Autonomism in the UK

[treelover]

Zeni, as a 'Jilly come lately', people who attended G8's as early as 1997,don't need any lectures from you...

 

[chilango]

Zeni, as a 'Jilly come lately', people who attended G8's as early as 1997,don't need any lectures from you...

1997?

Pah! the movement was dead by then...

 

[zenie]

Zeni, as a 'Jilly come lately', people who attended G8's as early as 1997,don't need any lectures from you...

Who do you see me lecturing?

You're taking my comments a bit to heart aren't you.

Time moves on, people need to stop fucking quibbling about the past and take things into their own hands don't they?

Or would you rather sit and bitch at nit pick at each other on an internet forum, about the way things used to be or what they meant to you.

How fuckin wadical

 

[mk12]

What did you say - looks like copied bollox to me. Get a mind of your own for a change.

I do not care what you say is what, I am happy with what I have said thanks, it's a different position to the one you are forwarding.

That stuff you wrote about class consciousness/ 2nd international is bullshit, pure and unadulterated, and you do not know what these concepts mean and you certainly do not know how to apply them.

So you're a cyber - stalinist, so what?

Worst. Reply. Ever.

 

[The Black Hand]

Worst. Reply. Ever.

You managed to do it. Well done.

 

[The Black Hand]

Who do you see me lecturing?

You're taking my comments a bit to heart aren't you.

Time moves on, people need to stop fucking quibbling about the past and take things into their own hands don't they?

Or would you rather sit and bitch at nit pick at each other on an internet forum, about the way things used to be or what they meant to you.

How fuckin wadical

Zenie - you are right, class struggle action is ALWAYS far better than sitting on your arse being a keyboard warrior.

Torres is the All England Keyboard Warrior Champion for the last 10 years.

 

[biff curtains]

Who do you see me lecturing?

You're taking my comments a bit to heart aren't you.

Time moves on, people need to stop fucking quibbling about the past and take things into their own hands don't they?

Or would you rather sit and bitch at nit pick at each other on an internet forum, about the way things used to be or what they meant to you.

How fuckin wadical

Treelover would rather rejoin the Labour party and campaign in the leadership election for a no hoper in the misguided belief it means something to "millions of working class people".

Actually Treelover your pisspoor moany one dimensional posts reveal that maybe you do need a lecture.

 

[treelover]

Returning poster Biff or rather shouty newboy/girl?

 

[durruti02]

I wrote this earlier;

Autonomous Class War - a definition

Here's a provisional attempt at definition;

Autonomous Class War applies critical analysis to; working class politics as the multitude fights the state and capitalism, the study of struggles, and the administration of business and the state. It emphasises the co -contextualising relationships of structure and agency, locating the 'everyday', routine world within structural and institutional relations but also emphasising alternative informal institutions and self valourisation outside them. It locates events, issues, media ('crime', 'deviance') and social conflict within their co - determining contexts rather than being obsessed by appearance level debate, causation, moral panic, superficial unity, partial analysis and limited organisation.

It endeavours to broaden the scope of analysis to a consideration of the working class as whole rather than isolated or small sectors, of practice and struggle rather than moral discourse, of humanity and towards dual power rather than punishment and ideologies of division, of freedom and dignity rather than discipline and control.

The structural relations of production and distribution, reproduction and patriarchy, neo-colonialism, and age are identified as the co - determining contexts. Within which the inter-relationships and mutual dependencies of structural forms of oppression can be understood, where different attempts to transcend and enforce boundaries take place, and the working class opposition manifests itself through the ever growing spread of struggles and solidarity.

