Afterword Group Krisis, criticism of the work
and the "primacy of the Italian civil"
Anselm Jappe
In the society of work, and work is becoming rare as the breathable air in the city. Yet he expects all to work if they want to live. Every day brought new ideas on how we could return to full employment. No one has ever worked, nor will ever work. Neither the license to the unlimited exploitation of the work force, or the attempt to subdue the splint to the global capital of the state can reverse this trend. Others have noted that it was to rebuild the company's work once and try to save the current living conditions for those who can no longer find work. They want to make the best of a bad lot. Almost no one doubts the work as a founding principle of the society in which we live. What it is instead the German group in Krisis
Manifesto against labor. But what is the point of view from which a radical critique?
For nearly two decades, the Krisis group, gathered around eponymous magazine, is developing in Germany one of the criticisms most articulate, innovative and radical of contemporary capitalist society. He has done outside of universities and large and small chapels on the left hand through the magazine "Krisis", now in its twenty-sixth number, by means of articles and books, some of them - especially those of Robert Kurz, the author best known of the group - have reached a remarkable expansion, and through seminars, conferences and meetings [1]. Originally part of a still relatively traditional Marxist position, the authors of Krisis have come as a critique of the global society of the goods that includes almost all his alleged opponents. Here are some of the cornerstones of this criticism.
more than two centuries ago, when industrial capitalism became the prevailing mode of production, we discuss only the distribution
of its supposed benefits, without criticizing its very nature. For the many souls of the workers' movement was to get through the class struggle or through reforms, that the surplus
go to those who produce it and to transform the workers into full citizens. Meanwhile, everyone, left and right, the market economy in countries like those who called themselves "socialist" had completely internalized the conditions of exploitation capitalism, namely the process by which the productive activity becomes
work: its first concrete is then compared to its secondary side
abstract work. As the "work", the activity is a mere amount of time spent to produce an undifferentiated commodity
not count in either the utility or beauty, but only the ability to become
money, that is to sell the market.
the value of such goods is the only measure that contains dead labor, which in turn allows to accumulate a larger amount of money in the form of dead labor and capital, in a never-ending process and no other sense than to perpetuate itself [2]. Marx criticized the abstract labor and goods, the economic value and money. But his criticism of the basic categories of capitalism was soon forgotten by his followers, in favor of the attempt - also foreshadowed in his writings - to better organize and distribute more "correct" the production of these assumptions that now passed for "natural ", and not the result of a particular social organization.
based society tautological transformation of work in vivo, however, money can not last forever. From the outset it contains within itself the irreconcilable contradictions: There is only by absorbing of living labor, which is the only source of value and surplus value, but at the same time, competition leads to an incessant increase in productivity through technology and thus to reduce the use of live work. The private producers need to delegate to the State all the costs of infrastructure, but it suffocates under their growing burden. The production of goods irrespective of any content and would like to consider everything only as a mere form, that is as pure quantitative expression of the commodity form, but is always achieved by the new content (for example in the ecological crisis: from the perspective of the commodity form a horse and a car are the same, if they are the same amount of money; from the point of view of content are not the same and produce very different consequences).
The crisis that the capitalist production of goods door-always in her womb has been postponed several times due to the expansion of total production - especially with the model "Fordist-Keynesian," based on the automotive industry, full employment, the
welfare and a strong role of the state. But the crisis of the mechanism of enhancement of the capital has become evident after 1970. Currently, only the huge parking lot of fictitious capital unusable in the realms of world stock markets still form an almost complete loss of substance that the capitalist mode of production has already suffered. But after the collapse of the weakest sectors of the global production of goods took place in the eighties and nineties, the countries "socialist" East to the South, to the 'emerging' countries in Latin America and the Far East, the centers of capitalist production are now entering a phase of irreversible decline. A decline that manifests itself not only with rates of unemployment and record-zero growth economy, astronomical debts public and private companies in the colossal failures, but also with the unwinding of the role of the nation state, with the phasing out of the low standard of civilization attained in education, health, safety, etc.., with the destruction natural foundations of life and the growing inability of many individuals to withstand the current conditions of existence.
