriarchical and populist and if, particularly in Chiapas, backward structures, longtime organized political and economic gangs didn't still survive, which the dominant modernizing tendency within the PRI wants to get rid of, too. The Mexican state, even in its present form, seeks to win voters' consent and as for the electoral fraud, its indisputable existance does not refute the success of the PRI's cooptation politics (Allianza Civica, a coalition of non-government organizations, which observed the electoral process, reported anomalies which didn't however alter the outcome of the present elections).

However, what is of interest from the standpoint of social revolution is the context, the essence, the meaning of democracy (whether of the Mexican or european type) and of "Civil Society". Democracy, the democratic state is not a timeless idyllic state of things above history, but the political outcome of class struggles since the French Revolution. In Mexico, through the Revolution of 1910-20, the basis of the democratic state was laid, which resides in the "sovereign people" satisfying legally some of the peasants' and workers' demands after having trodden on their dead bodies.

The basis and the content of democratic "political society", this "spiritual, heavenly community" is none other than the society of private individuals, of real people with their private and competitive interests, of class society. This real competitive society called the "Mexican people" or the "Mexican nation" is unified abstractly in the Mexican state. "Man in his immediate reality, in civil society, is a profane being", says Marx in the Jewish Question. "Here, where he regards himself and is regarded by others as a real individual, he is an illusory phenomenon. In the state, on the other hand [in the "political society"], where he is considered to be a species-being, he is the imaginary member of a fictitious sovereignty, he is divested of his real individual life and filled with an unreal universality". Mexican "Civil Society", which includes ejidatarios, workers, businessmen etc, will probably be able to liberate itself politically, modernizing and liberalizing the political system and abolishing the one-party rule. However, it cannot abolish its immediate alienating reality. Because this battle is fought by the ejidatario repossessing communal land and by the proletarian against flexibility and immiseration, whereas the EZLN's national-democratic ideology urges them to fight as "citizens", namely as members of an imaginary community.

No government, neither the one that "governs obeying" nor any other, will ever liberate human beings, since it will always re-unify them abstractly as citizens retaining simultaneously their class divisions, even by force. Because, naturally, no "people" in any democracy, even the most liberal was ever convinced by, or, has ever chosen to be governed by capitalism! With their persistence in pursuing "clean elections", the Zapatistas actually favoured the PRD and its leader, "citizen engineer Cardenas" -to use one of their expressions. And now many peasants in Chiapas recognize Avendano, the PRD's candidate, as "their own man" who expresses their will. In their 17/12/94 communique, the EZLN state, among other things: "EZLN recognize the social forces rallied around engineer Cardenas and the CND, as an honest, civil and peaceful opposition against the government's impositions; for this reason, the EZLN addresses themselves to citizen-engineer Cardenas and the National Council of Representatives of the CND to ask them, irrespective of their political affiliation and party commitment (sic), to convey the EZLN's voice to Mexican society and to the personalities in the political life of the nation that they consider to be competent, presenting them the means which would render a stable truce possible:

1. Satisfactory solution for the conflicting parts after the elections in the states of Veracruz, Chiapas and Tabasco.

2. Recognition of the transitional democratic government in the state of Chiapas.

3. Recognition on the part of the federal government of CONAI as a neutral organ which can make possible the political solution to the conflict. The EZLN recognize the effort of citizen-engineer Cardenas and the CND for a peace with justice and dignity".

Generally, the EZLN's relationship with the PRD and the CND (which consists mainly of PRD members and cadres) is one of partners-allies against the common enemy the PRI and the one-party state. A partnership wherein each part wants to retain its autonomy.

In an interview in La Jornada (7/12/94), Marcos made clear that the "return" to guns afetr the second meeting of the CND was the continuation of the EZLN's democratic politics by other means. In fact, the Zapatistas never considerd the electoral process and the use of guns as two incompatible activities. In the same interview, Marcos was quite clear: "The guns ought to open up space again, spitting lead enables politics to be exerted again". For this very reason, we do not limit our attention in this text to the EZLN's partial tactics but we try to point out the essential content of their politics on the whole.

Closely related to the EZLN's national-democratic ideology is their social-patriotism. "We are the inheritors of the true builders of our nation. We, the dispossessed, are millions and we thereby call upon our brothers and sisters to join this struggle as the only path, so that we will not die of hunger due to the insatiable ambition of a 70-year dictatorship led by a clique of traitors who represent sell-out cliques and the most conservative elements", they said in their First Declaration from the Lacandona Jungle and in their communique of the 6th of January, they made clear that "...we try to unite the Mexican people and its independent organizations so that through all forms of struggle, a national liberation movement can be formed which will enable the presence of honest and patriotic social organizations for Mexico's progress". In their Second Declaration, they refer to "the plunder of national wealth", to the "government's persistence in implementing an economic plan that increases poverty in our country for the benefit of the foreigners" as a reply to the EZLN's demand for a revision of NAFTA. Marcos, in the interview with Amor y Rabia explains the extent of the EZLN's "internationalist" politics: "...as far as international politics is concerned, we have nothing more than our appeal for solidarity to the Mexican and latino community in the USA, to help us as a fraternal nation". This nationalism that traps class struggle within state borders or seeks out people of similar ethnic descent without regard to class, sabotages the modern dimension of the rebellion against NAFTA. Precisely now, when it's pointless to refer to Mexicans in general when it's Mexican as well as american proletarians (Chicanos or otherwise) who are being hit hard by capital's world integration, precisely now, when the social question cannot be limited to Mexico's borders, the Zapatistas intensify class struggle whilst holding the national flag as their banner against the "sell-out" government and "foreign capital". They foster the false vision of socialism in one country again and they (together with a fraction of the Mexican bourgeoisie threatened by capital's integration) fill the ideological gap opened by capital's internationalization in the Mexican government's propaganda apparatus. Whereas the PRI in dismantling the welfare state is forced to tone down its nationalistic demagogy, now, it seems, social-patriotic and nationalistic slogans emerge on behalf of the proletariat -another fact indicating that what happens in Mexico is not soleley a Mexican affair. Do not the protestations of trade unions in several European countries calling privatizations of nationalized corporations "sell-outs" wrap up class struggle in a social-democratic, nationalist language? Or, don't references to the "threat against our cultural heritage" from european integration signify the false identification of popular culture with the nation?

Do not be misled into supposing that the quarrel between Madero and ourselves is a quarrel between Mexicans, which Mexicans should be left to settle for themselves. It is not. It is the old, inextinguishable quarrel between bourgeoisie and proletariat; between monopolists and disinherited; between those who wish to live peacefully under the existing system and those who know that under the present system there is no peace...This quarrel therefore, is yours. Without playing the traitor to the great international cause of the emancipation of labour you cannot ignore it... We do not appeal to you to help US. Our appeal is that you leave no stone unturned to help YOURSELVES by utilizing the magnificent opportunity of forwarding the common cause which the Mexican Revolution affords.

Regeneracion, PLM's newspaper, from the "Appeal to members of the [american] Socialist Party" of 29/4/1911, later included in the article "Labour's solidarity should know neither race nor colour".

The Zapatistas are therefore criticised in the context of international class antagonism which their nationalist ideology does not promote and not of course because they "do not make the revolution". The dimensions of the social question in Chiapas and Mexico in general transcend their ideology, even if they were the ones who escalated class struggle and are keeping it up to a great extent. The attacks against proletarians in Mexico and the States during the last decade have generated new struggles. In California, Proposition 187, which denies "illegal" immigrants access to health care, education and social care in general has become a law, after a referendum with 59% for and 41% against (20). On the other hand, they reduce the length of time on welfare benefit and lower the age at which children can be tried as adults from 16 to 14...among other things the "Republican Revolution" has accomplished. The first reaction last October was the largest demonstration (over 100,000) in L.A. for several decades. There were also student walk-outs, rallies and sit-ins and there are a lot of indications that maybe the outbreak in 1992 (the big L.A. riot) will happen again. Perhaps the hiring of 3,000 new cops was no coincidence.

As a reaction to NAFTA, transnational networks have already been formed linking activists in the USA, Mexico and Canada. Labour unions, women's groups, farmers, environmental, religious and intellectual organisations -about sixty in all- have formed transnational coalitions demanding a "revision of NAFTA", "democratization of the IMF and the World Bank", "equitable, sustainable and participatory development", a new "global Keynesianism", redistribution of wealth between "poor and rich countries", "a civil society without borders...for a participatory and sustainable global village". This new social-democratic vision without borders, that brings together dissimilar social groups of limited class composition (from the petite-bourgeois to labour unions leaders, from feminists to academics) is forced by the internationalization of capital to get over any idea of exclusively national action. It is precisely this new strategy of capital which, although it precipitates the collapse of the social-democratic parties based on a Keynesian national development, generates a new social-democracy in the form of grass-roots movements of a transnational orientation. It is certainly a positive fact that in this transitional age, one of global restructuring of social relations, neo-Keynesianism recognizes the international character of capital's attack and stresses global solidarity. However, it is not only that this multicultural reformism is undesirable; it is also questionable whether permanent reforms are possible any longer.

Not an unimportant role in the division between Mexican and american proletarians is played out in the ideologies of the "bad gringos" and the Mexican "traitors" who in migrating to the USA "forgot" the nation and the Raza. Against these so-called pochos, the old anti-imperialist hatred rages again vehemently, something that makes the identification of second and third generation immigrants with Chiapanecos or Mexican proletarians in general almost impossible. On the other side of the borders ("al otro lado") racism against immigrants intensifies, especially after its legislative consolidation.

While the New Enclosures are imposed globally through the pillaging of communal land, privatizations, the war on rents, the decline in wages, the destructuration of the welfare state, immigration, "working in the black", developers destroying the countryside (construction of huge motorways, airports etc), the struggles everywhere against all of this, cannot as yet, go beyond their partiality. While the internationalist vision appears nowadays as an urgent necessity and not as a mere abstract principle, new barriers of nation, race and localism rise up to annul it.

If the Zapatistas, limiting the rebellion in Mexico to a political, national affair, assign us, at best, the tasks of just a solidarity committee, we can only feel for ourselves what is ours in this struggle. Contrary to the PRD which organizes solidarity campaigns for the Zapatistas in Europe gathering signatures from academics, artists and sympathizers in general, our practical solidarity to the ejidatarios and proletarians in Chiapas will be to continue squatting, to struggle against privatizations and the alienation of everyday life, aiming to develop these struggles into the creation of a world human community.
KATERINA, Athens -March 1995

NOTES
(1) Marxist-leninist organizations mostly, the so-called "extremists", arousing suspicion from many sides that they are PRI agents -such suspicions and accusations in Mexico are quite common, since the spectacle of terrorism and spying is perfectly organized and adds to confusion.

(2) It is the name the EZLN gave to the jungle meeting place where the convention met referring symbolically to the convention of representatives of Villa's, Zapata's and the Constitutionalists' armies in 1914, in the vortex of the Mexican Revolution. However, comparing these two conventions the only resemblance seems to be the name.

(3) Cuauhtemoc Cardenas, the leader of the PRD, is the son of Lazaro Cardenas, the reformist ex-president. An ex-member of the PRI and ex-governor of the state of Michoacan, gathered round him the "democratic current" within the PRI. Now with the PRD he represents the nationalist, social-patriotic tendency. Gaining 31% in the elections in 1988 he was considered to be the actual winner, although the PRI came to power again through blatant fraud. It's worth mentioning that the abstention then amounted to 50%.

4) The Plan de Ayala, a concise, fiery outline of the Zapatistas' objectives was written by Zapata and his comrade and former school-teacher, Otilio Montano.

(5) "Zapata emphasized "land and liberty", that is, restitution of stolen lands, water and pasture rights and the restoration of village democracy. Not that the Zapatistas lacked a proletarian consciousness -on the contrary, they seized all the means of production; fields, mills, railway stations, and distilleries. They set up liberated zones, basing themselves on communal traditions of village self-government. Zapata's was a classic "people's war", fought in guerilla fashion, and his forces enjoyed great popular participation and support. First Diaz, then Madero, then Huerta, and eventually the Constitutionalists launched scorched-earth campaigns of terror against the Zapatistas, indiscriminately killing any civilians in their path, but so long as their charismatic leader lived, the Zapatistas resisted the demoralization that these barbarous attacks sought to provoke.

In the north, Villa's forces were less homogeneous than those of Zapata. In addition to former bureaucrats of the Madero regime, who helped administer the immense expanses of territory liberated by Villa's army, the top ranks of Villa's followers included more cowboy caudillos * (vaqueros or charros), rancheros, and petty bourgois storekeepers than it did communal peasant farmers; the foot soldiers were usually miners, migrant farmworkers, railway workers, and the unemployed. The aims of the Villistas were thus more worker-orientated or petty bourgeois than they were pro-peasant: as foremen of large estates, vaqueros, or independent ranchers, cowboy caudillos had commanded peasants but had not experienced land hunger at first hand. Workers were more interested in gainful employment than in farming for themselves. Thus lands seized by Villa's army were held by the state, not given to the peasants." J. Cockroft "Mexico. Class Formation, Capital Accumulation and the State". * strong regional (mostly military) leaders.

6) US intervention through the invasion of Veracruz not only gave the Constitutionalists a military advantage but also helped them claim credit for "throwing out the yankee invaders" and pose as "anti-imperialists".

(7) Founded in 1929 as the PNR: National Revolutionary Party it was renamed PMR: Party of the Mexican revolution in 1938; we are talking about the PRI, which is still in power.

(8) Nevertheless, foreign (mostly US) capital has always had a strong presence in Mexico, especially in industry. According to a study in 1970, of the 2,040 companies with the largest profits, foreign capital controlled 36% of the income of the largest 400 companies and participated in another 18%, while Mexican private capital and the Mexican government controlled 21% and 25% correspondingly. (

9) We are referring to politicians and army officers, who during the Revolution amassed vast quantities of land for themselves, which they kept later under state support.

(10) Walking the streets of Mexico City, one is immersed in Mexican history and especially the period of the Revolution: subway stations, streets, squares etc. bearing the names of militants assassinated by this very state that later declared them "national heroes". After the student uprising in 1968, even Magon was pronounced a "hero", although formerly he had been condemned as "anti-Mexican", due to his internationalism.

(11) Local bosses, more information in the chapter RURAL MEXICO AND THE NEW ENCLOSURES.

12) Both Mexican and foreign (mainly US), these labour-intensive assembly plants were first established in 1964 along the borderline by the Mexican government. The maquiladoras run under extremely favourable terms for capital accumulation (no duties are imposed on parts imported from US and similarly there are no duties on the assembled products exported to the US). The workers are mostly landless peasants (especially very young women) from the same region, so that the management (Mexican or not) can better exploit them through traditional, paternalistic methods such as donations to the village, being godparents (compadrazco) etc.

(13) See in "Midnight Notes" #9 H.Cleaver's article: "The uses of an earthquake".

(14) See "Midnight Oil" by Midnight Notes, especially chapters "Oil, guns and money" and "Audit of the crisis".

(15) Ejido means exit since the communal land usually lay on the outer edges of the village.

16) It is highly interesting to examine the methodology followed in those programmes. The emphasis was laid on the "participation" of the peasants in their exploitation, which presupposed regional "information" about the peasants' behaviour. Usually a spying network was set up to track down the leaders of agrarian movements and then followed the implementation of the programme and the death squads for those peasants disagreeing with development. Both the time -in the 70's- and the place -Guerrero and Oaxaca, states with a tradition of agrarian movements and especially armed ones- were not selected accidentally for this exchange of funds for "information" necessary for disbanding agrarian organizations and the peasants' subsequent subordination to capital (see Kaffentzis, "Let me speak of the end of the World Bank and IMF").

17) Already since the 60's leasing ejidos, although prohibited according to the constitution, was allowed after certain amendments were made. Ejidal Bank and Banco Rural, both in the interests of big landowners, acted as collective owners and controllers of the ejidos.

18) However often it resorts to electoral fraud, repression and violence, the Mexican state has also promoted and refined its recuperational practice. As we have already shown, it knows how to use both the rifle and money; to give away scholarships amply or publish Bakunin's collected works and assassinate political opponents. We may then speak of an authoritarian but democratic state.

19) References to Magon (here and below) serve two purposes: first, to show to what extent the anarcho-communist movement during the Mexican Revolution and the existing Zapatista movement differ, as a response to an attempt by Greek anarchists to present the latter as a direct continuance of the former; second, to highlight the content and perspectives of that defeated movement at the turn of the century which can be very inspiring today, even though the historical context is quite different. Namely, the communist, internationalist perspective and the rejection of all political party manipulations.

(20) The case was brought to court by the L.A. School Board, immigrant rights groups and civil liberties advocates disputing Proposition's 187 constitutionality. As for the referendum, the white/Anglo electorate voted for Prop. 187 by a 63% to 37%, Blacks against, 53% to 47%, and although the Latinos also voted against by 77%, 23% voted for it. Among the latter two communities those in favour of the Prop. thought that they protected themselves against the threat of the undocumented workers depressing wages and monopolizing unskilled jobs (info from "News and Letters, vol. 39, no 10).

