Economics 387L

AUTONOMIST MARXISM

Course Overview

In developing this course, in deciding which materials to include and how to organize them, there have been a number of key considerations to take into account. In the first place the tradition is not only internationalist but has evolved rapidly in several different countries on both sides of the Atlantic. It is easy to identify groups of American, or French, or Italian militants as well as their contributions. But at the same time, in each case, those militants were self-consciously connected in their thinking and sometimes their organizing to many other parts of the world. As a result, despite the importance of local factors, none of those working in this tradition think in local or national terms. It would therefore be somewhat misleading to speak of "the Italian" contribution, or the "American" contribution.

In the second place, because of intense involvement in particular struggles the literature of this tradition is a complex mix of the theoretical, of intervention, and of the historical. Most authors have been involved not only in developing studies of particular situations but also of elaborating new theoretical concepts and directions. It therefore makes little sense to attempt to divide up the material into categories such as "theoretical innovations," "historical studies," or "industrial" versus "sphere of reproduction" studies.

As a result of these considerations I have decided, to organize the presentation of the literature of this tradition around a number of key issues that have occupied its participants. This leads to two more observations. First, the issues chosen are fundamental but hardly exhaustive; others could be included. Second, because all issues are connected, the articles that deal with one almost always deal with others as well. Thus an effort must be made to interlink the various contributions and to understand them in the context of the struggles within which they have been developed. To help with this, I will interweave some commentaries on the evolution of this tradition by its principals and by others. Reading these commentaries is also important because of the intrinsic interest of some of them, and because the literature of this tradition is larger than we can possibly cover in a semester course and so overviews and syntheses are especially useful to give a sense of the whole, both that part studied and that part left for future exploration.

In any survey of a tradition defined in terms of a set of ideas or of political strategies, it often difficult to know where to begin. In some cases, say Marxism in general, we can always start with the fountainhead from which the ideas sprang. Yet even there we can suspect that there are deeper roots which we really need to grasp. In other cases, such as the one at hand, the point of departure is even more ambiguous. Because we are dealing with one tradition in Marxism, we too could begin with Marx. However, this tradition is not based on this or that reading but rather on considerable reinterpretation of much of Marx's writing --too much for a short treatment as an introduction to the later material. Similarly, we can find roots in both Leninism and Anarchism that have contributed to the growth of this tradition, but those too are vast subterranean storehouses, too large to be explored here. Therefore I have decided to limit this course to those writers, groups and tendencies which have been central contributors to the elaboration of this tradition in the recent past --the last 50 years or so. There has been enough direct contact and recognition of influence among those in this tradition to make it possible to identify central lineages, with all their continuities and breaks, as well as important outside influences and parallel developments which appear to be important enough to note.

A final general note: one severe limitation on the comprehensiveness of the materials included in this course is the absence of English translations of many central writings. There are a great many articles and books in Italian, French, German and Portuguese which have not been translated and/or are not available. In some cases, if we have adequate language skills among course participants we will be able to get reports on some of this material, but you must know that the bulk of it will remain "out there" beyond most of our abilities to tap, at least in the short run. A listing of materials (in many languages) in this tradition which are locally available can be found in THE TEXAS ARCHIVES OF AUTONOMIST MARXISM.

Course Prerequisites:

Course Requirements:

Outline of Course Readings:

I. Overview

II. The Theory of the Soviet Union as State Capitalism

Among the many left groups within which there rapidly developed a critique of the centralizing tendencies of Bolshevism were the Industrial Workers of the World (IWW) --the most radical of all American labor movements-- and the Council Communists which originated in Germany and Holland. Along with European revolutionaries like Rosa Luxemburg, Wobblies such as Big Bill Haywood had hailed the Revolution of 1905 as an inspiring example of the power of the General Strike and, like many others, greeted the Revolution of 1917 enthousiastically. That enthousiasm quickly waned, however, in response not only to the Bolsheviks' displacement of the Soviets, but also to their efforts to dominate workers' movements in other countries. Both of these developments confirmed the Wobblie's long standing suspicions and hostility toward specifically political organizations not based directly in workers' control of production (as the Soviets had been). So they refused any identity with Lenin and the Bolshevik Communist Party just as they had refused alliance in the U.S. with De Leon and the Socialist Labor Party years before. Unfortunately, the Wobblie critique of Bolshevism, however, left no detailed analysis of the social and political dynamics of the new Soviet System which could be included in this course.

The Council Communist movement grew out of the same fascination with the Soviets in 1905 and 1917, but blossomed as a movement as a result of the experiences of the German Workers' Council's after 1918 and defined itself partly through its polemics against the Bolshevik dominated Third International. Unlike the Wobblies who saw themselves as trade unionists --albeit unlike most trade unionists in so far as they were dedicated to one big union of all workers and to revolution-- the Council Communists developed a critique not only of parliamentary electoral politics but also of trade unionism and of the Soviet Union as state capitalism. It is this last aspect of their work which interests us here, and elements of their writings have been included in course materials.

The most direct lineage of the critique of socialism among Autonomist Marxists today can be traced back to the break with Marxist orthodoxy that developed in the 1930s and 1940s within the ranks of the Trotskyist wing of Marxism-Leninism. This break involved at least three groups in three countries: the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the United States, those around Tony Cliff in England and Socialism ou Barbarie in France. In each case the development of substantial differences with some aspects of the Trotskyist analysis and program led to the development of new theory and new politics. Although these groups were clearly not the first to develop a Left critique of the Soviet Union, they did carry out much more extensive research into the actual social relations of production which had been created in the Soviet Union than any of the previous critics. It is this depth of analysis, coupled with other aspects of their theory, which along with their direct influence on the tradition of autonomist marxism which justifies the space they are accorded below.

Harry Cleaver, "The Critique of Existing Socialism," (typescript) 1989.

This is a draft of the second chapter of a book I am writing on autonomist Marxism. This draft provides an overview and analysis of this whole tradition of critique. It covers not only the materials included in this syllabus, but considerable additional material besides. It thus constitutes something of a guide to a more in depth examination of this subject that the materials we will have time to look at. Most importantly, it includes an analysis of the autonomist Marxist analyses of other existing socialism besides the Soviet Union, especially those of China and Eastern Europe.

W.Jerome and A Buick, "Soviet State Capitalism? The History of an Idea," Survey 62, January 1967.

This article provides a brief overview of the variety of individuals and groups that have seen state capitalism emerging in the Soviet Union, from Lenin through the Western European Social Democrats and the Council Communists to the groups we are concerned with here. Jerome and Buick identify three general groups who have held one version or another of this interpretation. 1) orthodox Marxists: these include: the Socialist Party of Great Britain and its companion parties in various other countries, who agreed with Lenin that state industry was, regretably, a form of state capitalism but came by 1929-30 to see the society as a whole as state capitalist; Karl Kautsky and Otto Bauer who saw Lenin creating "state capitalism" and some Mensheviks and Italian social democrats who also used this label. 2) the council communists: Gorter and Pannekoek for example as well as Karl Korsch saw the Bolsheviks creating both a new ruling burearucracy and state capitalism. 3) dissident Leninists: which includes: Bukharin et al who worried about such trendsas early as 1918,Zinoviev who was still worrying about it after Lenin had died, the Italian communist Amadeo Bordiga and followers (who had split with Gramsci and the PCI), the Yugoslav Anton Ciliga and last, but not least the Trotskyist splinter groups, especially the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the US, Socialisme ou Barbarie in France and Tony Cliff in England. What is striking in this overview is the widespread recognition that the new Soviet State was not socialist and the frequent rereappearance of "state capitalism" as a characterization of the new regime. First Lenin and then Stalin and Trotsky had to spend considerable time dealing with critics of the new Bolshevik regime, both within Russia and without. Except for Lenin's early admissions of the state capitalist character of state enterprise, orthodox Marxists have mainly spent their time converting Marxism into an ideology of domination as they have sought to justify the new, viciously exploitative relations as those of socialism.

A. Council Communism

The political work and writings of those who would be called Council Communists began before the first Russian Revolution, within the debates of the Second International (1898-1914), but reached its greatest intensity during and after the revolutionary movements in Germany in 1918 and 1919 based on the Workers' and Soldiers' Soviets which were formed at the collapse of the German government and the end of World War I. The Councils were the spontaneous creation of the German working class and, in at least some areas, came to replace temporarily other forms of government. Conflict over the role of the councils, however, both within the council movement and from without, vis ˆ vis the formation of a new parliamentary government separated from them weakened the movement and made it possible for the ruling class to crush them militarily.

The development of a critical attitude towards the new Soviet State among the Council Communists occured very quickly in the context of the relations between their political organizations and the newly formed, Soviet controlled Third International or Comitern. The Comitern Russian leadership was not only centralizing power at home (and destroying the Soviets in the process) but it sought first to push its own political strategies onto all members of the Comitern and then to use the later to gain stability in Western Europe and links with major liberal forces, both in the trade unions and parliament. Not only did the Council Communists critique the evolving relation between the soviets and the Russian state, but they rejected Moscow's call for cooperation with the trade unions and parliament which they saw as systematically counterrevolutionary. It was such conflicts that led Lenin to issue his Left-wing Communism: An infintile Disorder attacking the German radicals and to the subsequent complete break. Although the early debates that led to the break are interesting, and essential for understanding the development of the Council Communist position, the main writings developing a critique of the Soviet Union as a state capitalist regime came later, long after the Council's had been crushed and many of their theoreticians exiled from Germany.

Otto Ruhle, From the Bourgeois to the Proletarian Revolution, 1924, Chapter 2 "The Russian Problem."