In his theoretical journey, the Group started from Krisis forgotten core of Marx's theory - the critique of commodity and value, abstract labor and money - to understand as the traditional class struggle for the appropriation of surplus value was still an integral part system that could not transcend. In his iconoclastic way - in reference to both the dominant consciousness as to the opposition - Krisis must necessarily come to dismantle another sacred category of modernity: that of "work". His criticism did not concern only exploited the work, paid work, alienated labor, or even only the abstract work [3]. He had to call into question the work
tout court. Certainly not to deny the activity. But to deny the alleged need to be active, not an end in view of the practical utility of which has been consciously deliberate, but to produce just to produce. In truth, capitalism prevents
many activities than it imposes
: condemns many people to refrain from exploiting the resources they have on hand, just because they are more "profitable". Just think of the countless peasants in the southern hemisphere to the world market which prevents you from continuing the their thousands of years.
pre-capitalist societies do not even know the concept of "work" or to "economy" [4]. Production activities were part of the whole of social life and were not organized as a separate sphere. So the concept of "work" and the "abstract labor" are in fact identical. The work, even the so-called "concrete", is always an abstraction that insulates an aspect of human life from its context, opposing domestic production activities for breeding, culture, gaming, etc. rites. It can not therefore oppose the "good" concrete work to the "bad" abstract labor, that they can not exist, as two sides of the same "work." The production of use values \u200b\u200bas possible can be just as tautological as that of exchange value. Even
is to enhance the "creative", the intellectual or artistic work (or what purports to be) to enforce against all'avvilente productive work of the traditional type. For several years, some theorists, for naivete or cynicism, carry out a speech that the possession of a computer and a professional knowledge (for more of doubtful nature) "embedded" in their brain would be enough to escape the tyranny of capitalist work . Here is a post-operative rhetoric meets with praise curiously neoliberal (already quite stale) the wonders of the new economy
and micro-entrepreneurship. The writings in this volume follow a very different track: do not call into question only
content of work (creative or interesting and boring and taxes) or the single issue of exploitation and hierarchy (as they remain, of course, important ), but above the
role as a form of work-based social life : Any activity is permitted, indeed required in the form of "work" if he can become a salable product, while the best or most useful activities that But it is not sold, is not a "work" and therefore has no right to exist, except as a "hobby" ever smaller spaces vacated by terrorism work.
There were thus good reasons to abandon the more limited ground offensive groped theory and research to the public on a large scale. In 1999, then launched the Krisis
Manifesto, it does not pretend to make theoretical innovations with respect to the other band's lyrics that lay bare the mechanism of work, but try to summarize them in the most efficient and enjoyable as possible. It was published as a brochure
self-produced and was presented during many debates, welcomed the protests, often brightly Marxists "traditional". It has since been published in Brazil (the country, outside Germany, where the thesis Krisis have found so far greener), France, Spain, Portugal and Mexico on the Internet has been translated into Persian, Russian and English. The Italian translation, although done quickly, has long remained unpublished. E 'was rejected by a dozen publishers, and most explicitly for the content: When challenged labor, orthodox anarchists and commercial publishers, the Leninists and the alternative, the Liberals and publishers "antagonist" each have something object.
The international circulation of this pamphlet
is a good sign at a time when viewers of all countries are encouraged, with depressing monotony, to look for "jobs" which are no longer. However, a limit of
Manifesto lies in its numerous references to the particularities of the German situation [5]. Is to better understand these references, both to recognize, by comparison, the hallmarks of the Italian branch of the global society of work, it is useful to consider the following.
After the Second World War was created in Germany a highly developed social protection system (whose origin, as is known, however, date back to the fight against Bismarck's social democracy). Who gets fired after working at least a year (including temporary jobs funded by the State itself as measures against unemployment) for a year receives 60% of final salary (initially the proportion was higher, but has been lowered several times in the Nineties), then for several years to a lesser extent, where no other resources. On the other hand required to appear regularly at the job. If the employment agency offered him a job, may only refuse if this work is "unacceptable" because too far below his status or his last salary, etc. too far from his residence. If he refuses without reason "valid" loses the subsidy. The criteria to determine which jobs are "acceptable", and who has been redefined several times in the sense more and more onerous now being asked to prove that the unemployed are actively engaged in finding a job. The aim is always to exclude people as possible by this grant.
