Strategy of Refusal of Strategy

(The following is a guest post by Stephen Squibb, author of the weblog fugitive ethical.)

What is being refused in Tronti’s “The Strategy of The Refusal”?

"What is generally known as class consciousness is, for us, nothing other that the moment of organization, the function of the party, the problem of tactics – the channels which must carry the strategic plane through to a point of practical breakthrough. And at the level of pure strategy there is no doubt that this point is provided by the very advanced moment in which this hypothesis of struggle becomes reality: the working class refusal to present demands to capital… in the final event, this means depriving capital of its content, of the class relationship which is its basis."

Putting aside the specifics of Tronti’s account of class consciousness for a moment, it is certainly evident that this is a departure from the traditional understanding of the term. But this should not surprise us; Tronti warns at the outset that it might be worthwhile "to confound Hegel's dialectic a bit," by asserting that the working class is a class for itself before it is a class against capital. He is clear that this is a departure not simply from Hegel, but from Marx as well.

Here Tronti's refusal is actually two-headed, directed, on the one hand towards the offerings of capitalists, and on the other, towards that tradition that gives his analysis its terms.  I would assert, perhaps foolishly, that it is impossible to consider “the strategy of the refusal” as simply one refusal or the other, as either the refusal of work, of reconciliation, of any participation in the capitalist system, or as the refusal of Hegelian-Marxism, the dialectic, class consciousness, history. Rather, from the outset, the strategy of the refusal is both practical and theoretical, its break stretching out in both directions at once.

What interests me here  is that the theoretical refusal is practically motivated, and the practical one theoretically so; not all of Marxism is thrown out, clearly, but just enough to clear a space for an account of refusal (indeed, many would say that it is not Marxism, as such, that is to say, theoretically, that is at issue but it is rather a Marx, that of Kapital, say, as opposed to that of the Grundrisse) Similarly, the second refusal remains theoretical, with Tronti loathe to spell out with any effectively practical specificity what is to be refused, when, and how. (To be fair, he does get more specific than some in this tradition, but the work is far from a manual)

Thus I find myself unable to respond satisfactorily to Tronti, he is at once a pragmatic theorist and theorist of praxis (not that he is unique in that regard, mind you).  Any categorical assessment would seem to take one side against the other, when he is so clearly invested in thinking both together. I would, in short, have to refuse him the totality of his refusal. And this refusal would be strategic, properly; impoverished in scope, focused in aim, and assessable after the fact.

It is in this last sense that I see Tronti writing a refusal of strategy at the same time that he is writing a strategy of refusal. His novel account of refusal is strategic only insofar as we agree with his theoretical account of the class relationships in play. But, and most important, for me at least, is that any attempt to assess the quality or promise of ‘the strategy of the refusal,’ as a strategy takes as granted the bit of confounding refusal at the outset. Thus it would seem there is only either theoretical strategy or strategic theory at work here.

All of this would be relatively beside the point if Tronti did not explicitly assert "within the Marxist camp, errors of theory are for in very practical terms..." My question then: if this is so, does it result from the refusal, fiercely on display in Tronti, to separate theory from strategy? Is it the case that the only way 'errors of theory' could be (seen as being) paid for by the working class, is if said theories erred by thinking themselves strategic, practically and properly, in the first place?