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Theory

October 28, 2003 - 1:07pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hydrarchist writes:

"Crisis Theory in a Crisis Society"

Interview with Norbert Trenkle from the German group Krisis


Interviewers and translators: Timo Ahonen and Markus Termonen. Originally made for the Finnish Magazine Megafoni (http://megafoni.kulma.net).

How can the postindustrialized
situation be reacted to, which is represented as a phase of rupture, and in
which some present solutions solely inside the current model of wage work and
others support a fixed citizen’s income as the central form of social security?
In other words, how can the mechanisms disintegrating solidarity and the capitalist
relations of production be critized without stagnating into the defense of welfare
state or taking on the form of past industrial classes? These questions and
others are discussed in this interview with Norbert Trenkle from the German
Krisis-collective. The group, concentrating on theoretical productivity, aims
to criticize the capitalist society in a constitutive way by focusing on e.g.
work, capital and commodity production. As topics in this interview we also
have the current meaning of "leftism" and some questions concerning action methods.

First of all, could you
give a representation of the origins, stages, productions and efforts of your
group?

October 21, 2003 - 9:03am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Money in the World Crisis:

The New Basis of Capitalist Power"

Christian Marazzi, Zerowork

This article is the preliminary result of discussion and collaboration among a group of comrades linked to Zerowork in London. John Merrington and Mike Sonenscher have made major contributions to the final result. Since this article was written in October 1976, many of the points have been developed further with a view to advancing the debate and publishing a collective book, forthcoming, with the title, Money and Proletarians.

One of the major difficulties in analyzing the current capitalist crisis and reorganization, whether on the national level or globally, lies in seeing how changes in the international monetary system fit in with changes at the level of the international division of labor and production. To approach this question we must grasp both the nature of the money-form as a social relationship of power within capitalism and the historical specificity of the particular organizational forms of that power.

October 15, 2003 - 8:24am -- jim
Announcements
Theory

This is an interesting site, put together by Loren Goldner and some
others to sustain the discussion of fictitious capital begun in the
debate with Aufheben.


www.munism.com

October 13, 2003 - 9:22am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

"Globalization and Its Apologists: An Abolitionist Perspective"

John Zerzan

In its heyday in the American South, slavery never lacked for apologists. Writers, preachers, and planters chimed in to defend the peculiar institution as divinely ordained and justified by the racial superiority of whites over blacks. The Abolitionists, who burned the Constitution, hid fugitives, and attacked federal arsenals, were widely viewed as dangerous firebrands fit for prison or the gallows.

October 10, 2003 - 8:03am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes:

"A Platformist Response to 'Post-Anarchism':

Sucking the Golden Egg: A Reply to Newman"

Zabalaza Anarchist Communist Federation of Southern Africa

Comrades: The following is a response by the zabalaza
anarchist communist federation (zacf) of southern
africa to an article by saul newman entitled
"anarchism and the politics of ressentiment" which is
online at: here.
Red & Black Regards, Michael Schmidt (Acting
International Secretary, ZACF, Johannesburg)

In the midst of the establishment's persistent refusal
to understand anarchism, of its constant attempts to
portray us as a bunch of violent lunatics; in the face
of continual misrepresentations by the Marxists, of
their efforts to portray us as a petty-bourgeois
movement that rejects organisation and can never be
truly revolutionary; in the face of all this
systematic misunderstanding and refusal to engage, it
is a relief to encounter a piece of criticism that
makes some attempt to understand what anarchism is
about, notes some of our good points, offers (mostly)
coherent and (as far as I know) original arguments,
and at least attempts to present itself as making
constructive proposals. Nonetheless, I wish to argue
that Saul Newman's article ' Anarchism and the
Politics of Ressentiment' is based on a fundamental
misunderstanding of anarchism, and that its proposals
amount to a rejection of the real point of our
movement.

October 9, 2003 - 10:10pm -- hydrarchist
News
Theory

hydrarchist writes:

Draft version 1.0

Please make comments here here


Introduction

At the n5m hacktivist conference, September 2003, collaborative and locational mappers met to organise themselves to work more closely by organising quarterly meetings over the next year and agreeing to share resources. As a contribution to this work the UO has published this text to address the implications posed by the use of Semantic Web as a part of the social projects of the Free Information movement.


