Leggiamo Tronti

Notes: Factory and Society

I think Tronti’s main argument in this article is that the revolution begins in the factory given by the formula: factory => society => State.

The article begins with a discussion of capitalist production a la Marx: production as work process and process of valorization; work for use-value vs. exchange value; dead and living labour; the wage form; absolute and relative surplus value; mystificatory processes at work within capitalist production

I am not too clear on this part of the article probably a result of a need to review some of the above concepts as used by Marx and of lazy reading. Heavily abstract writing tends to have this effect on me.

However, I think the main point being made here is that capitalist production is inherently antagonistic and the key site of capitalism (if I read this right, he seems to reduce consumption, distribution and exchange as different moments of production or at least as subordinate to production). Tronti is thus setting up here his argument that the site of production should be the privileged site of working class struggle.

Marx: “What is important here is to see that production and consumption…appear in any case as moments of a process where production is the veritable starting point…thus its predominant factor, the act where the process renews itself.”

Tronti then goes on to describe the emergence of capitalist society, crucially for his argument, a process that begins from within production.

My rough understanding of what Tronti writes here is as follows: As capital moves from absolute to relative surplus value, that is as capitalism begins to manage/define the social relations of production, it (or rather the social relations of production) creeps outside the immediate site of production to shape and eventually define society since production is an inherently social activity and thus changes therein pass through the walls of the workplace so to speak. In short capitalist production leads to the capitalist society or the social factory. The political regulation of the working day and the emergence of the collective capitalist/the modern state are manifestations of the emergence/emerging of capitalist society. Thus, capitalist society has its center of gravity in capitalist production.

“Thus, due to the immediately social nature of work, the ever more exclusive capitalist domination over the conditions of work expands and deepens; and, by means of this domination and the ever more rational use of all the conditions of production, capitalist exploitation of the workforce/labour power develops and specializes.”

“It is not by chance that Marx placed the chapter on the working day when discussing the passage from absolute surplus value to relative surplus value, from the capital that seizes the labour process as it finds it to the capital that disrupts this labour process in order to model it in its own image and in its own resemblance. The struggle for the 8-hour working day is historically at the heart of this passage.”

The emergence of capitalist society is not a process driven by capital alone or predominantly. It is shaped on the contrary predominantly by the struggle between the working class and the capitalist class with the working class as the most active agent, the instigator of struggle.

“The working class struggle forced the capitalist to change the form of his domination. This is to say that the pressure of the work force is capable of forcing capital to modify as far as its internal composition, that the workforce intervenes from within capital as an essential component of capitalist development, that it pushes forward from within, capitalist production and forces it to spill over into all the exterior relations of social life.”

“The collective capitalist, be it by the conclusions of various boards of inquiry, or by the brutal intervention of the State, first of all seeks to convince, and in the end to force the individual capitalist to model himself on the general and uniform needs of capitalist social production.”

“The more capitalist production penetrates deeply and invades expansively the sum of social relations, the more society appears as the whole vis-a-vis production and production like a particular part vis-a-vis at society. When the particular is generalized and becomes universal, it appears as represented by the general and the universal.”

From the above argument it follows that just as capitalism attacks the working class within production in order to change it and society according to its interests, similarly working class struggle can do likewise and overthrow capitalist society and the State through revolutionary struggle within production, which for Tronti means the factory – “Social production has become industrial production.”

“…at this stage, it is not only possible, but historically indispensable to thrust at the heart of the social relation of production the global struggle against the social system, and to put in crisis bourgeoisie society from within capitalist production.”

And to achieve this the working class must be opposed to its own constitution as the working class, to its own existence as a part of capital. “The collective worker is not only against the machine in the form of constant capital, but he is also against labour power itself in the form of/as variable capital.” And further down, “It is evident that the integration of the capitalist class into the system becomes, consequently, a vital necessity for capitalism: the fact that the workers refuse this integration prevents the system from functioning. The only possible alternative become: the dynamic stabilization of the system or the workers’ revolution.” Is this one of the roots of the “refusal of work” of Italian politics in the 1970s?

I am not too sure about the last part of the article.

First: “The development of the productive forces is the “historical mission” of capitalism. And, actually, it is the foundation at the same time of its major contradiction: because the ceaseless development, of the productive forces cannot but involve the continual development of greatest of productive forces: the working class as a revolutionary class.”

He then goes on to write: “Because the only insoluble contradiction of capitalism is the working class within capitalism: or rather it becomes it from the moment when it autonomously/self- organizes as revolutionary class.”

So one the one had he seems to tie the strength of the working class to stages of capitalist development (the more advanced the stage the stronger the working class) and on the other, working class strength is based upon autonomous or self-organization. So which is it for Tronti? Or does he mean that as capitalism develops the working class becomes potentially stronger but this potential is only realized if the class gets itself organized? I am more keen to agree with this although I am still wary of linking the strength of any collectivity to its position within production or the economic system more broadly. For me at this point, “strength” is tied to organization. In short, one can be marginal to the economy and, if organized, present a significant challenge to the system. I think we can see lots of examples of this, such as the Zapatistas. And finally what does Tronti mean by stronger as in a more “developed productive force”?

And he goes on to say that revolutionary class means organized into the worker’s party, that is the party based within the factory.

“The problem today is no longer to know if political conscience must be brought to the worker from the outside, and if this role falls to the party. It is the development of capitalism, of capitalist production which ends up shaping the borders of bourgeoisie society, in short of the factory that has imposed from now its exclusive domination of society as a whole, which has already dictated directly the solution to the problem: the role of bringing political conscience to the workers returns to the party, but it must do it from within production. There is no one today that can think of putting in place, little by little, a revolutionary process without the political organization of the working class, without the workers’ party.

As long as the party is “bringing political consciousness” to workers, this still seems to me an act from the outside, outside the working class, and all the consequences that follow.