who do not receive it, and not every person with no own resources, may ask for the "social assistance" in exchange for humiliating paperwork to prove your status as necessary to allow a small life (you have to take into account the fact that almost Germany no longer lives with his parents after two decades and that home ownership, however small, is considered a human right). Whoever receives the "social assistance" may be required to perform the work almost for free "socially useful, for example, clean parks and cemeteries. A threat that has long been rather theoretical, but some years the offices responsible for this modern administration of poverty are often put into practice - more a deterrent than with economic goals. Since he released
Manifesto, the political will to push the unemployed Germans to work in every price was still significantly enhanced, and proposals for a special government commission set up to "reform the labor market" has been for months the center of a heated debate. But in the opinion of many opinion makers
this is not enough and you have to shake the whip even more brutal. As a part of German society is liege to the 'Protestant ethic "of work, asked to work because he does not know what else to do in life and despise the other" parasites ", another part is smaller and has discovered that it is often more convenient live more or less comfortable with these government subsidies rather than doing chores for a salary perhaps just over subsidies (one must remember that a family can receive up to € 1500 per month of "social assistance" and that many will integrate with the work the black on the dole instead depends on the last salary). To the despair of the capital, it is not easy to convince people in these conditions to polish the shoes to be wealthy or four hours each day of travel. On the other hand, the system cost becomes prohibitive when there are stable for more than four million unemployed. In the past era of prosperity and social harmony, the capital seemed to have forgotten one of the basic rules of capitalism, coolly announced at the end of the eighteenth century by English economists: the poor must be put before the alternative of working in all conditions, or of dying hunger. They called it the "silent compulsion". That is why the German authorities are trying to come up with ever new means of forcing the unemployed to accept any work or to forgo public aid. A real blackmail, because in general the unemployed Germans are really out of work (the informal sector exists, but much less than in Italy), nor can they rely heavily on families.
also in other northern European countries, unemployment on the welfare state occupies a central place in political life. However, there is still something to defend, and resistance are numerous. Krisis as a critical observer knows that the welfare
has always served the integration of human material in capitalist society, in addition, unlike the reformist pro-statist as it is professed by Attac or "Le monde diplomatique", Krisis not make any illusion that we can block the fundamental crisis of the society of the goods and return the golden age of capitalism with a simple "political intervention". However, Krisis recognizes that the current destruction of the welfare state will just throw much of the population in the barbarism of a competition that cannibalized away more and more every prospect of emancipation.
In Italy, as you know, things are different. Always laboratory for new methods of social domination that combines the archaic and the modern, Italy took the second half of the twentieth century for a particular street in techniques to force the job. The widespread use of temporary employment and undeclared work pushes most efficiently individuals to accept any job. Everything in France, Germany or England governments are still trying to introduce, with great difficulty, in Italy, unfortunately, has always been true for much of the population: a workforce very "flexible" that it will accept, especially if it is Young, Southern or immigrant or if it should do the "mess", to work for minimum wages or even for free (in the hope of future employment), to work only when his "employer" has actually need, they can be fired at any moment and that you review the practice of temporary employment and wages regionally differentiated. As you know, millions of Italian also consider a fortune for a job that is far below legal standards in relation to pay, safety, schedules, sanitation.
regular employees, public or private, are often well protected in Italy, to cite a current example, the difficulties encountered in the "reform" of Article 18 on the "termination for cause" show that even a government like that of Berlusconi not dares to challenge the unions too. But those who have to defend such a status are fewer in number, until reduced to a true "labor aristocracy" (or collar). At the same time grow silently, without the need for government initiatives and battles with unions at most detected by the inevitable annual reports of Censis, those forms "atypical" work with which Italy is adjusting more quickly than many other countries, the post-modern capitalism: a part of the informal sector, especially the work grows pseudo-independent. The same services that were previously performed by salaried employees are now assigned to "self" or micro-entrepreneurs (the so-called outsourcing
). This trend is global, but Italy is one of the few countries where self-employed workers are already more numerous employees. To survive in the market, a system of fierce competition, these autonomous workers are often sentenced to inflict self-exploitation levels and working conditions that no proletarian classic would have accepted, for more must try each day to sell their goods and assume all risks of their "independence."
In Italy, even more than elsewhere, the fact of having a job, or a "good" job, is considered a sign of personal superiority, glorifying all the means that lead to success and blaming everyone in the labor market has not need it most. Even now, Italy is a disturbing demonstration of how a developed capitalist society would be able to live with a very high number of unemployed without incurring the cost of maintaining them. In fact, Italy is the only great western country that has managed to do without a general unemployment, relieving comfort the families. In Italy, unlike other countries, very few are truly unemployed, even if they appear in the statistics as such. Most of them are constantly employed to "make ends meet," without asking anything to the "community" and grateful to every young master who offers them a job or a commission. The "silent compulsion" could most of the laws. Italy has already gone where other governments want to bring their countries. A sad edge.
