(Below, english translation and corrections by ROSS WOLF)
Il y a toujours eu segmentation de la force de travail, il faut la prendre comme une détermination objective de la force de travail face au capital, cela tient naturellement à la division du travail, mais là on pourrait n’avoir que le découpage dans un matériau homogène et une simple gradation quantitative de la valeur de cette force de travail (travail simple ou travail complexe, osmose dans le MPC entre contrainte au surtravail et travail spécifique de direction de la coopération, etc.). Mais la segmentation n’en serait pas une si elle n’était qu’un découpage quantitatif dans un matériau homogène. Deux processus interviennent alors qui s’entrecroisent : d’une part, le MPC est mondial, il peut s’approprier et détruire tous les modes de production tout en conservant en lui des caractéristiques de ces modes de production qu’il redéfinit ; d’autre part la valeur de la force de travail comporte une composante morale, culturelle et historique. Parce que l’exploitation capitaliste est universelle, parce que le capital peut s’emparer de tous les modes productions ou les faire coexister avec lui, en exploiter la force de travail ou la détacher de ses anciennes conditions d’existence, le mode de production capitaliste est une construction historique qui fait coexister dans son moment présent les différentes strates de son histoire. La segmentation n’est pas une « manipulation ». Il existe une activité volontaire de la classe capitaliste et de ses professionnels de l’idéologie, mais cette activité met en forme et agit sur un processus objectif, une détermination structurelle du mode de production.
Si la classe ouvrière a toujours été segmentée, il faut toujours contextualiser cette segmentation, c’est-à-dire la situer dans la forme générale de la contradiction entre prolétariat et capital dans un cycle de luttes. Sans cela, l’opposition aux identités, identifiées à tort aux communautés, est seulement normative. Même si l’on confère à cette segmentation une grande importance circonstancielle, l’être est ailleurs, dans une pureté accessible ou non. On ne sort pas d’une opposition réciproquement exclusive ce qui est à ce qui devrait être.
Sur la relation entre segmentation et racisation, il existe deux positions unilatérales qui se font face. Pour la première, le matérialisme se limite à ramener l’identité à sa base sans considérer son efficacité et sa logique propres. La seconde, tout autant matérialiste, s’arque-boute sur un refus de considérer les faits et dit : si la racisation se ramène en totalité à sa base elle n’est alors qu’une construction volontaire et malfaisante et ce qui en font un objet ne font que diviser la classe et promouvoir la barbarie (je caricature à peine). Ce qui échappe aux uns et aux autres, c’est toujours la question de l’idéologie qui n’est pas reflet mais ensemble de réponses pratiques et crédibles, sous lequel opèrent des pratiques. Il y a identité quand il y a découpage et autonomisation d’un domaine d’action propre. Chaque idéologie – au sens employé ici - ou identité a son histoire et son fonctionnement propres, repérables par les pratiques opérant sous cette idéologie. L’identité est alors une essentialisation définissant un individu comme sujet.
Une dénégation normative de la segmentation racisée ne cherche pas de contradictions dans ce qui existe, mais se contente de se poser en contradiction à ce qui existe : la classe contre sa segmentation, sans considérer que la classe, dans une contradiction entre prolétariat et capital qui porte sur la reproduction, n’existe que dans sa segmentation. L’opposition normative à la segmentation réelle du prolétariat aboutit à une occultation idéologique de cette réalité que le PIR, inversement, travaille à sa façon.
Répétons que toute lutte du prolétariat se produit et se développe dans les catégories de la reproduction et de l’autoprésupposition du capital. La lutte de classe n’existe toujours que « surdéterminée » parce qu’elle est lutte de classe, c’est le rêve programmatique qui veut une classe qui se dégage de son implication réciproque avec le capital et s’affirme en tant que telle dans une pureté autodéterminée, une classe subsistant par elle-même. Dans ce « plus », cette « surdétermination », ce n’est pas un manque ou un détournement qui réside, mais c’est l’existence et la pratique en tant que classe que l’on trouve, c’est-à-dire la reproduction réciproque du prolétariat et du capital dans laquelle c’est toujours le second qui subsume le premier qui agit alors à partir des catégories définies dans la reproduction du capital. Les fractions du prolétariat, sa segmentation apparaissent sur le marché du travail comme des conditions préalables, parce que le mode de production capitaliste, au-delà même du marché du travail, se meut à l’intérieur des formes concrètes qu’il a créées, et que ces formes qui en sont le résultat, l’affrontent dans le procès de reproduction, comme des conditions préalables toutes faites, déterminant le comportement aussi bien des capitalistes que des prolétaires, leurs fournissant leurs motifs d’agir et leur conscience.
