Autonomous Class War - a definition

[butchersapron]

What's the matter with that nino?

 

[nino_savatte]

What's the matter with that nino?

It isn't racist enough, torres.

 

[butchersapron]

Nothing ever is.

 

[nino_savatte]

You don't understand sarcasm or irony, do you? Only when it suits, eh?

 

[Megaton]

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.

Quick! Someones swallowed a dictionary!

This reminds me of Pseuds Corner in Private Eye....

 

[butchersapron]

You don't understand sarcasm or irony, do you? Only when it suits, eh?

*whoosh*

 

[nino_savatte]

*whoosh*

The sound of the wind blowing through your bonce.

 

[butchersapron]

Excellent, one minute! Here boy! Here boy!

 

[nino_savatte]

Don't give up your day job (not that you'd have one being a Class Warrior).

 

[butchersapron]

Slacking there - 3 minutes. I may have to tighten your leash.

 

[nino_savatte]

Slacking there - 3 minutes. I may have to tighten your leash.

Ah, the dog analogy...weak but only to be expected from a man with the discursive talents of a paramoecium.

Still sharpening those knives I see. Who else will you stab in the back?

 

[butchersapron]

Nutter! No biscuits for you tonight. (and put down that biology dictionary - you don't understand any of it)

Hey nino, am i a in red action, class war, a trot or what? Who am i? Because you've told me that i'm not who i am already a number of times and told me that i'm someone else (whilst telling a whole host of other people that they're also him). Your skills are as sharp as ever.

 

[nino_savatte]

I think you're not just a bully, you're an arrogant prick as well.

Hey nino, am i a in red action, class war, a trot or what? Who am i? Because you've told me that i'm not who i am already a number of times and told me that i'm someone else (whilst telling a whole host of other people that they're also him). Your skills are as sharp as ever.

You're a slippery fucker, that's all I know. Oh and you're exaggerating - as you're somewhat prone to do. I never said that you "were in Red action", I asked you if you were in Red Action. Asking you something and telling you what you are are to very different things. You're pretty good at smear jobs too.

For someone who likes be thought of as a serious and sensible debater, you would rather engineer a confrontation than offer a correction - as you did on the thread that you're mentioning here. You have no room to talk, friend.

So how would I know who you are, if I can't see your face? For all I know, you could be anyone.

 

[butchersapron]

I think you're not just a bully, you're an arrogant prick as well.

You're a slippery fucker, that's all I know. Oh and you're exaggerating - as you're somewhat prone to do. I never said that you "were in Red action", I asked you if you were in Red Action. Asking you something and telling you what you are are to very different things. You're pretty good at smear jobs too.

For someone who likes be thought of as a serious and sensible debater, you would rather engineer a confrontation than offer a correction - as you did on the thread that you're mentioning here. You have no room to talk, friend.

So how would I know who you are, if I can't see your face? For all I know, you could be anyone.

Nice one! I bet you had to get someone to restrain you from immediately posting that lest you appear to be at my beck and call (and you are). I expect the keyboard got a rignt hammering when you finally let go.

Did you have free school dinners nino?

 

[nino_savatte]

Nice one! I bet you had to get someone to restrain you from immediately posting that lest you appear to be at my beck and call (and you are). I expect the keyboard got a rignt hammering when you finally let go.

Did you have free school dinners nino?

The desperate ejaculations of Mr Holier-than-thou.

Are you still wearing nappies, torres?

 

[butchersapron]

Do nappies often make you think of ejacualations len?

 

[nino_savatte]

What a curious link but only to be expected from someone with a command of English that would make a 2 year old blush.

 

[butchersapron]

You're doing well today though - 3 of these and you're usually shouting at everyone else that you've got someone on IGNORE.

 

[nino_savatte]

He's holier than thou and he's prolier than thou but he's got the discursive talents of housebrick. I'd get more sense out of a housebrick...and they have more uses.

 

[butchersapron]

You should do a blog nino - or do you do one already?

 

[nino_savatte]

How about you, torres? Avid blogger or just a layer of logs?

 

[butchersapron]

Very good! Now you're getting into the swing of it -albeit in a embarassing 'trendy vicar way', but it's the effort that i appreciate.

 

[teuchter]

You're doing well today though - 3 of these and you're usually shouting at everyone else that you've got someone on IGNORE.

I'm on the nino_savatte ignore list (so it is claimed, anyway).

Are you jealous? Seems like you're going to have to try a bit harder. It's not an honour handed out to just anyone, you know.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

having mistakenly wandered into this thread hoping for (say) a comparison between the paradigms of Toni Negri and Adriano Sofri, I find that the phrase 'Autonomous Class War' seems to have been actualised in the playground sense...Sorry for intruding, carry on playing.