Ruhle was one of the first Council Communists to develop a critique of the Soviet Union. Sent to Moscow as a delegate of the KAPD (the Communist party of Germany, formed in April 1920, of which he was at that time a member) to the Second Congress of the Comitern in July 1920, Ruhle took several weeks to arrive as he studied the situation in Russia. Disillusioned, he refused to participate in the Congress and returned to Germany to recount what he had found. In a 1921 article "The Basic Issues of Organization," published in Die Aktion, No. 37, Ruhle blasted the Bolsheviks arguing that the soviets had been destroyed by the party and "without councils there is no socialist construction, no communism." He went on to say that "The dictatorship of the party is commissar-despotism, is state capitalism." It was, he said, a dictatorship "of 5% of a class over all other classes, and over 95% of its own class." Three years later, in 1924, RŸhle elaborated on his analysis in his essay "From the Bourgois to the Proletarian Revolution." In chapter two of that essay, devoted to the Soviet Union, RŸhle argued that the Bolsheviks had tried and failed to leap over capitalism to socialism. Their failure lay both in their concepts and in their policies. He argued had they behaved like a capitalist nation state in signing the Brest-Litovsk treat but their distribution of land to peasants and their nationalization of industry merely reinforced private property on the one hand (amounting to a "capitualation to profit") while building a "large scale, tightly centrally controlled state capitalism," on the other. The alternative policies which he thought would have prolonged the revolution were: continued opposition to the Germans, the elimination of private property in the countryside, the development of the soviets and the avoidance of the NEP. The failure to move in these directions, he argued, resulted in the Russian Revolution amouting to a "Bourgeois" revolution --a process which he concluded on the basis of a rigid "phaseological" interpretation of Marx was inevitable.

"Theses on Bolshevism," International Council Correspondence, No. 3, December 1934.

Written by the Dutch Group of International Communists, this was a statement of the council communist view of the Bosheviks as the instruments of the bourgeois revolution in Russia and as the constructors of state capitalism. International Council Correspondence was published in the US by Paul Mattick in the 1930s and 1940s. (The Texas Archives of Autonomist Marxism has an index to the collection which is available in the PCL: 335, N449, Vols.1-6, 1934-1943.)

Paul Mattick, Anti-bolshevik Communism, White Plains: M.E.Sharpe, 1978. Chapter VI: "Otto RŸhle and the German Labour Movement."

Mattick, one of the last important council communists, has written on the social movement out of which he and R\237hle emerged. In tracing RŸhle's development, Mattick recounts the limitations of the German labor movement including the soldiers' and workers' councils which, to a considerable degree he argues, were merely fighting for the restoration of bourgeois democracy. For our purposes here, the main aspect of his analysis is RŸhle's critique of bolshevism, which flowed from both Luxemburg's critique which he shared and his analysis of Bolshevik practice after the revolution. Mattick sees in the Radical German Left's opposition to Bolshevism the beginnings of the struggle against Fascism --against party rule and centralized political and economic discipline. At the same time Mattick realistically points out the marginal character of the Radical Left and their political, if not theoretical failure, in the face of Soviet backed communism and then fascism.

Mark Shipway, "Council Communism," in M. Rubel and J. Crump (eds), Non-market Socialism in the Nineteeth and Twentieth Centuries, New York: St. Martin's Press, 1987, pp. 104-126.

Shipway's article constitutes a nice quasi-bibliographic overview of the Council Communist movement, one of a series of essays in a volume dedicated to sketching those traditions of pro-socialist groups and writers who have understood that to move beyond capitalism means to leave the market and money behind.

Peter Rachleff, Marxism and Council Communism, Brooklyn: The Revisionist Press, 1976. Chapter VIII: "Council Communist Theory," especially the section on "The Critique of Bolshevism in Russia," pp. 185-197.

Brief overview of the council communist critique of Bolshevism as a prototype of fascism (a political form of capitalism) and of the Soviet Union as state capitalist.

Serge Bricianer, Pannekoek and the Workers' Councils, Saint Louis: Telos Press, 1978.

This book, along with Rachleff's, provides one of the most thorough studies to date on the Council Movement --in English.

Bologna, Sergio "Class Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origin of the Workers' Council Movement," Telos, #13, Fall 1972, pp. 4-27. Translated by Bruno Ramirez from Operai e Stato, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1972, pp. 13-46. (12pp)

Bologna is an historian and major figure in the post-WWII "autonomist" tradition in Italy. Relevant here mainly for 1) the way he situates the Workers' Councils as one moment of a series of international cycles of struggles that also included the Russian Revolutions of 1905 and 1917 and the American Wobblies in the period 1905-1920, and 2) his analysis of the way in which the councils (including the soviets) were the organizational expression of a particular class composition: skilled manufacturing worker/engineers who, to an unusual degree, designed, created, controlled and identified with their tools. It was that class composition he argued that led to the particular politics of the councils. With the passing of that composition, the working class, he goes on to show, evolved other organizational solutions more appropriate to other class compositions.

B. The Johnson-Forest Tendency

C.L.R. James, "Resolution on the Russian Question," submitted to the Second Workers' Party National Convention in September 1941.

James' basic approach to his critique of Russia was characteristic of all the Johnson-Forest Tendency materials which would follow. He defined capitalism in terms of its relations of production (as opposed to the Trotskyist focus on property relations), argued that those relations obtained in Russia and therefore concluded first, that the actions of the ruling bureaucratic elite in Russia could only be understood in terms of Marx's analysis of captalism and second, that working class policies toward Russia must be as hostile as those toward other capitalist states. On this basis he rejected both Trotsky and the SWP's calls for the defense of Russia and Schachtman's view of Russia's "property relations" being progessive. James definition of capitalist relations of production is fairly classic; he focuses on the exploitation of a class of wage laborers (via the extraction of surplus value) by another class through the production of commodities within the context of a world market. Thus surplus value, the subordination of use value to exchange value and the world market are his theoretical points of departure. On them are based, he argues, Marx's understanding of the "laws of motion" of capitalism, especially the tendencies of the organic composition of capital to rise, and that of the rate of profit to fall. Where all these characteristics obtain, capitalism exists. They do obtain, he argues, in the Russia, so Russia is capitalist. A key methodological principle which James enunciated in this resolution, was the importance of seeing past "form" to "essence." "That the laws inherent in capitalist production in Russia," he wrote, "manifest themselves in unusual forms is obvious." But if, behind the unusual forms, capitalist relationships could be identified then Marx's analysis would apply. It was this perspective which led to the Johnson-Forest replacement of the Trotskyist preoccupation with "property" with a focus on relations of production. Henceforth, just as "democracy" and "fascism" could be understood as two different political forms of the capitalist state, so too could "competitive" capitalism and "state" capitalism be seen as two different organizational forms of capital accumulation. In fact, James went on to argue that there was an historical tendency for the centralization of capital which Marx had identified as an inherent tendency to lead to the displacement of free markets (and with them the "private character" of capital) by state controlled allocation. "What was formerly private and uncontrolled . . . becomes more and more state-controlled." The intermediate step in this process, James argued, was the rise of the "joint-stock" company (limited liability, stock issuing corporation) which Marx had already recognized as involving the "abolition of capital as private property within the boundaries of capitalist production." The "climax" of this process he argued was "the ownership of all capital in the hands of the State." Thus, he concluded "the development of Russia is a sign-post as to the future of capitalist society." Thus, he also concluded, Russia could be expected to behave internationally in ways similar to that of other capitalist states, i.e., imperialistically. Presciently, he predicted that "Should [Russia] emerge victorious in the coming war [WWII] it will share in all the grabbings of its partners, and for the same reason." The Johnson-Forest Tendency would not be at all surprised by the Russian takeover of Eastern Europe.

J.R. Johnson and Joseph Carter, "Aspects of Marxian Economics," THE NEW INTERNATIONAL, Vol.VIII, No. 3, April 1942.

F. Forest (R.Dunayevskaya), "An Analysis of Russian Economy," Part I: 3 articles in the NEW INTERNATIONAL (Dec 1942, Jan. 1943 and Feb.43) These articles, along with two others [see below] were reprinted by News and Letters in 1973 as a pamphlet: The Original HIstorical Analysis: Russia as State-capitalist Society.

James' analysis of Russia was strengthened considerably by Dunayevskaya's research on the social history of the first three Russian five year plans and the evolution of official Soviet Marxist theory whose results she published in a series of articles between December 1942 and January 1947. She reaffirmed James assertion that the Soviet state's systematic exploitation of workers to finance investment in heavy industry was a process of captitalist accumulation and not one of socialist construction, as the Russian leadership maintained, but she also provided evidence of this in data showing the preponderance of investment in the means of production over means of subsistence, the sharp income differentials between managers and workers, as well as in the fierce resistance to that accumulation mounted by workers and peasants and in the way in which Soviet planners allowed the world market to shape their policies. "An Analysis of the Russian Economy," Dec.1942: This first article is mainly an examination of official Russian sources as the basis for arguing that the "intrinsic law of motion" of the Russian economy is basically the same as that of capitalism. First, R.D. shows that production of means of production was growing faster than the production of means of consumption. Then, she goes on to examine the 5-year plans.In the analysis of the 1st 5-yr plan, she critiques the Russian use of value measures of output in the presence of high inflation and recalculates in physical terms to show how the state overstated success. She then argues that high world prices and higher foreign productivity forced the state to invest more heavily in means of production than it had planned. In the analysis of the 2nd 5-yr plan, she again argues that the planners were forced by "the high organic composition of capital on a world scale" to invest more heavily in means of production than planned. With respect to the 3rd 5-yr plan she notes the continuing relatively low productivity of Russian labor and the emphasis on extracting a surplus from the workers by holding wage increases below productivity increases. Jan.1943: This second article begins by arguing that the state extracted an enormous revenue from the people by imposing a turnover tax that, by being imposed on the price including the tax raised prices greatly, especially the prices of basic consumption goods. R.D. then goes on to explain the campaign for enterprise profits that held worker wages down while generating surpluses for investment and very high managerial salaries. At this point R.D. turns to agriculture where she traces the processes of collectivization and the resistance to it which forced the state to allow free markets for [non collectivized] peasant output. She argues that agricultural development was complicated by the world crisis that held down Russian export prices that made it more difficult to import needed machinery. She also notes how variations in access to inputs and to official output markets led to enormous differences in collective farm income: millionaires vs paupers. Finally, she shows how mechanization, refusal to move to the factory and low levels of peasant work created large scale hidden unemployment in the countryside that the state began to tap, by force. Feb. 1943: The first two-thirds of this article is an examination of the struggle between the Russian workers and the state. R.D. traces state efforts to impose work and limit workers resistance She examines conflicts over labor turnover, piece wages and Stakhonovism. Then she shows how standards of living for the average worker deteriorated absolutely during the period of the 1st,2nd and 3rd 5-yr plans to levels lower than that of Czarist times. The last one third digs beneath employment categories to count the numbers of the "classless intelligensia" [from university professors to factory managers] who rule production and constitute, for R.D., the "ruling class" --about 2% of the population.