Working class struggles, although they appear to be subordinate to capital, are in fact primary. Traditional leftist and anarchist vocabulary which speaks about 'resistance' is mistaken and reactionary, and thus their historic task has been to mediate the class struggle. Rather the task is to encourage the ever widening and developing working class practices and autonomous zones into potentially revolutionary moments. Moving beyond the 'permanent revolution' into permanent transcendence of expedient compromise with those who try to control how we live. To live as we choose we must suppress not only those who choose how we live, but the modes of thought that are engendered in and upon all of us. Everybody is not only thinking something they shouldn't they are doing something they shouldn't too.

thats virtually unreadable attica .. it is also not autonomist or marxist as i understand (for what it is worth) .. marxists and autonomia correctly repositioned the wrorking class as equalto capital in capitalism as /intregal ... not subordinate .. BUT NOT as you suggest as primary

p.s. i agree with torres and others there is a clear split in autonomism with the workers autonomy strand stating that the working class must be autonomous , and a wishy washy one that says that opposition to capital comes from autonomous groups ..

the best introduction to autonomism is the preface to Harry Cleavers book "Reading Capital Politically"

 

[zenie]

Returning poster Biff or rather shouty newboy/girl?

He's my fwend we met @ g8

 

[The Black Hand]

thats virtually unreadable attica .. it is also not autonomist or marxist as i understand (for what it is worth) .. marxists and autonomia correctly repositioned the wrorking class as equalto capital in capitalism as /intregal ... not subordinate .. BUT NOT as you suggest as primary

p.s. i agree with torres and others there is a clear split in autonomism with the workers autonomy strand stating that the working class must be autonomous , and a wishy washy one that says that opposition to capital comes from autonomous groups ..

the best introduction to autonomism is the preface to Harry Cleavers book "Reading Capital Politically"

It maybe unreadable, and I certainly meant it to be at an higher standard than what passes now for theory by the movement. But I wrote it for people with political experience, not a romanticised 'Coronation street man' or 'Eastenders woman'. People also systematically underestimate the knowledge of the general public too, but we are getting into a threaad of its own here...

Negri and EP THompson have both said that working class struggle is primary. My interpretation is a common position (Cleaver mentions Thompson in his intro to 'Reading Capital Politically').

I know of no autonomists who say "that opposition to capital comes from autonomous groups". I would like you or Torres to point them out cos I do not believe they exist, I see none anyway.

 

[durruti02]

1)It maybe unreadable, and I certainly meant it to be at an higher standard than what passes now for theory by the movement. But I wrote it for people with political experience, not a romanticised 'Coronation street man' or 'Eastenders woman'. People also systematically underestimate the knowledge of the general public too, but we are getting into a threaad of its own here...

2)Negri and EP THompson have both said that working class struggle is primary. My interpretation is a common position (Cleaver mentions Thompson in his intro to 'Reading Capital Politically').

3)I know of no autonomists who say "that opposition to capital comes from autonomous groups". I would like you or Torres to point them out cos I do not believe they exist, I see none anyway.

1)attica i have read enough stuff in my time but that is really unneccessaryly unreadable .. ( jees what happenned to the cw doctrine of simplicity and clarity)


2)i stand corrected re negri theory and primacy .. i think actually that what negri came to say is bollox .. capital and labour are intregal as marx says

3)i met enough of them in italy france and here .. indeed i think they were in negris camp and cleaver supportted this too

 

[mk12]

Is EP Thompson an "autonomist Marxist"?

the best introduction to autonomism is the preface to Harry Cleavers book "Reading Capital Politically"

Yes i'd second that- it's worth reading for a brief timeline of bottom-up Marxism. It's not long either.

 

[The Black Hand]

Is EP Thompson an "autonomist Marxist"?

Does it matter? I hate shoehorning real people into neat labels/ categories which is one of the ways sectarianism thrives. Rather, everybody should treat all ideas as equal at the outset, without prejeudice of the idea origins, and this way we maybe able to start a real open working class political culture, rather than the rather blind one there is now...

Thompson btw genuinely respected working class autonomy, here I mean the working class doing class struggle themselves without mediation - which is also a very short definition of 'autonomism' isn't it?