 

[butchersapron]

Well sofri is meaningless in todays terms, as the politics he endorsed and developed ended up in labour party entyrism, political confusion and the GLC indentity politics. Negri doesn't have a 'paradigm' as such (i'm not sure individuals can) but it's noticable that his new found popularity in anglophone countries has taken place simultanteously with his abandonment of the most crucial and powerful aspects of operaismo (namely class composition) and his re-embrace of western technologicial determinist leninism.

 

[butchersapron]

btw, a proper discussion on the history, the theory and the pratice of what has been called 'autonomism' is till possible, but it's not helped by the egotistial stuff in the OP.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

Well sofri is meaningless in todays terms, as the politics he endorsed and developed ended up in labour party entyrism, political confusion and the GLC indentity politics.

Are we talking about the same Sofri? I was thinking in particular of his concept of 'internal vanguards' (in 'Organising For Workers Power') which I thought was very nifty indeed, and way superior to Leninism, and not in itself reformist at all, surely, whatever he may have done subsequently. Or are you referring to what some Big Flame members did--I was in Big Flame, but not one of them

Negri doesn't have a 'paradigm' as such (i'm not sure individuals can) but it's noticable that his new found popularity in anglophone countries has taken place simultanteously with his abandonment of the most crucial and powerful aspects of operaismo (namely class composition) and his re-embrace of western technologicial determinist leninism.

interesting point: is this gone into in detail anywhere?

 

[butchersapron]

Are we talking about the same Sofri? I was thinking in particular of his concept of 'internal vanguards' (in 'Organising For Workers Power') which I thought was very nifty indeed, and way superior to Leninism, and not in itself reformist at all, surely, whatever he may have done subsequently. Or are you referring to what some Big Flame members did--I was in Big Flame, but not one of them

That's where it ended up Larry. You know this far better than me i suspect.

interesting point: is this gone into in detail anywhere?

Steve Wright and Sergio Bologna (from around 75) to have quite aggressively criticised Negri for this - for substituting an abstract new 'social worker' engaged in immaterila labour (theorised as a 'tendency' by Negri) for the old manual worker but with the exact same political characteristics of the old manual workers and their organisations - namely, hegemony over the terrain of struggle (i.e others struggles) in terms of content and organisational form. Give me a minute and i'll edit in some refs/links.

edit:

Reality check: Are We Living In An Immaterial World?

Immaterial Labour is seen by (post)Marxists and capitalists alike as the motor of the new economy. Steve Wright recovers Marx's theory of value from critics such as Antonio Negri to ask whether it is as 'immeasurably' productive as is claimed?

The Limits of Negri's Class Analysis

And there's a blinding article by Bologna in The philosophy of Antonio Negri volume 1 (ed Murphy and Mustapha) that's a very harsh review of Negri's Proletarians and the state, that is spot on in just about every area.

 

[Larry O'Hara]

That's where it ended up Larry. You know this far better than me i suspect.



Steve Wright and Sergio Bologna (from around 75) to have quite aggressively criticised Negri for this - for substituting an abstract new 'social worker' engaged in immaterila labour (theorised as a 'tendency' by Negri) for the old manual worker but with the exact same political characteristics of the old manual workers and their organisations - namely, hegemony over the terrain of struggle (i.e others struggles) in terms of content and organisational form. Give me a minute and i'll edit in some refs/links.

edit:

Reality check: Are We Living In An Immaterial World?

Immaterial Labour is seen by (post)Marxists and capitalists alike as the motor of the new economy. Steve Wright recovers Marx's theory of value from critics such as Antonio Negri to ask whether it is as 'immeasurably' productive as is claimed?

The Limits of Negri's Class Analysis

And there's a blinding article by Bologna in The philosophy of Antonio Negri volume 1 (ed Murphy and Mustapha) that's a very harsh review of Negri's Proletarians and the state, that is spot on in just about every area.

thanks for the Negri references: I see you have no such detail for the Sofri claims. I know very well what happened to BF: and do not blame Sofri's ideas for it one bit. Far more influential was Geoff Hodgson's theories--as outlined by the keynote Duncan/McKenzie 'Seizing the Power' in BF Discussion Bulletin January 1979.

 

[butchersapron]

Well, what sofri proposed was either influential - in which case where BF (largely) ended up is very relavant, or it was uninfluential in which case why are we talking about him?

As it goes we have a poster on here who was active in mersyide in the late 60s/early 70s who has a very acute critique of sofri and his attmempts to import his reading of the italian conditions into the UK - i hope they'll post something on this.