A bunch of unsorted
and digitalized texts

Antonio Negri: Interpretation of the Class Situation Today: Methodological Aspects

Antonio Negri, who is known for his work on Marx and class and who has been a leading theorist within the autonomist Marxist tradition, rejects a sociology of class cast in terms of capitalist reproduction. Negri’s stress is on the power of labour as constitutive of social activity; this emphasis allows him to construe social development in terms of revolutionary constitution and rupture. In Negri’s view, communism as a constitutive power obtaining (already) within, and against, capital is the requisite category for any theory purporting to focus on issues of class. The possibility of a constitution of communism he discusses in terms of the category of ‘value’. Contrary to seeing value as an economistic ‘measure’, Negri stresses value’s qualitative and political dimension. Negri’s view of value is at the opposite pole from that favoured by Marxist ‘economics’ and ‘political science’. Contrary to these views, Negri stresses the real and radical possibility of communist constituent power opened up at the present time.

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From: Open Marxism vol. II. (Pluto press, 1992)
ISBN: 0 7453 0591 1
Pages 69-105

Werner Bonefeld: The Capitalist State: Illusion and Critique

Johannes Agnoli has reminded us of the need to complement Marx’s critique of political economy with the critique of the political, of the state. Marx never wrote his projected book on the state. This has let generations of Marxists to argue over "the" Marxist theory of the state.

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Alfredo M. Bonanno: From Riot to Insurrection

From the backside of the book

The new productive process, which has often been defined as post-industrial, allows for low production costs even for small quantities of goods; considerable modifications in production requiring only modest capital investment; possibilities of changes in products never seen before. This opens up horizons of “freedom” for the middle classes, horizons never dreamt of before.

Such apparent simplification of life, such technological “freedom” has led sociologists and economists to let go and sketch the outlines of an interclassist society, capable of living “well” without re-awakening the monsters of the class struggle, communism or anarchy.

But this “freedom” is very similar to that of the castle for the Teutonic knights. Encircled by the walls of the manor, armed to the teeth, only the peace of the graveyard reigns. None of the ideologues of post-industrial capitalism have asked themselves what to do about the danger that will come from the other side of the walls.

The riots of the future will be even more bloody and terrible. And they will be even more so when transformed into mass insurrections.

Just as industrial conditions of production made the syndicalist struggle reasonable, in a post-industrial perspective, the only possible strategy for anarchists is the informal one. Groups of comrades who come together with precise objectives based on intermediate aims, who are at the same time building the minimal conditions for transforming situations of simple riot into those of insurrections.

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Published by Elephant Edition 1988.
ISBN: 1 870133 08 0

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UNFINISHED BUSINESS... The Politics of the Class War

From the backside of the book

This book comes as a breath of fresh air, inspired by the uprisings and rebellions of people in Britain and around the world. It shows that little has changed in our society since the beginning of the centery. Despite the politicians of the right and left trying to wish us out of existence, our class, the working class, are still here: alive and kicking!

We don’t pretend to have all the answers; indeed this book raises questions that you will have to find answers for. But it does represent a part of the wider debate that is happening within the working class, about how to change society for the better.

As the left in Britain and elwsewhere cry into their beer over the failure of their plans, we in Class War think it’s about time to throw them and their methods into the dustbin of history and return to the basics. We argue here for the re-creation of an independent revoluitonary movement within the working class, under the control of no one but themselves, inspired by the best traditions of unity and solidarity.

This is our unfinished buisness!

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First published by The Class War Federation and A.K. Press in May 1992.
ISBN 1-873176-45-7