Raya Dunayevskaya, "A New Revision of Marxian Economics," American Economic Review, September 1944.

This article contains Dunayevskaya's commentaries on a Russian article she translated and got published in the AER (same issue) on "Some Questions of Teaching Political Economy." The article and her interpretation of it as embodying the abandonment of basic Marxist tenets led to considerable discussion and debate, not only in the AER but in Foreign Affairs, the New York Times and elsewhere. The commentators in the AER included Paul Baran (Dec.1944), Oscar Lange (March 1945), Brooks Otis (March 1945) and Leo Rogin (March 1945). These comments led Dunayevskaya to respond in the September 1945 issue of the AER. The Russian article announces a revision in the official interpretation of Marxian economics. The major revision consists in the insistence that Marx's "law of value" must be understood to apply to the USSR as well as to capitalist countries. From this flows an acceptance of a wide variety of phenomena often called capitalist: surplus value, money, interest, banking, and especially, distribution according to labor. The authors argue that is is impossible to apply the old communist slogan "to each according to his needs" when the level of productivity is so low in the USSR. So distribution according to labor is the rule to be followed. Because different workers have different skills and abilities, it is argued, they will therefore receive different incomes. "Labor" therefore, continues to be "the measure in economic life." This is justified by saying the law of value applies to all commodity producing countries of which the USSR is one and by arguing that the socialist state intervenes to prevent the kind of chaos produced by the market. The article then goes on to argue the need for extra work and surplus value in order to raise productivity and meet the needs of the people. Dunayevskaya's response is to argue that the affirmation of the applicability of the law of value to the USSR shows that capitalism persists and will be developed in that country. She also says that distribution according to labor is being used to justify income differentials that are occurring as a side effect of the new manager/worker class structure. She quotes Marx and Engels to argue that the law of value does not apply in socialism which must abolish both alienation and exploitation. Baran attacks her interpretation and supports the Russians on several minor points, except that he denies the applicability of the law of value to socialism. That law, he claims, quoting Sweezy, is the result of market exchange and allocation. He attributes their error to a failure to understand what Marx meant by "law." He also attacks Dunayevskaya's assertion of an emerging class society in Russia, saying there is no evidence of this, and argues for using neoclassical theory to help with Russian planning. Lange, on the other hand, sees the article as a return to Marxian fundamentals that occurred for political reasons, but he sees the law of value as an inadequate basis for planning and calls for the use of marginality tools. Ottis also sees the article as quite orthodox, argues that Marxian theory was never meant as a theory of relative prices, and, like Lange, thinks that marginal analysis is of potential use to socialists. Rogin, after complaining about Dunayevskaya's undiplomatic attacks on a war ally, also argues that Marx thought the law of value applied to socialist countries in their early stages but goes on to say that the Russian article overgeneralizes to all of socialism which, according to him, one would expect to see moving in the direction of distributing goods according to need. However, he backs off and argues that given the low level of productivity in the Soviet Union it will be a long time before that can happen. To these critics, Dunayevskaya responds that they misinterpret Marx, that the law of value includes surplus value and was integral to and limited to capitalism and therefore to admit that it applies to the USSR is to admit that capitalism persists there. She also throws a bunch of references at Baran concerning class structure in the Soviet Union. All in all it is interesting to see what Dunayevskaya choses to attack in the article and how, and then to see what of her critics she responds to and what she ignores.

F. Forest (R.Dunayevskaya), "The Nature of the Russian Economy: A Contribution on the Discussion on Russia," Part II: 2 articles in the New International (Dec.1946 and Jan.1947) These articles, along with three others [see above] were reprinted by News and Letters in 1973 as a pamphlet: THE ORIGINAL HISTORICAL ANALYSIS: RUSSIA AS STATE-CAPITALIST SOCIETY.

Dec. 1946: This first article provides a summing up, without all the factual evidence, of the three articles presented in 1943 and 1944, together with some of the results of the AER debate mentioned above. The basic line of argumentation is that Stalinism overthrew many of the gains of the revolution and recreated the capitalist mode of production with its classical laws of motion. At the same time she rebuts the Trotskyist position that the absence of competition and private property mean the abolition of capitalism. She basically argues that the forms of appropriation have changed, but the content: the extraction of surplus value, remains the same, and, as a result, the class struggle persists. She again traces workers resistance to exploitation, including the 1937-38 flight to the countryside where "the unemployed army hides out." Central to her argument is the idea that the "world market" has forced the state to raise the organic composition of capital and to exploit workers. How? Either to compete in the market, or to avoid being beaten by more efficient capitalist nations in imperialist war. [e.g.WWII] The article concludes with a brief discussion of crisis in Russia. She says while Stalin has avoided "the ordinary type of commercial crises" crises have come and have been more violent and destructive. But she does not explain their nature or dynamics. Jan. 1947: This last article attacks Trotskyism directly, especially the fetishism of state property whereby the Russian state is seen as a workers state, albeit degenerated. R.D. insists, quoting Lenin, that the key issue is the relations of production and on this grounds Russia must be recognized as capitalist. She goes on to argue that "socialism cannot be achieved except on a world scale" and that "The socialist revolution is only the beginning. The greater and more arduous task of establishing socialist relations of production begins after the conquest of power." Finally, she associates herself with "The Johnson Minority" [C.L.R.James] and attacks the Fourth International for defending Russia and the Red Army. She sees the 4th Intern'l call for the withdrawal of the all occupation armies from Europe (including the Red Army) as a "first necessary step in the right direction." She concludes by saying that only by changing its interpretation of Russia can the 4th Intern'l "take its rightful place as the vanguard of the world revolutionary forces."

C.L.R.James (with Raya Dunayevskaya and Grace Lee) STATE CAPITALISM AND WORLD REVOLUTION (1949)

Written before the split with Dunayevskaya, this was a major Johnson- Forest policy statement and, although apparently written by James, contains their joint analysis and critique of the Soviet Union as a state capitalist system. See especially chapters 1-5. Chapter 1 rejects Trotsky's analysis of the USSR and affirm the JFT view that Stalinism is the ideology of a class of labor bureaucrats that dominate a state capitalist social order. Chapter 2, through a polemic with a variety of other Marxists, rejects underconsumptionist theories of capitalist crisis saying that the Stalinists are trying to hide class conflicts in production. The theory of the tendency of the rate of profit to fall is affirmed as pointing to the centrality of production relations and of the class struggle in production. Chapter 3 attacks the view that socialism is characterized by planning and argues that capitalism has developed to the point where it must plan to deal with workers' struggles. Chapter 4 continues the polemic against the Stalinists affirming that "capitalist planning does not in the slightest degree allow it to escape the laws of capitalism." Chapter 5, the most substantial chapter analyses the rise of state capitalism in the USSR and in the United States with its associated bureaucracy. Included is a discussion of the relations of production in the factory in both the US and the USSR with parallels drawn.

Raya Dunayevskaya, MARXISM AND FREEDOM (1958): especially chapter XIII:"Russian State Capitalism vs Workers Revolt."

Written after the split with James et.al., this book treats a variety of issues in Marxian theory, including the issue of state capitalism in the Soviet Union. Whatever other differences the two splitting factions had, disagreement over the basic nature of the Soviet Regime was not one of them. In Chapter 13, Dunayevskaya basically restates her previous analyses the first three five-year plans, the efforts to implement them and the resistance of workers. She now sees two opposing plans: that of the planners and that of the workers. On the side of the planners she points to the state imposed high turnover taxes on consumption goods, forced labor camps, Stakanovite competition, wage hierarchies, intensified piece work, purges and the beginnings of a new managerial class. On the side of the workers she points to continued resistance:peasant slaughter of animals and continuous worker resistance in the factories. She argues that the extent of repression (death penalties, forced labor camps, etc) measures the extent of resistance."Had the revolt not been so persistent, the terror would not have been so violent." The conflict exists she argues, because of fundamentally opposing goals of the workers and the state. The workers wanted to improve their standards of living and control production, the state wanted to emphasize surplus and investment at the expense of the workers. The planners were pushing the economy in the direction of "a continuous preponderance of means of production over means of consumption." This she said Marx had seen as a principle of capitalist development. The by-product in Russia was class struggle and famine. To achieve these results the planners followed, she says, the principle of paying the workers the "minimum necessary" for their existence, while extracting from them "the maximum surplus value." As long as this is the case she argues the productive system is governed by the law of value and "capitalist relations of production exist, no matter what you name the social order."

