Old tactics for a new strategy
Nate:
Ch5. “Old tactics for a new strategy”
This chapter was originally published as an article in Classe Operaia #1, May 1964. I’d like to know more about how the articles that make up the first part of this book were received at the time. In any case…
“The problem is this: how to make a discourse that has, and wants to have in this phase, the character of political theory be immediately practical. How to tactically apply in a new way a new strategy.” (100, Sp. ed.)
“the spontaneity of the struggle moves in the highest points of development of the working class (…) this type of spontaneity should be understood, critiqued, and brought down [?? not sure I have this last word right, if so… what the fuck?]”
“In critical moments of capitalist development there reappear, in an open form, various levels of class struggle. The most backward worker sectors tend today to take on, in an active manner, traditional types of struggles, general but defensive. The most advanced sectors, on the contrary, tend to respond anew by renouncing the open struggle, given the lack of offensive capacity of the organized worker movement. Both options spontaneously favor the process of stabilization of the conjuncture. The bosses are in fact provoking exactly those two types of responses. They attack the advanced level of the working class, because they expect here passive response, that leaves a greater capitalist power in the factory and debilitates and demoralizes the too strong workers pressure of recent years. They need, on the other hand, in other places, active struggles, but backward ones, in order to make the degree of development presently reached by the class struggle recede and to make homogeneity and, as a result, the possibility for control over totality of labor power in the social plane. These are the true conjunctural difficulties. These should be resolved before [programmacion - I looked this up and it said ‘organization’, here does it mean capitalist planning? political program? both? neither? I’ll check the Italian and see if I can make this any clearer.]” (100-101)
“the science of capital has adequately seen the causes of the crisis of the conjuncture: clearly from a technical-economic point of view, in an obscured way from the politico-institutional point of view. In accord with this, and given its needs, it commits the error of making a tactic of stabilization precede in time the strategy of [programmacion - I assume this means organization of production, but I’m not sure]. Between these two moments there opens today a formidable occasion for the class struggle.” (101)
Tronti writes of “a macroscopic example of the political use of union struggle” during the 1950s in Italy, “struggle in the productive structures, immediate confrontation with the boss, the possibility of rapid wage gains, but also sindicalist illusions, errors of spontaneism, infravalorization [? as in under-valuing?] of organization. Starting from these elements there is reinforced, on one hand the concepts of the “mass party”, and there responds, on the other hand, the organization of minoritarian “groups” for intervention into struggles.” (103) [This sounds like it could describe today as well.]
“The worker use of the union struggle has overcome (…) the capitalist use of the union.” (103) That’s interesting.
“a law of development: when the political level of the working class and the political unification of capital increase, the union tends to separate itself from the immediate interest of workers, and to integrate itself completely, as institutional mediation, within the capitalist interest.” (104)
“It is not for the workers to resolve the problems of the conjuncture. Let the bosses do it, by themselves.” “It’s their system,” Tronti writes. Let them do it. (104) So no “what happens after” for Tronti then. “a strategy of total refusal of capitalist society should find the positive tactical forms for most effective aggression against the concrete power of the capitalists. (…) blocking production is what [capital] today can not stand (…) blocking production in strategic points. The boss attacks in the factory in order to demolish the workers pressure: in the factory it is necessary to use this attack as a multiplier of this pressure. (…) to intervene in this sense: to force high levels of struggle (…) to impose the character of open confrontation, to transform the cult of passivity into into open struggle, to start up [like starting an engine, to crank], with this kind of violence, the old organizations. In these conditions, no form of worker initiative can replace the traditional fundamental form of struggle: the factory strike, the mass strike.” (105) Interestingly enough. Tronti doesn’t see this as a decisive blow against capital. Rather, it will initiate a recomposition with a new balance of forces favorable to the working class. Otherwise, barring this struggle, recomposition will occur for the worse (ie, recomposition of the capital relation along w/ political decomposition of the working class). I’d be curious to know from someone who knows Italian history, what happened from ‘64 on - was there action like Tronti called for or not (the Hot Autumn, might be such?), does it fit his descriptions and predictions? (The events of the late 70s certainly suggest decomposition.)
“the link in which the chain will break will not be that in which capital is weakest, but rather that in which the working class will be strongest.” (105) Is this descriptive/theoretical/retroactive — breaks happen due to worker power not capital weakness, this is assessed after the fact of a break — or prescriptive/political/forward looking — don’t focus on the perceived weak links of capitalist development but the perceived strong points of the working class for present and future action?
On 106, last line of the second to last paragraph, Tronti calls for a “permanent worker assembly.” I’d like to know more about that and what he’s referencing.