La segmentation développe « ensuite » sa propre efficacité idéologique qui découpe une population, solidifie les différences, c’est là où les Indigènes apparaissent comme des entrepreneurs en racisation, comme il y a des entrepreneurs en nationalisme, c’est une élite qui se constitue un racket, heureusement sans grande efficacité jusqu’à maintenant. Là, la critique doit être sans concession. L’homophobie tactique, l’antisémitisme latent, la « compréhension » du « pro-Saddam » pendant la guerre du Golfe, la mise au rencart (« pour le moment ») des luttes féminines etc. ne sont pas des « dérives », ce qui présupposerait un point de départ plus ou moins « sain » ; ces positions sont constitutives de l’activité d’entrepreneurs en racisation qui est la raison d’être du PIR. Ils découpent même un segment particulier dans la population « immigrée » sous le vocable de « postcolonial ». Il leur faut définir une identité essentielle. Même si le PIR est insignifiant dans les quartiers, son travail idéologique est en phase avec la situation qui y prédomine maintenant : « Depuis le milieu des années 1970, nous pouvons distinguer trois configurations successives, trois âges de la banlieue : un monde désorganisé mais encore proche, des territoires requalifiés par les trafics et violences urbaines, un univers marqué par la fermeture et la sécession. » (Michel Kokoreff et Didier Lapeyronnie, Refaire la cité, l’avenir des banlieues, Ed. Le Seuil). On peut parler d’un sentiment d’impuissance devant son propre rapport à la société, qui fait face à l’individu comme contrainte collective chosifiée. Nous avons là la forme et le contenu d’une conscience individuelle de soi proprement religieux : la considération de l’aliénation de l’individu vis-à-vis de la communauté (qui n’est plus un mode de production comme ensemble de rapports de production) comme un état : la misère inhérente à la nature humaine. Dans la constitution capitaliste de l’exclusion, l’aliénation du prolétaire vis-à-vis de l’ensemble des rapports sociaux et de sa propre reproduction n’apparaît plus comme le produit de sa propre activité, et l’aliénation comme le rapport contradictoire qu’il entretient avec l’ensemble de cette société, mais comme une donnée inhérente à son individualité, c’est le pauvre, la plèbe. Devenue inhérente à l’individualité, la séparation d’avec les autres individualités et d’avec la communauté ne se résout que dans une relation qui transcende ces individualités et se pose face à elles comme radicalement extérieure. C’est la structure religieuse même et sa production. La religion peut alors devenir la réunion de toutes les déterminations de l’individualité et un puissant levier pour les entrepreneurs en identités.
Toutes les identités se donnent une généalogie imaginaire qui est efficace et réelle de par sa reconstruction et c’est tout le problème des identités, mais aussi leur caractère très labile, plastique et fragile (malgré les apparences), car la contradiction de cette phase de la subsomption réelle est aussi au niveau de la reproduction.
Mais alors entre les entrepreneurs en racisation et le déni normatif, la voie des contradictions du réel est étroite.
[Pour ce qui suit il est utile de se référer au bref texte « Tentative de définition des classes » à la suite]
Le lieu de production des identités, c’est la multitude de rapports qui ne sont pas strictement économiques dans lesquels se construit et se vit l’appartenance de classe. Il faut ensuite ajouter leur processus de production. Les inégaux niveaux de développement jusqu’à leur mise en abyme dans le capitalisme actuel, la division du travail, l’aspect historique de la valeur de la force de travail, le jeu entre rapports de production et rapports de distribution (avec la prédominance que ceux-ci peuvent acquérir sur les premiers), la dénationalisation de l’Etat (voir TC 25 : Une séquence particulière) constituent ce processus de production. Les mécaniques de production s’appliquant dans ce lieu sont diverses : contingence de l’appartenance classe, segmentation de la force de travail création de l’individu comme sujet, oppression (le « moment coercition » que contient le renouvellement du face à face de la force de travail et du capital), rapports de distribution. Il faut voir comme les « Indigènes » ne parlent que d’oppression et d’opprimés, c’est, entre autres choses, leur façon de découper et produire une identité. Ils donnent forme à une vraie logique de l’identité s’adressant à des individus pour lesquels la définition première est la « mise à l’écart » de la « vraie société » et le « manque de respect ». Ce que l’on voit c’est une constante surdétermination, constant découpage, de la logique des classes à partir d’elle-même, c’est tout le problème qui échappe au déni normatif et au culte de l’être vrai et pur de la classe.
Ces mécaniques inhérentes à l’autoprésupposition du capital travaillent le matériau des rapports non strictement économiques, il sort de ce travail sur ce matériau toute sorte de produits : communautés religieuses, ethnies, races, appartenance territoriale, etc., les produits possibles sont quasiment infinis. C’est tout ça la lutte des classes et ce n’est pas toujours joli et nous avons à y prendre parti parce que c’est là-dedans que nous vivons et non dans le monde des Idées pures. Nous sommes au fond de la Caverne.
Une erreur fréquente consiste à ramener l’identité construite à sa « base », la segmentation, sans comprendre que si c’est bien là la base, l’identité construite suit « ensuite » la logique propre qui est la sienne et fonctionne selon cette logique, elle organise toute une vision du monde, et la relation aux rapports de production s’organise selon cette logique. Tous ces facteurs sont les agents pertinents de l’invention des distinctions et de leur variation ou disparition (à Marseille, un Italien ou un Espagnol ne sont plus que de sympathiques joueurs de boules). La racisation (ou la production d’identités spécifiques) n’appartient pas au concept même du capital (à la différence de la distinction de genre inhérente au travail comme force productive), mais celui-ci donné, elle est une forme de manifestation nécessaire. La transformation du rapport social en chose, c’est-à-dire « paradoxalement » en sujet est aussi bien une transformation de cette chose en rapport social entre sujets. En quelque sorte, le sujet est l’héritier du mouvement qui le crée. Cette inversion est la façon réelle dont les rapports de production n’agissent que dissimulés en tant que volontés et décisions de sujets.