C.L.R. James, Grace C. Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu, FACING REALITY: THE NEW SOCIETY... WHERE TO LOOK FOR IT, HOW TO BRING IT CLOSER. A STATEMENT FOR OUR TIME, Bewick/Ed, 1974. (Originally published by the Correspondence Publishing Committee in 1958.) Especially Chapter II: "The Whole World."

In the section on Russia, the authors do not dwell on definitions but examine the relations between the workers and managers in the Soviet Union, drawing parallels with the same relations in the West. The especially argue that the workers in the Soviet Union are just as "united, disciplined, and organized by production...as the workers in the United States." Perhaps most interesting in the treatment are the quotes from Khrushchev's speech to the 20th Congress on difficulties in controling the workers. The authors argue that the managers have had to capitulate to the plans of the workers, especially to their manipulation of the piece work system to increase their wages.

C. Socialism ou Barbarie

Cornelius Castoriadis, "From Bolshevism to the Bureaucracy," OUR GENERATION, 12, No.2 (Fall 1977):43-54.

In this article Castoriadis first explains the rise of bureaucracy in the Soviet Union as being the natural outgrowth of the victory of Bolshevik Party centralism over the Soviets and other forms of workers control and argues that Lenin and Trotsky made basic mistakes in separating the issue of "who manages" from that of "who ultimately controls" and in not recognizing that the capitalist "forms" of production necessarily embodied the content of class power. He begins by rejecting the explanation of the development of the bureaucracy out of the revolution as caused by Russia's "backwardness" and "isolation." He explains the emergence of the bureaucracy in general as due to "the concentration of production" in industry which leads to the formation of a "managerial stratum." Similarly, the expanding role of the state leads to a "bureaucratic state machine." Finally, in the developed countries working class organizations are integrated into the system through bureaucratization. In the Third World, he argues, the weakness of the local bourgeoisie leads to the state bureaucracy substituting itself for the bourgeoisie and taking responsibility for bringing the new [capitalist] mode of production into being. The Russian bureaucracy, he says, is a third type: the degeneration of the revolution. The degeneration lay in the Bolshevik desires to establish "state capitalism." The Party felt it had to manage the economy, displacing the power of the Soviets. The Opposition within the Party opposed this direction demanding "collective management" against management by the bureaucracy, but were defeated. (This opposition never included Trotsky who always believed in the necessity of the bureaucracy.) Within production, furthermore, Lenin and the others, felt compelled to follow the capitalist lead in the organization of production in order to maximize productivity. They never realized that the capitalist methods of production embodied capitalist mechanisms of control. In theory, this was expressed by the emphasis on the development of the "productive forces." In practice, by the willingness to force workers to work.

Cornelius Castoriadis, "The Relations of Production in Russia," in Cornelius Castoriadis, POLITICAL AND SOCIAL WRITINGS, VOLUME 1, 1946-1955: FROM THE CRITIQUE OF BUREAUCRACY TO THE POSITIVE CONTENT OF SOCIALISM, Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988.

Andre Liebich,"SOCIALISM OU BARBARIE, a Radical Critique of Bureaucracy," OUR GENERATION, 12, no.2 (Fall 1977):55-62.

This article densely traces the rise and evolution of SouB, noting its links to the Johnson-Forest Tendency in the U.S. and the changing conflicts between Lefort and Castoriadis.

Arthur Hirsh, THE FRENCH NEW LEFT: AN INTELLECTUAL HISTORY FROM SARTRE TO GORZ, Boston: South End Press, 1981, Chapter 5: "Castoriadis and Socialisme ou Barbarie."

A brief but useful overview of some of the key aspects of SOCIALISME OU BARBARIE and Castoriadis and Lefort's evolution from a Marxist critique of bureaucratic capitalism, both East and West, through their embrace of the Eastern European revolts of the 1950s to anti- Marxism.

"An Interview with C.Lefort," TELOS 15 (Spring 1973):3-20.

"An Interview with C.Castoriadis," TELOS 23 (Spring 1975):117-130.

D. The English Dissent

Tony Cliff, THE NATURE OF STALINIST RUSSIA JUNE 1948; REISSUED AS STALINIST RUSSIA:A MARXIST ANALYSIS IN 1955; AS THE FIRST PART OF RUSSIA: A MARXIST ANALYSIS in 1964, and as STATE CAPITALISM IN RUSSIA, Pluto Press, London, 1974.

III.Working Class Autonomy

Paul Buhle, "Marxism in the USA," URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.)

This article locates James against the background of American Marxism during the first 30 years of this Century and relates him to writers such as W.E.B. Dubois, Austin Lewis, William Walling, and Louis Fraina and also describes the course of his relationship with Trotskyism. He notes how James has been outside the "mainstream" of Western Marxism partly by always insisting on the creativity and revolutionary potential of the working class, partly by his rejection of the Vanguard Party which was one of the reasons for his rupture with Trotskyism. He locates the origins of James' viewpoint in the richness of the struggles of blacks in the Third World (sports to revolution). Buhle also emphasizes the vitality of James' views at a time (40s and 50s) when the Left appeared bankrupt. James' ability to recognize and fight for the possibilities of autonomous black struggles both in Africa and the US extended and developed DuBois' earlier work on the role of blacks in the development of the working class. He also notes James analysis of state capitalism and its implications.[It should be said Buhle's focus on James fails to give his comrades in the JFT, and after, due credit for their contributions to these subjects.] Finally, he emphasizes James' undying belief in the creative, revolutionary possibilities that lie with plain people: "barbarism" he quotes James, "exists only because nothing else can suppress the readiness for sacrifice, the democratic instincts and creative power of the great masses of people."

C.L.R.James, Grace C. Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu,"The Workers' Councils: Hungary," in FACING REALITY, Detroit: Bewick/ed, 1958.

This work included an important discussion of the Hungarian workers councils which became almost paradigmatic for Facing Reality's understanding of working class autonomy. The excerpt included in your packet was published as "The Workers Councils in Hungary" in C.L.R. James THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT. The fascination with the Hungarian Workers Councils came from the perception that the workers had not only made a revolution but had done so on the basis of self- organization, without party or trade union leadership, at the point of production and without repression. "The secret of the workers' councils," they began, "is this. ...these shop-floor organizations of the workers demonstrated such conscious mastery of the needs, processes, and inter- relations of production, that they did not have to exercise any domination over people...Workers' management of production, government from below, and government by consent have thus been shown to be one and the same thing." They went on to point out how the workers organized production and defence from the base with no central plan or central direction from any party or any delegation of power. At the same time they noted, the councils called for the creation of workers councils "in every branch of the national activity," e.g., by government employees, white collar workers, and so on. They also saw the councils over coming traditional divisions, such as that between technicians (who were invited into the councils) and manual workers, and as those between workers and peasants (who supported the workers). In all this they saw a new kind of society emerging, one which was crushed just as it was organizing itself. [The Facing Reality people also circulate a thin volume by Andy Anderson, Hungary '56, published by Solidarity in London in 1964 and by Red & Black in Detroit in 1976.]

George Rawick, "Working Class Self-Activity," RADICAL AMERICA ,Vol.3, No.2 (March-April 1969).

*Ferrucio Gambino, "Only Connect," URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.) pp.95-96.

In this short note, Gambino makes three points: first, C.L.R. James was able to link the self-activity of the proletariat in the industrialized countries with the self-activity of the proletariat in the colonized countries." Second, it was remarkable how in the late 40s and 50s, James helped lead a "convergence of the self-activity of the masses against exploitation with the contribution of dedicated intellectuals in legitimizing such self activity. Three, the 50s was a time when "tiny groups and individuals in Southern Europe discovered and read 'the American comrades'...discussion started about Danilo Montaldi's translation into Italian of Paul Romano's The American Worker..." Gambino thus documents the connection established between the JFT/Facing Reality tendency and the Italian New Left.

Working class self-activity vis a vis capital

Typical of such views have been most theories of capitalist accumulation and crisis. Accumulation has been understood to occur, for the most part, as a result of the competition among capitalist firms --a formulation which leaves the working class out of the dynamics all together. Crisis, in turn, has been understood to occur as a result of the working out of the inexorable laws of capitalism, e.g., underconsumptionist theories of overproduction. Even where critical theoreists have admitted that workers' "economic" struggles could challenge capital, they have affirmed capital's ability to "instrumentalize" or "integrate" those struggles into moments of capital's own growth --an analysis which, in their formulations, again submerges the working class within capital's own logic.

Against such understandings, the tradition we are studying here has emphasized the ability of the working class not only to resist capital's depredations but also to launch its own initiatives of struggles --struggles which repeatedly rupture capital accumulation, precipitate crisis and threaten the complete overthrow of the system. The analysis of such struggles has been developed on many levels. At the most general level, the power and autonomy of struggles have been studied which have brought about dramatic revolutionary ruptures. Against Marxist-Leninist interpretations which have emphasized the role of "political leadership" or the Party, groups such as the Council Communists or the Johnson-Forest Tendency have shown how masses of workers have acted without such leadership, creating their own organization "spontaneously" and, where they have had the power, new organizational alternatives to capital, e.g., the Soviets, the German and Hungarian workers councils.

During periods inbetween such dramatic historical moments, the emphasis has been on the day to day struggles of workers. Early on the emphasis was on the day to day struggles of workers in production, on the shop floor within the factory or in the countryside. Later on the analysis focused more and more on struggles in reproduction. (See especially the section below on the Unwaged).

Within production working class self-activity has been seen both in workers resistance to the capitalist organization of work and in workers' ability to transform creatively their work and work environments. These kinds of continuing self-activity were not seen primarily as something "within" capital, but rather as autonomous activities constantly checking, rupturing and overthrowing capitalist management which could often, at best, react and adapt to the workers power.