Without doubt, this situation makes the fight against the job even more difficult than elsewhere, although Italy can boast a long tradition in the modern labor resistance to terrorism: from Naples who according to a cliché
rather nice answer to those who offered him a job: "Thanks, I've already eaten today," the resistance in the factories of the seventies, the thief de
Unknown thieves another thief crying "There you are working" when they hide in a yard, the numerous early retirement. The obligation to work sometimes seems less deeply internalized than elsewhere. A small civilian primacy of the Italians. " But when the company's work as a general rule requires that by now everyone should think for themselves how to exploit them and how to sell, then it becomes increasingly clear that it is not just to get out of paid work, work heteronomous, work exploited. It is instead a categorical break with the work itself, with the need to transform any business into a commodity, whose sole purpose is to find a buyer.
E 'then particularly important to abandon the belief that the dissemination of the work "person" contains a perspective of liberation and it can become a job "self" that enables individuals to combine profit with pleasure. Interestingly, the neo-liberal principles "of each manager himself" has found widespread - at least when you can harness the illusion of work "creative" - In environments that want to escape the capitalist work. The extreme flexibility required by today's capital to its human material appears to some as the promise of a job is not subject to traditional constraints on working time, conditions, content, etc.., A job that can be reconciled with other requirements of its life and possibly play collectively and creatively, for example in a community center. Criticizing this illusion does not mean the old factory with regret the siren or office than once, and lasts until the need to work, is more than legitimate to seek a job that seems more bearable than others. But we must not make a virtue of necessity and believe can "recode" clear purpose for the tax on capital flexibility. The work of "self" will always be subject to all
dictates of the market and compete with all other suppliers of the same item. And the vaunted "popular intellectuals", the skills and knowledge they need only a computer and no longer by any owner of the means of production, show (apart from the more than doubtful character of much of this knowledge) that not only it is delivered to a single master in the flesh, but to all the anonymous market, to the whole machine uncontrollable transformation of time working in value and then money. Even if this work "intangible" and self was so widespread as claimed, it would still be far away from any direct access as soon as resources, from any control over their living conditions, any collective decision on what makes sense to produce and what is not. In addition, limited to works "creative" is not a prospect extensible.
Here it becomes quite clear that we must break, at the social level, with the work itself, to be able to give back to all activities necessary or pleasant, and not just those "creative", their autonomy from the State and the market. It will be understood that the authors of the Manifesto
not
lingered bohemian who abhorred the activity as such. Of course, much part of the efforts of today are completely useless and only arise from the needs of the system of exploitation of labor. But once past work, there will be plenty to do in certain fields, perhaps more than before. It will never, however, to fuel the process of making money by working with the mediation of money. The prospect of
Krisis is therefore not even to wait for a technological paradise where the machines work for us and we can restrict us humans to look at them. This expectation is behind a lot of critical surface and "hedonistic" of labor, who want to get through a political act (though highly unlikely) that the production system currently restricts its benefits to everyone without demand in exchange for labor services. The proposal of the existence of income, when not confined merely to ask for a subsidy to survive, is going in this direction. But this is to ask plenty capitalist without wanting to pay the price, means to desire the capitalist consumption of goods without the production of goods, work-based. Ignore it the hazardous nature, alienating and often catastrophic 's "full" capitalist, which in many ways would be eliminated, instead of distributing it in increasing quantities, free of charge. Hardly the technique developed by capitalism and science can be a vehicle of emancipation, they are not "neutral." But this request
cornucopia also assumes that capitalism is still thriving and that we should only force him to give everything he has but does not want to give up. In truth, the system of production of goods entered into an irreversible crisis, because that job is making unnecessary the exploitation of which is both its sole reason for existence. Capitalism is no longer able to create full employment, but could not even offer an abundance of goods without a job, and always for the same reason: the exhaustion of its secular dynamics. But there is no reason to regret dreaming of a return to capitalism and "healthy" or "true" sixties. On the contrary, need to take this
historical chance. E 'but not realistic to expect something from the classical left, who has always wanted to work and not the liberation of the liberation from work. Just look Rifondazione describing the sinking of Fiat as a national disaster and almost ridiculous to ask for the "nationalization" of his remains, in tacit agreement with the neo-liberal principles "privatize gains, socialize losses." And what of the Disobedient convinced that occur with militancy against the closure of the Fiat, instead of rejoicing that the octopus that oppresses almost a century, poisons and destroys Italy finally loosen its grip? Why not ask, if anything, layoffs to life for all fired? In truth, even to many environments "antagonist" the unwinding of the work is scary. So cry "work less work all" rather than imagine a society that has left the job behind.