Mais alors toute la construction sociale dont tout cela provient s’efface d’elle-même. La distinction de races ou d’ethnie joue alors son propre rôle selon des déterminations prescrites par elle-même dans l’autonomie du domaine d’action qu’elle se crée : un noir peut devenir président des Etats-Unis, il reste noir, et un prolétaire noir n’est pas un prolétaire blanc. Existant pour elle-même dans son domaine d’action la distinction peut même être l’objet d’une activité politique instrumentale comme on l’a vu en France lors de la grande vague de grèves dans l’automobile dans les années 83 – 84 et encore plus aujourd’hui. La distinction est une idéologie et en tant que telle efficace comme assignation et relation des individus à leurs conditions d’existence et de reproduction, c’est-à-dire à leurs relations aux rapports de production. Parce que tout cela est réel, objectif, cela ne se nie pas par une grande invocation rituelle de l’être vrai de la classe, comme si l’on demandait aux prolétaires de faire sécession.
C’est toute l’autoprésupposition du capital que nous avons là : la reproduction du fameux face à face entre le prolétariat et le capital. Inscrites dans les contradictions de l’autoprésupposition du capital, dans son existence de contradiction en procès, et finalement dans la lutte des classes, ces identités sont donc plastiques selon les nécessités de cette distinction (qui passe par toutes les instances non directement économiques) et fragiles selon la capacité de cette distinction à se reproduire elle-même.
Les identités sont là, elles peuvent même être des points d’appui pour la lutte (contrairement aux vœux normatifs), mais elles ne sont jamais fixes (contrairement à ce que veulent en faire les pratiques entrepreneuriales) et même quand elles se « fixent » en communautés, elles reproduisent alors les contradictions de classes en leur sein. Il ne faut jamais oublier que toutes les identités sont construites, historiques et fragiles. La révolution, mais aussi les luttes actuelles comme les émeutes dites de banlieues (2005 n’a pas été une révolte ethnique) affrontent la sclérose de la définition de la classe comme catégorie socio-économique, mais aussi affrontent ou parfois seulement minent, interrogent, remettent en cause, toutes les identités qui se constituent sur elles — nationales ethniques, raciales, etc. — comme ses surdéterminations, ses conditions d’existence. Ce n’est pas une question intellectuelle revenant à savoir qui est qui, car cette sclérose et la lutte contre elle sont la confrontation de pratiques intriquant la révolution et la contre-révolution. La classe n’apparait pas toujours en clair et même rarement (il n’est pas dans la nature de la révolution de faire sonner l’heure de la dernière instance) : c’est dans une multiplicité de pratiques et de contradictions avec le capital et de contradictions internes, de confrontations avec toutes sortes d’identités, d’actions à partir d’elles et de dépassement de celles-ci, qu’elle peut s’auto-transformer en classe communisatrice, c’est-à-dire s’abolir. La révolution ne peut plus être affirmation d’un prolétariat se reconnaissant pour lui-même en tant que force révolutionnaire dans le mode de production capitaliste face au capital.
Les luttes n’existent toujours que « surdéterminées ». Dans cette « surdétermination » ne réside aucun détournement, mais c’est l’existence et la pratique réelles. C’est le rêve programmatique qui veut une classe qui se dégage de son implication réciproque avec le capital et s’affirme en tant que telle dans une pureté autodéterminée, une classe subsistant par elle-même.
Quand lutter en tant que classe est la limite de la lutte de classe, la révolution devient une lutte contre ce qui l’a produite, toute l’architecture du mode de production, la distribution de ses instances et de ses niveaux se trouvent entraînées dans un processus de bouleversement de la normalité / fatalité de sa reproduction définie par la hiérarchie déterminative (chacune bien à sa place et « cause » de la suivante dans l’ordre des bases, infrastructures, superstructures, ces dernières elles-mêmes hiérarchisées) des instances du mode de production. C’est parce qu’elle est ce bouleversement et seulement si elle l’accomplit que la révolution est ce moment où les prolétaires se débarrassent de toute la pourriture du vieux monde qui leur colle à la peau et les constitue come tels, tout comme les hommes et les femmes de ce qui constitue leur individualité. Il ne s’agit pas d’une conséquence mais du mouvement concret de la révolution où toutes les instances du mode de production (idéologie, droit, politique, nationalité, économie, genres, etc.) peuvent être tour à tour la focalisation dominante de l’ensemble des contradictions. Une conjoncture désigne le mécanisme même d’une crise comme crise de l’autoprésupposition du capital : le bouleversement de la hiérarchie déterminative des instances du mode de production. La révolution comme communisation aura à se nourrir de l’impureté, de la non-simplicité, du procès contradictoire du mode de production capitaliste. Changer les circonstances et se changer soi-même coïncident : c’est la révolution, c’est une conjoncture. Les identités ne sont pas des essences, même si elles se donnent et fonctionnent comme telles (tout le monde est à peu près d’accord là-dessus). Si on considère leur lieu et leur mécanique de production, la question de leur dépassement se ramène aux questions relatives à la révolution comme conjoncture : bouleversement de la hiérarchie des instances et circulation de la dominante.
Il serait faux de voir là quelque chose d’absolument nouveau n’arrivant que dans « la conjoncture », nous avons une idée possible de cette fragilité dans la construction même des identités, qu’elles soient raciales, ethniques, ou communautés religieuses, et souvent un mix de tout cela, mix s’originant et traversé par les contradictions de classes.