For this text, except for those sources already mentioned, the following ones were also "expropriated":

--P. Newell, "Zapata of Mexico"

--"Land and Liberty, Anarchist Influences in the Mexican Revolution, R.F. Magon"

--K. Dawkins, "NAFTA, GATT and WTO", Open Magazine Pamphlet Series

--"The other side of Mexico", # 34 and 36 --Wildcat, #60

--Marc Cooper, "Zapatistas, Chiapas, Mexico", Open Magazine Pamphlet Series

Excerpts from EZLN's declarations and communiques were mainly taken from "Love and Rage", vol. 5, issues no 1, 2, 3.

Text taken from the Collective Action Notes website

It will be published in London by Pluto Press in June/July 1998. We thank John Holloway for his kind permission. A brief version of this article was published in Common Sense # 22, December 1997.

Dignity's Revolt

John Holloway

I

Dignity arose on the first day of January 1994.

The 'Enough!' ('!Ya Basta!') proclaimed by the Zapatistas on the first day of 1994 was the cry of dignity. When they occupied San Cristobal de las Casas and six other towns of Chiapas on that day, the wind they blew into the world, 'this wind from below, the wind of rebellion, the wind of dignity', carried 'a hope, the hope of the conversion of dignity and rebellion into freedom and dignity'.(1) When the wind dies down, 'when the storm abates, when the rain and the fire leave the earth in peace once again, the world will no longer be the world, but something better'.(2)

A letter from the ruling body of the Zapatistas, the Comite Clandestino Revolucionario Indigena (CCRI),(3) addressed just a month later to another indigenous organisation, the Consejo 500 Anos de Resistencia Indigena,(4) emphasises the central importance of dignity:

'Then that suffering that united us made us speak, and we recognised that in our words there was truth, we knew that not only pain and suffering lived in our tongue, we recognised that there is hope still in our hearts. We spoke with ourselves, we looked inside ourselves and we looked at our history: we saw our most ancient fathers suffering and struggling, we saw our grandfathers struggling, we saw our fathers with fury in their hands, we saw that not everything had been taken away from us, that we had the most valuable, that which made us live, that which made our step rise above plants and animals, that which made the stone be beneath our feet, and we saw, brothers, that all that we had was DIGNITY, and we saw that great was the shame of having forgotten it, and we saw that DIGNITY was good for men to be men again, and dignity returned to live in our hearts, and we were new again, and the dead, our dead, saw that we were new again and they called us again, to dignity, to struggle'.(5)

Dignity, the refusal to accept humiliation and dehumanisation, the refusal to conform: dignity is the core of the Zapatista revolution of revolution. The idea of dignity has not been invented by the Zapatistas, but they have given it a prominence that it has never before possessed in revolutionary thought. When the Zapatistas rose, they planted the flag of dignity not just in the centre of the uprising in Chiapas, but in the centre of oppositional thought. Dignity is not peculiar to the indigenous peoples of the southeast of Mexico: the struggle to convert 'dignity and rebellion into freedom and dignity' (an odd but important formulation) is the struggle of (and for) human existence in an oppressive society, as relevant to life in Edinburgh, Athens, Tokyo, Los Angeles or Johannesburg as it is to the struggles of the peoples of the Lacandon Jungle.

The aim of this essay is to explore what it means to put dignity at the centre of oppositional thought. In the course of the argument it should become clear why 'zapatismo' is not a movement restricted to Mexico but is central to the struggle of thousands of millions of people all over the world to live a human life against-and-in an increasingly inhuman society.

The essay aims not so much to give a historical account of the Zapatista movement as to provide a distillation of the most important themes, without at the same time concealing the ambiguities and contradictions of the movement. In order to distill a fragrant essence from roses, it is not necessary to conceal the existence of the thorns, but thorns do not enter into what one wants to extract. The purpose of trying to distill the theoretical themes of zapatismo is similar to the purpose behind any distillation process: to separate those themes from the immediate historical development of the Zapatista movement, to extend the fragrance beyond the immediacy of the particular experience.

II

Dignity was wrought in the jungle.

The uprising of the first of January 1994 was more than ten years in the preparation. The EZLN(6) celebrates the 17th November 1983 as the date of its foundation. On that date a small group of revolutionaries established themselves in the mountains of the Lacandon Jungle - 'a small group of men and women, three indigenous and three mestizos'.(7)

According to the police version, the revolutionaries were members of the Fuerzas de Liberacion Nacional(8) (FLN), a guerrilla organisation founded in 1969 in the city of Monterrey, one of a number of such organisations which flourished in Mexico in the late sixties and early seventies. Many of the members of the FLN had been killed or arrested, but the organisation had survived. Its statutes of 1980 describe the organisation as 'a political-military organisation whose aim is the taking of political power by the workers of the countryside and of the cities of the Mexican Republic, in order to instal a popular republic with a socialist system'. The organisation was guided, according to its statutes, by 'the science of history and society: Marxism-Leninism, which has demonstrated its validity in all the triumphant revolutions of this century'.(9)

The supposed origins of the EZLN(10) are used by the authorities to suggest an image of manipulation of the indigenous people by a group of hard-core professional revolutionaries from the city. However, leaving aside the racist assumptions of such an argument, the supposed origins of the revolutionaries merely serve to underline the most important question: if, as is claimed, the small group of revolutionaries who set up the EZLN came from an orthodox Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group, how did they become transformed into what eventually emerged from the jungle in the early hours of 1994? What was the path that led from the first encampment of 17th November 1983 to the proclamation of dignity in the town hall of San Cristobal? For it is precisely the fact that they are not an orthodox guerrilla group that has confounded the state time and time again in its dealings with them. It is precisely the fact that they are not an orthodox group of revolutionaries that makes them theoretically and practically the most exciting development in oppositional politics in the world for many a long year.

What, then, was it that the original founders of the EZLN learned in the jungle? A letter written by Marcos(11) speaks of the change in these terms: 'We did not propose it. The only thing that we proposed to do was to change the world; everything else has been improvisation. Our square conception of the world and of revolution was badly dented in the confrontation with the indigenous realities of Chiapas. Out of those blows, something new (which does not necessarily mean 'good') emerged, that which today is known as "neo-Zapatismo".'

The confrontation with the indigenous realities took place as the Zapatistas became immersed in the communities of the Lacandon Jungle. At first the group of revolutionaries kept themselves to themselves, training in the mountains, slowly expanding in numbers. Then gradually they made contact with the local communities, initially through family contacts, then, from about 1985 onwards,(12) on a more open and organised basis. Gradually, more and more of the communities sought out the Zapatistas to help them defend themselves from the police or the farmers' armed 'white guards',(13) more and more became Zapatista communities, some of their members going to join the EZLN on a full-time basis, some forming part of the part-time militia, the rest of the community giving material support to the insurgents. Gradually, the EZLN was transformed from being a guerrilla group to being a community in arms.(14)

The community in question is in some respects a special community. The communities of the Lacandon Jungle are of recent formation, most of them dating from the 1950s and 1960s, when the government encouraged colonisation of the jungle by landless peasants, most of whom moved from other areas of Chiapas, in many cases simply transplanting whole villages. There is a long tradition of struggle, both from before the formation of the communities in the jungle and then, very intensely, throughout the 1970s and 1980s, as the people fought to get enough land to ensure their own survival, as they tried to secure the legal basis of their landholdings, as they fought to maintain their existence against the expansion of the cattle ranches, as they resisted the threat to their survival posed by two government measures in particular, the Decree of the Lacandon Community,(15) a government decree which threatened to expropriate a large part of the Lacandon Jungle and the 1992 reform of Article 27 of the Constitution, which, by opening the countryside up to private investment, threatened to undermine the system of collective landholding. The communities of the Lacandon Jungle are special in many respects, but arguably the rethinking of revolutionary theory and practice could have resulted from immersion in any community:(16) what was important was probably not the specific characteristics of the Lacandon Jungle, so much as the transformation from being a group of dedicated young men and women into being an armed community of women, men, children, young, old, ill - all with their everyday struggles not just for survival but for humanity.

The Zapatistas learnt the pain of the community: the poverty, the hunger, the constant threat of harrassment by the authorities or the 'white guards', the unnecessary deaths from curable diseases. When asked in an interview which death had affected him most, Marcos told how a girl of three or four years old, Paticha (her way of saying Patricia), had died in his arms in a village. She had started a fever at six o'clock in the evening, and by ten o'clock she was dead: there was no medicine in the village that could help to lower her fever. 'And that happened many times, it was so everydady, so everyday that those births are not even taken into account. For example, Paticha never had a birth certificate, which means that for the country she never existed, for the statistical office (INEGI), therefore her death never existed either. And like her, there were thousands, thousands and thousands, and as we grew in the communities, as we had more villages, more comrades died. Just because death was natural, now it started to be ours.'(17) From such experiences arose the conviction that revolution was something that the Zapatistas owed to their children: 'we, their fathers, their mothers, their brothers and sisters, did not want to bear any more the guilt of doing nothing for our children.'(18)

They learnt the struggles of the people, both the struggles of the present and the struggles of the past, the continuing struggle of past and present. The culture of the people is a culture of struggle. Marcos tells of the story-telling by the campfire at night in the mountains - 'stories of apparitions, of the dead, of earlier struggles, of things that have happened, all mixed together. It seems that they are talking of the revolution (of the Mexican revolution, the past one, not the one that is happening now) and at moments no, it seems that is mixed up with the colonial period and sometimes it seems that it is the pre-hispanic period.'(19) The culture of struggle permeates the Zapatista communiques, often in the form of stories and myths: Marcos's stories of Old Antonio (el viejo Antonio) are a favourite way of passing on a culture impregnated with the wisdom of struggle.

And they learnt to listen. 'That is the great lesson that the indigenous communities teach to the original EZLN. The original EZLN, the one that is formed in 1983, is a political organisation in the sense that it speaks and what it says has to be done. The indigenous communities teach it to listen, and that is what we learn. The principal lesson that we learn from the indigenous people is that we have to learn to hear, to listen.'(20) Learning to listen meant incorporating new perspectives and new concepts into their theory. Learning to listen meant learning to talk as well, not just explaining things in a different way but thinking them in a different way.

Above all, learning to listen meant turning everything upside down. The revolutionary tradition of talking is not just a bad habit. It has a long-established theoretical basis in the concepts of Marxism-Leninism. The tradition of talking derives, on the one hand, from the idea that theory ('class consciousness') must be brought to the masses by the party and, on the other, from the idea that capitalism must be analysed from above, from the movement of capital rather than from the movement of anti-capitalist struggle. When the emphasis shifts to listening, both of these theoretical suppositions are undermined. The whole relation between theory and practice is thrown into question: theory can no longer be seen as being brought from outside, but is obviously the product of everyday practice. And dignity takes the place of imperialism as the starting point of theoretical reflection.

Dignity was presumably not part of the conceptual baggage of the revolutionaries who went into the jungle. It is not a word that appears very much in the literature of the Marxist tradition.(21) It could only emerge as a revolutionary concept in the course of a revolution by a people steeped in the dignity of struggle.(22) But once it appears (conciously or unconsciously) as a central concept, then it implies a rethinking of the whole revolutionary project, both theoretically and in terms of organisation. The whole conception of revolution becomes turned outwards: revolution becomes a question rather than an answer. 'Preguntando caminamos: asking we walk' becomes a central principle of the revolutionary movement, the radically democratic concept at the centre of the Zapatista call for 'freedom, democracy and justice'. The revolution advances by asking, not by telling; or perhaps even, revolution is asking instead of telling, the dissolution of power relations.

Here too the Zapatistas learned from (and developed) the tradition of the indigenous communities. The idea and practice of their central organisational principle, 'mandar obedeciendo' ('to command obeying'), derives from the practice of the communities, in which all important decisions are discussed by the whole community to the point where a consensus is reached, and in which all holders of positions of authority are assumed to be immediately recallable if they do not satisfy the community, if they do not command obeying the community. Thus the decision to go to war was not taken by some central committee and then handed down, but was discussed by all the communities in village assemblies.(23) The whole organisation is structured along the same principle: the ruling body, the CCRI is composed of recallable delegates chosen by the different ethnic groups (tzotzil, tzeltal, tojolobal and chol), and each ethnic group and each region has its own committees chosen in assemblies on the same principle.

The changes wrought in those ten years of confrontation between the received ideas of revolution and the reality of the indigenous peoples of Chiapas were very deep. Marcos is quoted in one book as saying 'I think that our only virtue as theorists was to have the humility to recognise that our theoretical scheme did not work, that it was very limited, that we had to adapt ourselves to the reality that was being imposed on us'.(24) However, the result was not that reality imposed itself on theory, as some (25) argue, but that the confrontation with reality gave rise to a whole new and immensely rich theorisation of revolutionary practice.

III

The revolt of dignity is an undefined revolt.

A revolution that listens, a revolution that takes as its starting point the dignity of those in revolt, is inevitably an undefined revolution, a revolution in which the distinction between rebellion and revolution loses meaning. The revolution is a moving outwards rather than a moving towards.

There is no transitional programme, no definite goal. There is, of course, an aim: the achievement of a society based on dignity, or, in the words of the Zapatista slogan, 'democracy, freedom, justice'. But just what this means and what concrete steps need to be taken to achieve it is never spelt out. This has at times been criticised by those educated in the classical revolutionary traditions as a sign of the political immaturity of the Zapatistas or of their reformism, but it is the logical complement of putting dignity at the centre of the revolutionary project. If the revolution is built on the dignity of those in struggle, if a central principle is the idea of 'preguntando caminamos - asking we walk', then it follows that it must be self-creative, a revolution created in the process of struggle. If the revolution is not only to achieve democracy as an end, but is democratic in its struggle, then it is impossible to pre-define its path, or indeed to think of a defined point of arrival. Whereas the concept of revolution that has predominated in this century has been overwhelmingly instrumentalist,(26) a conception of a means designed to achieve an end, this conception breaks down as soon as the starting point becomes the dignity of those in struggle. The revolt of dignity forces us to think of revolution in a new way, as a rebellion that cannot be defined or confined, a rebellion that overflows, a revolution that is by its very nature ambiguous and contradictory.

The Zapatista uprising is in the first place a revolt of the indigenous peoples of the Lacandon Jungle, of the tzeltals, tzotzils, chols and tojolobals who live in that part of the state of Chiapas. For them, the conditions of living were (and are) such that the only choice, as they see it, is between dying an undignified death, the slow unsung death of misery suffered, and dying with dignity, the death of those fighting for their dignity and the dignity of those around them. The government has consistently tried to define and confine the uprising in those terms, as a matter limited to the state of Chiapas, but the Zapatistas have always refused to accept this. This was, indeed, the main point over which the first dialogue, the dialogue of San Cristobal, broke down.(27)

The Zapatista uprising is the assertion of indigenous dignity. The opening words of the Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, read from the balcony of the town hall of San Cristobal on the morning of the first of January 1994, were 'We are the product of 500 years of struggles'.(28) The uprising came just over a year after the demonstrations throughout America that marked the 500th anniversary of Columbus's 'discovery'. On that occasion, 12 October 1992, the Zapatistas had already marched through San Cristobal, when about ten thousand indigenous people, most of them Zapatistas(29) but under another guise, had taken the streets of the city. After the first of January 1994, the Zapatistas at once became the focus of the increasingly active indigenous movement in Mexico. When the EZLN began its dialogue with the government in April 1995, the dialogue of San Andres Larrainzar, the first theme for discussion was indigenous rights and culture. The Zapatistas used the dialogue to give cohesion to the indigenous struggle, asking representatives of all the main indigenous organisations of the country to join them as consultants or guests in the workshops which were part of the dialogue and concluding that phase of the dialogue with an Indigenous Forum, held in San Cristobal in January1996. The Indigenous Forum led in turn to the setting up of the Congreso Nacional Indigena (30) which gives a national focus to previously dispersed indigenous struggles. The first phase of the dialogue of San Andres also led to the signing of an agreement with the government designed to lead to changes in the constitution which would radically improve the legal position of indigenous peoples within the country, granting them important areas of autonomy.(31)

The Zapatista movement, however, has never claimed to be just an indigenous movement.(32) Overwhelmingly indigenous in composition, the EZLN has always made clear that it is fighting for a broader cause. Its struggle is for all those 'without voice, without face, without tomorrow', a category that stretches far beyond the indigenous peoples. The demands they make (work, land, housing, food, health, education, independence, freedom, democracy, justice and peace...) are not demands limited to the indigenous: they are demands for all. The Zapatista movement is a movement for national liberation, a movement not just for the liberation of the indigenous but of all.