In such ways, at all levels, this tradition reversed orthodox Marxism and critical theory's vision of the respective roles of labor and capital. Instead of capital the jauggernaut, we have capital as dead labor, shaped by living labor (the working class). Instead of labor as victim, we have labor evolving from living labor to labor as revolutionary subject capable of negating capital.

*Phil Romano and Ria Stone(R.Dunayevskaya) THE AMERICAN WORKER, Detroit: Facing Reality Publishing Company, 1946.Translated and published in France by SouB, and then in Italy (from the French) by Danilo Montaldi.

*C.L.R.James, STATE CAPITALISM AND WORLD REVOLUTION, 1949.

Although first introduced in the previous section, this document also contains a few of the JFT's statements of workers' autonomy. In particular in Chapter 5 on the Class Struggle, the rise of state capitalism is associated with a rise in autonomous working class struggle against both the state and the unions. Again in Chapter 6 on the party, the problem of organization is found not in the mistakes of elites (party or union) but in "the crisis of self-mobilization of the proletariat." Autonomous struggles are not to be confused with simple reactions of workers to capitalist crimes but must be recognized as having their own revolutionary initiative. Even clearer are the statements in the 1956 Preface to the 2nd Edition of the work where the vanguard party is openly rejected and the ability of workers to develop new forms of organization is affirmed. "The great organizations of the masses of the people and of the workers in the past were not worked out by any theoretical elite or vanguard. They arose from the experience of millions of people and their need to overcome the intolerable pressures which society had imposed upon them for generations. ...new organizations will come as Lilburne's Leveller Party came, as the ....Soviets in 1905, with not a single soul having any concrete ideas about them until they appeared in all their power and glory."

C.L.R.James, Grace C. Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu,"New Society: New People," FACING REALITY, 1958.

An almost lyrical ode to the reality of working class imagination and power to craft a new society out of the present. The authors swept across the world, from the developed First world to the underdeveloped Third, from the new attitudes and behaviors of shop stewards in England through the struggles of women in the United States to anticolonial struggles in Asia and Africa. Everywhere they were able to see "new men, new types of human beings" throwing off the encumbering prejudices and destructive hierarchies of capitalism to develop new ways of being. Where others see only the brutality of capital, they saw the ferocious struggle that brutality was required to crush. "We wish to draw attention to one of the great social forces of the day, the spirit of renaissance which now animates the vast millions everywhere in the globe..." Only "a socialist economy, without the overhead burdens and incompetence of official society," they argued, can generate the enormous surplus wealth needed "for the development of the world economy as a whole." Similarly they also argued that those in the Third World could only solve their problems "in a global context" but at the same time their struggles could serve "as inspiration and example to the advanced proletarians." Finally, they discussed the emergence of new forms of art and literature that could only accompany the development of the forces of a new classless society. (The excerpt in your packet is from C.L.R. James, AT THE RENDEZVOUS OF VICTORY, Allison & Busby, 1984.)

*Mario Tronti, "Lenin in England," (Classe Operaio, No.1, Jan.1964) Republished in OPERAI E CAPITALE, pp.89-95. Translated and published in WORKING CLASS AUTONOMY AND THE CRISIS by Red Notes and CSE,London, 1979.

In this short piece, Tronti calls for reversing traditional Marxism's focus on capitalist development toward the analysis of the development of working class struggle. Capitalist development, he asserts, is led by and follows behind working class initiative. The workers he says have gone beyond their old organizations, the trade unions and the party but have not yet developed appropriate new organizations. To do so is the project he calls "Lenin in England." If the workers were well organized politically they would be able to lead capital and "make use" or take off from capital's highest points of development. That is to say they could use capital's composition as a point of departure for a political recomposition of class organization. But, because there is no appropriate organization, capital has the initiative and workers must oppose its development which is aimed at their repression. Without revolutionary organization he warns working class theoretical and strategic thought can leap forward but tactics must be decided pragmatically and as such there is still a link to the unions (while there is no longer any link to the party which can no longer express the necessary strategic leap forward). He calls for discovering "certain forms of working class struggles which set in motion a certain type of capitalist development which goes in the direction of revolution (a sympathy for vanguards that the red notes editors reject in a footnote). Finally he calls for a new working class newspaper that would "monitor the strategic validity of particular instances of struggle" to discover emerging new, un-coopted, revolutionary organizational forms --as opposed to the Leninist concept of paper as collective organizer.

*Mario Tronti, "Workers and Capital," TELOS 14 (Winter 1972):25- 62.(from OPERAI E CAPITALE, Einaudi,Turin 1966, 1971.)

This key book, OPERAI E CAPITALE is also available in French and Portuguese, but not in English. A few pieces have been translated and published. "Workers and Capital" was the 1971 postface "Poscritto di Problemi," written after Tronti had returned to the CPI. It is of interest here less for the interpretation of labor history, which is open to criticism at several points, than for the methodology it contains. Despite his return to the CPI, Tronti held on to much of his previous work and this article must have been, in part, one step in trying to gain acceptance of that work, and many of its insights, within the CPI. The article opens with a dichotomy between two possible approaches to history: 1) a chronology of cycles of labor struggle; this is capital's history, and 2)the examination of great historical events, privileged periods which present models; this is labor's viewpoint and politics. Basic here is the juxtaposition of the capitalist and working class viewpoints. Tronti then sketches three such moments. The first is during the progressive era in the U.S. when Theodore Roosevelt breaks the coal strikes with arbitration rather than troops. This is a change from the previous period when working class violence was met with capitalist violence. With arbitration and legal action capital shifts to reformism. The second moment is in England and is Marshall's theoretical response to a new level of working class organization, a capitalist response on the level of Science. Thus capital's response is a function of a new working class composition. Tronti argues two things here: first, that the autonomy of politics appears here only as the autonomy of science (capital's economics) and second, we must learn to translate the "scientific language of capital" into "our illustrious class dialect." The concept of the autonomy of politics is central to the CPI's justification for its own centrality and its evocation here bespeaks Tronti's return to the fold. The emphasis on looking at things from a working class viewpoint, Tronti holds over from his autonomist days. His perception of the need to translate capital's views of itself is fundamental: "Every discovery of an objective social science can and must be translated in the language of the struggles. The most abstract theoretical problem will have the most concrete class meaning."(p.30) The third moment is in Germany and is social democracy. Here Tronti sees the German labor movement as appearing to have only a political history. There are underlying struggles of course, but he thinks the social democrats accurately "derived the political form of the party from the content of the struggles...[and]...having used the struggles to grow as an alternative power." Lenin's theory of the party ,he goes on to say, is a theory equally applicable to social democracy as to Bolshevism. Lenin's theory reconstituted the autonomy of the political from labor's viewpoint, he says. Tronti hails the immediacy of relationship between social democratic politics and worker struggles, unmediated by trade unions as "an unequalled organizational solution of the labor struggle on the political level." Why did German social democracy fail? "Intellectual mediocrity," and "theoretical misery." Tronti then goes on to draw parallels between Weber's concept of the purely political and Lenin. Tronti then returns to the United States, which he argues, gives us the most important models of working class struggle because American struggles have gained the most. He then sketches the cycle of struggles of the teens and the era of social peace of the 20s. About the twenty he says two things of note: first, workers struggles are "irreplaceable instrument[s] of self conciousness for capital," and second, workers didn't struggle much in the 20s because from 1922-1929, they could "obtain without asking" and from 1929-1933, they knew there was nothing to gain. "Why bother to struggle when it is impossible to win concessions?" "They know that there is nothing to gain as a particular class if the general development has nothing more to grant." Here we see a line of reasoning which the CPI used against workers struggles during the crisis that beset Italian capital at the end of the 1960s to get workers to cooperate with finding a solution to the crisis. Tronti then sketches Roosevelt and the Keynesian solution to the Great Depression: legalizing workers struggles and then harnessing them for capital's development. He shows how labor took the initiative and how Roosevelt and the state acted in labor's interest against the capitalist but in such a way as to preserve the system. Reformism is again the response to labor struggles but coupled with a new way of using the state and a new economics. So during this period all of the newness of the three moments mentioned above are combined. Keynes theoretical initiative equals Roosevelts political one."If Keynes could have directed poitically the 'capitalist revolution' as the theoretician of the New Deal, he would have been an American Lenin." From this Tronti draws two principles, one methodological, one strategic: methodologically: "To depart from the labor struggles in order to grasp the various levels of social development such as the state, science and organization is something learned all of a sudden in these events." I.E., the primacy of autonomous working class struggle within capitalist development. Strategically: "Afterwords it becomes useless to condemn [the great capitalist initiative]: our only advantage is in using it." Thus the CPI position of cooperating with capitalist development but using it at the same time. In the course of this analysis Tronti touches on many facets of the new order: the mass worker, the obsolesecence of orthodox Marxism, the contract as a form of periodical stabilization of struggle, the need for constant organizational renewal on the part of labor [an appeal for innovation within the CPI?]. Methodologically, toward the end of the article is a good statement of autonomist methods: "If politics for us is labor struggle that leaps to increasingly higher levels of quality, and history is capital updating on this basis its technological and productive structures, its organization of work, its control and manipulative social instruments and substitutes, upon the objective suggestion of the class adversary, the increasingly obsolete parts of its power mechanism, then politics always procedes history....We don't start with the class: we come to it. Or better, we reach a new level of class composition. We begin with struggle."

Ferruccio Gambino, "Workers Struggles and the Development of Ford in Britain," BULLETIN OF THE CONFERENCE OF SOCIALIST ECONOMISTS, March 1976, pp.1-18.

Working class autonomy vis ˆ vis the unions

Because orthodox Marxist-Leninist analysis has always seen day to day struggles as "economistic" and unable to rise to the level of "politics," i.e., to the level of the general interests of the class as a whole, it has always considered the labor union as the proper organizational vehicle for workers efforts at that level. Where the various orthodox communist parties have had the power, they have taken over unions and through the control of the union burearucracy tried to subordinate them to the current Party line and strategy.

