tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post6469156934358933611..comments2023-11-05T03:05:16.380-08:00Comments on No Useless Leniency: A Difficult QuestionBenjaminhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comBlogger2125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-22923757750984563572009-04-28T02:56:00.000-07:002009-04-28T02:56:00.000-07:00Yes, I'm still torn over Tronti v. Value-Form Marx...Yes, I'm still torn over Tronti v. Value-Form Marxism. The problem with VFM is that it seems to recompose a quasi-baudrillardian capital qua totality w/o any counter-agency. The interview with Postone by Timothy Brennan is actually fascinating as Postone seems to concede the need for appealing to state constraint on the market and a recognition of the 'fissured' character of capital:<br />In my view, however, capitalism should be understood as the social and cultural order within which we live—an order that can’t be sufficiently grasped in negative terms, but that is characterized by a complex interplay of what we might regard as positive and negative moments, all of which are historically constituted.<br /><br />http://platypus1917.home.comcast.net/~platypus1917/postone_brennan_saq2009.pdfBenjaminhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/18237178500472453910noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-7038706923946698710.post-54372891758618726222009-04-27T15:42:00.000-07:002009-04-27T15:42:00.000-07:00Though it raises the proverbial red herring of org...Though it raises the proverbial red herring of organisation, the following quote by Tronti is suggestive of a dimension that the claustrophobic "functionalism" of a Postone, along with other value-form readings of the working-class as posited by Kapital-Geist, seems to miss out - i.e. the political moment which is intrinsic to exploitation and the formation and reproduction of classes. Leaving aside any idealism of the multitudes (resistance comes first, etc.), I think there is a broader insight of operaismo regarding value struggles that shouldn't be abandoned entirely, even in a baleful period when it seems that capital has indeed evacuated itself of any political/antagonistic dialectic:<br /><br />"The working class does what it is. But it is, at one and the same time, the articulation of capital, and its dissolution. Capitalist power seeks to use the workers’ antagonistic will-to-struggle as a motor of its own development. The workers’ party must take this same real mediation by the workers of capital’s interests and organise it in an antagonistic form, as the tactical terrain of struggle and as a strategic potential for destruction."<br /><br />It is precisely the emphasis on tactics and strategy that raises Tronti above the level of idealism. At one point in Operai e Capitale he lucidly prophecies that if the organised working class is incapable of anticipating capital and ambushing it at the crossroads of history (or something to that effect), then it will be decades until it will have any similar opportunity. Only too right.Savonarolahttps://www.blogger.com/profile/08601032824561603860noreply@blogger.com