The fact that the EZLN is an Army of National Liberation seems to give a clear definition to the movement. There have been many other movements (and wars) of national liberation in different parts of the world (Vietnam, Angola, Mozambique, Cambodia, Nicaragua etc). Here we have what appears to be a clearly defined and well-established framework: national liberation movements typically aim to liberate a national territory from foreign influence (the control of a colonial or neo-colonial power), to establish a government of national liberation designed to introduce radical social changes and establish national economic autonomy. If the Zapatista movement were a national liberation movement in that sense, then, if the history of such movements is anything to go by, there would be little to get excited about: it might be worthy of support and solidarity, but there would be nothing radically new about it. This indeed has been the position of some critics on the left.(33)

Looked at more closely, however, the apparent definition of 'Army of National Liberation' begins to dissolve. In the context of the uprising, the term 'national liberation' has more a sense of moving outwards than of moving inwards: 'national' in the sense of 'not just Chiapanecan' or 'not just indigenous', rather than 'national' in the sense of 'not foreign'.(34) 'Nation' is also used in the Zapatista communiques in the less clearly defined sense of 'homeland' ('patria'): the place where we happen to live, a space to be defended not just against imperialists but also (and more directly) against the state. 'Nation' is counterposed to the state, so that national liberation can even be understood as the liberation of Mexico from the Mexican state, or the defence of Mexico (or indeed whatever territory) against the state. 'Nation' in this sense refers to the idea of struggling wherever one happens to live, fighting against oppression, fighting for dignity. That the Zapatista movement is a movement of national liberation does not, then, confine or restrict the movement to Mexico: it can be understood rather as meaning a movement of liberation, wherever you happen to be (and whatever you happen to do). The fight for dignity cannot be restricted to national frontiers: 'dignity', in the wonderful expression used by Marcos in the invitation to the Intercontinental Gathering held in the Lacandon Jungle in July 1996, 'is that homeland without nationality, that rainbow that is also a bridge, that murmur of the heart no matter what blood lives in it, that rebel irreverence that mocks frontiers, customs officials and wars'.(35) It is consistent with this interpretation(36) of 'national liberation' that one of the principal slogans of the Zapatistas recently has been the theme chosen for the Intercontinental Gathering, 'for humanity and against neoliberalism'.

The open-ended nature of the Zapatista movement is summed up in the idea that it is a revolution, not a Revolution ("with small letters, to avoid polemics with the many vanguards and safeguards of THE REVOLUTION").(37) It is a revolution, because the claim to dignity in a society built upon the negation of dignity can only be met through a radical transformation of society. But it is not a Revolution in the sense of having some grand plan, in the sense of a movement designed to bring about the Great Event which will change the world. Its claim to be revolutionary lies not in the preparation for the future Event but in the present inversion of perspective, in the consistent insistence on seeing the world in terms of that which is incompatible with the world as it is: human dignity. Revolution refers to present existence, not to future instrumentality.

IV

The revolt of dignity is a revolt against definition.

The undefined, open-ended character of the Zapatista movement sometimes rouses the frustrations of those schooled in a harder-edged revolutionary tradition. Behind the lack of definition there is, however, a much sharper point. The lack of definition does not result from theoretical slackness: on the contrary, revolution is essentially anti-definitional.

The traditional Leninist concept of revolution is crucially definitional. At its centre is the idea that the struggles of the working class are inevitably limited in character, that they cannot rise above reformist demands, unless there is the intervention of a revolutionary party. The working class is a 'they' who cannot go beyond certain limits without outside intervention. The self-emancipation of the proletariat is impossible.(38)

The emphasis on dignity puts the unlimited at the centre of picture, not just the undefined but the anti-definitional. Dignity, understood as a category of struggle, is a tension which points beyond itself. The assertion of dignity implies the present negation of dignity. Dignity, then, is the struggle against the denial of dignity, the struggle for the realisation of dignity. Dignity is and is not: it is the struggle against its own negation. If dignity were simply the assertion of something that already is, then it would be an absolutely flabby concept, an empty complacency. To simply assert human dignity as a principle (as in 'all humans have dignity', or 'all humans have a right to dignity') would be either so general as to be meaningless or, worse, so general as to obscure the fact that existing society is based on the negation of dignity.(39) Similarly, if dignity were simply the assertion of something that is not, then it would be an empty daydream or a religious wish. The concept of dignity only gains force if it is understood in its double dimension, as the struggle against its own denial. One is dignified, or true, only by struggling against present indignity, or untruth. Dignity implies a constant moving against the barriers of that which exists, a constant subversion and transcendence of definitions. Dignity, understood as a category of struggle, is a fundamentally anti-identitarian concept: not 'my dignity as a Mexican...', but 'our dignity is our struggle against the negation of that dignity'.

Dignity is not a characteristic peculiar to the indigenous of the south-east of Mexico, nor to those overtly involved in revolutionary struggle. It is simply a characteristic of life in an oppressive society. It is the cry of 'Enough!' (!Ya Basta!) that is inseparable from the experience of oppression. Oppression cannot be total; whatever its form, it is always a pressure which is confronted by a counter-pressure, dehumanisation confronted by humanity. Domination implies resistance, dignity.(40) Dignity is the other side, too often forgotten, too often stifled, of what Marx called alienation: it is the struggle of dis-alienation, of defetishisation.(41) It is the struggle for recognition, but for the recognition of a self currently negated.

Dignity is the lived experience that the world is not so, that that is not the way things are. It is the lived rejection of positivism, of those forms of thought which start from the assumption that 'that's the way things are'. It is the cry of existence of that which has been silenced by 'the world that is', the refusal to be shut out by Is-ness, the scream against being forgotten in the fragmentation of the world into the disciplines of social science, those disciplines which break reality and, in breaking, exclude, suppressing the suppressed. Dignity is the cry of 'here we are!', the 'here we are!' of the indigenous peoples forgotten by neoliberal modernisation, the 'here we are!' of the growing numbers of poor who somehow do not show in the statistics of economic growth and the financial reports, the 'here we are!' of the gay whose sexuality was for so long not recognised, the 'here we are!' of the elderly shut away to die in the retirement homes of the richer countries, the 'here we are!' of the women closed into the houses whose wives they are, the 'here we are!' of the millions of illegal migrants(42) who are not where, officially, they should be, the 'here we are!' of all those pleasures of human life excluded by the growing subjection of humanity to the market. Dignity is the cry of those who are not heard, the voice of those without voice. Dignity is the truth of truth denied.(43)

'Us they forgot more and more, and history was no longer big enough for us to die just like that, forgotten and humiliated. Because dying does not hurt, what hurts is being forgotten. Then we discovered that we no longer existed, that those who govern had forgotten us in the euphoria of statistics and growth rates. A country which forgets itself is a sad country, a country which forgets its past cannot have a future. And then we seized our arms and went into the cities where we were animals. And we went and said to the powerful "here we are!" and to all the country we shouted "here we are!" and to all the world we shouted "here we are!" And see how odd things are because, for them to see us, we covered our faces; for them to name us, we gave up our name; we gambled the present to have a future; and to live ... we died'.(44)

This 'here we are!' is not the 'here we are!' of mere identity. It is a 'here we are!' which derives its meaning from the denial of that presence. It is not a static 'here we are!' but a movement, an assault on the barriers of exclusion. It is the breaking of barriers, the moving against separations, classifications, definitions, the assertion of unities that have been defined out of existence.

Dignity is an assault on the separation of morality and politics, and of the private and the public. Dignity cuts across those boundaries, asserts the unity of what has been sundered. The assertion of dignity is neither a moral nor a political claim: it is rather an attack on the separation of politics and morality that allows formally democratic regimes all over the world to co-exist with growing levels of poverty and social marginalisation. It is the 'here we are!' not just of the marginalised, but of the horror felt by all of us in the face of mass impoverishment and starvation. It is the 'here we are!' not just of the growing numbers shut away in prisons, hospitals and homes, but also of the shame and disgust of all of us who, by living, participate in the bricking up of people in those prisons, hospitals and homes. Dignity is an assault on the conventional definition of politics, but equally on the acceptance of that definition in the instrumental conception of revolutionary politics which has for so long subordinated the personal to the political, with such disastrous results. Probably nothing has done more to undermine the 'Left' in this century than this separation of the political and the personal, of the public and the private, and the dehumanisation that it entails.

Dignity encapsulates in one word the rejection of the separation of the personal and the political.(45) To a remarkable extent, this group of rebels in the jungle of the south-east of Mexico have crystallised and advanced the themes of oppositional thought and action that have been discussed throughout the world in recent years: the issues of gender, age, childhood, death and the dead. All flow from the understanding of politics as a politics of dignity, a politics which recognises the particular oppression of, and respects the struggles of, women, children, the old. Respect for the struggles of the old is a constant theme of Marcos's stories, particularly through the figure of Old Antonio, but was also forcefully underlined by the emergence of Comandante Trinidad as one of the leading figures in the dialogue of San Andres. The way in which women have imposed recognition of their struggles on the Zapatista men is well known, and can be seen, for example, in the Revolutionary Law for Women, issued on the first day of the uprising, or in the fact that it was a woman, Ana Maria, who led the most important military action undertaken by the Zapatistas, the occupation of the occupation of the town hall in San Cristobal on the 1st January 1994.(46) The question of childhood and the freedom to play is a constant theme in Marcos's letters. The stories, jokes, and poetry of the communiques and the dances that punctuate all that the Zapatistas do are not embellishments of a revolutionary process but central to it.

The struggle of dignity is the 'here we are!' of jokes, poetry, dancing, old age, childhood, games, death, love - of all those things excluded by serious bourgeois politics and serious revolutionary politics alike. As such, the struggle of dignity is opposed to the state. The Zapatista movement is an anti-state movement, not just in the obvious sense that the EZLN took up arms against the Mexican state, but in the much more profound sense that their forms of organisation, action and discourse are non-state, or, more precisely, anti-state forms.

The state defines and classifies and, by so doing, excludes. This is not by chance. The state, any state, embedded as it is in the global web of capitalist social relations, functions in such a way as to reproduce the capitalist status quo.(47) In its relation to us, and in our relation to it, there is a filtering out of anything that is not compatible with the reproduction of capitalist social relations. This may be a violent filtering, as in the repression of revolutionary or subversive activity, but it is also and above all a less perceptible filtering, a sidelining or suppression of passions, loves, hates, anger, laughter, dancing. Discontent is redefined as demands and demands are classified and defined, excluding all that is not reconcilable with the reproduction of capitalist social relations. The discontented are classified in the same way, the undigestable excluded with a greater or lesser degree of violence. The cry of dignity, the 'here we are!' of the unpalatable and undigestable, can only be a revolt against classification, against definition as such.

The state is pure Is-ness, pure Identity. Power says 'I am who am, the eternal repetition'.(48) The state is the great Classifier. Power says to the rebels: 'Be ye not awkward, refuse not to be classified. All that cannot be classified counts not, exists not, is not.'(49) The struggle of the state against the Zapatistas since the declaration of the cease-fire has been a struggle to define, to classify, to limit; the struggle of the Zapatistas against the state has been the struggle to break out, to break the barriers, to overflow, to refuse definition or to accept-and-transcend definition.

The dialogue between the government and the EZLN, first in San Cristobal in March 1994, and then in San Andres Larrainzar since April 1995, has been a constant double movement. The government has constantly sought to define and limit the Zapatista movement, to 'make it small', as one of the government representatives put it. It has constantly sought to define zapatismo as a movement limited to Chiapas, with no right to discuss matters of wider importance. It did sign agreements on the question of indigenous rights and autonomy, but apparently without having at the time any intention of implementing them.(50) In the section of the dialogue devoted to democracy and justice, however, the government representatives made no serious contribution and have apparently no intention of signing agreements in this area. The Zapatistas, on the other hand, have constantly used the dialogue to break out, to overcome their geographical isolation in the Lacandon Jungle. They have done this partly through their daily press conferences during the sessions of the dialogue, but also by negotiating the procedural right to invite advisers and guests and then inviting hundreds of them to participate in the sessions on indigenous rights and culture and on democracy and justice: advisers from a very wide range of indigenous and community organisations, complemented by a wide range of academics. Each of the two topics also provided the basis for organising a Forum in San Cristobal, first on Indigenous Rights and Culture in January 1996 and then on the Reform of the State in July of the same year, both attended by a very large number of activists from all over the country.

On the one hand, the government's drive to limit, define, make small; on the other, the (generally very successful) Zapatista push to break the cordon. On the one hand, a politics of definition, on the other a politics of overflowing. This does not mean that the Zapatistas have not sought to define: on the contrary, the definition of constitutional reforms to define indigenous autonomy is seen by them as an important achievement. But it has been a definition that overflows, thematically and politically. The definition of indigenous rights is seen not as an end-point, but as a start, as a basis for moving on to other areas of change, but also as a basis for taking the movement forward, a basis for breaking out.

The difference in approach between the two sides of the dialogue has at times resulted in incidents which reflect not only the arrogance of the government negotiators but also the lack of understanding derived from their perspective as representatives of the state. This has even been expressed in the conception of time. Given the bad conditions of communication in the Lacandon Jungle, and the need to discuss everything thoroughly, the Zapatista principle of 'mandar obedeciendo' ('to command obeying') means that decisions take time. When the government representatives insisted on rapid replies, the Zapatistas replied that they did not understand the indigenous clock. As recounted by Comandante David afterwards, the Zapatistas explained that 'we, as Indians, have rhythms, forms of understanding, of deciding, of reaching agreements. And when we told them that, they replied by making fun of us; well then, they said, we don't understand why you say that because we see that you have Japanese watches, so how do you say that you use the indigenous clock, that's from Japan.'(51) And Comandante Tacho commented: 'They haven't learned. They understand us backwards. We use time, not the clock.'(52)

Even more fundamentally, the state representatives have been unable to understand the concept of dignity. In one of the press conferences held during the dialogue of San Andres, Comandante Tacho recounts that the government negotiators 'told us that they are studying what dignity means, that they are consulting and making studies on dignity. That what they understood was that dignity is service to others. And they asked us to tell them what we understand by dignity. We told them to continue with their research. It makes us laugh and we laughed in front of them. They asked us why and we told them that they have big research centres and big studies in schools of a high standard and that it would be a shame if they do not accept that. We told them that if we sign the peace, then we will tell them at the end what dignity means for us.'(53)

The Zapatista sense of satire and their refusal to be defined is turned not only against the state, but also against the more traditional 'definitional' left. In a letter dated 20 February 1995, when the Zapatistas were retreating from the army after the military intervention of 9 February, Marcos imagines an interrogation by the state prosecutor, consisting of the prosecutor's accusations and his own responses:

'The whites accuse you of being black: Guilty. The blacks accuse you of being white: Guilty... The machos accuse you of being feminist: Guilty. The feminists accuse you of being macho: Guilty. The communists accuse you of being an anarchist: Guilty. The anarchists accuse you of being orthodox: Guilty... The reformists accuse you of being an extremist: Guilty. The 'historical vanguard' accuse you of appealing to civil society and not to the proletariat: Guilty. Civil society accuse you of disturbing its tranquility: Guilty. The stock market accuses you of spoiling their lunch: Guilty... The serious people accuse you of being a joker: Guilty. The jokers accuse you of being serious: Guilty. The adults accuse you of being a child: Guilty. The children accuse you of being an adult: Guilty. The orthodox leftists accuse you for not condemning homosexuals and lesbians: Guilty. The theorists accuse you for being practical: Guilty. The practitioners accuse you for being theoretical: Guilty. Everybody accuses you for everything bad that happens to them: Guilty.'(54)

Dignity's revolt mocks classification. As it must. It must, because dignity makes sense only if understood as being-and-not-being, and therefore defying definition or classification. Dignity is that which pushes from itself towards itself, and cannot be reduced to a simple 'is'. The state, any state, on the other hand, is. The state, as its name suggests, imposes a state, an Is-ness, upon that which pushes beyond existing social relations. Dignity is a moving outwards, an overflowing, a fountain; the state is a moving inwards, a containment, a cistern.(55) The failure to understand dignity, then, is not peculiar to the Mexican state: it is simply that statehood and dignity are incompatible. There is no fit between them.

