Comments on: … do people think they’re accomplishing? http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/04/12/do-people-think-theyre-accomplishing/ A working notebook Thu, 28 Aug 2008 18:04:44 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=1.5.1-alpha by: Nate http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/04/12/do-people-think-theyre-accomplishing/#comment-2532 Tue, 15 Apr 2008 10:03:51 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/04/12/do-people-think-theyre-accomplishing/#comment-2532 hi Eli, Thanks for your comment. I've got Massimo's book but still need to read it. I hope I wasn't being a jerk in this post - I was quite tired and stressed when I wrote it. If so, then my apologies. I also want to say, I think people saying the types of things I disagree with are wrong but are acting in good faith. I sympathize with them. But I don't empathize. This is probably simplistic of me but I think basically people don't make radical change on the job. By doing the job I mean. So, I don't think my teaching Capital or my writing (writing for academic stuff, anyway) contributes to organizing for power. I think it's useful for me, in the way that my yoga class is, and so perhaps to that extent it may make a contribution (in so far as I make a contribution). Like Penguin selling copies of Capital. I don't want to say nothing can come of any of this, but I don't want to bank on anything coming of it, if that makes sense. I find it useful to draw parallels to other jobs and other industries in thinking about all this. Say there's three commies - one who works as an academic, one who works as a nurse, and one who works as an electrician. I don't know that there are parallel claims that hold up about the connection between ways of doing the job and ways of building power. I mean, all three commies will presumably take part in building power on the job via collective organization and struggle, around the variety of issues people have on the job including doing good work (giving good care, doing good teaching, not cutting corners in wiring people's houses). But the ways of doing the job are goals - we want more power because we want more control because among other things we want to do our jobs this way and not that way. Here's a parallel - when I used to organize hospital workers worked with a committee of janitors. One of the janitors' complaints was that the hospital cut corners on cleaning supplies to save money, so they would run out of disinfectant at the end of each month, leaving the janitors to clean the toilets with whatever they had on hand - soap, windex, whatever. This bothered them because they felt partly responsible. They didn't like the idea that someone might get sicker as a result. It seems to me that the demand made and the end that it demands - the way of doing the job, having adequate cleaning supplies - is not radical, nor would them finding some other source of cleaning supplies be radical (it's ethical, it's good, but it doesn't have a communist content). Organizing for and exercising power to get the employer to provide more cleaning supplies might be, or comes closer to it. Know what I mean? Another way to put this is that I'm quite skeptical (sp?) of the prefigurative claims implied in some of the autonomist/commons-ist perspective. I think the project is building mass organizations to exert power (and in doing so radicalize and educate people, including myself in that term 'people' - ie, I don't mean "I'm already there, let's bring others to where I'm at"). Specifically, to exert power against the valorization process. That's different from trying to implement changes in or practice a different labor process. The two are related, but to my mind the aim is build power to fight the power behind/the power which is the valorization process. Insofar as changes in the labor process (teaching Marx, giving good patient care, etc) contribute to that then they're part of the project. I think such a contribution is not something we should presume - especially the 'we' who work as academics because the ostensible radicalness of our work is one part of how the valorization process occurs at least in some parts of academia. Gotta run. Sorry again that I missed your talk, I look forward to reading it. take care, Nate hi Eli,
Thanks for your comment. I’ve got Massimo’s book but still need to read it. I hope I wasn’t being a jerk in this post - I was quite tired and stressed when I wrote it. If so, then my apologies. I also want to say, I think people saying the types of things I disagree with are wrong but are acting in good faith. I sympathize with them. But I don’t empathize. This is probably simplistic of me but I think basically people don’t make radical change on the job. By doing the job I mean. So, I don’t think my teaching Capital or my writing (writing for academic stuff, anyway) contributes to organizing for power. I think it’s useful for me, in the way that my yoga class is, and so perhaps to that extent it may make a contribution (in so far as I make a contribution). Like Penguin selling copies of Capital. I don’t want to say nothing can come of any of this, but I don’t want to bank on anything coming of it, if that makes sense.