Who Are The Freemasons of the Future?

The first and most salient fact about the Freemasons of the Future is that they do not exist. However they are sentient beings trying to struggle into existence. From their perspective they are involved in a life and death struggle to ensure their own past, some of which we perceive as the present. Located in the distant future after time travel has become commonplace they endeavour to sojourn into what they regard as history to create the conditions which they consider as necessary for their own existence. But this does not mean they are going to be successful.

October 9, 2003 - 9:40pm -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hydrarchist posts:

("Those of you who were at the No Border camp in Strasbourg last
summer, or at the Hub in Florence during the ESF, probably received a
copy of the maps made by Bureau d'Etudes with collaboration from
several others (including myself). You can find one example at
http://utangente.free.fr/index2.html. To give background on the
projects and their relation both to art practices and political aims,
I wrote this text for "Geography and the Politics of Mobility,"
an upcoming expo in Vienna (info below). I'll also be raising some
methodology questions at World Information this Friday morning in
Amsterdam." -- BH)

"Maps for the Outside:

Bureau d'Etudes, or the Revenge of the Concept"

Brian Holmes

The closure of the gallery space is a classic conceptual gesture.
Witness this proposal by Robert Barry: "My exhibition at the Art &
Project Gallery in Amsterdam in December, '69, will last two weeks. I
asked them to lock the door and nail my announcement to it, reading:
'For the exhibition the gallery will be closed.'(1) Conceptual art
can be defined, not simply as the refusal of the commodified object
and the specialized art system, but as an active signage pointing to
the outside world, conceived as an expanded field for experimental
practices of intimacy, expression and collaboration -- indeed, for the
transformation of social reality. (2)

October 7, 2003 - 10:54am -- hydrarchist
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

hydrarchist writes:

The Renaissance of Workerism (Operaism)

Part Two of a Trilogy

In the last Wildcat, No. 64/65 (March 1995) we published part one of an article on workerism that we expected to have a follow-up. It examined in detail (and it is still worth reading!) the origin of the concept of "worker inquiries" and the first experiences with them at the beginning of the 60s in Italy. In the mid 1990s, books had been published on workerism in West Germany and in Italy in the 60s and 70s. At the same time, the discussion turned on Karl Heinz Roth's book, Die Wiederkehr der Proletarität (The Return of the Proletarian Condition). We wanted to use his theses on the convergence of worldwide class relations and the arisal of a world working class as the starting point for a militant investigation. But Roth's idea of the "proletarian circle," composed of academics, left unionists and base initiatives, failed. After that, there was no need for workerism for a long time on the left.

October 2, 2003 - 2:16pm -- jim
Reviews
Theory

Anonymous Comrade writes

People who are interested in Negri, Marx, Tronti, Deleuze, and Guattari might also be interested in The Micro-Politics of Capital: Marx and Prehistory of the Present


Summary

Re-reads Marx in light of the contemporary critical interrogation of subjectivity.
What is the relation between the economy, or the mode of production, and culture, beliefs, and desires? How is it possible to think of these relations without reducing one to the other, or effacing one for the sake of the other?

September 27, 2003 - 10:23am -- jim
Analysis & Polemic
Theory

radicaleyes submits:

"The Multitude and the Metropolis"*

Toni Negri

1. ‘Generalising’ the strike.

It is interesting to note how, on the occasion of the Spring and Summer 2002 struggles in Italy, the project of ‘generalising’ the strike of the movement of precarious and socially diffuse workers, men and women, seemed to be harmlessly and uselessly subsumed beneath the workers’ ‘general strike’. After this experience, many comrades who participated in the struggle began to realise that whilst the workers’ strike was ‘damaging’ to the employer, the social strike passed without notice through the folds of the global working day. It neither damaged the masters nor helped the mobile and flexible workers. This realisation raised a series of questions: how do we understand how the socially diffuse worker fights; how can he concretely subvert in the space of the metropolis his subordination to production and the violence of exploitation? How does the metropolis present itself to the multitude and is it right to say that the metropolis is to the multitude what the factory used to be to the working class?

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