Dignity's revolt, therefore, cannot aim at winning state power. >From the beginning, the Zapatistas made it clear that they did not want to win power, and they have repeated it ever since. Many on the more traditional 'definitional' Left were scandalised when the repudiation of winning power gained more concrete expression in the Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle at the beginning of 1996, when the Zapatistas launched the formation of the Zapatista Front of National Liberation (FZLN) and made the rejection of all ambition to hold state office a condition of membership.(56) The repudiation of state power is, however, simply an extension of the idea of dignity. The state, any state, is so bound into the web of global capitalist social relations that it has no option, whatever the composition of the government, but to promote the reproduction of those relations, and that means defining and degrading. To assume state power would inevitably be to abandon dignity. The revolt of dignity can only aim at abolishing the state or, more immediately, at developing alternative forms of social organisation and strengthening anti-state power. 'It is not necessary to conquer the world. It is enough to make it anew'.(57)

The central principles on which the Zapatistas have insisted in developing alternative forms of social organisation are those of 'mandar obedeciendo' ('to command obeying') and 'preguntando caminamos' ('asking we walk'). They have emphasised time and time again the importance for them of taking all important decisions through a collective process of discussion, and that the way forward cannot be a question of their imposing their line, but only through opening up spaces for discussion and democratic decision, in which they would express their view, but their view should count only as one among many. In relation to the state (and assuming that the state still exists), they have said many times that they do not want to hold state office, and that it does not matter which party holds state office as long as those in authority 'command obeying'. The problem of revolutionary politics, then, is not to win power but to develop forms of political articulation that would force those in office to obey the people (so that, fully developed, the separation between state and society would be overcome and the state effectively abolished). Just what this would mean has not been spelt out by the EZLN,(58) apart from the obvious principle of instant recallability: that the president or any other office-holder should be instantly recallable if they fail to obey the people's wishes, as is the case with all the members of the EZLN's ruling body, the CCRI.(59)

Although the details are not clear, and cannot be, since they could only be developed in struggle, the central point is that the focus of revolutionary struggle is shifted from the what to the how of politics. All the initiatives of the Zapatistas (the Convencion Nacional Democratica, the 'consultation' on the future of the EZLN, the invitation of advisers to the dialogue with the government, the organisation of the forum on indigenous rights and culture and on the reform of the state, the intercontinental meeting for humanity and against neoliberalism, amongst others) have been directed at promoting a different way of thinking about political activity. Similarly, all the contacts with the state and even the proposals for the 'reform' of the state have in fact been anti-state initiatives in the sense of trying to develop new political forms, forms of action which articulate dignity, forms which do not fit with the state. The principal problem for a revolutionary movement is not to elaborate a programme, to say what the revolutionary government will do (although the EZLN has its 16 demands as the basis for such a programme); the principal problem is rather how to articulate dignities, how to develop a form of struggle and a form of social organisation based upon the recognition of dignity. Only the articulation of dignities can provide the answer to what should be done: a self-determining society must determine itself.

V

Dignities unite.

The Zapatistas rose up on the first of January 1994 in order to change Mexico and to make the world anew. Their base was in the Lacandon Jungle, far away from any important urban centre. They were not part of an effective international or even national organisation.(60) Since the declaration of the cease-fire on the 12th January 1994, they have remained physically cordoned within the Lacandon Jungle.

Cut off in the jungle, how could the EZLN transform Mexico, or indeed change the world? Alone there was little that they could do, either to change the world, or even to defend themselves. 'Do not leave us alone' ('no nos dejen solos') was an oft-repeated call during the first months of the cease-fire. The effectiveness of the EZLN depended (and depends) inevitably on their ability to break the cordon and overcome their isolation. The revolt of dignity derives its strength from the uniting of dignities.

But how could this uniting of dignities come about when the EZLN itself was cornered in the jungle and there was no institutional structure to support them? Marcos suggests a powerful image in a radio interview in the early months of the uprising: 'Marcos, whoever Marcos is, who is in the mountains, had his twins, or comrades, or his accomplices (not in the organic sense, but accomplices in terms of how to see the world, the necessity of changing it or seeing it in a different way) in the media, for example, in the newspapers, in the radio, in the television, in the journals, but also in the trade unions, in the schools, among the teachers, among the students, in groups of workers, in peasant organisations and all that. There were many accomplices or, to use a radio term, there were many people tuned in to the same frequency, but nobody turned the radio on... Suddenly they [the comrades of the EZLN] turn it on and we discover that there are others on the same radio frequency - I'm talking of radio communication, not listening to the radio - and we begin to talk and to communicate and to realise that there are things in common, that it seems there are more things in common than differences.'(61)

The idea suggested by Marcos for thinking about the unity of struggles is one of frequencies, of being tuned in, of wavelengths, vibrations, echoes. Dignity resonates. As it vibrates, it sets off vibrations in other dignities, an unstructured, possibly discordant resonance.

There is no doubt of the extraordinary resonance of the Zapatista uprising throughout the world, as evidenced by the participation of over three thousand people from forty-three different countries in the Intercontinental Meeting organised by the EZLN in July 1996. 'What is happening in the mountains of the Mexican southeast that finds an echo and a mirror in the streets of Europe, the suburbs of Asia, the countryside of America, the towns of Africa and the houses of Oceania?'(62) And equally, of course, what is happening in the streets of Europe, the suburbs of Asia, the countryside of America, the towns of Africa and the houses of Oceania, that resonates so strongly with the Zapatista uprising?

The notion of resonance, or echo, or radio frequency may seem a very vague one. It is not so. The EZLN have engaged in a constant struggle over the past few years to break through the cordon, to overcome their isolation, to forge the unity of dignities on which their future depends. They have fought in many different ways. They have fought, with enormous success, by letters and communiques, by jokes and stories, by the use of symbolism(63) and by the theatre of their events. They have fought by the construction of their 'Aguascalientes', the meeting place constructed for the National Democratic Convention (Convencion Nacional Democratica) in July 1994, and by the construction of a series of new Aguascalientes in the jungle after the first one had been destroyed by the army in its intervention of February 1995. They have fought too by the creative organisation of a whole series of events which have been important catalysts for the opposition in Mexico and (increasingly) beyond Mexico. The first important event was the National Democratic Convention, organised immediately the EZLN had rejected the proposals made by the government in the Dialogue of San Cristobal and held just weeks before the presidential elections of August 1994: an event which brought more than 6,000 activists into the heart of the jungle only months after the fighting had finished. The following year, the EZLN built on the popular reaction to the military interventon of February 1995 to organise a consultation throughout the country on what the future of the EZLN should be, an event in which over a million people took part. The new dialogue with the government, begun in April 1995, also became the basis for inviting hundreds of activists and specialists to take part as advisers in the dialogue, and for organising the forums on Indigenous rights and culture (January 1996) and on the Reform of the State (July 1996). The same year also saw the organisation of the Intercontinental Meeting for Humanity and against Neoliberalism, held within the Zapatista territory at the end of July. In each case, these were events which seemed impossible at the time of their announcement, and events which stirred up enormous enthusiasm in their realisation.

The communiques and events have also been accompanied by more orthodox attempts to establish lasting organisational structures. The National Democratic Convention (CND) established a standing organisation of the same name, with the aim of coordinating the (non-military) Zapatista struggle for democracy, freedom and justice throughout the country. After internal conflicts had rendered the CND ineffective, the Third Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle in January 1995 proposed the creation of a Movement for National Liberation, an organisation which was stillborn. The Fourth Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle, a year later, launched the Frente Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional (the Zapatista National Liberation Front - FZLN) to organise the civilian struggle thoughout the country. This, although it has provided an important point of organisational support for the Zapatistas, has stirred up none of the enthusiasm aroused by the EZLN itself.

The relative failure of the institutional attempts to extend the Zapatista struggle lends weight to the argument that the real force of the Zapatista uniting of dignities has to be understood in terms of the much less structured notion of resonance. The notion of resonance is indeed the counterpart of the idea of 'preguntando caminamos' ('asking we walk'). We advance by asking, not by telling: by suggesting, arguing, proposing, inviting, looking for links with other struggles which are the same struggle, looking for responses, listening for echoes. If those echoes are not there, we can only propose again, argue again, probe again, ask again: we cannot create echoes where they do not exist.

All this does not mean that organisation is not important, that it is all just a matter of vibrations and spontaneous combustion. On the contrary, the whole Zapatista uprising shows the importance of profound and careful organisation. It does suggest, however, a different, less structured and more experimental way of thinking about organisation. The concept of organisation must be experimental in a double sense: experimental, simply because there is no pre-given model of revolutionary organisation, but also experimental in the sense that the notion of dignity and its corollary, 'asking we walk', mean that revolutionary organisation must be seen as a constant experiment, a constant asking. The notion of dignity does not imply an appeal to spontaneity, the idea that revolt will simply explode without prior organisation; but it does imply thinking in terms of a multitude of different forms of organisation and, above all, thinking of organisation as a constant experiment, a constant probing, a constant asking, a constant searching: not just to see if together we can find some way out of here, but because the asking is in itself the antithesis of Power.(64)

Yet there is obviously a tension here implied in the very notion of the 'uniting of dignities'. The Zapatistas speak, not just of 'dignity', but of 'dignities'. Clearly, then, it is not a question of imposing one dignity or of finding what 'true dignity' really means. It is a question rather of recognising the validity of different forms of struggle and different opinions as to what the realisation of dignity means. This does not mean a complete relativism in which all opinions, even fascist ones, are granted equal validity. Conflicts between different dignities are inevitable: it is clear, for example, that the Zapatista women's understanding of the dignity of their struggle has brought them into conflict with the men's understanding of their dignity.(65) What the concept of dignity points to is not the correctness of any particular solution to such conflicts, but rather a way of resolving such conflicts in which the particular dignities are recognised and articulated. Even here, the Zapatistas argue that there is not just one correct way of articulating dignities: while they themselves organise their discussions on the basis of village assemblies, they recognise that this may not be the best form of articulating dignities in all cases. What form the articulation of dignities might take in a big city, for example, is very much an open question, although there are obviously precedents(66) and, in some cases, deep-rooted traditions of forms of direct democracy. The struggle to unite dignities in a world that is based on the denial and fragmentation of dignities is not an easy one.

VI

Dignity is the revolutionary subject.
Dignity is a class concept, not a humanistic one.

The EZLN do not use the concept of 'class' or 'class struggle' in their discourse, in spite of the fact that Marxist theory has clearly played an important part in their formation. They have preferred, instead, to develop a new language, to speak of the struggle of truth and dignity. 'We saw that the old words had become so worn out that they had become harmful for those that used them.'(67) In looking for support, or in forming links with other struggles, they have appealed, not to the working class or the proletariat, but to 'civil society'. By 'civil society', they seem to mean 'society in struggle', in the broadest sense: all those groups and intitiatives engaged in latent or overt struggles to assert some sort of control over their future, without aspiring to hold governmental office.(68) In Mexico, the initial reference point is often taken as the forms of autonomous social organisation that arose in Mexico City in response to the earthquake of 1985 and the state's incapacity to deal with the emergency.

It is not difficult to see why the Zapatistas should have chosen to turn their back on the old words. That does not mean, however, that all the problems connected with these words are thereby erased. The Zapatistas have been criticised by some adherents of the traditional orthodox Marxist left for not using the concept of class. It is argued that, because they do not use the traditional triad of class struggle, revolution and socialism, preferring instead to speak of dignity, truth, freedom, democracy and justice, their struggle is a liberal one, an armed reformism which has little possibility of leading to radical change. An extreme form of this sort of application of a class analysis is the argument that the Zapatista uprising is just a peasant movement and, while it should be supported, the proletariat can have little confidence in it.

The orthodox Marxist tradition works with a definitional concept of class. The working class may be defined in various ways: most commonly as those who sell their labour power in order to survive; or as those who produce surplus value and are directly exploited. The important point here is that the working class is defined.

In this definitional approach, the working class, however defined, is defined on the basis of its subordination to capital: it is because it is subordinated to capital (as wage workers, or as producers of surplus value) that it is defined as working class. Capitalism, in this approach, is understood as a world of pre-defined social relations, a world in which the forms of social relations are constituted,(69) firmly fixed or fetishised. The fixity of the forms of social relations is taken as the starting point for the discussion of class. Thus, working class struggle is understood as starting from the (pre-constituted) subordination of labour to capital. Any sort of struggle that does not fall within this definition is then seen as non-class struggle (which consequently raises problems as to how it should be defined).

The definitional approach to class raises two sorts of problems. Firstly, it inevitably raises the question of who is and who is not part of the working class. Are intellectuals like Marx and Lenin part of the working class? Are those of us who work in the universities part of the working class? Are the rebels of Chiapas part of the working class? Are feminists part of the working class? Are those active in the gay movement part of the working class? In each case, there is a concept of a pre-defined working class to which these people do or do not belong.(70)

The second (and more serious) consequence of defining class is the definition of struggles that follows. From the classification of the people concerned there are derived certain conclusions about the struggles in which they are involved. Those who define the Zapatista rebels as being not part of the working class and draw from that certain conclusions about the nature and limitations of the uprising. From the definition of the class position of the participants there follows a definition of their struggles: the definition of class defines the antagonism that the definer perceives or accepts as valid. This leads to a blinkering of the perception of social antagonism. In some cases, for example, the definition of the working class as the urban proletariat directly exploited in factories, combined with evidence of the decreasing proportion of the population who fall within this definition, has led people to the conclusion that class struggle is no longer relevant for understanding social change. In other cases, the definition of the working class and therefore of working class struggle in a certain way has led to an incapacity to relate to the development of new forms of struggle (the student movement, feminism, ecologism and so on). The definitional understanding of class has done much in recent years to create the situation in which 'the old words had become so worn out that they had become harmful for those that used them'.

The notion of dignity detonates the definition of class, but does not thereby cease to be a class concept. It does so simply because the starting point is no longer a relation of subordination but a relation of struggle, a relation of insubordination/ subordination. The starting point of dignity is the negation of humiliation, the struggle against subordination. From this perspective there does not exist a settled, fixed world of subordination upon which definitions can be constructed. Just the contrary: the notion of dignity points to the fact that we are not just subordinated or exploited, that our existence within capitalist society cannot be understood simply in terms of subordination. Dignity points to the fact that subordination cannot be conceived without its opposite, the struggle against subordination, insubordination. A world of subordination is a world in which subordination is constantly at issue. The forms of social relations in capitalist society cannot be understood simply as fetishised, constituted forms, but only as forms which are always in question, which are imposed only thorugh the unceasing struggle of capital to reproduce itself. Once the starting point is dignity, once the starting point is the struggle to convert 'dignity and rebellion into freedom and dignity', then all that was fixed becomes shaky, all that appeared to be defined becomes blurred.

From the perspective of dignity, then, class cannot be understood as a defined group of people. This is quite consistent with Marx's approach. His understanding of capitalism was based not on the antagonism between two groups of people but on the antagonism in the way in which human social practice is organised. Existence in capitalist society is a conflictual existence, an antagonistic existence. Although this antagonism appears as a vast multiplicity of conflicts, it can be argued (and was argued by Marx) that the key to understanding this antagonism and its development is the fact that present society is built upon an antagonism in the way that the distinctive character of humanity, namely creative activity (work in its broadest sense) is organised. In capitalist society, work is turned against itself, alienated from itself; we lose control over our creative activity. This negation of human creativity takes place through the subjection of human activity to the market. This subjection to the market, in turn, takes place fully when the capacity to work creatively (labour power) becomes a commodity to be sold on the market to those with the capital to buy it. The antagonism between human creativity and its negation thus becomes focused in the antagonism between those who have to sell their creativity and those who appropriate that creativity and exploit it (and, in so doing, transform that creativity into labour). In shorthand, the antagonism between creativity and its negation can be referred to as the conflict between labour and capital, but this conflict (as Marx makes clear) is not a conflict between two external forces, but between work (human creativity) and work alienated.

The social antagonism is thus not in the first place a conflict between two groups of people: it is a conflict between creative social practice and its negation, or, in other words, between humanity and its negation, between the transcending of limits (creation) and the imposition of limits (definition). The conflict, in this interpretation, does not take place after subordination has been established, after the fetishised forms of social relations have been constituted: rather it is a conflict about the subordination of social practice, about the fetishisation of social relations.(71) The conflict is the conflict between subordination and insubordination, and it is this which allows us to speak of insubordination (or dignity) as a central feature of capitalism. Class struggle does not take place within the constituted forms of capitalist social relations: rather the constitution of those forms is itself class struggle. This leads to a much richer concept of class struggle in which the whole of social practice is at issue. All social practice is an unceasing antagonism between the subjection of practice to the fetishised, perverted, defining forms of capitalism and the attempt to live against-and-beyond those forms. There can thus be no question of the existence of non-class forms of struggle.

Class struggle, in this view, is a conflict that permeates the whole of human existence. We all exist within that conflict, just as the conflict exists within all of us. It is a polar antagonism which we cannot escape. We do not 'belong' to one class or another: rather, the class antagonism exists in us, tearing us apart. The antagonism (the class divide) traverses all of us.(72) Nevertheless, it clearly does so in very different ways. Some, the very small minority, participate directly in and/ or benefit directly from the appropriation and exploitation of the work of others. Others, the vast majority of us, are, directly or indirectly, the objects of that appropriation and exploitation. The polar nature of the antagonism is thus reflected in a polarisation of the two classes,(73) but the antagonism is prior to, not subsequent to, the classes: classes are constituted through the antagonism.

Since classes are constituted through the antagonism between work and its alienation, and since this antagonism is constantly changing, it follows that classes cannot be defined. The concept of class is essentially non-definitional. More than that, since definition imposes limits, closes openness, negates creativity, it is possible to say that the capitalist class, even if it cannot be defined, is the defining class, the class that defines, that identifies, that classifies. Labour (the working class, the class that exists in antagonism to capital) is not only incapable of definition but essentially anti-definitional. It is constituted by its repressed creativity: that is to say, by its resistance to the (ultimately impossible) attempt to define it. Not only is it mistaken to try to identify the working class ('are the Zapatistas working class?'), but class struggle itself is the struggle between definition and anti-definition. Capital says 'I am, you are'; labour says 'we are not, but we are becoming; you are, but you will not be': or 'We are/ are not, we struggle to create ourselves'.