L’objet de la critique communiste, théorique et, quand cela est possible, pratique, ce n’est ni l’entreprenariat, ni le déni ou l’opposition normative qui ne considèrent que l’exclusion réciproque des termes entre classe et « identités » et encore moins une « compréhension distanciée. L’objet de la critique, sa cible, son point d’appui, c’est cette labilité, cette plasticité et cette fragilité : l’historicisation, la « déconstruction », la contextualisation et, pourquoi pas, dans certaines situations, le fait que ces identités peuvent être des processus dynamiques de constitution d’une lutte spécifique et particulière et par là la reformulation d’un rapport de forces général entre les classes. Mais même cela est compliqué. La labilité de la construction identitaire est très différente selon les niveaux sociaux et culturels, on constate que la labilité est plus forte dans les luttes qui gagnent. Ne pas oublier en outre que la disparition de la racialisation ne va qu’avec celle des classes, ce n’est pas un préalable et qu’elle est aussi la parole du capital.
Une reprise des luttes en France, dans un rapport de forces favorable est en grande partie suspendue actuellement à la lutte particulière et autonome des prolétaires racisés contre leur racisation, cela ne peut se faire en niant la racisation comme nulle et non avenue. Cela ne sert à rien de sommer les individus de se défendre « en tant que prolétaires », comme si les segmentations et la racisation ne faisait pas partie de leur existence de prolétaires. Mais la mise en avant d’une identité peut être à la fois sa reconnaissance et sa dé-essentialisation qui passe par l’attaque de ce qui fait de certaines caractéristiques historiques, culturelles, une définition personnelle et les agents d’un clivage socialement et économiquement opératoire, parce que choisies et délimités. C’est-à-dire porter le fer sur la distance qui sépare la Loi officielle de l’égalité, de la citoyenneté et même les abstractions sur lesquelles fonctionnent le capital d’avec les règles réelles inverses de la Règle officielle (ce que tout le monde sait) et les conditions réelles de travail et de vie. Il ne s’agit pas d’assumer la « différence » (et de la gommer en même temps), cette « différence » n’est rien d’autre qu’un statut d’inférieur inscrit de façon indélébile dans la personne. Il faut affirmer que « l’intégration » est un examen où vous n’avez aucune chance de réussite, d’autant plus quand elle se couple avec la « guerre contre le terrorisme ». Rompre avec la règle du jeu, montrer que la règle officielle n’est pas la règle réelle, montrer que la division raciale prise dans la segmentation de la force de travail fonctionne selon ses propres nécessités, il n’y a pas de « tous ensemble » a priori. Même si cela paraît « réformiste » et un « objectif intermédiaire », ce n’est pas gagné…
Quand on possède la compréhension générale de la production des identités, contre les entrepreneurs de l’identité et ceux de la norme de La Lutte de Classe, tout se ramène à l’analyse particulière d’une situation particulière.
Pourquoi aujourd’hui un tel sujet est-il aussi sensible ? Voir quasiment toutes les questions sociales et la plupart des luttes ne pouvoir s’exprimer que dans le langage des identités, des ethnies, des religions et des races suffirait à répondre à cette question. Mais cela n’explique pas la violence et la crispation que cela provoque dans notre « milieu ». L’opposition purement normative à la segmentation réelle de la classe est là pour conjurer ce qui serait l’anéantissement de l’identité générale de prolétaire dont se réclame le militant et sans laquelle il implose. C’est sa propre existence qu’il sait être en jeu sur cette question. Quelle blessure narcissique que de ne plus pouvoir s’identifier aux « lascars de banlieue » !
Tentative de définition du prolétariat
La définition essentielle du prolétariat est un concret de pensée, elle n’exclut pas les manifestations, elle est toujours présente en elles et n’existe elle-même que dans la totalité de ses formes, de ses attributs. Qu’est-ce alors qu’une classe ? Tentons une définition possible du prolétariat comme classe. Définition qui a toujours navigué entre deux pôles : une définition socio-économique, et une définition comme catégorie historique définie par une pratique (dans les débuts de la critique du programmatisme l’ambigüité avait été artificiellement surmontée par la distinction entre classe ouvrière et prolétariat).
Partons non pas du simple mais du plus simple : de l’impératif de vendre sa force de travail. Ajoutons que cet impératif n’a de sens que pour la valorisation du capital, ce qui amène à dire que cette vente pour la valorisation se définit comme une contradiction pour le capital et pour elle-même. La vente de la force de travail ne dit pas ce qu’est le prolétariat si cette vente n’est pas saisie dans sa relation à la valorisation du capital comme contradiction. C’est alors cette contradiction qui est la définition des classes. La vente de la force de travail n’explique rien par elle-même si on en reste à ce niveau, elle ne définit pas plus la classe même si on la relie simplement à la valorisation du capital. La définition n’apparaît qu’au moment où cette situation (la vente de la force de travail) et cette relation (de la vente à la valorisation) sont saisies comme contradiction pour cela même dont elles sont la dynamique. C’est la contradiction entre le travail nécessaire et le surtravail, c’est la baisse tendancielle du taux de profit comprise comme une contradiction entre le prolétariat et le capital, c’est, de même, le capital comme contradiction en procès. Nous avons alors l’unité de la définition des classes comme situation et pratique (comme « en soi » et « pour soi » si l’on veut).
