What in the hell …

A question on my mind lately as I plan to soon rejoin the world of stuff to read, in which people read stuff. Well, there’s this stuff that I mentioned a bit ago, and then there’s Big Flame, and of course I need to wade through material on the common (and really, the commons, for good measure), and there’s all these theses that Angelus posted, with more to come, and stuff from Wildcat and this other German group, and NP’s back to blogging, not to mention a great deal of material on anarchist organizations of which that link is just one example…

The LS Schmittfest bonfire’s settled down into orange and black embers. In his raking of the coals Craig suggests people reflect on nationalism and proposes privilege as a further conversation topic. (more…)

Buy a copy, and then use these notes to return to it.

The stuff on urban and rural is quite like immaterial labor in those circles today, as is the stuff on language. The stuff on labor as political basis may be useful for challenging Virno’s assertion that the Arendt/Aristotle formulation has broken down in postfordism, since labor was already conceived as and functioned as political in the 1840s. Also would be interesting to compare artisan labor w/ immaterial labor, esp printers, worker-poets, pamphleteering incl Ranciere on artisans and response to him. Sewell starts the book asserting essentially the hegemony of artisan labor, rather like immaterial labor, also shows up limits of the abilities imputed to hegemonic immaterial labor (among them universalizing a nonuniversal position). Also check out the book Alberto recommended on immaterial labor and utopian socialism.

Also to return to -
p189- 193 on corps, corporation, etat,
194-200 on the July Revolution, change in idiom, change in the use of the term “exploit”
201-206 on the idiom of association, Buchez,
206-211 on association, corporation, conflict with the masters
211-215 on changes in the concept of labor and broadening the field of association
222 on the use of the term “social” (see also 143-4 on “industry” and “society”)
228 on Villerme and a moralizing bourgeois image of the workers, need for discipline (like Lenin)
235-6 on Louis Blanc, (petit) bourgeois radicalism
236-242 on worker poets and changes in the concept of labor
249 on the concept of labor
262-265 on the concept of labor, socialism, labor as providing a right to participation (the workers are the people)
267-270 on the relationship with rural and agricultural workers - a universal idiom but one which neglects important differences (universal program for association based on the experiences of urban workers). See especially 267 on “workers of thought” and “workers of the head”, and 269 on the power of speech, language as foundation

Pillage material from the bibliography on 285-290, 293, 295, 296, 298, 299, 301, 302, 305, 309-317.

Angela’s got a post that raises some interesting question about contracts, and ties those issues to ones about contracts of all sorts - social, wage, others. This resonates with something else I’ve been reading lately - Staughton Lynd’s book Solidarity Unionism, which some folk from my IWW branch are going to discuss soon in part because Lynd’s the main speaker at Midwest Wobfest which our branch is hosting. (more…)

The Tronti symposium has started at Long Sunday. Jon’s contribution has started a bit of discussion on what Tronti means by the term ‘intellectual’. That’s actually one of the terms I planned to use this blog to get my head clearer on when I initially set this thing up. Haven’t done so yet. (more…)

A dumb idea, that’s what. (more…)

This is the question provocatively asked in a recent piece at prol-position. The piece engages a lot with Silver’s Forces of Labor, which I keep meaning to finish. (Incidentally, Wildcat assembled a dossier on Silver that’s quite good.)

Notes to self. (more…)