Class struggle, then, is the unceasing daily antagonism (whether it be perceived or not) between alienation and dis-alienation, between definition and anti-definition, between fetishisation and de-fetishisation. The trouble with all these terms is that our side of the struggle is presented negatively: as dis-alienation, anti-definition, de-fetishisation. The Zapatistas are right when they say that we need a new language, not just because the 'old words' are 'worn out' but because the Marxist tradition has been so focused on domination that it has not developed adequate words to talk about resistance.(74) Dignity is the term that turns this around, that expresses positively that which is supressed, that for which we are fighting. Dignity is that which knows no Is-ness, no objective structures. Dignity is that which rises against humiliation, dehumanisation, marginalisation, dignity is that which says 'we are here, we are human and we struggle for the humanity that is denied to us'. Dignity is the struggle against capital.

Dignity, then, is the revolutionary subject. Where it is repressed most fiercely, where the antagonism is most intense, and where there is a tradition of communal organisation, it will fight most strongly, as in the factory, as in the jungle. But class struggle, the struggle of dignity, the struggle for humanity against its destruction, is not the privilege of any defined group: we exist in it, just as it exists in us, inescapably. Dignity, then, does not exist in a pure form, any more than the working class exists in a pure form. It is that in us which resists, which rebels, which does not conform. Constantly undermined, constantly smothered and suffocated by the myriad forms of alienation and fetishisation, constantly overlaid and distorted, constantly repressed, fragmented and corrupted by money and the state, constantly in danger of being extinguished, snuffed out, it is the indestructable (or maybe just the not yet destroyed) NO that makes us human. That is why the resonance of the Zapatistas goes so deep: 'as more and more rebel communiques were issued, we realised that in reality the revolt came from the depths of ourselves.'(75) The power of the Zapatistas is the power of the !Ya Basta!, the negation of oppression, which exists in the depths of all of us, the only hope for humanity.

VII

Dignity's revolution is uncertain, ambiguous and contradictory.

Uncertainty permeates the whole Zapatista undertaking. There is none of the sense of the inevitablity of history which has so often been a feature of revolutionary movements of the past. There is no certainty about the arrival at the promised land, nor any certainty about what this promised land might look like. It is a revolution that walks asking, not answering.

Revolution in the Zapatista sense is a moving outwards rather than a moving towards. But how can such a movement be revolutionary? How can such a movement bring about a radical social transformation? The very idea of social revolution is already greatly discredited at the end of the twentieth century: how does the Zapatista uprising help us to find a way forward?

There is a problem at the heart of any concept of revolution. How could it be possible for those who are currently alienated (or humiliated) to create a world of non-alienation (or dignity)? If we are all permeated by the conditions of social oppression in which we live, and if our perceptions are constrained by those conditions, shall we not always reproduce those conditions in everything we do? If our existence is traversed by relations of power, how can we possibly create a society that is not characterised by power relations?

The simplest way out of this problem is to solve it by bringing in a saviour, a deus ex machina. If there is some sort of figure who has broken free of alienation and come to a true understanding, then that figure can perhaps lead the masses out of the present alienated society. This is essentially the idea of the vanguard party proposed by Lenin:(76) a group of people who by virtue of their theoretical and practical experience can see beyond the confines of existing society and who, for that reason, can lead the masses in a revolutionary break. There are, however, two basic problems. How is it possible for anyone, no matter what their training, to so lift themselves above existing society that they do not reproduce in their own action the concepts and faults of that society? Even more fundamental: how is it possible to create a self-creative society other than through the self-emancipation of society itself? The experience of revolution in the twentieth century suggests that these are very grave problems indeed.

However, if the notion of a vanguard is discarded, and with it the notion of a revolutionary programme, which depends on the existence of such a vanguard, then what are we left with? The Leninist solution may have been wrong, but it was an attempt to solve a perceived problem: the problem of how you bring about a radical transformation of society in a society in which, apparently, the mass of people are so imbued with contemporary values that self-emancipation seems impossible. For many, the failure of the Leninist solution proves the impossibility of social revolution, the inevitability of conforming.

The Zapatista answer is focused on the notion of dignity. The notion of dignity points to the contradictory nature of existence. We are humiliated but have the dignity to struggle against the humiliation to realise our dignity. We are imbued with capitalist values, but also live a daily antagonism towards those values. We are alienated but still have sufficient humanity to struggle against alienation for a non-alienated world. Alienation is, but it is not, because dis-alienation is not but also is. Oppression exists, but it exists as struggle. It is the present existence of dignity (as struggle) that makes it possible to conceive of revolution without a vanguard party. The society based on dignity already exists in the form of the struggle against the negation of dignity.(77) Dignity implies self-emancipation.

The consistent pursuit of dignity in a society based on the denial of dignity is in itself revolutionary. But it implies a different concept of revolution from the 'storming the winter palace' concept that we have grown up with. There is no building of the revolutionary party, no strategy for world revolution, no transitional programme. Revolution is simply the constant, uncompromising struggle for that which cannot be achieved under capitalism: dignity, control over our own lives.

Revolution can only be thought of in this scheme as the cumulative uniting of dignities, the snowballing of struggles, the refusal of more and more people to subordinate their humanity to the degradations of capitalism. This implies a more open concept of revolution: the snowballing of struggles cannot be programmed or predicted. Revolution is not just a future event, but the complete inversion of the relation between dignity and degradation in the present, the cumulative assertion of power over our own lives, the progressive construction of autonomy. As long as capitalism exists (and as long as money exists), the degradation of dignity, the exploitation of work, the dehumanisation and immiseration of existence will continue: the assertion of dignity clearly comes into immediate conflict with the reproduction of capitalism. This conflict could only be resolved by the complete destruction of capitalism. What form this might take, how the cumulative uniting of dignities could lead to the abolition of capitalism, is not clear. It cannot be clear if it is to be a self-creative process. What is clear is that the experience of the last hundred years suggests that social transformation cannot be brought about by the conquest (be it 'democratic' or 'undemocratic') of state power.

This notion is not reformist, if by reformism is meant the idea that social transformation can be achieved through the accretion of state-sponsored reforms. Anti-reformism is not a question of the clarity of future goals but of the strength with which those forms (especially the state) which reproduce capitalist social relations are rejected in the present. It is a question not of a future programme but of present organisation.

An uncertain revolution is, however, an ambiguous and contradictory revolution. Openness and uncertainty are built in to the Zapatista concept of revolution. And that openness means also contradictions and ambiguities. At times it looks as if the EZLN might accept a settlement that falls far short of their dreams, at times the presentation of their aims is more limited, apparently more containable. Certainly, both the direction and the appeal of the uprising would be strengthened if it were made explicit that exploitation is central to the systematic negation of dignity and that dignity's struggle is a struggle against exploitation in all its forms. The very nature of the Zapatista concept of revolution means that the movement is particularly open to the charge of ambiguity. Yet historical experience suggests that ambiguities and contradictions are deep-rooted in any revolutionary process, no matter how clearly defined the line of the leadership. Rather than deny the contradictions, it seems better to focus on the forms of articulation and political experiment that might resolve those contradictions. It is better to recognise, as Tacho does, that in undertaking revolution, the Zapatistas are 'going to classes in a school that does not exist'.(78)

But what do the EZLN want? What is their dream of the future? Clearly, there are many dreams of the future: 'For one it can be that there should be land for everybody to work, which for the peasant is the central problem, no? In reality they are very clear that all the other problems turn on the question of land: housing, health, schools, services. Everything that makes them leave the land is bad and everything that lets them stay on it is good. To stay with dignity'.(79) That is a dream of the future, a simple dream perhaps, but its realisation would require enormous changes in the organisation of society.

Or again, in another interview, Marcos explains the Zapatista dream in these terms: 'in our dream the children are children and their work is to be children. Here no, in reality, in the reality of Chiapas the work of the children is to be adults, from the time they are born and that is not right, we say that that is not right.... My dream is not of agricultural redistribution, the great mobilisations, the fall of the government and elections and a party of the left wins, whatever. In my dream, I dream of the children and I see them being children. If we achieve that, that the children in any part of Mexico are children and nothing else, we've won. Whatever it costs, that is worth it. It doesn't matter what social regime is in power, or what political party is in government, or what the exchange rate between the peso and the dollar is, or how the stock market is doing, or whatever. If a child of five years can be a child, as children of five years should be, with that we are on the other side.... We, the Zapatista children, think that our work as children is to play and learn. And the children here do not play, they work.'(80) Again a simple dream, possibly to some a reformist dream, but one that is totally incompatible with the current direction of the world, in which the exploitation of children (child labour, child prostitution, child pornography, for example) is growing at an alarming rate. This dream of children being children is a good example of the power of the notion of dignity: the consistent pursuit of the dream would require a complete transformation of society.

A society based on dignity would be an honest, mutually recognitive society, in which people 'do not have to use a mask ... in order to relate with other people'.(81) It would also be an absolutely self-creative society. In an interview for the Venice Film Festival, Marcos replied to the standard question, 'what is it that the EZLN wants?': 'We want life to be like a cinema poster from which we can choose a different film each day. Now we have risen in arms because, for more than 500 years, they have forced us to watch the same film every day'.(82)

There are no five-year plans here, no blueprint for the new society, no pre-defined utopia. There are no guarantees.

There are no guarantees, no certainties. Openness and uncertainty are built in to the Zapatista concept of revolution. And that openness means also contradictions and ambiguities. At times it looks as if the EZLN might accept a settlement that falls far short of their dreams, at times the presentation of their aims is more limited, apparently more containable. These contradictions and ambiguities are part and parcel of the Zapatista concept of revolution, of the idea of a revolution that walks asking. Inevitably, the contradictions and ambiguities are part of the development of the movement, and undoubtedly it is possible to sustain interpretations of zapatismo that are more restricted than the one offered here. The argument here is an attempt to distill rather than to analyse. Our question is not 'what will happen to the EZLN?' but 'what will happen to us?' Or rather not 'happen to' since the whole point is that we are not 'happened to': how will we (not 'they') change the world? How can we change a world in which capitalism starves thousands of people to death each day, in which the systematic killing of street children in certain cities is organised as the only way of upholding the concept of private property in the world, in which the unleashed horrors of neoliberalism are hurtling humanity towards self-destruction?

And what if they fail? By the time this is published, there is no guarantee that the EZLN will still exist. It may be that the Mexican government will have launched an open military assault (already tried on the 9 February 1995 and an always present threat): it is even possible that the army could be successful, more successful than the last time they tried it. It is also possible that the EZLN will become exhausted: that they will be drawn by tiredness, by their own ambiguities or by the simple lack of response from civil society into limiting their demands and settling for definitions. All of these are possible. The important point, though, is that the Zapatistas are not 'they': they are 'we' - we are 'we'. When the huge crowds who demonstrated in Mexico City and elsewhere after the army intervention of 9 February 1995 chanted 'we are all Marcos', they were not announcing an intention to join the EZLN. They were saying that the struggle of the Zapatistas is the life-struggle of all of us, that we are all part of their struggle and their struggle is part of us, wherever we are. As Major Ana-Maria put it in the opening speech of the Intercontinental Meeting: 'Behind us are the we that are you.(83) Behind our balaclavas is the face of all the excluded women. Of all the forgotten indigenous people. Of all the persecuted homosexuals. Of all the despised youth. Of all the beaten migrants. Of all those imprisoned for their word and thought. Of all the humiliated workers. Of all those who have died from being forgotten. Of all the simple and ordinary men and women who do not count, who are not seen, who are not named, who have no tomorrow.'(84)

We are all Zapatistas. The Zapatistas of Chiapas have lit a flame, but the struggle to convert 'dignity and rebellion into freedom and dignity' is ours.

Libcom note: A critique of this article by Wildcat Germany is linked below, followed by a reply from John Holloway.

Notes

1) EZLN, La Palabra de los Armados de Verdad y Fuego, (Mexico City: Editorial Fuenteovejuna, 1994/ 1995), Vol. 1, pp.31-32. The three volumes of this series are a collection of the interviews, letters and communiques of the EZLN during 1994, an invaluable source. All translations of Spanish quotations are by the author.

2) EZLN, La Palabra, Vol 1, p. 35.

3) Clandestine Revolutionary Indigenous Committee.

4) The Council 500 Years of Indigenous Resistance.

5) EZLN, La Palabra, Vol 1, p.122; emphasis in the original. The continuing importance of this passage was underlined when it was quoted by Comandante Ramona in her speech to a meeting in Mexico City on 16 February 1997 organised to protest against the government's failure to fulfill the Agreements of San Andres.

6) Ejercito Zapatista de Liberacion Nacional: Zapatista Army of National Liberation.

7) Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, 17th November 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. III, p. 224. Subcomandante Marcos is the spokesperson and military leader of the EZLN. He is, however, subordinate to the CCRI, a popularly elected body. "Mestizos" are people of mixed indigenous and European origin - the vast majority of the Mexican population.

8) Forces of National Liberation.

9) Quoted in C. Tello Diaz, La Rebelion de las Canadas (Mexico City: Cal y Arena, 1995) pp. 97, 99.

10) The EZLN's reply to the government's claim is contained in a communique of 9 February 1995: 'In relation to the connections of the EZLN with the organisation called "Forces of National Liberation", the EZLN has declared in interviews, letters and communiques that members of different armed organisations of the country came together in its origin, that the EZLN was born from that and, gradually, was appropriated by the indigenous communities to the point where they took the political and military leadership of the EZLN. To the name of the "Forces of National Liberation", the government should add as the antecedents of the EZLN those of all the guerrilla organisations of the 70s and 80s, Arturo Gamiz, Lucio Cabanas, Genaro Vazquez Rojas, Emiliano Zapato, Francisco Villa, Vicente Guerrero, Jose Maria Morelos y Pavon, Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, Benito Juarez and many others whom they have already erased from the history books because a people with memory is a rebel people". La Jornada, 13 February 1995.

11) Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, 'Carta a Adolfo Gilly', Viento del Sur, no.4 (summer 1995) pp. 21-25, at p. 25.

12) See the account given by Tello, La Rebelion, p. 105, of the meeting between some of the insurgent leaders and the community of the ejido of San Francisco on 23 September 1985.

13) See the account given by Marcos in an interview with Radio UNAM, 18 March 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. II, p. 69. The 'white guards' are paid paramilitary groups who, often in collusion with the authorities, suppress protest and dissent with violence.

14) For a discussion of the transformations in the EZLN, see the chapter by Luis Lorenzano in this volume.

15) Decree of the Lacandon Community. See Tello, La Rebelion, pp. 59ff.

16) For a discussion of the significance of 'community', see the chapter by King and Villanueva in this volume.

17) Radio UNAM interview with Marcos, 18 March 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. II, p.69-70.

18) Marcos, Letter to children of a boarding school in Guadalajara, 8 February 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. I, p. 179.

19) Radio UNAM interview with Marcos, 18 March 1994, EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. II, p. 62.

20) Marcos interview with Cristian Calonico Lucio, 11 November 1995, ms. p. 47. The interview is unpublished in written form, but formed the basis of a video.

21) Ernst Bloch's Naturrecht und Menschliche Wuerde (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1961) is a notable exception. Although theoretically very relevant, it probably did not exercise any influence on the Zapatistas.

22) In a recent interview, Marcos confirms that it was as a result of the integration of the revolutionaries with the indigenous communities that they started using the concept of dignity. 'More than the redistribution of wealth or the expropriation of the means of production, revolution starts to be the possibility that human beings can have a space of dignity. Dignity begins to be a very strong word. It is not our contribution, it is not a contribution of the urban element, it is the communities who contribute it. Such that revolution should be the assurance that dignity be realised, be respected.' Yvon Le Bot, El Sueno Zapatista (The Zapatista Dream) (Mexico City: Plaza & Janes, 1997) p. 146.

23) See for example the interview of Marcos with correspondents of the Proceso, El Financiero and The New York Times, February 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol.I, p. 204, at p. 216.

24) G. Camu Urzua and D. Totoro Taulis, EZLN: el ejercito que salio de la selva (Mexico City: Editorial Planeta, 1994) p. 83.

25) Camu and Totoro, EZLN.

26) The supreme example of the instrumentalist theory of revolution is, of course, Lenin's What is to be Done?

27) See the CCRI communique of 10 June 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol.II, 201.

28) EZLN, La Palabra, Vol.I, p.5.

29) See the account given by Tello, La Rebelion, p. 151; see also Le Bot, El Sueno, p. 191.

30) National Indigenous Congress.

31) At the time of writing, the agreement still has not been implemented by the government.

32) On the refusal of the Zapatistas to define their movement as an indigenous movement, see Le Bot, El Sueno, p. 206, where Marcos says in interview: 'The principal preoccupation of the Committee [CCRI] and of the delegates was that the movement should not be reduced to the indigenous question. On the contrary, if it had been up to them, at least to that part of the committee [those who come from the areas with the strongest traditions] our discourse would have abandoned completely any reference to the indigenous.'

