Leggiamo Tronti

Nate:
My notes on ch1. This chapter originally appeared in 1962 in issue one of Mundo Nuovo (New World). Opens with a quote from Rudolf Schlessinger, who I’d not heard of before. Moves on say that he’ll advance some working hypotheses that will have to be deepened and verified.

“And above all, a premise: an inquiry that wants to take up once again the discussion of the present validity of fundamental marxist affirmations should confront Marx not with his time but with ours. Capital should be judged according to contemporary capitalism.” (p35, spanish ed.) Indeed.

Capitalism’s development gets us closer to/unfolds the truth/nature of capitalism (Tronti says “the secret” of capitalism). Don’t know what to do with that.

For Tronti is certain that “here, in the social organization of the most developed capitalism, the decisive historic confrontation between the working class and capital should produce itself” and “on this same terrain the class struggle between worker theory and bourgeois ideologies should express itself”. (36.)

Advanced capitalism explains prior capitalism, not vice versa. “Consequently, the verification of a thought is effected not with the social terrain that has apparently produced it, but rather with that which later surpasses it, because it is precisely this which it has produced in reality. ” (36)

“authentically revolutionary thought tends to destroy that which already exists in order to construct in its place what still does not exist.” (37) This has the following two components:
1. the ruthless critique of all that exists, aka critique of bourgeois ideology
2. the positive analysis of the present, aka “scientific analysis of capitalism”
Tronti identifies the former with Marx’s critique of Hegel’s philosophy of right, and the latter with Marx’s Capital.

Marx identified general abstract points, which in turn need to be taken as the point of departure for concrete understanding of the present. And ideology critique must also be carried out. I’m curious to see what comes of ideology critique as the book unfolds. My own recent thoughts have been anti- what I understand of the uses of the terms ideology and ideology-critique. That said, critique in the sense of engaging with and defeating (divesting each other and ourselves of) the bosses’ lies is of course necessary, but requires no theory of fetishism etc to do.

Sounds like the SI here: “an ideology is always bourgeois because it is always a mystified reflection of the class struggle on the terrain of capitalism”, against which he proposes revolutionary theory. Anti- any talk of revolutionary ideology as well. (38)

There is a de-ideologization of Marxism to be carried out, which is not to say a one of Marx, which Tronti takes pains to distinguish (if one can side with the founder authentically one beats all the followers). There is a critique to be made internal to Marx, which involves engaging in trying to understand contemporary capitalism. This is not the work of demystifying some marxian theories. (39)

In the right circumstances, theory becomes a material force (40). I think Dunayevskaya says this as well.

Tronti cites Lenin, there is not revolutionary movement w/ out revolutionary theory. He adds that it is equally certain that “revolutionary theroy is not possible without revolutionary movement.” Theory must proceed to practice, one of “rediscovery and reorganization of the only authentically subversive forces that live inside capitalism”, contributing to the becoming-conscious and giving “materially organized form to the revolutionary instance that expresses itself objectively in this existence”. Furthermore, “the process of demystification (demythification?) of marxism is not possible without workers power. In reality, the worker power - the autonomous organization of the working class - constitutes the real process of demystification, because it is the material base for the revolution.” (41).

Thus, the main polemic for Marxists today is not against vulgar economy, but the vulgar politics of the worker movement. Tronti specifies, though, that this should be carried out cautiously and, perhaps, constructively:

“the internal critique of the worker movement should always express itself as external struggle against the class enemy, and as such the internal critique of marxism should express itself above all as struggle against bourgeois thought.” This ideology critique, though, is secondary, as it must be preceded and founded by the positive analysis of capitalism today. (Positive precedes and makes possible the negative.) (41) The next step: analysis of contemporary capitalism should lead to “theory of the revolutionary proletariat starting from modern capitalism. Worker revolution - with all of its instruments - should become anew and concretely the minimum program of the worker movement.” (42) This project Tronti identifies with learning to replicate the leap from Marx to Lenin, from a Marx for our time to a Lenin for our time.