2 Questions on Tronti

This symposium has been my first exposure to Tronti. I've benefitted from the posts and comments that have appeared thus far.

Most interesting to me is Tronti's insistence on the party, on a form for political action that corresponds to mass passivity at the level of production. On the one hand, refusal (passivity) is necessary to deprive capital of what it needs to control. On the other, the constitution of the party as a political actor is necessary in order to break the hold of the capitalist state. The party then is another space, a political alternative, a new site which does not issue demands but which receives or responds to those of capitalists. So, it seems as if his strategy involves an economic and a political logic, one that separates productivity from struggles and claims, and that establishes a specific task fitting for each.

All I can add at this point are two questions.

1. Is it true that 'whoever controls and dominates [production] controls and dominates everything?

2. Is it true that the capitalists 'have not invented--and in fact will obviously never be able to invent--a non-institutionalized political power;' that it 'does not exist independently of the formal political situations, through which, at different times but in permanent ways, they exercise their political domination'?

I am skeptical regarding each claim.

ad 1: It seems to me that neoliberalism complicates this claim, suggesting that whoever controls finance capital controls and dominates everything. So, an ability to succeed in financial markets, to threaten governments with debt crises, to shift flows of capital, is now more important than production. One, likely too simple and naive way that I think about this, is with the idea that even if workers controlled factories today, they would still compete in global markets, and still come under all sorts of constraints involving debt and finance. So, the matter is not only the ownership of means of production; it is also control over the terms of monetarization, financialization, and trade.

In fact, I would say that part of the horrific genius of the neoliberal turn was the way that it moved class struggle to another level, extracting capitalist interests from production per se, the site where they were weak, and moved them to the level of markets, currencies, finance.

(Textually, Tronti makes clear that he is writing at the 'end of laissez faire' and under Keynesian conditions. But, this is what has changed dramatically under neoliberalism.)

ad 2: It seems to me that capitalists have developed non-institutional forms of political power. Of course, a lot will read on what one means by 'institutions' here. I don't know what Tronti means, whether he would see ideological state apparatuses, on one side, or the cultural practices characteristic of civil society, on another, as institutions. So, is the family an institutional form of political power for Tronti? What about markets? It seems to me that capitalist power is exercised through myriad diverse practices, practices that are not synonymous with state institutions in the narrow sense.

Comments

[Nate]

hi Jodi,

Re #1, yes.

Re #2, I guess it depends on what you think those institutions do. If civil society and markets went away one could still have a society with a prevalent form of the capital relation, one that would likely require a severely beefed up repressive state apparatus to keep it in motion. On the other hand, if all the cops and military and their private equivalents went away, capital wouldn't last very long - people would be able to not work and to take what they needed (hence no so-called silent compulsion of the market).

Okay just kidding re:#1, for real now: I admit I'm not the best on finance and all that, but my impulse is to say that there's no value produced by finance so something different's going on there. This could cash out in two ways. One an old fashioned (but not necessarily wrong) Marxist take, that this arrangement will produce crisis because there's no 'real' wealth produced. Another would be that if finance doesn't rely on surplus value - defined as command over labor - then it's a non sequitur, in that folks who take the command of/over/to labor as the primary problem could just ignore it and go about attacking the places where that command does exist. Also, I think the power to threaten goverments and all that is predicated on institutional power (repressive apparatus) and on control over production (ability to cut off goods).

This latter control over production, though, might not occur at the direct point of production but could come via chokepoints - economic embargoes, just like how organized longshore workers and truckers are able to impact far beyond their industries, because value that is not recouped is simply value lost, rather than accumulated. This is precisely the power that piquetero groups' roadblocks have been able to have in Argentina: commodities produced that can't circulate are in some ways even worse for the involved capitalists (loss on investment rather than not investing in the first place).

Best,
Nate

[s0metim3s]

Beverly Silver's Forces of Labor: Workers Movements and Globalization since 1870 is worth a read - and she's critical of the Operaisti for some very good reasons, but much of her take (as well as Giovanni Arrighi's) was developed as a dialogue with Alquati, Tronti and other Operaisti.

There's also Tronti's discussion of 'social capital', (which has much to do with finance and money assuming a particular role). And Sergio Bologna spent much more time on the topic of money, credit and than did Tronti, so maybe they're worth reading alongside eachother.

[Jon]

OK, Jodi, I note that the URL for this post is http://www.long-sunday.net/long_sunday/2006/03/3_questions_on_.html.

So what was the third question to have been? :)

[Jodi]

Jon--I feel so exposed!