33) The Zapatista use of national symbols, such as the Mexican flag and the national anthem, disconcerted some, especially of the European participants in the recent Intercontinental Gathering in Chiapas. For a critique of the alleged 'nationalism' of the EZLN, see, for example, Sylvie Deneuve, Charles Reeve and Marc Geoffroy, Au-dela des passe-montagnes du Sud-Est mexicain (Paris: Ab irato, 1996); and Katerina, 'Mexico is not only Chiapas nor is the rebellion in Chiapas merely a Mexican affair', Common Sense, no. 22 (winter 1997).

34) In this sense, for example, see the Third Declaration of the Lacandon Jungle (1st January, 1995): "The indigenous question will not be solved unless there is a RADICAL transformation of the national pact. The only way to incorporate, with justice and dignity, the indigenous peoples into the nation is by recognising the peculiar characteristics of their social, cultural and political organisation. The autonomies are not a separation but rather the integration of the most humiliated and forgotten minorities into contemporary Mexico. That is how the EZLN has understood it since its formation and tha is how the indigenous bases which form the leadership of our oranisation have directed. Today we repeat it: OUR STRUGGLE IS NATIONAL": La Jornada, 2 January 1995, p.5.

35) La Jornada, 30 January 1996, p. 12.

36) This is, of course, not the only interpretation possible. See, for example, S. Deneuve et al., Au-dela des passe-montagnes. Although it seems incorrect to interpret the Zapatista use of national liberation in the narrow, statist sense, there is no doubt that the term 'national liberation' opens up an enormous, and dangerous, area of ambiguity, simply because the notion of 'nation' and 'state' have been so interwoven that it is difficult to disentangle them completely. It is argued below that the undoubted contradictions and tensions in the discourse of the Zapatistas are not the result of eclecticism, but are the outcome of the consistent pursuit of the principle of dignity. They are not necessarily less serious for that. For a further discussion of Zapatista nationalism, see REDaktion (Hrsg), Chiapas und die Internationale der Hoffnung (Cologne: Neuer ISP-Verlag, 1997), pp. 178-184.

37) Subcomandante Insurgente Marcos, "Mexico: La Luna entre los espejos de la noche y el cristal del dia", La Jornada, 9/10/11 June 1995, p. 17 (11 June).

38) This is most clearly elaborated in Lenin's What is to be Done? For example: 'We said that there could not yet be Social-Democratic consciousness among the workers. This consciousness could only be brought to them from without. The history of all countries shows that the working class, exclusively by its own effort, is able to develop only trade union consciousness... The theory of socialism, however, grew out of the philosophical, historical and economic theories that were elaborated by the educated representatives of the propertied classes, the intellectuals': V.I.Lenin, 'What is to be Done' in Essential Works of Lenin (New York: Bantam Books, 1966), p. 74.

39) The notion of dignity is little used by mainstream political theory. Where it is used, it is often connected with notions of self-ownership (for example, Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia (New York: Basic Books, 1981), p. 334) or self-possession (for example, Michael Walzer, Spheres of Justice (Oxford: Blackwell, 1983) p. 279). The use of the term in mainstream political theory and philosophy differs crucially from the Zapatista concept in two respects: firstly, its primary point of reference is the individual; and, secondly, it refers to an abstract, indeterminate and idealised present in which it is assumed that people already have the 'right' to dignity. At best, this is a sort of flabby wishful thinking which has little to do with the Zapatista concept of dignity as struggle against the denial of dignity, and is far removed indeed from seeing 'our fathers with fury in their hands'.

40) See, for example, James C. Scott, Domination and the Arts of Resistance (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1990).

41) This argument is developed in section V.

42) It is not surprising that the !Ya Basta! of the Zapatistas has been strongly echoed by the "sans papiers", the movement of illegal immigrants in France.

43) The Zapatistas use truth and dignity as basically interchangeable concepts. The Zapatistas speak of what they say as the 'word of those who are armed with truth and fire' ('la palabra de los armados de verdad y fuego'). The fire is there, but the truth comes first, not just as a moral attribute, but as a weapon: they are armed with truth, and this is a more important weapon than the firepower of their guns. Although they are organised as an army, they aim to win by truth, not by fire. Their truth is not just that they speak the truth about their situation or about the country, but that they are true to themselves, that they speak the truth of truth denied.

44) Communique of 17 March 1995: La Jornada, 22 March 1995.

45) The separation of personal and political, of private and public, is at the same time their mutual constitution. The point is not to conflate the personal and the political, the public and the private, but to abolish them (to abolish the separation which constitutes both). On this, see Karl Marx, On the Jewish Question, Marx Engels Collected Works, Vol. 3 (Moscow: Progress Publishers, 1975). To that extent, the phrase 'the personal is political' is misleading.

46) See the chapter by Margara Millan in this volume.

47) It is as a form of the capital relation that the state defines and classifies. The defining action of the state is one moment of the definition inherent in the alienation of labour, the containment of human creativity. For a development of the general argument, see John Holloway, 'Global Capital and the National State' in W. Bonefeld, J. Holloway (eds), Global Capital, National State and the Politics of Money (London: Macmillan, 1995), pp. 116-140.

48) Communique of May 1996, La Jornada 10 June 1996.

49) Communique of May 1996, La Jornada 10 June 1996.

50) At the time of writing (February 1997), the agreement still has not been implemented by the government.

51) La Jornada 17 May 1995.

52) La Jornada, 18 May 1995.

53) La Jornada, 10 June1995.

54) La Jornada, 5 March 1995.

55) 'The cistern contains; the fountain overflows': William Blake, 'The Proverbs of Heaven and Hell': in, for example, William Blake (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1958) p. 97.

56) 'A political force whose members do not hold or aspire to hold popularly elected offices nor governmental posts at any level. A political force which does not aspire to take power. A force which is not a political party'. La Jornada, 2 January 1996.

57) First Declaration of La Realidad, January 1996: La Jornada, 30 January 1996.

58) They have often mentioned the idea of plebiscites or referendums as a necessary part of a new political system. It is clear, however, from the experience of other states that plebiscites and referendums are quite inadequate as a form of articulating popular decision-making, and are in no sense comparable to the communal discussions which are central to the Zapatistas' own practice.

59) 'And we demand that the authorities should be able to be removed just as soon as the communities decide it and come to an agreement. It could be through a referendum, or some other similar mechanism. And we want to transmit this experience to every level: when the President of the Republic is no use any more he should be automatically removed. As simple as that.' Press Conference given by Subcomandante Marcos, 26 February 1994: EZLN, La Palabra, Vol.1, p. 244.

60) If indeed they are part of the FLN, as the state maintains, it has remained remarkably ineffective.

61) Radio UNAM interview with Marcos, 18 March 1994, EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. II, p. 97.

62) Closing speech by Marcos to the Intercontinental Meeting in La Realidad: Chiapas, no. 3, pp. 106-116, at p. 107.

63) See the chapter by Heau-Lambert and Rajchenberg in this volume.

64) The question of what sort of organisation should develop out of the Intercontinental Meeting of the summer of 1996 was addressed by Marcos in his closing speech: 'What follows? A new number in the useless enumeration of numerous internationals? A new scheme that will give tranquility and relief to those anguished by the lack of recipes? A world programme for world revolution? A theorisation of utopia which will allow us to maintain a prudent distance from the reality that torments us? An organigram that will secure us all a post, a responsibility, a name and no work? What follows is the echo, the reflected image of the possible and the forgotten: the possibility and necessity of talking and listening... The echo of this rebel voice transforming itself and renewing itself in other voices. An echo that converts itself into many voices, into a network of voices that, in the face of the deafness of Power, chooses to speak to itself, knowing itself to be one and many, knowing itself to be equal in its aspiration to listen and make itself heard, recognising itself to be different in the tonalities and levels of the voices which form it... A network that covers the five continents and helps to resist the death promised to us by Power. There follows a great bag of voices, sounds that seek their place fitting with others... There follows the reproduction of resistances, the I do not conform, the I rebel. There follows the world with many worlds which the world needs. There follows humanity recognising itself to be plural, different, inclusive, tolerant of itself, with hope. There follows the human and rebel voice consulted in the five continents to make itself a network of voices and resistances.' (Closing speech by Marcos to the Intercontinental Meeting in La Realidad: Chiapas, no. 3, pp. 106-116, at p. 112.)

65) See the chapter by Margara Millan in this volume.

66) Obvious precedents are, for example, Marx's discussion of the Paris Commune in the Civil War in France, or Pannekoek's discussion of workers' councils in the early years of this century.

67) La Jornada, 27/8/95.

68) 'Civil society, those people without party who do not aspire to be in a political party in the senes that they do not aspire to be the government, what they want is that the government should keep its word, should do its work': Marcos interview with Cristian Calonico Lucio, 11 November 1995, ms. p39.

69) On the dialectic of constituting and constituted, see the article by Werner Bonefeld, 'Capital as Subject and the Existence of Labour', in W. Bonefeld. R. Gunn, J. Holloway and K. Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism Vol. III (London: Pluto 1995), pp. 182-212; see also J. Holloway, 'The State and Everyday Struggle', in S. Clarke (ed), The State Debate (Houndmills: Macmillan, 1991).

70) The understanding of the working class as a defined group has been extended ad infinitum to discussions about the class definition of those who do not fall inside this group - as new petty bourgeoisis, salariat, etc.

71) What Marx calls primitive accumulation is thus a permanent and central feature of capitalism, not a historical phase. On this, see Werner Bonefeld, 'Class Struggle and the Permanence of Primitive Accumulation', Common Sense no. 6 (1988).

72) For a development of this point, see Richard Gunn's article, 'Notes on Class', Common Sense, no. 2 (1987); and also Werner Bonefeld, 'Capital, Labour and Primitive Accumulation: Notes on Class and Constitution', unpublished ms. (1997).

73) Thus, for Marx, capitalists are the personification of capital, as he repeatedly points out in Capital. The proletariat too first makes its appearance in his work not as a definable group but as the pole of an antagonistic relation: 'a class ... which ... is the complete loss of man and hence can win itself only through the complete rewinning of man': K. Marx, 'Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Law: Introduction', in Marx Engels Collected Works, Volume 3 (London:Lawrence & Wishart, 1975), p. 186.

74) The autonomist concept of self-valorisation is perhaps the closest that the Marxist tradition comes to a concept that expresses positively the struggle against-and-beyond capital, but the term is clumsy and obscure. On self-valorisation, see, for example Harry Cleaver, 'The Inversion of Class Perspective in Marxian Theory: From Valorisation to Self-Valorisation', in W. Bonefeld, R. Gunn and K. Psychopedis (eds), Open Marxism, Volume II (London: Pluto Press, 1992), pp. 106-145.

75) Antonio Garcia de Leon in his prologue to an edition of the Zapatista communiques: EZLN, Documentos y Comunicados: 1 de enero / 8 de agosto de 1994 (Mexico City: Ediciones Era, 1994), p. 14.

76) The deus ex machina idea stretches far beyond Leninism, of course. It can be seen also in those theories which privilege the revolutionary role of the intellectuals. On a quite different plane, the same notions are reflected in the state's understanding of the Zapatista movement and its (racist) assumption that the real protagonists of the movement are urban white or mestizo intellectuals, such as Marcos.

77) 'Alienation could not even be seen, and condemned of robbing people of their freedom and depriving the world of its soul, if there did not exist some measure of its opposite, of that possible coming-to-oneself, being-with-oneself, against which alienation can be measured': Ernst Bloch, Tuebinger Einleitung in die Philosophie (Frankfurt: Suhrkamp, 1963), Vol. II, p.113. Dignity, in other words.

78) Le Bot, El Sueno, p. 191.

79) Radio UNAM interview with Marcos, 18 March 1994, EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. II, p. 89.

80) Radio UNAM interview with Marcos, 18 March 1994, EZLN, La Palabra, Vol. II, p. 89.

81) Marcos interview with Cristian Calonico Lucio, 11 November 1995, ms. p. 61. This would of course mean a society without power relations.

82) La Jornada, 25 August 1996.

83) This is clumsy, but the best translation I could find for the more elegant 'Detras de nosotros estamos ustedes'.

84) 'Discurso inaugural de la mayor Ana Maria', Chiapas no. 3, pp. 101-105, at p. 103.

Lavori in corso

Riccardo Bellofiore

From Common Sense #22 1997

Editorial Introduction
Ricccardo Bellofiore's article supplies a critical assessment of Appuntamenti di fine secolo [Meeting at the end of the century], edited Pietro Ingrao and Rossana Rossanda, with essays by Marco Revelli, Isidoro Davide Morteilaro and K.S. Karol. 284pp. An expanded version of the book has appeared in German (VSA, Hamburg, 1996). An English language version is not available. Despite this Bellofiore's critique will be understandable. The main arguments of the book are summarised at the beginning of his review. Furthermore, the book's main focus is familiar: Fordism, its crisis,Post-Fordism, globalisation and the New Times of left social and political practice These themes have, time and time again, been advanced within the British context, by the reformist Left, especially those associated with the former Marxism Today. In this context we refer to R. Gunn's review 'Communist Party: Facing up to the Future' (published in CS no.6) and F. Gambino's 'A Critique of the Fordism of the Regulation Approach' (published in CS no.19), as sources for further critical reading of mainstream Left proposals.

Bellofiore's article is based on a talk at the Associazione dei Lavoratori e delle Lavoratrici Torinesi (ALLT) in Turin on 24 November 1995. The article retains the original conversational style. We have also retained the Italian title: Lavori in corso means 'work in progress' but might also be translated as 'road work in progress'. We have cut the section where the author speaks about specific Italian conditions associated with the academic growth industry on the Third Italy. Those interested in this issue are advised to consult the German-language version, published in Wildcat Zirkular no.27, July-August 1996. As far as we are aware, an Italian version has not been published

Translation: Werner Bonefeld and Ed Emery

1. Introduction
In a book published In the early 1980s I came across a cartoon. It showed a man meeting Karl Marx on a cloud in heaven. The man says to Marx 'I've read your book.' Marx replies: 'Oh really? And how does it end?'

Now we are in the 1990s and all sorts of people seem to think they have the answer to the question how the history of Marxism, and of communism - the history of that political thought and political practice which had raised the banner of the emancipation of labour has ended. The book by Ingrao and Rossanda moves into the opposite direction: it stubbornly insists that an analysis of, and a judgement on, capitalism has to advance also by inquiring into the contradictory dynamics of the capitalist mode of production. In short it places the question of labour once again at the heart of things. The book needs to be taken seriously and this means, of course, examining its theses in a thorough manner. Apart from the circle close to Ingrao and Rossanda - those who are either present as contributors, or who took part in the debate in il Manifesto after the book's publication, and who, so to speak, are part of the family (for example, Lunghini, Mazzetti, Ravaioli) - a thorough appreciation of their work has, as far as I am aware, not taken place. Most other comments on the book indicated an unwillingness to discuss: they were characterised by disgust, foreclosure, prejudice, and rejection. Commentators who dogmatically refuse to listen have nothing to say.

In what follows I shall try to express a dissenting viewpoint. However, first I would premiss both a note of caution and my own position. The note of caution is the recognition that it is a risky matter and far from easy to attempt to synthesise and argue with Ingrao and Rossanda. This is because of the richness and complexity of the volume, as evidenced in its very structure. The theses of the introductory essay, written by both of them, are already intricate and complex, and this appears further in the collection of letters between Rossanda and Ingrao which make up the second part of the book. These letters are full of disagreements and unanswered questions. Furthermore, their theses enter into fertile exchange with the essays by other authors contained in the third section.I am thus conscious that my critique of Appuntamenti di fine secolo is subject to the inevitable riposte of having over-judged a theoretical development which is very much still under construction. However, if you want to start a discussion, you have to begin somewhere.

So I shall try to extract the main bones of Ingrao and Rossanda's position, to see whether and to what extent their arguments hold up. Let me now turn to my second premiss, that is my own position. The focal point of the book is the question of communism. The two authors declare at the end of their introductory essay that they still have this word in their vocabularies. It was undoubtedly this brave and rather unfashionable statement which gave rise to the whirlwind of criticism that promptly descended on them in the mainstream press. The considerations that follow, and these will not be indulgent, start from the same 'question' as that posed by the authors: communism. To cite Rossana Rossanda (p. 128) 'the challenge as to how to liberate everybody, and not to allow one person to be a slave either of another person or of needs that are so primary that he can't even question himself on the meaning of his existence here on earth. How to regulate power, how to guarantee one's freedom without canceling out that of others, how not to reduce the other to a slave or a commodity or a mere function of himself.' With the same frankness, however, I must state that, at least if for none other than generational reasons, my evaluation of communism as an answer', as it constituted itself in the form of the state during the twentieth century, is far less positive than the by no means sympathetic evaluation offered by Ingrao and Rossanda.

