Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Class and other social divisions
Date: Sun, 10 Feb 2002 09:18:19 -0600


commie00,

I understand your hesitations and criticisms.  I am not posing this as a
fully worked out position.  I am trying to understand race and gender in a
different relationship to class.  IMO, that may also mean a
reconceptualization of class.  I am not trying to leave class as negation,
but maybe I am trying to reconceptualize race and gender as moments within
the separation of the producer from the means of producing.

For example, I do not find most discussions of gender particularly
satisfying.  The various twists and turns of structural Marxism around this
are enough to give that kind of 'marxism' the lie.  Have we done better
however?  Capitalist patriarchy implies a certain form of the separation of
the producer from the means of producing which does not immediately equate
in any meaningful way with commodified labor, which is typically one way of
understanding the working class.  Women do not buy or sell their
reproductive labor on the market in the majority of cases.  That is why the
discussion of 'Wages for housework' a few weeks ago was actually a very
important discussion.  I am thinking in part of Harry's clarification on why
the waging of housework would be potentially positive.

I have not felt that the notion of class presented in even the most
interesting autonomist discussions is adequate.  This is one way of trying
to think through those problems raised by autonomist Marxism but not, IMO,
resolved by it.

You may be right.  In the process, I may deprive class of all meaning and
find myself returning to the beginning, but I have already had some
interesting insights that have made the attempt worthwhile.  If I return to
where we started, so be it.  I am prepared to go where necessary.

A few specific comments below.

Cheers,
Chris

>
> > > The main problem involves confusion about the very notion of class
> itself
> > > and the most fundamental separation of class society.  It isn't class.
>
> so class isn't the "funadamental separation" of *class* society? er... am
i
> missing something?

Maybe 'class' needs to be rethought.  Anyway, that hardly constitutes a
critique except of the most formalistic type.

> > If we see class as a relation of antagonism between
> > > two poles, if we see class as that kind of separation, we also have to
> > > realize that patriarchy and race represent similar polarities,
> > representing
> > > different aspects of the capital-labor relation in more highly
mediated,
> > > sometimes obscured forms.
>
> behind all the jargon, the basic problem i see here is your reduction of
the
> concept of class to an almost meaningless state. in fact, i'm not entirely
> sure what you mean by class... is class distinction based in the
seperation
> of the producers from the means of production? that's what i've always
> understood as the basis of class.

I understand class in the same way.  However, I am wondering if race and
patriarchy cannot also be understood in a similar way, if we want to be
historically precise.  Slavery comes to mind as a separation which does not
match the dual-freedom of the working class Marx talks about.  I think that
I have been gnawing on the argument between myself and Jamal.  Maybe we were
both wrong.

Woman's labor was typically separated from the means of producing in so far
as the necessary goods to reproduction can only be acquired with money, but
money can only be acquired by wage labor, and women's labor is not waged
labor.  Hence wages for housework.

Anyway, I sent you something much longer on this, but I think that is the
general intent.

> on top of this, i've always understood the labor / capital split as the
> class split. that is: if something manifests as "labor" it is "working
> class" in terms struggle, etc.

Well, that's what I am calling into question.

> if this is so, then patriarchy and race, yes, represent different aspects
of
> the labor / capital relation because they are different aspects of the
class
> division... and the struggle against them as different aspects of class
> struggle.
>
> and from here, methinks, we get a very expanded definition of class.

I think that, at the moment, I don't think that these fit within class very
well.  I think that a lot of contortionist tricks have been done around
this.  Even Harry's discussion in Reading Capital Politically left me
unsatisfied and it was by far the most thoughtful brief point on the matter
I had read, taking what I always found implicit in the work of John
Holloway, et al and making it explicit.

> > We can think of this in terms laid out by Italian
> > autonomist
> > > Marxism, as specific compositions of the capital-labor relation,
> existing
> > as
> > > the outcome of specific class struggles.
>
> yes... as specific *CLASS* compositions. the key moment of autonomist
> theory, for me, is preciesely this understanding: that these things,
within
> capitalism, come to represent the labor / capital division, and thus are
> moments of class division, and thus are potential fissurs in capitalism
> because they open up different moments in class struggle.
>
> trying to seperate them from the labor / capital relation shows, i think,
a
> misunderstanding of capitalism, and how it operates. but trying to
> differentiate the capital / labor relation from "class" just boggles my
> mind.
>
> marx's idea viz. alienated labor giving rise to class is true because
> alienated labor gives rise to the labor / capital dialectic... the labor /
> capital dialectic is what class is.
>
Maybe.  Still thinking about it.  Good points.

Cheers,
Chris



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