Operaism

[Widerstand]

Yumyum. I'm reading a book on Post-Operaism right now, and it explains the origins (operaism), but I'm not quite sure if I understood the terms right.

Is a "mass worker" (operaio massa) basically anyone in a Fordist factory at a job that requires next to no education and is part of mass production?

What exactly is a "social worker" (operaio sociale)?

[28350]

What is Operaism and Post-Operaism?

[Palingenisis]

I wish I was better at other languages.

How similar were their politics to those of the Independent Working Class Association (non-Marxist-Leninist but I give them critical support)?

http://www.iwca.info/?page_id=1410

[Widerstand]

What is Operaism and Post-Operaism?

A Marxist tendecy developed in the 70s in Italy. Theoretically, it focuses on the Grundrisse much more than on Das Kapital, has influences of Spinoza and Machiavelli, and, for Post-Operaism at least, also from Post-Structuralism - it also focuses on class composition, class antagonism and class struggle as a driving force behind capital development and restructuring, and non-wage labor much more than other Marxist schools. From what I gather it's much closer to Anarchism than to Leninist tendencies of Marxism, opposes the idea of a (vanguard) party and is deeply anti-statist.

It is also far less centered on the idea of a working class, but rather embraces the idea of multitude. More on that can be found here: http://libcom.org/library/multitude-or-working-class-antonio-negri


How similar were their politics to those of the Independent Working Class Association (non-Marxist-Leninist but I give them critical support)?

http://www.iwca.info/?page_id=1410

Not much at all, I suppose. I'm not aware of operaismo ever focusing on things like "anti-social behavior" or fighting against drug dealers, in fact certain Autonomist groups (in Germany) have allied with drug dealers and users against police repression.

(Post-)Operaist Writers, notable John Holloway, have often praised the Zapatistas and migrant struggles.

[Palingenisis]

From what I understand of it the "Social Factory" idea is rather Maoist :blushing:.

I thought though that Italian movement in the 70s was Leninist just not stupidly dogmatically so unlike the German and Dutch autonomist movements?

[Widerstand]

From what I understand of it the "Social Factory" idea is rather Maoist :blushing:.

I've never seen any reference to Mao in any operaist writings, and I'm not familiar enough with Mao's work to really judge whether or not there are similarities.

But it can be said that operaismo generally assumes a post-fordist society, whereas from what I know of Maoism, it generally assumes a semi-feudal / pre-fordist society, no?



I thought though that Italian movement in the 70s was Leninist just not stupidly dogmatically so unlike the German and Dutch autonomist movements?

Many operaist texts actually denounce Leninism (Holloway goes as far as to call it reformist because of it's insistence on having a state). Operaismo was deeply opposed to the Stalin-sympathetic/Stalinist PCI, which at that time took anti-worker positions aching of social democracy/reformism.

The German Autonomist movement is a mix really, though it does draw a lot from Autonomous Marxism, which developed out of operaismo. The Dutch Autonomist movement however is largely Anarchist, although the two movements have very similar politics and tactics.

[Palingenisis]

The PCI under Togliatti was one of the most revisionist/reformist of the CPs outside of maybe the CP-USA (which never the less had a strong revolutionary current among principally its black members). It was hardly what I would call Stalinist. After him it basically became little different from the British Labour Party.

[Palingenisis]

I've never seen any reference to Mao in any operaist writings, and I'm not familiar enough with Mao's work to really judge whether or not there are similarities.
.

I meant by Maoist its focus on society as a whole, cultural struggle, counter power and things like that as opposed to narrow economism.

[Widerstand]

I meant by Maoist its focus on society as a whole, cultural struggle, counter power and things like that as opposed to narrow economism.

Ah. Then I guess there could be similarities, yes (I guess you could also say that the bloc of classes could be slightly compatible with the concept of a multitude).

Is there any text that explains this Maoist focus on society as a whole?

[Widerstand]

The PCI under Togliatti was one of the most revisionist/reformist of the CPs outside of maybe the CP-USA (which never the less had a strong revolutionary current among principally its black members). It was hardly what I would call Stalinist. After him it basically became little different from the British Labour Party.

That would match with what I heard of it, yes. But didn't they, regardless of what they actually were, style themselves as being Stalinist and were supportive of Stalin?

[Palingenisis]

Is there any text that explains this Maoist focus on society as a whole?

I will look in the morning...But something like aspects of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution and the work done by Proletarian Left in France around gay rights and womens' issues within a working class revolutionary as opposed to cross class reformist point of view would be a good example. Not limiting the revolutionary struggle to the work place like some ultra-leftists do is what I meant...seeing cultural struggles outside of it as part of a wider class struggle. Red Cat could explain better but you should get my drift.