2. Appuntamenti di fine secolo
So let us turn to the main arguments contained in Appuntamenti... which I shall put together with the - albeit in some respects dissonant - theses advanced in the essay by Marco Revelli ('Economy and Social Model in the Transition from Fordism to Toyotism'). The book's argument can be summarised under four main headings:

i) During the 1970s the Taylorist-Fordist-Keynesian model went into crisis. This model was based on the scientific organisation of labour, on the rigid technology of the assembly line,and on an interventionist state which 'mediated' social concerns. This mediation involved support to business through demand management, the guarantee to workers of high levels of employment and of a welfare state. Ingrao and Rossanda don't say much about the origins of this crisis. For Revelli, the crisis was caused by a decline in the rate of economic growth and thus economic instability. The 'Fordist' mass consumer durable goods markets had become saturated and, as he seems to suggest, powerful ecological considerations had emerged. The crisis appears to have come from the outside and appears somehow 'natural'.

ii) The subsequent phase is defined principally via the category of globalisation, the globalisation of capital. The search for flexibility, and thereby for lower costs through a reduction of the minimum size of enterprises, unleashes a global and highly aggressive competitive struggle among individual capitals, hunting for markets wherever they can find them and relocating different parts of their production processes at the global level. Globalisafion thus gives rise to a crisis of the national state, which is definitive for Revelli, and certainly serious for Ingrao and Rossanda. Aided by the liberalisation of the movements of capital, there is a growing importance of the financial component in the profits of big business. In addition to a 'renewed domination' of the North over the South (the Gulf War), there can also be detected an 'ordering omnipotence' of the organs of world government (G7, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Maastricht Treaty).

iii) Concerning the issue of work, globalisation and the crisis of Fordism translate, on the one hand, into precarious work and exclusion and, on the other, into 'mass technological unemployment'. Work becomes increasingly less guaranteed, less stable, and lower paid, while anyone expelled from the labour market finds it harder to get back in. The number of workers in the industrial sector of the developed West declines, and those made redundant are left with no means to fmd work elsewhere. This liberation from work means that, within the capitalist universe, there is a reduction of living labour in real quantitative terms. In the new post-Fordist phase, capital has less need for the waged worker: what we see is the 'tendential end of the relationship of commensurate growth between the production of goods and employment (p.71), as lngrao and Rossanda maintain; and a 'systematic destruction of employment (p 198), according to Revelli.

iv) The present phase of capital in the post-Fordist era is characterised, apart from the aspects outlined above, by the much stronger integration of the workforce into the relations or production. This fourth point, as the first, is more pronounced in Revelli's contribution than in those by Ingrao and Rossanda. On the basis of an analysis restricted mainly to the automobile sector, Revelli seems to deduce an almost complete alienation of the workers (employed in this sector in ever fewer numbers), and an expulsion of conflict from factories which have by now become pacified because the soul' of the workers has been conquered. This, at least, is what we gather from pp. 185-94, although this is contradicted - and, in my view, rightly so - on pp 195-6.

This understanding of capitalist development is widespread amongst the majority of the radical left in Italy and has become more or less its vulgate. We have only to recall the analyses, each with their own peculiarities, of those who wrote contributions for Il Manifesto on the Ingrao-Rossanda volume. From this understanding derive, obviously, suggestions for political action. If it is true that within capitalism the socially necessary labour expended is tending ineluctably to diminish, the question of 'what is to be done' becomes reduced to a handful of options. The notion of a citizen's income, proposed specifically by authors such as Gorz and Aznar, finds little favour with Ingrao and Rossanda. There is also Lunghini's proposal to expand the area of 'concrete' socially useful labour, decommodifying the sphere of social reproduction in order to compensate for the reduction of 'abstract' capitalist work Furthermore, there is the idea of using the increases of productivity with a view to redistributing the smaller amount of work among everybody, as Mazzetti and Ravaioli (and, before them, Napoleoni) propose. In addition, there is Revelli's proposition - although, to be frank, he is not very clear on this - that 'antagonistic subjectivity itself [like post-Fordist capital] leaps over the relations of commodity exchange and thereby beyond the commodity form of labour, and the contract that sanctions it; and that it thus goes beyond the alienated relations of wage labour' (p. 193).

3. On a Fordism that never was
The framework outlined above obviously grasps some real aspects of capitalist development. However it seems to me that it is based on a misunderstanding of the nature of contemporary developments and that it supplies a view that is so one-sided that the implied periodisation of capitalism is quite wrong This is because it rests on distorted data.

Let's begin with the crisis of the Taylorist-Fordist-Keynesian model. I have to say that, to begin with, I regard this putting together of terms as highly problematical. Taylorism, that is the increase in the intensity of labour at a given level of technology, when it was introduced into the United States in the early part of this century, failed because of the conflict which, understandably, it aroused among the craft workers. A different fate was suffered by Fordism in the strict sense. Fordism sought to increase the productivity of labour through a revolution in the machine system, replacing the craft worker with the mass worker. It was only by virtue of this change that it was able successfully to incorporate the new organisational innovations of the early part of the century, which included, but not exclusively so, Taylorism. However, success at the level of production was confronted with the discovery of the limits of markets - the increase in productivity, combined with a relatively stagnant demand for consumer goods and, because of other factors, a weakened demand for investment, was one of the causes of the Great Depression (a far cry from the claim that Fordism means unlimited markets!). Only the Second World War and, it is suggested, Keynesian state intervention opened the era of the swift growth of income, a growth assisted by a politics of deficit demand management. This was Fordism in its broad sense, a mode of regulation which dominated right through to the early 1970s.

But is this really how it was? One might legitimately dispute it. When we look at the data and the most convincing interpretations, we find that the golden era of capitalism after the Second World War was characterised from the early 1960s onwards by the following elements: A world economy that had been unified under the leadership of the United States because Europe and Japan needed a leader country, not merely for economy reasons particularly reconstruction - but, also, for political-military reasons. For this reason we also had a single currency, the dollar (one should say that if there ever was a global capitalism, it was perhaps this). A stable demand for private investment was sustained by high profits and, of course, on rosy expectations because there were certain convictions associated with the proclamation of Keynesian principles, and there were central banks who were ready to function as lenders of last resort (thus not a model of development based on consumption, as suggested by the agreeable conception of Fordism-Keynesianism). Nevertheless, state budgets were essentially balanced; the growing percentage of expenditure in relation to GNP was compensated by a growth in taxation levied principally at the expense of labour. Were one to conceive of the Keynesian era as if it had been characterised by the pursuance of economic policy within the boundaries of national states and by the accumulation of deficits, one would be left with no more than a caricature. In particular, growth of capitalist income was faster than the growth of real wages, although these increased too thanks to the marked expansion of commodity production.

Why did this model go into crisis? Essentially because it was unstable: during its development it undermined its own foundations. In particularly, its international foundations fragmented: the catching-up of Japan and Germany (with Europe coming up behind) pushed the USA out of its undisputable central position and led, during the 1960s, to a sharpening of inter-imperialist rivalry. Then the monetary foundation was undermined: in the same decade, the global monetary system that was based not only on the dollar but also on the dollar's tie with gold, began to wobble and finally collapsed in 1971. Above all, in those same years, industrial conflict began to grow to the point where it exploded at the end of the decade: after years of 'full employment', why on earth should the workers in manufacturing not have done what economic theory teaches night and day - in other words, exploit a favourable position in the labour market a market that was then favouring the seller? More serious than that, as well as asking for higher wages and less pressure at work - demands that in abstract terms are not incompatible with the capitalist model - at the heart of working class antagonism was the rejection of 'factory discipline' itself, and capitalist command over production as a whole. Mi this had been perfectly foreseeable; in fact, it was foreseen by Kalecki in a well-known article dating from 1944. In the 1970s, budget deficits increased - not only, and not so much, because of the social pressure that was demanding reforms but also because of the attempt by the state to continue a Keynesian response to the difficulties, and to tame and circumvent the problems posed by social conflict in the big factories. In addition to this conflict at the 'heart' of the crisis-ridden development, and also intra-capitalist conflict, there was, for a time, a conflict with the producers of raw materials, of oil in particular. Over a period of a few years, profit expectations worsened with the decline in profitability, the time-horizon of investments contracted, and investments fell. Strange as it may seem, it was the return to the fore of monetarist economic policy - symbolised in the coming to power of Reagan and Thatcher - which led in the United States, but also elsewhere, to an explosion of deficits and public debt, precipitating the more or less ferocious subsequent attempts at reducing them. In regard to Italy, for example, Di Cecco characterised the Italian model in the 1980s as 'delinquent Keynesianism'. Not only in Italy, despite this 'Keynesianism', investment is having a hard time getting under way again.

The reason for all this is not at all mysterious. If what I say is correct, then the crisis of the old model derives not from some rather vaguely defied crisis of growth, but from a far more material emergence of fundamentally internal conflicts over the creation and distribution of wealth. Other precise consequences follow from this. The political right's critique of the Keynesian era is inconsistent: it did not fail as a result of a spendthrift and unproductive state (which, as I have said, is doubtful that it ever existed). The Keynesianism of those days had little to do with the Keynesianism that is peddled by academic circles and the media.

The crisis of the so-called Fordist model was crucially due to social conflict, and so its transcendence, which is still under way, inevitably has to pass through a radical redefinition of existing conditions in the labour market and the labour processes. The fact that investment is not lifting off after two decades of defeats of the working class is perhaps testimony to the radicality of the challenge to capitalist power which was more or less consciously pursued, and of the fear that followed from it that every upturn in the economy would reactivate conflict. A testimony, in short, that the dismantling and restructuring of all parts of the capitalist valorisation process is still in full motion. And one can again ask: if things are as I have said, does it make sense to compare, as the authors of the volume do, tPost-Fordism' with a -however defined - conception of 'Fordism', a conception which appears increasingly as a parenthesis in the history of capitalism? Is it really impossible, if not rather simply improbable, to repropose a Fordist/Keynesian settlement, a settlement that combines a sort of global regulation with income and employment policies based on a negotiated settlement of a new Toyotist organsiation of labour? In this respect, we might have to set aside the desirability of such a settlement from a Left point of view, to which I would give a negative response. That this reproposition is, as I suggest, improbable derives from the fact that there has not yet appeared on the horizon an 'objective' crisis such as that which struck Fordism narrowly defined at the end of the 1920s. This is because, in our time, there is hardly a 'subjective' critique of the contradictory constitution of Fost-Fordism which does not propose a hasty 'exit' from it. Such a critique is entirely powerless to confront Post- Fordism's real contradictions.

4. Uneven Globalisation
The thesis of the globalisation of capital also deserves to be reexamined. We have seen that, in some respects, the capitalism of the Keynesian era was more, not less, global. We could add that the capitalism of the golden age of the gold standard, that is the period which ran from the last quarter of the nineteenth century through to the First World War, was also at a high level of globalisation. The present growth of trade integration merely carries through to completion the recouping, begun after the Second World War, of the terrain lost in the years of mercantilism between the two wars. It is certainly true, on the other hand, that the contemporary greater dependence on export markets is a consequence of the lesser weight of internal investments. It is also true that, as regards manufacturing and most particularly traditional manufacturing of mass consumer durable goods, the quota of imported goods has effectively increased.

On the whole, then, industrial competition has indeed increased dramatically, and the globalisation of production in this area of the economy is a fact. However, the phenomenon of global competition in manufacturing goes hand-in-hand, as the economists should know, with the reduced importance of this sector for the creation of income and employment. This reduction is compensated by the growth of sectors that are protected from imports. This development which strikes at all the classic locations of the organised strength of the labour movement, is not generalisable to all sectors of production. And the sociologists, for their part, should know that the post-Fordist reorganisation of labour, to which I will turn below, cuts right across both protected and non-protected sectors.

The globalisation of commercial flows is, however, another of those sirens which we should not allow to bewitch us. If anything, in the crisis of Fordism in its broader sense, the tendency towards the regionalisation of capitalism into the three areas of America, Europe and Asia seems to predominate. Ingrao and Roassanda note this, but they do so as if this phenomenon operates merely as something that puts a limit to the predominant tendency towards globalisation. In fact, and importantly, the notable characteristic of these three areas is that they are 'closed' economies, in the sense that their openness to trade does not seem to have grown in any dramatic sense. This is true, in particular, for Western Europe as a whole - not, of course, for single countries given the process of trade unification within Europe itself. It is thus understandable that the thesis of the globalisation of capital appears, for example, plausible from the Italian viewpoint - that is of an economy which was relatively more closed than others, more dependent than others on a traditional manufacturing sector which was hit particularly hard by openings to the outside.

It is equally wrong to argue, as Ingrao-Rossanda and Revelli do, that we should see the globalisation of production, and the present reality of the global character of commodity production, as something definitively new and imposed by neoliberalism, as part and parcel of the tendency of capital to seek lower wage costs, less regulated conditions of labour, and countries that are more compliant with the desires of companies. Those who take at face value the thesis of a single path of capital after the Fordist-Keynesian era, lose sight of the plurality of capitalist models in the 1970s and 1980s, and the disunited nature of capital today. Alongside the Anglo-American model of breakneck deregulation - a deregulation, however, that is never carried to its extreme logical consequences - we have had another model taking shape in Germany, Japan and South-East Asia.

In some cases, the German case in particular, this model has been compatible with high wages and relatively restricted working hours.

Even South Korea, we should remember, has seen - albeit from a starting point of a particularly low level - rates of growth in real wages never seen before in the history of capitalism. This model was based, as in Japan, on the protection of the highly qualified sections of the work-force, at the expense of its more peripheral sections. At the heart of this model there was a state and a banking system which regularly broke every neo-classical wisdom, every suggestion of the World Bank or the International Monetary Fund. This has meant practicing the kind of support policies for national industry which are heresy for neo-liberalism: a concern for the quality of local factors of production, and not only their cost, selecting credit flows, and controlling its own capital and its domestic labour. It has been this type of capitalism, which we might call Schumpeterian, that up until now has obtained the best results, and not the sort of capitalism propagandised by the supporters of deregulation. The countries of Latin America have learned that lesson, and the countries of South East Asia are also learning it fast. Both these groups of countries have enjoyed, more than enough, the guidance by proponents of neo-liberal anti-statism. Clinton himself came to power with a programme which proposed intervention in the quality of local factors of production, and not with a programme that argued the case for a subordination to the ideology of globalisation. And the variously-labelled experiences of the 'Third Italy', of the 'Adriatic backbone', of the North-East of Italy, have they not perhaps also been constructed on this basis, namely on a combination of flexibility and qualification of labour? But when reading the Appuntamenti, we often have the impression that the ideology propagated by international organisations is confused with understanding of the real developments.

As with the questioning of the Taylorist/Fordist/Keynesian model, the questioning of the thesis of globalisation has enormous political consequences. Just to mention two: the Gulf War would appear at least as much, if not more, marked by the conflict within northern capitalism as by conflict between North and South; and the same should be said of what is happening in Eastern Europe after the collapse of real socialism. However, let me stay with the thesis of globalisation, in order to sum up. I have left to one side one characteristic, the most striking, of global capitalism, and that is the exponential growth and autonomisation of speculative capital in financial markets. This is something which one would have to be blind not to see. However it is hard to understand why this should be seen by the whole of the Left, even the less conformist groups among them, almost as a natural given fact, rather than as a product of choice, or at least of the omission of possible actions. We shall never find out whether 'global' financial capital really is uncontrollable unless we try to control it - and the subjects of this control, given what I have just said about 'regional' capitalism, inevitably have to be found at an intermediary level between the national level and the (for good or ill) Utopian level of a world government. To state just one: honestly reformist proposals which strike at the speculative movements and not the productive movements of capital have been on the table for a while. The new information technologies, whatever one might wish to say about them, increase rather than reduce the possibility of control over monetary flows. Events like those following on from the crisis of the 'irrevocably' fixed exchange rates of the European Monetary System confirm that the much-vaunted death of the autonomy of national monetary policies has been announced prematurely. In short, it is possible to act.

5. Too much work
The so-called globalisation of capital is thus a phenomenon which is far from new. What we have been seeing in recent years is rather a redefinition on the part of capital of the national and international conditions of accumulation, which has not yet run its full course, and which is best understood through the categories of regionalisation and plurality, a plurality of capitalisms, Because Ingrao and Rossanda analyse the general tendencies of capitalism differently from me, their analysis of mass unemployment, which they share with many other well regarded commentators, is also quite different from mine. I have to confess that my perplexity with their analysis of this issue is even more marked.

The clearest and most rigorous exposition of the thesis that capitalism has transformed from that of Fordist-Keynesian full-employment into a post-Fordist 'future without work' ('too many commodities, very little work') is probably that of Giorio Lunghini in L'Eta dello Spreco ('The Age of Waste'). The structural change of recent years is said to consist in the fact that the increase in unemployment in periods of recession is crystallised by technological and organisational restructurings, so that when the economy revives employment does not rise. The quantity of living labour employed by capital is thus, it is claimed, tendentially destined to fall. In this circumstance too, however, a close look at what is happening in different areas of capitalism reveals a quite different picture.