Besides this left pressure, labor unions have also been subjected, throughout their history, to pressures from capital to transform these vehicles of struggle into business unions --organizations which confine their demands to those compatible with the growth of business. Those pressures have taken the concrete form of capitalist attempts to coopt union leaders either through appeal to their good judgement or through less honorable means. Where the labor union bureaucracy has accepted to confine workers demands in this way, sharp contradictions have often emerged between the rank and file workers and their union leadership. Such contradictions have involved daily guerrilla warfare as well as overt battles, e.g., wildcat strikes, between the workers and "their" union. Such guerrilla warfare often coincides with the day to day struggles of workers against capital --precisely to the degree that the union has become the labor relations arm of capital. Part of the autonomous Marxist tradition has consisted of giving expression to such autonomous working class struggles and showing how it constitutes a critique and going beyond of such organizational mediation.

Martin Glaberman, PUNCHING OUT, Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Committee, 1952 (Reprinted 1973 by Bewick Editions)

A collaborator of James in the JFT and then in CORRESPONDENCE and Facing Reality, Martin Glaberman was an autoworker and central contributor to the development of this tradition. Most of Glaberman's writings have concerned the autonomous activities of rank and file workers vis ˆ vis the unions. In this pamphlet, Glaberman analysed how the unions were transformed from an organization of workers to an organization of capital after the mass struggles of the 1930s. Running through the pamphlet is the tension between the workers trying to organize themselves and their production and the capitalist attempts to control production and subordinate them to it. Thus Glaberman argued that the resistance to the capitalist plan reveals the workers' own plans, their own desires to manage production. He noted that workers do not always clearly conceptualize their resistance as an attempt to create a new society but their activities run in that direction. He illustrated the struggles with many examples taken from the 30s, the 40s and the 50s. Particularly interesting is his discussion of the use of the contract to harness workers struggle. He pointed out the contradictory nature of the contract: on the one hand it records workers victories, on the other, as the Wobblies knew, it becomes a means to control them, as the company and union representatives impose the disciplinary clauses of the contract on the workers. One illustration is the grievance procedure that, by tying up the whole process for long periods of time, and diffusing conflict, undercuts workers ability to change things. Similarly, at the social level, he argues that much of the social legislation of the New Deal was designed to achieve the same kind of control. Glaberman went on to argue that left wing caucuses and union groups only "want to substitute themselves for the porkchoppers in power." He even drew a parallel between Walter Reuther's 1950 five year contract -- during which the union would cooperate with management to control the workers-- and Stalin's five year plans. Finally he gave a variety of examples of worker self-organization of work and work time which showed elements of an incipient "new society" that capital wants to repress. Thus we have here, mostly on the level of the shop floor, an analysis of workers' autonomy versus capitalist/union control.

Martin Glaberman, ARTIE CUTS OUT, 1953.

*Martin Glaberman, UNION COMMITTEEMEN AND WILDCAT STRIKES, Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Committee,1955.

In an analysis of a member of Correspondence who left the group after being editor of its paper, Glaberman presents a fascinating examination of one aspect of the class composition in the auto plants. He argues that as a union committeman who did not work but who was constantly preoccupied with union business or abstract political discussion, this man was structurally separated from the other workers and thus could neither understand nor relate to them. As a result, over time, the alienation became more complete and he came to typify the modern relations between workers and bureaucrats. As an enforcer of the union contract the committeeman appears to the workers more of a cop than a representative of the workers' interests. As enforcer he could not empathize with wildcat strikes, struggles to control overtime, or hostility to automation. Moreover: "The independent forms of the struggles of Negroes, what women and youth were doing to establish new human relations, the mass participation and concern with sports, entertainment, literature, all these escaped the editor completely." In his analysis Glaberman reaffirms the JFT & Correspondence view that the future society should be sought in the positive content of the attitudes and struggles of people today. (what will later be called self-valorization) The committeeman was opposed to those attempts to open up the paper to those emerging attitudes, knowledge and feelings in the experiences of workers themselves. "What the editor could not and would not learn," Glaberman finishes, "is that the only reason that Correspondence has for its existence is to provide a place and a means for the expression of the hostility to all forms of bureaucracy that exists in every section of society."

Bruno Ramirez, WHEN WORKERS FIGHT: THE POLITICS OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS IN THE PROGRESSIVE ERA, 1898- 1916, Westport: Greenwood Press, 1978.

Working class autonomy vis a vis the political party

Such critiques have involved both historical analyses of the actual political roles played by various "parties" throughout the history of working class struggle and theoretical meditations on the general question of working class organization. The Leninist/Boshevik-Stalinist nexus has, of course, a key point of reference in such studies.

For independent-minded European Marxists like Rosa Luxemburg, the Left Opposition in Russia and the Council Communists, of course, opposition to Boshevik politics developed early, first in theory and then in practice. For others, however, for whom the Russia Revolution and subsequent events were faraway historical events, the trajectory of their critical intellectual assessment of working class experience has been different. First, a recognition of the reactionary and repressive character of the Stalinist party, coupled with the assertion of that party as a sharp break from Lenin's party which is seen as a valid expression of working class organization. Second, a critique of existing post-Stalinist Marxist- Leninist parties --such as those in the West. Third, a recognition of the contradictions within Bolshevism and the concept and practice of the Leninist party in any form. For the Trotskyists the critique of Stalin came early, for others it came only after his death in 1953 and the revelations of the XXth Congress. The tendency to preserve Lenin as a revolutionary saint, and his theory of working class organization as a guide to action, has been strong among virtually all those who didn't have to deal with him directly. The critique of the Leninist Party has often been developed quite separately from the critique of Lenin himself. What has survived longest of the veneration of Lenin is respect for his incredible ability to interpret every phenomenon in poitical terms and to grasp the ebb and flow of the class struggle. Since few make any pretense to clairyovance, they hardly blame Lenin for not forseeing the development of the Soviets. Instead they praise him for his ability ot grasp their importance and raise the cry "All Power to the Soviets!" Such respect has survived despite the rejection of his subsequent attempts to subordinate the Soviets to the party.

This critique of the party form has by no means meant a rejection of all forms of working class organization. On the contrary, it has been accompanied by an openness to and exploration of a wide variety of different organizational forms. Luxemburg became known for her embrace of the "spontaneous" creativity of the working class in its organizational response to obstacles in the class struggle. The IWW, of course, embraced the more or less syndicalist approach of what they called "trade unionism" --workers taking over society on the basis of factory organization as a base. Others embraced the council form of organization. Still others worked within the framework of what they called the "small working class organization" which was conceived, not as party, but as a forum for discussion within struggles that would eventually generate other, broader organizational solutions. Over time, with the proliferation of various kinds of organization, from free radio stations and underground newspapers, to squatters groups or women's groups, what has differentiated autonomist Marxists from other Marxists has been their openness to organizational variety and their refusal to attempt to subbordinate such variety to a single organization.

Rosa Luxemburg, "Organizational Questions of the Russian Social Democracy," (1904) in Mary-Alice Waters (ed) ROSA LUXEMBURG SPEAKS, New York: Pathfinder Press, 1970, pp. 112-130.

This article was written in 1904 in response to the publication of Lenin's book WHAT IS TO BE DONE? and his pamphlet ONE STEP FORWARD, TWO STEPS BACK, both of which detailed his argument for an extremely centralized reorganization of the Russian Social Democratic movement. Luxemburg's attack on Lenin's position likens it to that of the Blanquists while arguing 1) that any attempt to centralize the labor movement along the lines he calls for would paralyze it and maximize the dangers of an opportunistic elite imposing its policies on the masses, and 2) that the history of the Russian movement shows that every important leap forward in tactics has come spontaneously from the workers in struggle. She writes: "The most important and most fruitful changes in its [Russian socialist movement] tactical policy during the last ten years have not been the inventions of several leaders and even less so of any central organizational organs. They have always been the spontaneous product of the movement in ferment. . . . [examples] . . . In general, the tactical policy of the social democracy is not something that may be Ôinvented.Õ It is the produce of a series of gret creative acts of the often spontaneous class struggle seeking its way forward." pp. 120-121.

C.L.R.James, Grace Lee, and Pierre Chaulieu, FACING REALITY, Detroit: Bewick, 1974 (Originally 1958)

Chapter VI: "The Marxist Organization: 1903-1958," contains a biting critique of the Leninist Vanguard Party and then a sketch of what organization should be. Chapter VII: "What to Do and How to Do It," contains much more on the role of a small Marxist organization dedicated to recording and publicizing working class activity.

Bologna, Sergio "Class Composition and the Theory of the Party at the Origin of the Workers' Council Movement," TELOS, #13, Fall 1972, pp. 4-27. Translated by Bruno Ramirez from OPERAI E STATO, Milano: Feltrinelli, 1972, pp. 13-46. (12pp)

The autonomy of different parts of the class from each other

Such appreciation has not come easily to the Marxist tradition. Capital has always ruled by dividing to conquer. Because of this "unity" has always been a key concept in the Marxist tradition --the unity of the working class in its struggle against capital. Indeed the central preoccupation of most politically active Marxists, including many of those I would associate with an "autonomist" tradition has been the building of inclusive, unified organizations capable of successfully confronting capitalÕs own totalizing unity. For example, despite her fervent opposition to LeninÕs centralized form of party organization, Rosa Luxemburg was equally insistent on the need for unified organizational forms. No where is this more obvious than in her attitude toward any kind of "national" autonomy within the working class movement. Opposing LeninÕs stated acceptance of national "self-determination," she wrote: "the Russian social democracy should not organize itself as a federative conglomerate of many national groups. It must rather become a single party for the entire empire." (Organizational Questions, op. cit., p. 117)

Perhaps most important in the early years of the building of this tradition, was the work of C.L.R. James. Born black in Trinidad, James was politically active not only in Trinidad but in England, in the United States and in the movement for African independence. Self-activity and autonomy were central to James' work in several areas: from the beginning, even before he became a Marxist, he was concerned with the autonomous struggles of black workers against colonialism, especially in the Caribbean and in Africa. Eventually this was extended to the observation of the necessary autonomy of women, students, peasants and so on.