[The Douche]

Operaism/Italian Autonomism did come from Leninism, but by the time it had become its own vibrant, independent movement it was staunchly anti-state and anti-lenin.

[Widerstand]

Operaism/Italian Autonomism did come from Leninism, but by the time it had become its own vibrant, independent movement it was staunchly anti-state and anti-lenin.

Well define "from Leninism." Sure you could say the workers (initially) were Leninist and carried some Leninist traces around, but it parted from Leninism quite quickly. In fact I wouldn't even know any operaist text in which Leninism was noticeable as more than a faint hint at best.

[Ravachol]

From what I understand of it the "Social Factory" idea is rather Maoist :blushing:.


The social factory isn't maoist by a far stretch. The social factory holds that capital's continuing restructuring has resulted in the class relations under Capitalism profilerating far beyond and outside the factory gates, with the entirety of the social terrain being subsumed to Capital's logic. The social terrain thus becomes an extension of the factory in the sense that it functions to reproduce the worker AS a worker. The social factory theory is a precursor to the more radical theories surrounding biopolitics emerging from Continental philosophy.



I thought though that Italian movement in the 70s was Leninist just not stupidly dogmatically so unlike the German and Dutch autonomist movements?

Operaismo was originally leninist but gradually moved away from Leninism, keeping only some fragments. The "movement of '77" however contained many Leninist groups like the Brigate Rosse and Prima Linea, drawing upon militants from the Autonomist milieu.



Not much at all, I suppose. I'm not aware of operaismo ever focusing on things like "anti-social behavior" or fighting against drug dealers, in fact certain Autonomist groups (in Germany) have allied with drug dealers and users against police repression.


Autonomism and the IWCA aren't alike at all, the focus on 'anti-social behavior' or whatever is anathema to Autonomism. What they have in common regarding drugs though is the analysis of pushers and social control inherent to addiction and the black market. In the '70s and '80s Italy had a large ammount of drug dealers pushing heroin next to rather harmless drugs such as pot or whatever. This resulted in large ammounts of heroin addicts in working-class areas who were almost under direct control by the dealers and thus open to all kinds of exploitation. As a result, many Autonomist armed groups started focussing on heroin pushers next to cops and bosses as a source of social control, resulting in many a kneecapping.



Well define "from Leninism." Sure you could say the workers (initially) were Leninist and carried some Leninist traces around, but it parted from Leninism quite quickly. In fact I wouldn't even know any operaist text in which Leninism was noticeable as more than a faint hint at best.


Leninism was pretty dominant in the early Autonomist writings of Quaderni Rossi as well as the rather legendary text "Domination & Sabotage" by Negri and post-operaist reflections like "Negri's Lenin and the Subjective Caesura".

[Widerstand]

Leninism was pretty dominant in the early Autonomist writings of Quaderni Rossi as well as the rather legendary text "Domination & Sabotage" by Negri and post-operaist reflections like "Negri's Lenin and the Subjective Caesura".

In what way was it dominant in them? What Leninist concepts did they hold on to?

[Ravachol]

In what way was it dominant in them? What Leninist concepts did they hold on to?

I think this excerpt from Aufheben #11 is relevant.



For example, Panzieri stressed that sabotage merely expressed workersʼ political defeat (Wright, p. 61); and Classe Operaia (ʻWorking Classʼ) suggested that spontaneous struggles were not enough (Wright, p. 69). While we agree that different particular struggles need to be linked up if they are to go beyond themselves, there is a crucial question of the nature of this organization and how it may arise. For the most part, the workerists tended to fetishize formal organizational structure in a way which refl ected their Leninist origins.

In the first place, there was for a long time an unwillingness to cut the
ties to the PCI. Thus, Tronti continued to argue for the necessity of working
within the PCI in order to ʻsaveʼ it from reformism. Tronti was not typical and
ultimately abandoned workerism; but Potere Operaio too maintained links
with the PCI until the events of France 1968, and even then still saw itself
as Leninist. And Negri, despite having written about the contradiction within
autonomia between those who privileged ʻthe movementʼ and the champions
of a ʻLeninistʼ conception of organization, affi rmed his commitment to the
necessity of the Leninist Party even during the events of 1977 (Wright, p.
214).
In part, autonomia emerged as a grouping of militants who felt
the need to criticize Leninist forms of organization and practice (including
the formal party structure), placing emphasis instead on class needs: ʻTo
articulate such needs, organization was to be rooted directly in factories and
neighbourhoods, in bodies capable both of promoting struggles managed
directly by the class itself, and of restoring to the latter that “awareness
of proletarian power which the traditional organisations have destroyed”ʼ
(Comitati Autonomi Operai, 1976, cited in Wright p. 153).
(..)
Although they innovated in some ways, with ideas like the armed party, their conception of organization remained Leninist in its fetishism of formal organizational structure, and showed little sense of Marxʼs quite different conception of the (historical) party.

