"Devine, James" wrote: > Right. But the fetters also reflect capitalists' > attempts to maintain > power.
Therein lies the answer to the riddle of capital's resilience. If, in response to working class resistence, capital _merely_ attempted to maintain power and didn't foster technological innovation, it would become irreparably despised. If it _merely_ promoted technological innovation and didn't bother about maintaining power, it would be summarily replaced. So it has to do both. By the way, the summer 2004 issue of Capital and Class had an article by Finn Bowring on the Italian autonomist context of Hardt and Negri's Empire, "From the mass worker to the multitude." Bowring grounds the inconsistencies in "Empire" in the ambiguities of Marx's fragment on machines and H&N's indiscriminate use of two contradictory interpretations of that text. "The problem with the fragment on machines as Thoburn has pointed out, is that its ambiguous content lends itself to two, potentially conflicting interpretations. "On the one hand, Marx appears to be describing the declining significance of labour in comparison to the power of fixed capital, the latter being the objectification in machines of society's accumulated knowledge and scientific expertise.... "A second interpretation of the 'Fragment', on the other hand, draws deliberately on Marx's cryptic references to the 'general intellect', the 'social brain' and the 'social individual'. It finds in his observation that 'direct' labour no longer provides the 'governing unity' of production, the implicit and subversive thesis that *indirect* labour -- 'the general productive force arising from social combination' is instead the wellspring of wealth." Of course my own leanings are heavily toward this second, cryptic interpretation and I would bolster my case by relying here on the influence of that "fine statement" from the anonymous pamphlet of 1821 that wealth is disposable time. Which is not to say simply "free time" but also the facility that such free time gives to "seek recreation, enjoy life and improve the mind" and thus contribute indirectly to productivity. Sandwichman ______________________________________________________________________ Post your free ad now! http://personals.yahoo.ca