I find it useful to draw parallels to other jobs and other industries in thinking about all this. Say there’s three commies - one who works as an academic, one who works as a nurse, and one who works as an electrician. I don’t know that there are parallel claims that hold up about the connection between ways of doing the job and ways of building power. I mean, all three commies will presumably take part in building power on the job via collective organization and struggle, around the variety of issues people have on the job including doing good work (giving good care, doing good teaching, not cutting corners in wiring people’s houses). But the ways of doing the job are goals - we want more power because we want more control because among other things we want to do our jobs this way and not that way.

Here’s a parallel - when I used to organize hospital workers worked with a committee of janitors. One of the janitors’ complaints was that the hospital cut corners on cleaning supplies to save money, so they would run out of disinfectant at the end of each month, leaving the janitors to clean the toilets with whatever they had on hand - soap, windex, whatever. This bothered them because they felt partly responsible. They didn’t like the idea that someone might get sicker as a result. It seems to me that the demand made and the end that it demands - the way of doing the job, having adequate cleaning supplies - is not radical, nor would them finding some other source of cleaning supplies be radical (it’s ethical, it’s good, but it doesn’t have a communist content). Organizing for and exercising power to get the employer to provide more cleaning supplies might be, or comes closer to it. Know what I mean?

Another way to put this is that I’m quite skeptical (sp?) of the prefigurative claims implied in some of the autonomist/commons-ist perspective. I think the project is building mass organizations to exert power (and in doing so radicalize and educate people, including myself in that term ‘people’ - ie, I don’t mean “I’m already there, let’s bring others to where I’m at”). Specifically, to exert power against the valorization process. That’s different from trying to implement changes in or practice a different labor process. The two are related, but to my mind the aim is build power to fight the power behind/the power which is the valorization process. Insofar as changes in the labor process (teaching Marx, giving good patient care, etc) contribute to that then they’re part of the project. I think such a contribution is not something we should presume - especially the ‘we’ who work as academics because the ostensible radicalness of our work is one part of how the valorization process occurs at least in some parts of academia.
Gotta run. Sorry again that I missed your talk, I look forward to reading it.
take care,
Nate

]]> by: Eli http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/04/12/do-people-think-theyre-accomplishing/#comment-2531 Mon, 14 Apr 2008 22:26:57 +0100 http://whatinthehell.blogsome.com/2008/04/12/do-people-think-theyre-accomplishing/#comment-2531 Nate, I agree with your critique of "radical chic" academics and your critique of the "radical chic" attitude displayed on that panel in reference to one of the panelists' elevation of "thought" as some inherently radical activity. Yet, I also would take further your somewhat ambivalent statement towards the end of your post about the contextuality of radicalness in different areas of the university (research, classroom, and organizing labor). I'd take it further by combining it with your earlier statement that radicalness is "tied to collective organization for power." We can articulate strategies for how teaching and research can contribute to organization for power (e.g., your teaching of Capital and your marxist research help toward this end). Conversely, we can think of how organizing academic labor can help create working conditions that enable you to teach and research such marxist stuff more and to have to do wage labor less. I know you know this, but I think that we can theorize this better than we have been by using Massimo de Angelis's theory. The key to effective class struggle in the university is to create an anti-capitalist "political recomposition" connecting the currently divided commons-producing communities of classrooms, disciplinary departments, and workplace associations. (This is what Isaac and I talk about in our paper... I'll send you a copy of it...). Nate, I agree with your critique of “radical chic” academics and your critique of the “radical chic” attitude displayed on that panel in reference to one of the panelists’ elevation of “thought” as some inherently radical activity. Yet, I also would take further your somewhat ambivalent statement towards the end of your post about the contextuality of radicalness in different areas of the university (research, classroom, and organizing labor). I’d take it further by combining it with your earlier statement that radicalness is “tied to collective organization for power.” We can articulate strategies for how teaching and research can contribute to organization for power (e.g., your teaching of Capital and your marxist research help toward this end). Conversely, we can think of how organizing academic labor can help create working conditions that enable you to teach and research such marxist stuff more and to have to do wage labor less. I know you know this, but I think that we can theorize this better than we have been by using Massimo de Angelis’s theory. The key to effective class struggle in the university is to create an anti-capitalist “political recomposition” connecting the currently divided commons-producing communities of classrooms, disciplinary departments, and workplace associations. (This is what Isaac and I talk about in our paper… I’ll send you a copy of it…).

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