Leggiamo Tronti

Alex:

In the interests of getting back to the readings I have decided for now to put aside “Social Capital” which I have read several times but need to go over it again since I’m finding it a very tough read. I am paying for not having read more Marx. This chapter was a nice way to get back at it though.

“We too have worked with a concept that puts capitalist development first, and workers second. This is a mistake. And now we have to turn the problem on its head, reverse the polarity, and start again from the beginning: and the beginning is the class struggle of the working class.” Nate wrote: “This is the whole impulse that draws many of us to sources like Tronti, operaismo, and the other moments in the autonomist tradition more broadly construed.” Exactly. I remember reading this quote (in Steven’s book I believe) and having a prolonged “that’s it!” moment.

“Of course, we urgently need to shake off that sense of working class defeat which has for decades dragged down this movement which, in its origins, was the only revolutionary movement of this era. But an urgent practical need is never sufficient basis for a scientific thesis: such a thesis must stand on its own feet, on a solid and complex grounding of material, historical fact.” I also like this a lot.

“Our new approach starts from the proposition that, at both national and international level, it is the specific, present, political situation of the working class that both necessitates and directs the given forms of capital’s development. From this beginning we must now move forward to a new understanding of the entire world network of social relations.” The workers’ struggle as motor/instigator of capitalist development thesis. I found this insight extremely illuminating when I first came across it. This is more than just a corrective to economistic accounts of capitalist development but also to so much political economy that I have studied where capitalist development is read politically but all the initiative is placed in the hands of the capitalist class, the state and more rarely the official labour movement with the power of working class independent of its “representatives” all but ignored.

But I wondered if Tronti takes away the autonomy of the other antagonist in this social relation, the capitalist class. Later he writes “Whilst it is true that the working class objectively forces capital into clear, precise choices, it is also true that capital then makes these choices work against the working class. Capital, at this moment, is better organised than the working class: the choices that the working class imposes on capital run the risk of giving strength to capital. This gives the working class an immediate interest in opposing these choices.” So is he saying that the capitalist class is purely reactionary, only capable of responding to the initiative of the working class? I really like the argument that it is working class struggle that shapes capitalist development but does the capitalist class not sometimes take the initiative? Is it more accurate to say the working class primarily shapes capitalist development, the working class as the main instigator of change but with some exceptions of the capitalist class and the state playing this role? I am trying to think of examples but none come to mind at the moment which doesn’t bode well for my argument!

Nate wrote: “And this compulsion to analyse the class independent of the working class movement, is this from the present onward (because of the state of things today) or does this involve a re-reading and criticism of the history of the working class and its organizations (and perhaps some impostors that posed as its organizations…)?” Good question. As I read I thought Tronti implicitly argues that this involves a re-reading of the history of the working class and its organizations but now I’m not sure. I may have been reading this into the reading.

Eric writes: “Nate wonders, as did I, if Tronti is describing here a stage reached, a recent historical development. I think, though, that what he’s doing is actually correct a long-held theoretical mistake: “Historically, right at its origins, workers’ labour power was already homogeneous at the international level, and–in the course of a long historical period–it has forced capital to become equally homogeneous.”

I’m not quite sure what Tronti means . Eric, would you mind elaborating on this? It would help clear up for me the previous question as posed by Nate.

Nate wrote: “I’ve avoided more of classical Marxism than I probably should have because the people who speak in its name generally strike me as fucks, particularly in their involvement in movements. I’m now trying to play catch up, because I want to know the tradition better.” I laughed out loud when I read this. I’m in the same boat for the same reasons though I suspect I’m even farther behind (hence my struggle to read “Social Capital”)

Tronti writes: “We must entrust ourselves to a new kind of scientific interpretation. We know that the whole process of development is materially embodied in the new level of working class struggles. Our starting point might therefore be in uncovering certain forms of working class struggles which set in motion a certain type of capitalist development which goes in the direction of the revolution.”

Nate asks “Who interprets, though? Generally, is Tronti posing a distinction between the audience (”we”) and “the working class”? What was Tronti doing at the time of this writing? Not working? Or, is the distinction between some of us in the working class and a lot of the rest of the working class? (I don’t think this distinction can be avoided.) I’d want to say that the forms of struggle and organization that are already happening involve some kind of interpretation that’s already happening, by definition. That can be improved of course, and circulated (along w/ the organization processes) - in this sense the ‘uncovering’ would mean ‘uncovering for us and for some other workers’, not any kind of leading of already-organizing workers to consciousness. Also, what’s the last line about, re: colonize people? Is this an anti- thirdworldist/anti-imperialist politics? Is there a contemporary debate Tronti is referencing here?”

I have similar questions here. Reading down a little, I wondered in the margins if Tronti sets up his “working class newspaper” as having some “truth” that allows it to pronounce which struggles are revolutionary and otherwise? I think here he does pose a distinction between the audience or theoretician and the working class. And I read the part on “colonized” people as Tronti definitely taking a shot at thirdworldist politics. I’d like to know too if Tronti is referencing a contemporary debate. Seems a little early but in this regard I don’t know much about the history of such debates.

I also agree that there seems to be a lot of tension on the question of organization. The last two paragraphs make it clear to me that Tronti calls for Organization, the Leninist party but often his thinking often suggests more horizontal forms of organizations. Its a tension that seems to run throughout his work right from the introduction

“This explains the fact that workers will very fast drop forms of organisation that they have only just won. And in place of the bureaucratic void of the general political organisation, they substitute the ongoing struggle at factory level - a struggle which takes ever-new forms which only the intellectual creativity of productive work can discover. Unless a directlyworking class political organisation can be generalised, the revolutionary process will not begin: workers know it, and this is why you will not find them in the chapels of the official parties singing hymns to the ‘democratic’ revolution.”

And the “directly working class political organisation” is the Leninist party.

“The reality of the working class is tied firmly to the name of Karl Marx, while the need of the working class for political Organisation is tied equally firmly to the name of Lenin. With a masterly stroke, the Leninist ’strategy brought Marx to St Petersburg: only the working class viewpoint could have carried out such a bold revolutionary step. Now let us try to retrace the path, with the same scientific spirit of adventure and political discovery. What we call “Lenin in England” is a project to research a new Marxist practice of the working class party: it is the theme of struggle and of organisation at the highest level of political development of the working class.”

I didn’t know who Joe Hill was but thanks Nate for inadvertently introducing him to me. US labour history, another area among many I need to catch up on. If only they taught this stuff during the 5 years I spent in university.