[Palingenisis]

http://libcom.org/library/party-autonomy-steve-wright

Found this just now but havent read it...It may well the answer the questions about Leninism and what we are discussing.

[The Douche]

Well define "from Leninism." Sure you could say the workers (initially) were Leninist and carried some Leninist traces around, but it parted from Leninism quite quickly. In fact I wouldn't even know any operaist text in which Leninism was noticeable as more than a faint hint at best.

Do you have books for burning? Its a collection of the texts which were used to prove Negri's supposed "leadership" of the red brigades. Anyhow, the first two or three texts in it (which are pre/proto-operaismo) are still coming from a Leninist theoretical approach, and later texts in the book contain a rexamination of the Leninist concepts Negri used.

I wish I could be more specific but I actually read "books for burning" while I was in Iraq (which was like three years ago or so) and before I left I gave it to a friend over there and he never returned it. So my memory of it isn't the best, and I probably didn't understand/process a lot of the content as well as I could have.

[Widerstand]

Do you have books for burning? Its a collection of the texts which were used to prove Negri's supposed "leadership" of the red brigades. Anyhow, the first two or three texts in it (which are pre/proto-operaismo) are still coming from a Leninist theoretical approach, and later texts in the book contain a rexamination of the Leninist concepts Negri used.

I wish I could be more specific but I actually read "books for burning" while I was in Iraq (which was like three years ago or so) and before I left I gave it to a friend over there and he never returned it. So my memory of it isn't the best, and I probably didn't understand/process a lot of the content as well as I could have.

Ah. Well as you said, it was proto-/pre-operaist. I'd be interested in how far the current operaismo / post-operaismo is supposed to come from a Leninist approach (maybe the Imperialism theory?).

Never read Books For Burning, in fact I'm very new to Negri/operaismo.

[Ravachol]

Ah. Well as you said, it was proto-/pre-operaist. I'd be interested in how far the current operaismo / post-operaismo is supposed to come from a Leninist approach (maybe the Imperialism theory?).

Never read Books For Burning, in fact I'm very new to Negri/operaismo.

I have a copy of Books For Burning and as cmoney said, the texts span different historical periods. The second text, "Worker's party against Work (1973)", for example, is far more leninist than the last one "Domination & Sabotage (1977)".

For example, "Worker's party against Work" still talks about the "Dialectical articulations of party organization" and "Hastening the pace from worker's autonomy to worker's leadership" in which the leninist conception of "taking over the old world under a new leadership" is still firmly embedded.

Autonomism has historically always been a very diffuse current which is why even in the Dutch/German autonomen milieu a myriad of clearly Marxist-Leninist armed groups would spring up. The clearest examples being Frontline and the "Rood Verzets Front" in the Netherlands and the Revolutionären Zellen (RZ) in Germany. As Tiqqun states in "This is not a program":



The other strategy, that no longer of war but of the diffuse guerrilla, belongs to Autonomy.
It alone can defeat Empire. It is no longer a matter of assembling into a compact subject to defeat Empire, but to disseminate in a multiplicity of centers like so many fault lines in the capitalist totality. Autonomy will be less an ensemble of radios, groups, arms, festivals, riots, squats, than a certain intensity in the circulation of bodies between all its points. Thus Autonomy does not exclude the existence of organizations in its midst, even when these adhere to ridiculous neo-Leninist pretensions: all organizations find themselves brought back to the empty row of architecture that in various circumstances traverses the flux of the Movement. Now that the Imaginary Party constitutes itself as a secessionist ethical tissue, even the possibility of an nstrumentalization of the movement by organizations, and a fortiori by an infiltration of these organizations, disappears: it is rather they who are bound to be subsumed by it, as simple points on its plan(e) of consistence.
As opposed to fighting organizations, Autonomy relies on indistinction, informality, a semi-clandestinity adequate for conspiratorial practice.

[Widerstand]

I have a copy of Books For Burning and as cmoney said, the texts span different historical periods. The second text, "Worker's party against Work (1973)", for example, is far more leninist than the last one "Domination & Sabotage (1977)".