Poursuivons, s’il est vrai que les classes se définissent comme une position spécifique dans les rapports de production, les rapports de production sont des rapports de reproduction et là en ce qui concerne la définition des classes tout se complique. Nous retrouvons ici le déni normatif face à la « disharmonie » entre ce qu’il se passe à un moment donné et le fameux « ce que le prolétariat doit faire conformément à son être ». Cette « disharmonie » ne tient pas seulement à des circonstances momentanées liées à des moments particuliers, elle est inhérente au fait que si être une classe est une situation objective donnée comme une place dans une structure, parce que cela signifie une reproduction conflictuelle et donc la mobilisation de l’ensemble du mode de production, cela implique une multitude de rapports qui ne sont pas strictement économiques dans lesquels les individus vivent cette situation objective, se l’approprient et s’auto-construisent comme classe.
PS : il faudrait produire cette tentative de définition à partir de la particularisation de la totalité, là ça part d’un pôle et non du tout. Ce n’est pas très grave mais c’est un peu gênant.
English translation:
Class / segmentation / racialization. Notes
October 29, 2016 No Comments
Originally published by Théorie Communiste, a French communization group, here.
Translated from the French by LNFC.
There has always been segmentation within labor power. We must then take it as an objective determination of labor power under Capital, which naturally leads to a division of labor, but here we have not but a divide within a homogenous material and a simple quantitative gradation of the value of labor power (both simple and complex work undergo an osmosis under the capitalist mode of production between the constraint of surplus labor and specialized labor under cooperative management, etc.). But this segmentation would not be so were it not but a qualitative divide within a homogenous material. Two processes intervene as they interweave: in one hand, the capitalist mode of production is global, a mode which can appropriate and destroy all other modes of production while still conserving for itself the characteristics of the mode of productions which it redefines; on the other hand, the value of labor power makes up a moral, cultural and historical component. Because capitalist exploitation is universal; because Capital can take over all other modes of production or make them coexist with it and exploit the labor power with those other modes of production, or detach it from their former existential conditions, the capitalist mode of production is a historical construction which brings about the coexistence, in its current moment, all of the different stratum of its history. Segmentation is not a “manipulation.” It exists as a voluntary activity by the capitalist class and its ideological professionals, but this activity forms and animates an objective process, a structural determination of its mode of production.
If the working-class has always been segmented, we must then contextualize this segmentation, which is to say we must situate it within the general form of the contradiction between the proletariat and Capital within a cycle of struggles. With this, opposing identities, identities wrongly associated with communities, would solely be normative. Even if we were to confer on this segmentation a great circumstantial importance, its being is elsewhere, within a purity that is either accessible or not. We do not escape a reciprocally exclusive opposition [of identities] by simply pitting what is with what should be.
A normative denial of racialized segmentation does not seek contradictions within what exists, but pleases itself by positioning itself in contradiction with what exists: the class against its segmentation, without considering that the class, within the contradiction of the proletariat and Capital which provide its reproduction, exists but within this segmentation. The normative opposition to the real segmentation of the proletariat leads to an ideological eclipse of this reality, which the Parti des indigènes de la République [PIR], inversely does in its own way.
Let us repeat that all proletarian struggles are produced and developed within the categories of reproduction and self-presupposition to Capital. Class struggle only ever exists as “overdetermined” because it is class struggle. It is the programmatic dream that desires a class that breaks away from its reciprocal implication with Capital and affirms itself as such within a pure self-determination, a class which substantiates itself. Further, this “overdetermination” is not a deficiency or a détournement which remains, rather it is within the existence and the practice of a class that we find it; in other words, the reciprocal reproduction of the proletariat and of Capital within which the latter always subsumes the former, which always acts according to defined categories within the reproduction of Capital. The factions within the proletariat, its fragmentation which appears on the labor market as predetermined conditions, since the capitalist mode of production, itself beyond the labor market, moves within concrete forms which it creates, and thus the proletariat confronts these resulting forms in the process of reproduction, as predetermined conditions, determining the behavior of both capitalists and proletarians, providing them with their motives for action and their consciousness.
This segmentation then develops its own ideological efficaciousness which then divides a population, solidifies differences and this is where the Indigènes appear as entrepreneurs of racialization, just as there are entrepreneurs of nationalism; they are an elite which constitute a racket, which were happily without much effectiveness until shortly ago. Here critique must be uncompromising. Tactical homophobia, latent antisemitism, the “understanding” of “pro-Sadaam” elements during the Gulf War, the scrapping (“for the moment”) of women’s struggles, etc. are not “deviations,” which would presuppose a point of departure more or less “healthy,”; these positions are constitutive of the activity of racialization entrepreneurs, the raison d’être of the PIR. They divide even a particular segment of the “immigrant” population with the term “postcolonial.” They seek to define an essential identity. Even if the PIR plays an insignificant role in the neighborhoods [quartiers], their ideological work is in line with the situation which currently prevails: “Since the mid-70s, we have been able to distinguish three successive configurations, three ages of the banlieue: a disorganized world but one close to us, territories requalified by drug trafficking and urban violence and a universe marked by enclosure and secession.”1 We could speak about a feeling of powerlessness in regards to our own relation with society, which confronts the individual like a thingified collective restraint. Here we have the form and the content of a individual consciousness of oneself which is rather religious: the consideration of individual alienation vis-à-vis the community (which is no longer a mode of production or an ensemble of modes of production) as a state: the inherent misery of human nature. Within the capitalist constitution of exclusion, the alienation of the proletariat vis-à-vis the whole of social relations and its own reproduction no longer appears as the product of its own activity, nor does it view the contradictory relation of its alienation with the whole of society as its own doing, but as an inherent given found in its individuality, found in the poor, the plebs. This alienation having become inherent to individuality, the separation among other individualities and within the community is only resolved with a relation that transcends these individualities and confronts them as something radically exterior to them. This is indeed the structure of religion and its production. Religion can thus become the meeting of all the determinations of individuality and a powerful lever for the entrepreneurs of identities.