 

[mk12]

I don't mean "does he decribe himself as such". I mean, does he use the same analysis of history as 'autonomists' - a history of the working class, rather than organisations, unions etc.

 

[The Black Hand]

I don't mean "does he decribe himself as such". I mean, does he use the same analysis of history as 'autonomists' - a history of the working class, rather than organisations, unions etc.

This is an interesting question. You/I are talking about one of the leading British Marxist historians, if not the best. I would think you would have read his worldwide famous research, The Making of the English Working Class, and others. In them I think you will find an history which does as you say, but also one which recognises that people can and have found their autonomy within 'official institutions' - such as Trade Unions. Their is a certain niave and ultimately foolish Ultra left streak within what passes for anarchist and communist thought in Britain. That thinks things would be 'unky dory' without unions, it's almost as if having a pure 'outside the unions' position is sufficient for working class political progress. It is an idea which is purile and theoretically mistaken, and what is more history in the UK context proves this theoretical stupidity wrong repeatedly.

 

[mk12]

I agree with you.

 

[The Black Hand]

I agree with you.

 

[barney_pig]

I don't disagree that his history work was(is) impressive, but his own politics didnt always follow did they- In particular his concentration on the threat of nuclear annihilation in the early 1980s and his conclusion that this meant a return to the popular frontism of his cp days

 

[The Black Hand]

I don't disagree that his history work was(is) impressive, but his own politics didnt always follow did they- In particular his concentration on the threat of nuclear annihilation in the early 1980s and his conclusion that this meant a return to the popular frontism of his cp days

I do not think this is an accurate portrayal. The Anti Nuclear stuff was a continuation of New Left politics from the 1950s (Committee of 100, Aldermaston etc) when the threat of nuclear annhilation was all to real in the Cold War atmosphere (concentrated by various events such as Korea, the Bay of Pigs/Cuba missile crisis). At this point the analysis was that the demands for peace and getting ridding the bomb was a simple humanist position, and was necessary before any establishment of real communism across borders. Therefore, Thompsons socialist humanism included taking part in peace movements, primarily in END (European Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament) but also included encouraging and being in touch with dissenting Marxists in the Eastern Block. Some important working class activists (such as www.minersadvice.co.uk) also still take note and participate in what CND does.

 

[butchersapron]

No attica, your new found interest in Negri is seriously lacking. I didn't mention homogenisation of class consciousness (and that you're still operating on an archaic consciousnes model that itself has its roots in 2nd international kautskyism and leninism is itself revealing) i was referring to the forms of political (self) organisation that Negri sees as emanating from the conditions of a tiny section of the global w/c and that is tendentially constructing the grund on which all future struggles must constitute themselves.

This is not some left-field interpretation held only by me - it's a standard mainstream criticism from people like Nick Dyer-Witherford, from Steve wright, from George Caffentzis, from Sergio Bologna from people who are familiar with the traditions and the developements of this current of thought (participants even) - they've all spotted the path that Negri has taken to where he is today and the continuities of that position with the leninism of his younger days and the leninism of his later mid-period too) - crudely - leading sector, consciousness determined by state of technology in their enterprise, political recomposition that takes place on the basis of these first two, then cirtculated by that group to all others etc etc. NDW goes so far as to suggest that his analysis offers a form of 'cyber-leninsm and i think that's pretty close.

Just to go back to this briefly, there was some discussion between me and the black hand on this thread that seems to have been edited out about the translation of Negri's Factory of Strategy/33 Lessons on lenin that i was involved in at the time (and that lead to his not grasping the leninist elements of late autonomism and Negri that i was emphasising in my posts on this thread). Well, a version has finally been published, (doesn't appear to be reliant on the one we worked on at all). This was the last work Negri did from within a developed social movement, the last time that the class could discipline him and stop him spinning off into a fantasy world. Anyway, the book is here.

(And reading back year later, apols to zenie for being rude to her)

 

[el-ahrairah]

as if i didn't have enough stuff to read already cheers butchers!