For example, "Worker's party against Work" still talks about the "Dialectical articulations of party organization" and "Hastening the pace from worker's autonomy to worker's leadership" in which the leninist conception of "taking over the old world under a new leadership" is still firmly embedded.

Ah. Well that explains it. I have so far more concentrated on post-operaism, and pretty much all texts I've read were written after Marx Beyond Marx (1979).


Revolutionären Zellen (RZ) in Germany.

But were really all of the RZ ML? I wouldn't think so, and from my knowledge of the way which the RZ as a network was organized, it was much more Anarchist than Leninist.


As Tiqqun states in "This is not a program":

To be honest, I find that particular quote somewhat agreeable. Much more than, for example, the following quote from "CALL", which clearly seems Leninist (actually, it could be straight out any Left Comm article):


In this context we are those, all those, who feel the tactical need of these three operations:

[...]
2. Advancing, from “natural disaster” to “social movement”, the process of communisation, the construction of the Party.

(highlights mine)

[Ravachol]

But were really all of the RZ ML? I wouldn't think so, and from my knowledge of the way which the RZ as a network was organized, it was much more Anarchist than Leninist.


Well, this is debetable. Most of the armed anti-imperialist groups that sprung up in the '70s where clearly leninist or maoist in their analysis, sometimes bordering on the third-worldist. From the Belgian CCC to the Dutch Rood Verzets Front (which in typical, good old Dutch fashion was nothing but a cheap attempt to imitate the CCC :rolleyes:) or the RZ, all of them shared more or less a similar analysis of imperialism.

It boiled down to seeing imperialism as the highest and final stage of Capitalism (per Lenin) and advocating urban guerilla in the West in order to support the revolutionary people's wars being waged in the 'third world'. This because supposedly revolution could only come from the periphery of Capital. This kind of analysis is more or less the same in the documents produced by the CCC as well as texts from the RZ. They all have leninist roots.



To be honest, I find that particular quote somewhat agreeable. Much more than, for example, the following quote from "CALL", which clearly seems Leninist (actually, it could be straight out any Left Comm article):


Well I understand the confusion but considering the nature of CALL and it being rooted in the 'Insurrectionary Communist' current they do not advocate building 'the party' in a traditional sense. In fact, their use of the word 'party' (as in The imaginary party) could be seen as a continuation and extension of the Autonomist conception of 'the party'. Most Insurrectionary Communists could be considered 'post-class' in a sense that they do not believe there is a 'revolutionary subject', a privileged social group capable of making revolution by virtue of being this or that social subject.

What they argue is that what matters, even moreso than material conditions, is one's attitude towards these conditions. They see society as a set of power mechanisms and governemental practices (per Foucault) and they see the full biopolitical tissue being molded by these practices as having revolutionary potential through their subjection to the practices of power.

While there is truth in this analysis, I think writing of class is rather ridiculous as it is obvious that class society still exists (something they do not deny! au contraire!). Also, the desire for the destruction of a given society arises from the conditions one finds him or herself in under the yoke of that society, the shared dispossion amongst the proletariat is what gives rise to their refusal, their yearning to desert. It is from this refusal that the desire for Communism is born. It's silly at the very least to believe that this desire for the destruction of this society can be born just as easily within the bourgeoisie as anywhere else.

As a result of this analysis however, when they speak of 'construction of the party' they mean the construction of a conscious amelgation of dissenting forces as opposed to those who merely resist biopower unconsciously. There are no organisational strings attached to the concept of Party here.

[Sasha]

i think the continuing confusion about the RZ ideoligy lies more in the fact that they advocated semi-illegality (i.e. not going completly underground like the RAF, living of bankroberys under assumed identies, drive flashy cars etc etc) they stayed as normal members of the alternitive scene, working in info-shops in the daytime blowing shit up in the night, living un-registerd in squats like so many others. So basicly, like the dutch RARA they hid between the thousands and thousands of potential members with made it very hard to track them down. So i would say that their tactics are very similair as those of past and current anarchist autonomist groups (look at an ALF or lots of greek insurectionary groups) but that says nothing about their ideaoligy, the RAF (Leninist) and the 2nd of june (anarchist) both started in the same commune (and in the end even shared members)
the RZs "autonomist" tactics did proof by the way superior, while the RAF members where getting caught left and right the RZ almost didnt loose any members. proving is far more easy to be semi-legal in an semi-legal world than illegal in an legal world with fake papers, wads of unexplainable cash, needing to steal cars etc etc.