All identities gives themselves an imaginary genealogy which is both efficacious and real by way of its reconstruction and this is the problem of all identities besides their very labile, plastic and fragile nature (despite appearances), because the contradiction of this phase of real subsumption is also at the level of reproduction.
[For what follows it would be useful to refer to the brief text, “An attempt to define class” which is forthcoming]
The site of production of identities is the multitude of relations, which are not strictly economic, within which class belonging is created and lived. We must follow then with their production process. This production process includes: the unequal levels of development and their mise en abyme under current capitalism, the division of labor, the historical aspect of the value of labor power, the interplay between relations of production and distribution (along with the predominance which these could have with the previous things listed) and the de-nationalization of the State (see TC25: A Particular Sequence). The mechanics of this production here applied are diverse: contingent on class belonging, segmentation of the labor power, creation of of the individual as a subject, oppression (the “coercive moment” that contains the renewal of the face-to-face of labor power and Capital), and relations of distribution. We must look to how the Indigènes only speak of oppression and the oppressed, which is among other things their way to divide and produce an identity. They give form to a real logic of identity addressed to those individuals for whom their defining aspect is their “being cast aside” from “real society,” along with a “lack of respect.” What we see here is a constant overdetermination and a divide from the logic of classes from itself: the entirety of the problem with a normative and religious denial of the real and unadulterated nature of class.
These mechanisms inherent to the self-presupposition of Capital works on the material of relations not-strictly economic, from this work results all sorts of products: religious communities, ethnicities, races, territorial-belonging, etc.; the possible products are quasi infinite. This is all a part of class struggle and it’s not always pretty; we have to take part in all this because it is within this that we live and not in the world of Pure Ideas. We are at the bottom of the Cave.
A frequent error consists of restoring a constructed identity to its “base”: its segmentation. This is done without understanding that if segmentation is indeed its base, the constructed identity follows the logic which belongs to it and functions according to this logic, a logic which organizes a whole worldview and the relation to the production relations is organized according to this same logic. All these factors are the pertinent agents which create their distinctions or their variation or disappearance (in Marseille, an Italian or a Spaniard are but another pleasant bowling mate). Racialization (or the production of specific identities) does not belong to the concept of Capital (unlike the distinction of gender inherent to work as a productive force), but this said racialization is a necessary form of manifestation. The transformation of social relations into a thing, in other words “paradoxically” transformed into a subject, is also a transformation of this thing into a social relation between subjects. In a way, the subject is the heir of movement which creates it. This inversion is the real way in which relations of production act but in a dissimulated way in the form of will and decisions made by subjects.
But the whole of the social construct which all this comes from effaces itself. Racial or ethnic distinction plays its own role according to prescribed determinations for itself within the autonomy of the domain of action in which it is created: a black man could become president of the United States, but he is still black and a black proletarian is not a white proletarian. Existing for itself within its own domain of action, distinction can also be the object of a instrumental political activity as we saw in France during the great wave of strikes in the automobile industry between 1983 and ’84 and even up to today. Distinction is an ideology and as such it works well as assigning and in defining the relation between individuals and their conditions of existence and reproduction, or said another way, between their relationships with their relations of production. Since all this real and objective, all this cannot be done away with a grand and ritualistic invocation of the real being of class-belonging, as if we were to simply call for proletarians to secede.
This is the self-presupposition of Capital that we have here: the reproduction of the face-to-face between the proletariat and Capital. Inscribed within the contradictions of the self-presupposition of Capital, within its contradictory existence in process, and finally within class struggle, these identities are thus plastic in accordance to the necessities of its distinction (that pass through all instances not directly economic) and also fragile in accordance to the capacity of its distinction to suits its self-reproduction.
Here are the identities and they could even be points of support in its struggle (contrary to normative wishes), but they are never fixed (contrary to what entrepreneurial practices would like to make of them) and even when they are “fixed” on communities, they reproduce at their core class contradictions. We must never forget that all identities are constructed, historical and fragile. Revolution, but also current struggles like the riots in the banlieues (2005 was not an ethnic revolt) confront the sclerosis in the definition of class as a socio-economic category and also confronts or at times only undermines, interrogates, calls into question, all identities built upon it – ethnical nationality, racial nationality, etc. – as their overdeterminations, their conditions of existence. This is not an intellectual question bringing us back to recall who is who, since this sclerosis and the struggle against it is the confrontation of practices linking revolution to counter-revolution. Class does not always clearly appear and any such clarity is rare (it is not in the nature of revolution to announce the final hour): it is within a multiplicity of practices and of contradictions with Capital and its internal contradictions, of clashes among all kinds of identities, of actions stemming from the previous and the overcoming of these that will find class self-transforming itself into the communizateur class, in other words self-abolishing. Revolution can no longer be the affirmation of a proletariat recognizing itself as a revolutionary force in the capitalist mode of production facing Capital.
Struggles only exist as “overdetermined.” Within this “overdetermination” resides no détournement, rather we find their real existence and practice. It is the programmatic dream that desires a class that detaches itself from its reciprocal implication with capital and that would affirm itself as such in a pure self-determination, a class which substantiates itself.