Within the Italian New Left, as elsewhere in the 1960s, the recognition of sectoral autonomy mostly grew out of the struggles of women against patriarchal domination. In such circumstances there was simultaneous theoretical and organizational development as women pulled out of male dominated groups and developed their own autonomous organizations. The development of the theory of first black and then women's autonomy within working class struggle eventually led to its extension to the struggles of peasants in the Third World. (On both these aspects see the section below on the unwaged.)

C.L.R.James, THE CASE FOR WEST-INDIAN SELF GOVERNMENT, Hogarth Press, London, 1933. Reprinted in C.L.R. James, THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT, Selected Writings Vol.I, Lawrence Hill, Westport 1977 and Allison & Busby, London 1977.pp.25-40

A pamphlet drawn from James' book THE LIFE OF CAPTAIN CIPRIANI (1932) which lays out the class composition in the West Indies and argues the case for local autonomy. James lays out a remarkably honest analysis not only of the peculiarities and weaknesses of the British white ruling class, but also of the diverse and conflicting sectors of the West Indian masses. He analyses the way differentiation by degree of blackness divides West Indians and weakens them in their struggles with their rulers. At the same time he argues strenuously and humorously, with devastating illustrations, that the West Indians are as, or more, capable of governing themselves than the British. The article shows some of the richness of understanding of human and class complexity out of which James would later elaborate a Marxist analysis of working class autonomy and capitalist development.

C.L.R. James, A HISTORY OF NEGRO REVOLT, London, 1936.

C.L.R. James, THE BLACK JACOBINS: TOUSSAINT LOUVERTURE AND THE SAN DOMINGO REVOLUTION, (London, Secker and Warburg) 1938

Perhaps James best known work, THE BLACK JACOBINS deals with the struggle for freedom and independence of black slaves in the Caribbean.

*Robert Hill, "In England, 1932-1938," URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.)

This short article describes James' sejour in England, his political development and his connections with the Pan-African movement. Hill traces the emergence of James political consciousness from his concerns with West Indian independence through his study of Trotskyism (which led to his book WORLD REVOLUTION, 1917-1936, and to his translation of Souvarine's biography of Stalin)to his involvement with Jomo Kenyatta and others in the creation of the International African Friends of Ethiopia to agitate in England against Italy's invasion of Ethiopia and later to his book THE BLACK JACOBINS and the formation with George Padmore and others of the International African Service Bureau to support Pan-Africanism. Hill particularly analyses the impact of James' book on the development of Black history and struggles.

*Walter Rodney, "The African Revolution," URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.)

Rodney, well known militant and historian who was assassinated in 1980, situates and appreciates James studies of and contributions to the development of the African Revolution. He begins with a reassessment of James's HISTORY OF NEGRO REVOLT (1938) noting James' insistence on Africans as having welcomed colonialism. James dealt with a whole series of struggles: the Sierra Leone Hut Tax War of 1898, the African Independent Church movement, the Sierra Leona railway strikes of 1919 and 1926, the Gambian sailors strike of 1929 and the Nigerian women's uprising at Aba in 1929. James insisted that the revolts sprang from both resistance to oppression and from the assertion of African desires and leadership. Rodney points out James own history of struggle and his willingness to analyse defeats as well as victories. For example, James work on Nkrumah and Ghana dealt both with the period in which Nkrumah lead the people's movement and the later period when his leadership fell behind and became a tether on it when he failed to smash the colonial state apparatus inherited from the English. Rodney sees that James work reflected the on going international character of the struggle against an international capitalist regime. He also approves James rejection of Stalinism and Trotskyism as worse than useless for pan- African struggle. He points again and again to James insistence that Revolution "is by and of the mass of the people, which means in effect the workers, peasants and such leadership as emerges from the mass struggle." In this light, Rodney also notes James fascination with Tanzania and its experiment with Ujamaa, based on the rural heritage of the mass of people.

*C.L.R. James, "The Revolutionary Answer to the Negro Problem in the USA," 1938 (New York, 1948) Reprinted in C.L.R. James, THE FUTURE IN THE PRESENT SELECTED WRITINGS VOL.I, Lawrence Hill, Westport 1977 and Allison & Busby, London 1977.

The basic political program for black autonomy from party and union. James attacks the old Left position that would subordinate black struggles to the [white] proletariat, and argues for the real, historically based vitality of the independent black movement. He argues this position both on Marxist theoretical principles and on demonstrated history: the role of blacks in the American Revolution, in bringing on the Civil War, during the Civil War, during the Populist movement, with Garvey, and finally in the late 40s with the NAACP and many other black institutions. He argues that not only have black struggles been vital, but that they have also been initiating of wider proletarian struggles, and he cites the rapid rise of black militancy in the auto factories of Detroit. The black movement, he says, is headed toward the labor movement, and indeed part of it is already playing a decisive role inside of the factory. He reminds his readers that the long history of capitalist repression of black people has created a tremendous potential for revolutionary violence. So, in this piece we can see some of the themes that will be further developed after the split from the SWP and during the years of CORRESPONDENCE, FACING REALITY and NEWS AND LETTERS --all of which recognized, and helped give expression to black voices within the labor movement as well as in the wider struggles of the black community.

*Dan Georgakis, "Young Detroit Radicals:1955-1965," URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.)

A reminiscence on the influence of James and the Correspondence/Facing Reality group on the development of those young militants who would found the League of Revolutionary Black Workers in Detroit. Georgakis found a number of important influences: 1) the emphasis on the activities of the workers themselves, 2) the availability of an analysis of international concerns, (he notes he and his friends concerns with China, Cuba and Palestine, Facing Realities interest in Hungary, 3) the Facing Reality emphasis on organizing at the point of production and its sophisticated critique of the UAW and support for the autonomy of Black struggles, 4) James indirect influence, through his writings and through his JFT and FR comrades, 5) the FR people as a network of contacts with a wide variety of militants (Italians, people working in factories and in the arts), 6) FR's emphasis on culture at the center of political struggle, e.g., James work on cricket, and 7) the personal empathy and support of those in the FR circles in the realm of the "personal as political."

George Rawick, "Personal Notes," [on C.L.R.James] URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.)

A friend of James and a noted historian of slave struggles, Rawick gives a personal account of what he feels is most basic about James contribution. He notes James identification of the struggles of plain people as the core of revolutionary struggle: "James understood and developed the idea of the autonomous struggle of Black people, an autonomy strong enough not to be submerged in or subordinated to the struggle of the white, male working class of the metropolitan center of capital. This notion of autonomy of struggle was carried through by James and those who worked most closely with him to include not only Blacks but all other national groups, women, youth, even artists and writers." He goes on to note some of James own involvement in struggle, including his work on such everyday subjects as cricket: "For James cricket is essential to the West Indian struggle for freedom, for his development of his views on the human personality, and a mark of his respect for an important aspect of the life of the West Indian masses."

Paul Lawrence Berman, "Facing Reality," URGENT TASKS, No.12, Summer 1981 (Special issue on C.L.R. James.)

Berman recounts the rebirth of anarchism within the New Left as an alternative to Leninism and how those interested in anarchism discovered C.L.R.James through Paul Buhle and RADICAL AMERICA.. He relates a variety of reasons for James appeal, including his insistence on focusing on the concrete content of workers struggles including what they reveal about "the existence, already, before a revolution, of a socialist society in embryo." He also notes that James never saw any relationship to anarchism in his work, indeed he condemned it. But, Berman argues, nevertheless FACING REALITY expresses, as far as he is concerned "some anarchist ideas." But at the same time, he goes on, there was much more in James than anarchism, there was a definite theoretical advance, mainly because most modern anarchists (e.g. Goodman and Bookchin) slighted the historic role of class conflict. "James had managed, in brief, to restate the theory of socialism in a way that recognized the validity of major libertarian insights and yet still preserved, through its reliance on Marxist dialectical and historical methodology, suppleness and solidity of mind....I would say that, for the American Left in this last quarter century, this book, FACING REALITY, is our underground classic."

George Rawick, FROM SUNDOWN TO SUNUP:THE MAKING OF THE BLACK COMMUNITY, Greenwood, Westport, 1972.Especially chapter on slave revolt.

The first volume of Rawick's 20-volume set of slave narratives this book draws upon those first hand accounts to describe and analyze the self-activity of slaves during the time they had to themselves, i.e., from sundown to sunup. According to Rawick's account this book sold more copies among the feminist movement in Italy than in the US. The intense interest there being plainly related to the focus on self-activity by a movement beginning to forge its awn autonomy from the Italian male dominated left. In Chapter 6, Rawick focuses on the resistance by slaves to their domination by whites. He considers both overt resistance and covert forms of struggle. He begins with a discussion of the black struggle to avoid being Sambo --passive and accepting of domination. Not only anger and violence demolish this possibility but also wiles and brain. Rawick analyses the oral story telling traditions of slavery that focus more often than not on Brer Rabbit-like characters {or Anansi the Spider} who is relatively weak but survives through using their wits to overcome stronger animals. Rawick goes on to describe a variety of forms of slave resistance: running away & the underground railroad, suicide, killing of overseers, attacking patrollers, killing the masters children, strikes, communication networks to circulate news and methods of struggle, learning to read for the same purpose, collective slave revolts, black secret fraternal organizations that spied on the South during the Civil War, working for the Northern Army, joining the North as troops, refusing to produce in the South, and so on. In all these efforts Rawick shows people that the masters would treat as objects [and others see as victims], struggling to become real human subjects, individually and collectively, crafting their own lives in an evolving community. "...the Subject: the man with needs and wants of his own, not only those that others can objectively and quantifiably impute to him; the man who acts as best he can to satisfy those needs and wants. He may demand better and more food, clothing, and shelter. He may demand higher status, dignity, and the time and opportunity to carry on flirtations, to laugh, dance, sing, make love, loaf, play with his children and raise them as he sees fit; he may demand the end of being whipped Object and become the one who chooses not to work well as an act of rebellion. the subject wants liberty and freedom and the opportunity to appropriate for himself and his family the best that is available in his time and place."

