Notes on the Introduction
Alex:
I have no page numbers for the quotes since I am using the French online version that is not numbered. Perhaps I could number the paragraphs if need…
On theory and practice:
I read Tronti here as writing against dogmatism and calling for “theory from below” which I liked and agree with.
“Against the aged and blunted bourgeois thought, the worker point of view can, without a doubt, live now the era of its robust youth. For this, it is necessary to break violently from its immediate past, to refuse the traditional role officially assigned to it, surprise the enemy by developing an improvised theoretical framework, unforeseen and uncontrolled.”
“Knowledge is tied to struggle. To truly know is to hate truly.”
Speaking of poetic writing: “Nevertheless it is difficult to escape the impression that today the path of a new type of Marxist research is opening before us, and that the long night, the long dogmatic sleep of the workers thought are not drawing to an end.”
“No, the problem now is not to know what must replace the old world, but how to defeat it.”
“We will thus learn that the tactic is not written once and for all “sur les tables de la Loi” [not sure how to translate this phrase; “on the pages/charts/volumes of the Law”??]; it is an everyday invention that is attached to reality and that at the same time frees itself from all preconceived ideas, in short, the only type of productive imagination capable of rendering thought operative and of truly moving on to action.”
On organization:
“And Lenin was the only one among the revolutionary leaders of Europe that held firmly to an elementary principle of subversive praxis that was for him the imperative itself of practice: never entrust the party in the hands of those who hold it.”
Having read the relevant parts of Steve Wright’s Storming Heaven before reading the introduction this seems a preview of Tronti’s belief in the need for a vanguard revolutionary party led by a leader or leadership that somehow subordinates its own interests to the interests of the working class. (Storming Heaven p. 70-75) I guess we’ll be discussing this more as we get to the relevant parts of the book.
hi Alex,
Thanks for this. I’ll respond further ASAP.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — January 13, 2006 @ 7:22 am
hi again Alex,
I like the ‘from below’ element too. I think one of the things I pause over re: Tronti’s Lenin invocations is that I wonder how much that ‘from below’ gets prefigured from above by the party and the politics that entails. I’m not sure. Do you have any thoughts on that so far?
Re: Storming Heaven, my copy’s on loan to a friend, I need to get it back and review the section you mention, the organization question is one of the biggest on my mind in reading the book.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — January 15, 2006 @ 5:41 am
Hi Nate,
Yes, I share your concerns about the “theory from below” becoming prefigured from above by the party. I think this is the outcome to be expected when strategy and tactics are entrusted in the hands of a Lenin, which, drawing from what I’ve read so far of the book and from Steven’s book, Tronti has in mind the figure of a revolutionary intellectual party leader. I find it a bit of a puzzle that Tronti can in one instance advocate research and militancy seemingly “from below” and then argue for a new Lenin figure as the answer to the question of organization. I guess this is the whole “weight of history” on the imagination phenomenon at work. The potential for other “answers” to the question of organization is there in parts of his writing but is quickly buried under the Party.
Comment by Alex — January 17, 2006 @ 3:19 am
hi Alex,
That’s well put. That’s my sense as I read the book too. And in Steve’s book, that’t what seems to keep happening, the recurrence of vanguardism. Separating out the useful elements from the not so useful (or worse) ones in Tronti will I think mean having to keep engage with the vanguardist elements.
take care,
Nate
Comment by Nate — January 17, 2006 @ 4:23 am