While struggling as a class is the limit of class struggle, revolution becomes a struggle against that which produced it: the whole of the architecture of the mode of production, the distribution of its instances and of its levels find themselves brought into the process of upending normality / destiny of its reproduction defined by a determinative hierarchy (each thing in its own place and “cause” as it follows in the order of bases, infrastructures, superstructures, all of which are placed in an hierarchy) of instances of its mode of production. It is because revolution is this upheaval and only if it is successful does it become that moment where proletarians cast off all of the rot of the old world which sticks to their skin and keeps them as proletarians, just as men and women will do with what constitutes their individuality. It is not a question of pure causation but of a concrete movement of the revolution where all the instances of the mode of production (ideology, law, politics, nationality, economy, gender, etc.) can be one by one the dominant focus of the whole of the contradictions under Capital. This conjuncture designates the very mechanism of a crisis as a crisis of the self-presupposition of Capital: the upending of the determinative hierarchy of the instances of the mode of production. The revolution as communization would have to nourish itself on this impurity, this non-simplicity, the contradictory process of the capitalist mode of production. Changing circumstances and changing oneself coincide: this is revolution, this is a conjuncture. Identities are not essences, even if they offer themselves and function as such (everyone pretty much agrees on this point). If we consider their place and their production mechanism, the question of overcoming leads to questions concerning revolution as conjuncture: upending the hierarchy of instances and circulation of the dominant [mode of production.]
It would be false to see in this something novel that would only arrive within this “conjuncture,” we already entertain the idea that the very construction of identities as fragile whether they are racial, ethnic, religious often including a mix of these, a mix that originates and traverses the contradictions of class.
The object of communist and theoretical critique, and when possible, a practical critique, is not the entrepreneurs of identity, nor is it normative denial or opposition that only considers the reciprocal exclusion of terms like class or “identities” and its is even less so a “distanced comprehension.” The object of the critique, its target, is the lability, the plasticity and the fragility of identity: historicization, “deconstruction,” contextualization and (why not) in certain situations, the object of critique is the fact that these identities could be dynamic processes of constitution of a specific and particular struggle and by way of this a reformulation of the relation of general forces among classes. But even this is quite complicated. The lability of identity construction varies much in accordance with social and cultural levels, we acknowledge that this lability is stronger in those classes who win. Besides we must not forget that the disappearance of racialization will not be brought about without the disappearance of class society, it is not a prerequisite and racialization is also the voice of Capital.
A recovery from the struggles in France, under a favorable balance of power, is currently suspended in the particular and autonomous struggle of racialized proletarians, which could not have been done by denying racialization as just void. It is absolutely useless to call on individuals to defend themselves “as proletarians,” as if segmentation and racialization were not a part of their existence as proletarians. But the foregrounding of an identity can be at once its acknowledgement and its de-essentialization which becomes an attack against the making of certain historical and cultural characteristics a personal definition and see them as agents of a social and economic operative, choosing and delimiting. In other words, to bring war to the distance between Official Law, equality and citizenship, and to do the same with the abstractions upon which Capital operates on with the real inverse rules of Official Rule (which the whole world knows) and the real conditions of work and life. It is not a matter of simply assuming “difference” (and to rub it out at the same time), this “difference” is nothing more than a status of inferiority inscribed in an indelible fashion on the person. We must affirm that “integration” is a test which you stand no chance in passing, even more so when it is coupled along with the “war on terror.” Break with the rules of the game, show that the official rule is not the real rule, show that racial division taken on as segmentation of labor power functions in accordance with its own needs, there is no a priori “all together.” Even if this seems “reformist” and as an “intermediary objective,” this has not even yet been achieved…
When one possesses a general comprehension of the production of identities, contrary to the entrepreneurs of identity and those of the Class Struggle ilk, everything returns to the particular analysis of a particular situation.
Why does such a subject today make sense? Just look at almost all the social questions and most struggles cannot but express themselves in the language of identities, ethnicities, religions and races, all of which would suffice to respond to. But this does not explain the violence and tension that this subject provokes in our “milieu.” Purely normative opposition to the real segmentation of the class is there to conjure what the reduction to nothing of the general identity of the proletariat would be like, which the militant claims as their own and without which they implode. It is their very existence which they know is at play concerning this question. What a narcissistic wound it would be to no longer be able to identity with the “thugs of the banlieue”!
Attempt at a definition of the proletariat
The essential definition of the proletariat is a concrete thought which excludes no single manifestation, it is always present in them and which does not exist but in the totality of its forms, and its attributes. What is a class then? Let us attempt a possible definition of the proletariat as a class. A definition which has always navigated between two pole: a socio-economic definition and a historical category defined by a practice (in the beginnings of the critique of programmatism, ambiguity had been artificially overcome with the distinction between working class and proletariat).
Let’s not start from a simple but from an even simpler point: from the imperative of needing to sell our labor power. Let us add that this imperative has no meaning outside of the valorization of capital, which leads us to say that this sale for valorization defines itself as the contradiction for Capital and a contradiction in itself. The sale of labor power does not say what the proletariat is if it is not seized by its relation to the valorization of capital as a contradiction. On its own, the sale of labor power explains nothing if we remain at this level, it no longer defines the class even if we simply link it to the valorization of capital. This definition only appears when either this situation (of the sale of labor power) or relation (of the sale to valorization) are seized as contradiction by that which they are the dynamic force of. This is the contradiction between necessary labor and surplus labor, it is the tendency of the rate of profit to fall comprised as the contradiction between the proletariat and Capital, it is also, Capital as a contradiction in process. We have then the unity of the definition of classes as a situation and a practice (as “in itself” and “for itself” if so preferred).