IV.The Theory of the Mass Worker and the Social Factory

The theory of the mass worker and the social factory received explicit development by Italian workerist theorists in the early 1960s as they fought to elaborate a theory adequate to the growing struggles of the workers in the big Italian factories such as those of FIAT in Turin. For them, the key points of reference, besides the American and French work on which they drew, was that of Gramsci and what the Italian Communist Party had done with his work. Gramsci had elaborated a theory of Fordism in the US but had concluded that, in his day, Italy had not yet experienced such developments and that therefore communist political strategy must be based on the still minoritarian position of the industrial working class. This became part of the CPI's dogma and part of its rationale for the continuing subordination of working class interests to political alliances with other classes, especially the petty bourgeoisie. It was against this position that the operaistas argued that indeed Ford had come to Italy and that the associated class composition constituted the basis for an independent working class politics.

It was in the process of developing their analysis of the new class structure (new for Italy) that the operaistas developed their theories of "class composition" as a working class perspective on Marx's notion of "organic composition" of capital. This involved a re-examination of Marx, especially his work on technological change and the division of labor which theorists such as Romano Alquati and Raneiro Panzieri rethought in terms of the structure of working class power.

Martin Glaberman, PUNCHING OUT, Detroit: Correspondence Publishing Committee, 1952 (Reprinted 1973 by Bewick Editions)

For example, in this pamphlet, where Glaberman analyzed how the unions were transformed from an organization of workers to an organization of capital after the mass struggles of the 1930s he discussed the use of the contract to harness workers struggle in ways that anticipated Mario Tronti's critique of the contract. Glaberman points out the contradictory nature of the contract: on the one hand it records workers victories, on the other it becomes a means to control them, as the company and union representatives impose the disciplinary clauses of the contract on the workers. One illustration is the grievance procedure that, by tying up the whole process for long periods of time, and diffusing conflict, undercuts workers ability to change things. Similarly, at the social level, he argues that much of the social legislation of the New Deal was designed to achieve the same kind of control. Glaberman goes on, in a way that will be repeated a thousand times in the New Left critique of the Italian Communist Party, to argue that left wing caucuses and union groups only "want to substitute themselves for the porkchoppers in power." He even draws a parallel between Walter Reuther's 1950 five year contract --during which the union would cooperate with management to control the workers-- and Stalin's five year plans.

*Raniero Panzieri, "The Capitalist Use of Machinery: Marx Versus the 'Objectivists,'" in Phil Slater (ed) OUTLINES OF A CRITIQUE OF TECHNOLOGY, (Atlantic Highlands, Humanities Press) 1980. (Originally published as "Sull'uso capitalistico delle macchine nel neocapitalismo," QUADERNI ROSSI, 1961 and reprinted in R. Panzieri, LA RIPRESA DEL MARXISMO LENINISMO IN ITALIA, Sapere Ed. 1975.)

A major figure in the emergence of New Left Italian Marxism, Panzieri broke from the Socialist Party of Italy (PSI) and helped found QUADERNI ROSSI, a journal which became a focal point for theoretical and political discussions that drew on both domestic (esp.the Italian class struggle) and foreign sources (JFT & SouB) to generate a whole series of new insights and perspectives. In this article Panzieri takes on several basic issues of conflict with the CPI and its trade unions. He attacks the orthodox position of the Italian Old Left that supported "modernization" in Italy after WWII. (This modernization meant first and foremost the introduction of Fordism, mass production, and collective bargaining in Italy. In this article he deals with several key issues: 1) the question of class strategy vis ˆ vis technological development. The orthodox view saw technology as an autonomous force which can be supported and used by the working class (say through a politics that supports struggle within capitalist development). Panzieri follows Marx's analysis of the development of machinery which sees it within the capitalist struggle to control the working class, as a moment of capital's planning. This he brings to bear against the argument that the development of the "productive forces" can guarantee the automatic or necessary "overthrow of existing relations." Thus he recreates in the Italian context the argument that the JFT and SOCIALISME OU BARBARIE threw against the Leninists and Stalinists years before. 2) the question of the role of wage and time struggles. The trade unions, the CPI and the PSI all see struggles for higher wages and more free time and the only necessary demands within capitalist development. Panzieri again uses Marx on both subjects to argue that increases in wages are not enough to rupture the wage relationship, and that the real meaning of "free time" is the working class control of production. What is necessary, Panzieri argues is a political rupture of the system based on the demand for workers' management of the whole society.

*Mario Tronti, "Social Capital," TELOS, #17, Fall 1973; from OPERAI E CAPITALE Turin: Einaudi, 1965, 1971.

One of the key figures in the Italian New Left, Mario Tronti wrote some of Autonomia's most important early theoretical papers. His book OPERAI E CAPITALE collects material originally published in QUADERNI ROSSI and other New Left journals together with new material. Although Tronti would later return to the CPI and would oppose many of his own earlier positions, his early work remains an important point of reference even today. This key chapter from Tronti's book deals with his analysis of Parts I and II of Volume II of CAPITAL wherein he emphasizes how Marx's analyses of both the circuit of commodity capital and the reproduction schemes encompass the reproduction of the whole social capital, including variable capital understood as the working class (waged and unwaged). From these passages he derives an analysis of social capital as self reproducing social factory.

Modern Times, "The Social Factory," FALLING WALL REVIEW, #5, Bristol, England, 1974.

*Guido Baldi, "Theses on the Mass Worker and Social Capital," RADICAL AMERICA, vol.6, No.3, May-June 1972.

Guido Baldi was a pseudonym used by Silvia Federici (see section V below) and Mario Montano (see section VIII below) in this article which sets out, in the form of "theses" a number of the important conclusions derived from previous work in Italy, and elsewhere, on the history of class struggle in the 20th Century.

Raniero Panzieri, "Surplus Value and Planning: Notes on the Reading of Capital," In THE LABOUR PROCESS AND CLASS STRATEGIES. CSE Pamphlet, No.1, London: Stage 1, 1976. (Originally in QUADERNI ROSSI, No. 4, 1964(?), pp. 257-288. Reprinted as Chapter 25 in R. Panzieri, LA RIPRESA DEL MARXISMO LENINISMO IN ITALIA, Milano: Sapere Ed. 1975, pp. 329-365.)

V. The Theory of the Wage and the Unwaged

Where the working class was defined by the wage, and the object of revolutionary struggle was to overthrow the "wages system," it was clearly hard for most Marxists to see the wage as an expression of working class power. Wage struggles were often seen as either useless (Weston, whom Marx attacked in VALUE, PRICE AND PROFIT) or as pure instruments of capital (of exploitation for orthodox Marxists or of instrumentalization for critical theorists). More in the tradition of Marx than of the Marxist, the contributors to the tradition we are exploring here, came to see wage struggles as integral moments of a more general power struggle.

In Italy, the New Left operaistas expressing the demands of the mass workers in the big factorys not only articulated a theory of the wage as power, but also saw first in the demand for wage equalization and then in the demand for separating the wage from productivity, vehicles for undermining the capitalist use of the wage and strengthening working class power.

Beyond these struggles, Italian feminists elaborated both a theory of the role of unwaged work (especially the housework of women) within capital and then a political program based on that theory: the wages for housework campaign. They argued that most of the work of reproduction, from procreation to day to day repair work, was just that -- the reproduction of human life as labor power for capital. Therefore, they argued, women (and anyone else employed in such work) should be paid by capital for their work. That theory and program challenged the traditional Marxist subordination of unwaged to waged struggles, i.e., the demand that women go get jobs if they wanted to join the working class. Instead, they argued that the acquisition of a wage would both make women's work visible and undermine the division between the waged and unwaged which weakened the class.

The autonomous struggles of women emerged not only out of the male dominated working class movement, but also out of the male dominated student movement of the late 1960s. Despite strong traditional pressures to subbordinate student struggles to those of factory workers, there was also a powerful sense that student struggles could be validly fought on their own terrain of the school as one factory of reproduction. Later on with the emergence of crisis in the 1970s and the increasing number of students who also held part-time, often illegal, jobs, the development of those struggles would contribute to the battles of the "tribe of moles." (See section on Post-Fordist working class)

In time, this theory of the unwaged as an integral part of the working class was extended to the peasantry and used both to critique traditional Marxist attitudes and politics toward peasants and to argue for the importance of autonomous peasant struggles. We are not talking here about the lip service Lenin gave the peasants, or Mao's willingness to use them as the "main revolutionary force" under strict working class (i.e., Mao's) guidance. We are talking about a willingness to recognize the various ways in which peasants are not only an integral part of capital but how their struggles can rupture accumulation every bit as much as industrial workers' struggles can and how they are also capable of elaborating projects of self-valorization which go beyond capital. (On this last see the section below on self valorization). Sometimes such struggle involve the demand for wages, or higher wages, but often they have involved the rejection of the wage, as of d