The crucial point is this: The exit from labor society is no utopia, not a nice dream. This is not to say "no" to work only because it is unpleasant and there is nothing better to do (although this is also true).
It 's the same capitalist society that is removing the work . He does not have hardly any more need. In countries "under-developed" at least half the population is already "unemployed", and when the house of cards will collapse of world stock markets, the situation in the "developed" countries will not be very different. But what may be good news becomes a nightmare continues until the obligation to work to eat. Capital no longer has need of men and puts out over entire countries. In doing so destroys himself. But out of this capitalist society and the output of work is not peaceful, joyful transformation, a switch to another better civilization. Under present conditions, this route leads to global barbarism. Be exploited today is almost a privilege and at least ensure their survival. A more and more people in the world, capital launches a message even harder: "You are obsolete, not even willing to exploit, because it does not do enough. For us, you can also go to the moon. Sbrogliatevela yourself, just do not ask us anything."
In this situation, it is perhaps even more so necessary to "fight the job." We are already thinking about the system of producer goods. The task that arises is then another: find a form of social life no longer based on the work, but on common decisions on the use of available resources. A farewell to work is not an option you can choose, if opponents of the work give a real alternative that satisfies all over the world. The demolition of Work has already happened in much of the world, and is in the rest, the only question is to know what comes next. Before you stop wanting to restore the work and we begin to build alternatives, the better. This is not simply rename "free activity" what is now called "work". We must reinstate the separate spheres of life, playing a total return to society, where the production of "economy" is not an end in itself to which the alleged rationality are subordinated to any other factors. Such an excess of work is not feasible with some artifice of social engineering, but requires a change of paradigms civilization. A change, however, that it may lie in the distant future, but upon which day by day the fate of a growing part of humanity.
1. in Italy have come out so far: Robert Kurz,
The Lost Honour of work , manifestolibri, Rome 1994; Robert Kurz,
The end of money politics el'apoteosi , manifestolibri, Rome 1997; Ernst Lohoff,
The end BEGINNING of the revolution of the proletariat as , in "Invariants", n. 29 and n. 30, 1997; Robert Kurz,
Sein and Design, in "Agalma", n. 1, 2000. Other important texts are by Robert Kurz
Der der Kollaps Modernisierung , Eichborn, Frankfurt 1991 (the Soviet Union collapsed and the crisis in the West);
Schwarzbuch Kapitalismus, Eichborn, Frankfurt 1999 (a history of capitalism) Marx
lesen , Eichborn, Frankfurt 2000 (an anthology commentary written by Marx);
Weltordnungskrieg , Horlemann, Bad Honnef 2002 (the new world disorder). In 1999 was released, along with the Manifesto, the volume
Feierabend! - Elf gegen die Arbeit Attacken (Lieraturverlag konkret, Hamburg) with essays by different authors working against the other two essays of this translation are included in this volume. The publisher Horlemann also published by Peter Klein, Die Illusion
von 1917, 1992 (the Russian Revolution); Ernst Lohoff,
Der dritte Weg in den Burgerkrieg , 1996 (the war in Yuogoslavia), Roswitha Scholz
Das Geschelcht des Kapitalismus , 2000 (on capitalism and patriarchy). Many Krisis texts, in Italian, can be found at
http://www.krisis.org/ .
2. work alive, after it has served to produce a commodity, "exists" in the goods stored in the form, just "dead". If you produce a commodity, and all its ingredients are needed twenty hours of work, this commodity is "twenty hours of work dead. While living labor disappears in the act of its execution, dead labor - past work, accumulated labor - still exists, in a very particular, as "value" of goods.
3. Because today there is great confusion in this regard, it is important to emphasize that the work "abstract" in the sense that Marx gives to this concept, it has nothing to do with the job "immaterial" or "virtual". For Marx, any work that produces goods has two sides: an abstract, as a mere time of undifferentiated labor, which translates into money, and a concrete result - tangible or intangible - asset. This side of specific labor is necessarily subordinated to the abstract, nor is the simple "carrier". Even the services or work computer have a side "concrete" and also that the factory or in agriculture or in hospitals has one side "abstract". It 's always been the case in capitalist conditions, and from that point of view, the work today is not "more abstract" than it was one hundred years ago.
4. words there, but the designation of specific areas and limited life.
5. Some minor references to the Italian situation have been introduced by the translators, in agreement with the authors.
