John Holloway

[articul8]

I heard him speak at the weekend at the Historical Materialism, where he essentially presented the thesis of his forthcoming book "Crack Capitalism" - I must say I was underwhelmed by his reading of Capital, which essentially render Marx a romantic anti-captialist. Oversimplified presentation of abstract vs. concrete labour, as though it was just a case of sloughing off the former. But this totally misses the immensely productive (as well as alienating) quality that the abstraction gives rise to. I thought that editing a book on Adorno might have made him think twice here. A politics of non-identity yes, but not a simplistic rejection of identity tout court.

But even if you went along with the romanticism - why is "the scream" the point of departure for a radical politics, as opposed to say our ability to play, or love, or reflect? And the political conclusions - hurrah for the EZLN etc... aren't much better.

Why is the guy feted by the non-Leninist left?

 

[butchersapron]

He increasingly isn't. His work with or in response to people like Bonefeld was useful as they clearly reined in his wilder side - writing off his own bat is fluttering off on the air of its own abtractions. As is the OP a little bit

 

[butchersapron]

The scream is a daft idea he's been hawking around for 20 years now, he tried to put opposition (on numerous levels) as the basic fact of capital, like a wimped out version of Tronti's refusal or Panzieri's primacy of w/c behaviour as the prime mover of cpaital, but as you say i'm quite happy. There's no need to replace his scream with play or love or anything either.

 

[articul8]

As is the OP a little bit

Give me a break, I've been with a load of flightly academics for the past three days

 

[articul8]

The scream is a daft idea he's been hawking around for 20 years now, he tried to put opposition (on numerous levels) as the basic fact of capital, like a wimped out version of Tronti's refusal or Panzieri's primacy of w/c behaviour as the prime mover of cpaital, but as you say i'm quite happy. There's no need to replace his scream with play or love or anything either.

No, I wasn't suggesting there is - just that if you did want to play that game there are equally plausible candidates.

Speaking of Panzieri etc. there was a guy there Massimiliano Tomba - who was a bit hard to follow as his accent was so strong, but was speaking of Quaderni Rossi and the "Fragment on Machines" in the Grundrisse. He seemed critical of Negri and post-workerism. Be interested to read his paper - will have a look on't web.

His co-author Bellafiore lost me altogether

 

[butchersapron]

Bellafiore is great, i whacked something of his up on CAC about 10 years back, very interesting and well worth re-reading ten years later

Anything in that vien from Tomba i'd be very interested in - that stuff simply does not get translated beyond individuals doing Sergio Bologna in their spare time. Negri is king. There's an open goal for your mag. A counter-attack from the operaisti would be fantastic.

 

[articul8]

translating that kind of material ain't easy - it would cost. We couldn't really run pieces that are so heavily analytical - best we could manage is a general overview. eg. Am looking at getting permission to print David Harvey's quite accessible piece on Hardt/Negri in the current "Artforum".

 

[kyser_soze]

I had to double take the thread title - I thought someone had started a thread about Joan Holloway, the character from Mad Men.

I mean you could probably make a decent fist of a discussion about her character being caught between her socialisation (worship men, marriage/kids/home the real goal, and work just being a way to Get That Man), and her burgeoning proto-feminism (she takes no shit)...

But no, I get BA using the word 'operaisti' instead

 

[articul8]

Apparently -

a paper by Massimiliano Tomba and Riccardo Bellofiore, ...was originally the afterword to the new Italian edition of Steve Wright's essential Storming Heaven. The paper critically questioned the 'holy trinity' of operaismo: Panzieri, Tronti, and Negri. While recognising the power of workerism to articulate a non-objectivist Marxism, criticisms came of the tendency to a 'paradoxical Leninism' in the privileging of a particular sector of the working class (ie mass worker / social worker / multitude). Instead MT & RB insisted on the necessity of further inquiry into the labour-process as 'contested terrain' - particularly in understanding the 'refusal of work' as a means of denying the concrete conditions of labour and connecting with others struggles. So, as MT noted how the struggle of the workers at the petrochemical works of Porto Marghera in the 1970s for better conditions immediately entailed dealing with the wider 'externalities' of pollution, health care, and so on (and how it was regarded, at the time, by Negri as only expressing the 'right-wing' of workerism). MT & RB suggested a new articulation that re-attended to worker's inquiry, and which developed the capacities of workerism to offer 'ecological' analysis through the critique of constant capital - connecting such contemporary concerns back to the labour-process.

 

[butchersapron]

Yes! This stuff had been appearing in Italian for 20 years now but because some middle-brow boradsheet types love Negri that's all we get. Back to basic is all that was needes to be said as that blurb as well.