First of all, right until the end of the 1980s, aggregate employment continued to grow everywhere, and it is too early to know whether the dip, which has been seen subsequently in some economies, is permanent or temporary. In any case, the employment figure as a percentage of the workforce has remained stable for decades. Secondly, the tendency to reduce living labour affects manufacturing, and in particular the large factories. However, in the terms in which this process has really taken place, it had already taken place in the USA during the 'Fordist' phase itself. This does not seem particularly unnatural since otherwise the capitalist reproduction would remain stuck in a specific commodity-configuration. Thirdly, within this sector, it is not clear to me why there is never any reference to the capitalism of the newly industrialised countries - those of South East Asia, for example. It is in these countries that we see a continued input of new labour power into the processes of valorisation and powerful waves of urban migration. The omission is all the more serious because it is in Asia that the accumulation of 'global' capital is, again, resuming most vigorously.

One of the more striking weaknesses of the analysis of imperialism up until the 1960s was the forecast that it was impossible for those countries which were then called the Third World, to take an active part in capitalist development. It is this Third World which today is pushing the diverging thrusts of inclusion and exclusion which have their cause precisely in the lift-off of capitalism. Finally, it is as well to bear in mind that unemployment presents peculiar characteristics in the different capitalist regions, with notable variations also in their midst: with all the necessary caution regarding the reliability of statistics, it is obvious that the unemployment levels of little more than 2% in Japanese statistics, and the oscillation of United States statistics at around 6% (euphemistically called 'full employment'), indicate a far different situation from rates of European unemployment, which range from 10% in Germany to 25% in Spain, with Italy somewhere in between. If the statistics on unemployment are sometimes underestimated and this is certainly the case in Italy - it is also true that the main body of precarious and unstable employment is invisible. We thus have to offer differentiated explanations of the different experiences. In the United States, the relatively more important factors are the deregulation of the labour market and the growing imbalance in the distribution of wealth. This has made possible the creation of insecure, low-skilled employment that, more often than not, maintains these workers in poverty. At the same time, the central position of the USA in the international division of labour permits also the creation of skilled and highly paid employment. In the European case, a greater role is played by the lesser downward flexibility of real wages. Thus the circumstance that restructuring penalised unskilled labour and led to an uneven position of Europe in the international hierarchy. So, although labour-time is declining in the area of unskilled or simple work employment of the traditional sectors of the older industrial-capitalism, there is good reason to maintain that the capitalised total labour time is increasing hugely.

The true structural break of the last fifteen years has been the interruption of the more than century-long tendency towards the reduction of individual labour-time. Instead of this, there has been the lengthening and intensification of the effective working day. To this has contributed, to greater or lesser extent in the various countries, the fragmentation of the labour market to which I referred earlier. This has led to the re-emergence of the 'working-poor' and precariousness of employment. In addition, there has been the 'slimming-down' of big companies and the externalisation of parts of the production process, to which Ingrao and Rossanda, as well as Revelli, draw attention. This externalisation weakens the central and strongest swathe of guaranteed employment and offloads the pressure of competitiveness onto subcontractors where the weaker regulation of the conditions of labour can be exploited more easily. As Sergio Bologna has reminded us untiringly for years, this externalisation is in large part responsible for the expansion of self-employed labour, a labour which in reality has nothing to do with 'self-employment' but which is rather labour that is commanded by, more often than not, a single contractor. The 'strong' area of the labour market is reduced while the 'weak' area is expanded. From this point of view it seems reasonable to state that the characteristic of our epoch is that of 'too much work', and not of 'too little work'.

If the first reason has to do with the conditions of the labour market, the second reason relates to the characteristics of the capitalist reorganisation of production. In the central areas of accumulation a crucially important role is played by the production of commodities which are rich in terms of information and which require a labour-force that is able to exploit knowledge and experiences accumulated over a long time. In Marxian terms, the labour time incorporated in these commodities is a multiple of that contained in the products of simple labour. In the meantime, the less-skilled labour involved in the traditional production of mass consumer durables has been relocated to areas that were once peripheral. These two phenomena explain the circumstance that, in Europe, there is a simultaneous growth of total labour time and non-labour time, permitting the continued existence of long-term structural unemployment - a development that should not surprise a Left which argues on the basis of Marx. There should, however, be no surprise that such a radical redefinition of the concrete nature of the valorisation process at a global level demands a higher mobility of the transfer of surplus value: it is inherent in 'capital' that it seeks to push its mobility forward with as little control by the state as possible.

There is also a third reason for the lengthening and intensification of the working day, a reason so obvious that I would not even raise it were it not for the fact that nobody seems to pay attention to it. The transition from the high growth of the Fordist/Keynesian model to the reduced growth of the subsequent years has seen a reduction not only of relative wages, but also of real wages. The reduction of real wages is obviously a powerful factor that increases one's willingness to work much more intensively and for longer hours.

In the face of this reality, Left-wing intellectuals have allowed themselves to be taken in by the ideology that capital is driving inexorably towards a reduction, and in the end to an elimination, of labour. The exhaustion of capital's capacity to create employment of which we hear so much nowadays has led some to rejoice and others to lament The view that capital's capacity to create employment is exhausted amounts to a fairytale. I have to say that if there is a period in the history of capitalism that, for me, confirms the Marxist thesis of the centrality of 'abstract labour' in the organisation of social life, it is precisely this one. Particularly if one takes account of the fact that today the very instruments of information technology which are revolutionising production are also revolutionising consumption; and that the distinction between labour time and non-labour time is rendered increasingly arbitrary.

If this is how things stand, then it is easy to see the limits of the proposals against mass unemployment which we mentioned at the start of this paper. All of them make the same mistake. Namely, they start from the mistaken assumption that in the present phase of capitalist development demand for labour is declining rather than increasing. In other words, the proposals against mass unemployment are not based on a correct appreciation of the facts. Since real wages are falling, the reduction of hours of work at parity wages would lead probably to the extension of de facto hours of work, to double work and to work in the black economy. The promotion of socially useful work would probably translate itself into a dualist segmentation of the labour market which, contrary to the intentions of those who propose it, would involve the devaluing of 'concrete' jobs and reduce these to the role of a simple shock-absorber in relation to the difficulties faced by those employed in the area of commodity production. At the same time, those employed in this area would be left to their fate and this because of the mistaken conviction that we are witnessing the problematic but 'tendentially' assured euthanasia of capital. Nor am i convinced by the schizophrenia of those who portray the post-Fordist labour processes as a place of total alienation and who, for this reason, hope to find and look for the emancipatory potential beyond capital in the sphere of reproduction as well as in [autonomous] spaces. I am not convinced of this, probably I am still too much imbued by the old materialism, because I do not see how this could be rendered possible. These are all proposals which start, like Gorz and a number of French intellectuals, from the assumption that society is divided into two parts, one, the declining part, is seen to be subordinate to capital, and the other, the increasing part, is seen as one of freedom. It is hard to disagree with Bruno Trentin's Il Coraggio dell'Utopia ('The Courage of Utopia') when he says that individuals who accept the mutilation of themselves during a part of the day are marked throughout the whole of their daily activity. There is no reason to assume why this should be different for the whole of society.

If we want to talk again about the reduction of labour time, then we have to do it in the concrete processes of production and in relation to the whole range of life, and we have to debate it in such a way that we secure a reduction of labour time not only, regarding the labour markets, on the side of demand but, also, and importantly, on the side of supply to obtain flexibility and choice. And there should be no doubt that such a demand can only be realised through 'artificial', that is political interventions, interventions that go against the natural tendency and mode of motion of capitalist accumulation. This demand poses not only a quite different dynamic in the distribution of income but, also, an active political intervention at the level of macro-economic industrial policies and labour policies. Therefore, the conflict within capital and within the state cannot be left behind; rather it needs to be taken up. The sooner we abandon the thesis that the capitalist tendency at the end of this century is to reduce labour time, the better.

6. In search of the phoenix: Post-Fordism
In the book by Ingrao and Rossanda there is much talk of postFordism - a word which has been fashionable for some time. It is not at all clear what exactly is meant by this and, unfortunately, the phoenix remains as such even in the essay by lngrao and Bossanda. Fortunately, Revelli's essay is an exception, but it does leave a strange sensation. First because post-Fordism is here defined in opposition to Fordism in the broad sense. While Fordism is seen as being founded on unlimited growth, economies of scale, conflictual factory-relations, and a national state and a domestic capital, postFordism is seen as having limited world markets, a lean and hegemonic factory, a deterritorialisation of the enterprise and the crisis of the national state. I have already expressed doubts on some of these defining elements: here I limit myself to express my doubts whether it makes sense to define post-Fordism simply as a counterpoint to the Keynesian era, without broadening one's gaze to a wider and possibly more meaningful span of time. Were one not do this, might there not be the risk of attributing to post-Fordism elements of pre-Fordism? Ingrao and Rossanda seem to share my doubt (p. 43) and the problem cannot simply be resolved by identifying the one with the other, as Revelli seems to suggest (pp. 792-3).

The most attractive part of Revelli's article, however, is that on the changes in the organisation of work. Unfortunately I cannot here give it the space it deserves. Nevertheless it is quite striking that in order to describe post-Fordism such massive recourse is made to marketing manuals, a resource from which the suspicion of ideology is not far removed. There is also a lack of any reference to the copious literature on the subject, which is often dedicated to the innovations in that selfsame automobile sector on which Revelli focuses his attention: here we have only to recall the contributions by Parker-Slaughter, Jacob, Kern-Schuman, Pollert, Jurgens-Malsch-Dohse, Kennedy-Florida and Appelbaus-Batt. These authors supply a far more contradictory picture than that proposed in this volume. Given the lack of space, I shall content myself with suggesting that a typical characteristic of the present phase is that the unifying element of capitalist strategy is the attempt to bring to an end the process of re-forming the working class. This process which might perhaps combine flexibility, precarious conditions and skilled work, does not cancel out conflict, even though it does render it more difficult (when it comes to it, Taylorism and Fordism themselves were, in their own time, presented as the prelude to the disappearance of conflict), which makes the individual place of work more flexible, while rigidifying the global production line and thereby making it more fragile.

It appears to me that the. whole Left which has over the last thirty years concerned itself with the analysis, and the future, of work, has premised its analysis on the same cardinal error - a mistake which appears also in the recent writings of Bruno Trentin. This mistake consists in the primacy accorded to Taylorism. Let's take the Taylorist-Fordist-Keynesian model with which we began. Current interpretations look at Keynesianism through the eyes of Ford, and at Ford through the lenses of Taylor. In this view, capitalist exploitation of labour exhausts itself in, and is no more than, the 'pressure' brought to bear on labour. From this it follows that post-Fordism would amount to no more than the extension of this pressure from the body to the brain - or even, more spiritualistically, to the 'soul' of the worker.

There is, I believe, a serious historical reason behind this mistaken conception. The cycle of struggles at the end of the 1960s, centred as it was on struggles over the extraction and organisation of labour, followed on from a phase, starting in the mid-1960s, of real and proper Taylorist regression in Italian industry. At that time, domestic producers reacted to the wage conflicts at the beginning of the 1960s by accumulating capital without comitting new investments and thus by intensifring labour on the basis of the given technical composition of capital - yet another example that Taylorist means of extracting surplus value lead inevitably to conflict. However, the widespread interpretation by the Left turned the real sequence of capitalist development, as Marx understood it, onto its head. There is an inherent tendency in capital to effect technological change, to control the extortion of labour through the revolutionising of the system of machinery. The direct and personal control over labour that is typical for the extraction of absolute surplus value, is 'governed' by the indirect and impersonal control that is typical for the extraction of relative surplus value.

Marx posed the hypothesis that revolutions in the organisation of the labour process do not precede the innovation of the labour process but rather follow it; and that it is through the dynamic of competition that individual capitalists are compelled to revolutionise the labour process. The dynamic of competition imposes upon individual capitals the requirement to reorganise work. Were one to start one's analysis from the opposite end, and were one not conscious of the force that impresses itself upon the individual parts of the accumulation process, then one is easily led to confuse the break with Taylorism with the opening of automous spaces for employed labour. Trentin makes this mistake when he conceives of the crisis of Taylorism as bringing about conditions of work that are less and less focused on rigidly performed tasks. Revelli's analysis, although he describes the situation quite differently and arrives at opposite political conclusions, starts on the same basic assumptions. For him, Toyotism amounts to an intensification of Taylorism and thus to a Strengthening of Fordism, As he puts it, there is 'once again a form of focused pressure on one's own labour power, on the management of labour time, on the performance of work' (p.182).

For Revelli, the epochal break resides in the circumstance of a completed reduction of the worker to a thing, to a commodity among other commodities. Again, capital's impossible dream is confused with reality. However, were one to argue with Marx, the question that needs to be posed would be quite different. The question would then not be whether the post-Fordist production method serves to conclude the restructuring of the labour processes and the labour market that has moved into all directions with the complete automatisation within big industry. Rather, and against the background that this has not functioned in real and proper Fordism, one would have to inquire about the points of rupture of this so apparently omnipotent mechanism

6. What is to be done?
Our critical assessment of some of the essays contained in Appuntamenti, will probably be accussed variously as operaism, industrialism and productivism. There is no doubt that my analysis is fundamentally different from that on which the Ingrao-Rossa essay is based. Strangely, though, this difference appears less fundamental if one looks at some of their practical conclusions at the end of their joint essay. There they ask - as I have done above - if it is not premature to abandon 'labour' and the state as areas of social and political action. On this issue, it seems to me, that Ingrao and Rossanda are, thank godness, less coherent than authors such as Gorz, Aznar and Latouche, but also Revelli and Longhini, Mazzetti and Ravaioli who, each in their own way, appear to say that the 'civilisation of labour' as well as the 'statism' of the 'short century' is coming to an end.

I find it easy to share, in particular, the observation of Rossana Rossanda in the letters part of the book. She writes: 'I have never thought that the sum total of a person exhausts himself in his relation of and with production. Outside of that area a whole set of fundamental experiences, beginning with perceptions of life and death, of the other, of one's own sex and that of others, of love, of fear, of growing, of dying, of good and bad, of the sense of one's own being, wounded or matured by experience. Of literature, of history, of memory, of art, of thinking and counting, of play, which to a certain extent cut across the life of every man and woman' (pp 100- 1). Although one might disagree with what Rossanda has to say afterwards, namely when she states that the movement born from Marxism has never been Labourist Marx was certainly not Labourist when he stated in the Holy Family that 'if it wins, the proletariat does not become the absolute side of society; in fact it wins only by transcending itself and its opposite'. However, to me it seems undeniable that not only the Marxism of the Second and Third Internationals, but also that closer to our time, of the old and the new Left, that was present right up until the mid-1970s in workplaces, always based themselves on a belief in the centrality of production - and this even then when working-class struggles were taking place against the primacy of production, and despite this claimed a higher dignity than that accorded to other conflicts For this reason, amongst others, the labour movement has been placed' in the defendant's stand by the so-called 'new movements' foremost amongst them the feminist and the green movements' Here I believe, we find an almost logical misunderstanding upon 'which 'the contemporary difficulties of a Left politics are based For anyone like Ingrao-Rossanda and myself as well, who still believes that' the contemporary 'conditions of social autonomy' is founded on the 'position within the system of production of goods or services and the access to the system of exchange' (p.101), conflict over and within work inevitably has to remain - to use again that expressions which Bossanda does not like - at the centre. However this social centrality of labour within capitalist accumulation, which is in turn at the heart of this society, can not be translated into a political centrality of labour in the sense of establishing a hierarchy between the different subjects, which would accord more weight to the working class. Or, again in the sense of defining the characteristics of the future society, according to Hanna Arendt's reproach against Marx: communism as a society of workers without wage labour. The challenge to create an anti-capitalist movement in which different subjects pay attention to each other and recognise each other's equal dignity, is in fact still not solved. Rossanda herself recognises this when she says that 'within the new subjects there is a temptation to substitute one totalising view with another' (p. 126). This misunderstanding is almost logical because the different 'communes' that have been created through the struggle against capital - that force which 'dissolves into thin air all that is stable' - tend to regard themselves as permanent Perhaps this 'subjective' difficulty is the most material of all, and its overcoming the key to an authentic theory and practice of 'transition' which will truly examine the questions raised by the Greens and, in particular, the women's movement.

The dichotomy between Ingrao and Rossanda's analysis and their practical recommendations has a high price: their insistence on the centrality of labour, deprived of any reference to the authentic dynamics of the daily explosiveness of labour, are tinged with idealism (can work still be a value?, p. 71); and their recourse to an alternative sort of statism and an alternative public sphere with which they wish to transform the 'things' from above, has to appear inevitably politicist.

On the other hand, even if my considerations should be vindicated - that is that capitalist accumulation is not moving into the direction of reducing labour, and that interventions into the relations of labour inevitably has to pass through economic policy -there would still obviously remain the dramatic difficulty that this volume addresses: how to organise the restructuring of capital? Whatever the answer, I do not believe that it will be helped by analyses that are incorrect and replies that are consequently illusory. Perhaps one of my friends was right when he said that Marxists have hitherto changed the world: now it is time to go back to interpreting it.