Continuing, if it is true that classes define themselves as a specific position in relations of production, the relations of production are relations of reproduction and where it concerns the definition of classes everything becomes complicated. Here we find the normative denial facing “disharmony” between what happens at a given moment and the famous “that which the proletariat must do in conformity with its being.” This “disharmony” does not only hold to certain momentary circumstances linked to particular moments, it is inherent to the fact that if being a class is an objective situation expressed as a place within a structure, that there is a conflictual reproduction and thus the mobilization of the whole of the mode of production. This implies a multitude of relations that are not strictly economic in which individuals live this objective situation, which they also take on and and self-constitute as a class.
Post-script: it would be necessary to produce this attempt at a definition from a particularity of the totality, here we part from a pole and not from the whole. This is not so bad but it is a bit inconvenient.
Michel Kokoreff et Didier Lapeyronnie, Refaire la cité, l’avenir des banlieues, Ed. Le Seuil
Source: http://www.luchanofeik.club/2016/10/29/theorie-communiste-notes/
Class, segmentation, racialization: Reading notes
By Ross Wolf
Théorie Communiste
Lucha No Feik Club (October 26, 2016)
Editorial note
Originally published by Théorie Communiste as «Classe/segmentation/racisation. Notes». Translated from the French by LNFC, with substantial revisions by Ross Wolfe. I can’t take credit for the majority of this translation, as I worked from the one posted by the Lucha No Feik Club. Nevertheless, I found this translation almost unreadable, and so decided to go over it again with my (admittedly quite poor) French and make some modifications. Right now it’s probably still unreadable, but hopefully a little less so. Just to point out some of my own edits, and give a sense of my reasons for making them, a few words might be added here. For example, I changed chosifiée from “thingified” to “reified.” Undoubtedly the former is used from time to time, but it comes across here as clunky and inelegant. Also, I rendered face à face as “faceoff,” rather than the dreadfully literal “face-to-face.” Various other minor corrections were made, some of them slight oversights. Part of the problem is in the original text, however, as there are a couple places where there are word-for-word repetitions of entire sentences. These were no doubt unintentional, and have been excised from the present version.
As regards the content, I am quite interested in seeing how Théorie Communiste relates the phenomenon of “racialization” [racisation] to the structural logic of capital and its historic unfolding. Clearly, the article takes race to be a more arbitrary construction than gender. Gender is rooted in the sexual division of labor within the oikos, wherein the family is the fundamental economic unit. There are more biological determinants for gender, at least initially. Some of this is sketched out in another short article published by Théorie Communiste, “Uterus vs. Melanin,” which as yet remains untranslated. However, while race is more recent and based on accidental features, it is no less real than gender. Théorie Communiste locates racialization within the segmentation of the workforce, where superficial distinctions such as skin color and difficulties of communication (multiple languages, etc.) become markers of difference. Denial of these differences, in the name of some normative ideal of what class should be, is sharply criticized for ignoring the segmented reality of socialized labor. Loren Goldner put this quite nicely a while back, when he wrote that “the ‘colorblind’ Marxism of many left communist currents — a proletarian is a proletarian is a proletarian — is simply… blind Marxism.”
Of course, race does not operate everywhere uniformly. It doesn’t always fall along a color spectrum running from “white” to “black.” To be sure, the legacy of racialized slavery in the United States overshadows most other historical determinations of race. But xenophobia toward various poor immigrant groups — the Irish in the 1850s, the Chinese in the early 1900s, Italians in the 1920s-1930s, Latinos today — also plays a major role. Paranoia about Islam also informs a great deal of the hateful rhetoric we’ve seen spouted against refugees since 2001. Antisemitism is less pronounced in the United States than in continental Europe, certainly, but it’s not altogether unknown. Racial dynamics work themselves out a bit differently in France, with its history of colonialism. However, I’m heartened to read that Théorie Communiste has no patience for the reactionary politics of race peddled by groups like the Parti des indigènes de la République and its leader, Houria Bouteldja. Roughly two years ago I criticized the cultural relativism of this particular group, which pervades decolonial discourse in general, its “tactical homophobia” and “latent antisemitism” (as the following article puts it). Later I reposted an excellent piece written by Malika Amaouche, Yasmine Kateb, and Léa Nicolas-Teboul.. «Classe/segmentation/racisation» lambastes the PIR, who Théorie Communiste calls the “entrepreneurs of racialization.” I don’t blame Bouteldja et al. for pursuing this enterprise, though; someone had to tap the market left untouched by Bloc Identitaire.
There has always been segmentation within labor power. We must take it, then, as an objective determination of labor power under capital that naturally leads to a division of labor. Here we have nothing more than a divide between a homogeneous material and a simple quantitative gradation of the value of labor power. (Both simple and complex work undergo a kind of osmosis within the capitalist mode of production, from the generalized constraint of surplus labor to specialized labor under cooperative management, etc.). However, this segmentation would not be so if it were not but a qualitative divide within an otherwise homogeneous material. Two processes intervene as they weave together: On the one hand the capitalist mode of production is global, capable of appropriating and destroying all other modes of production while conserving for itself the characteristics of those it has redefined. On the other hand the value of labor power represents a moral, cultural, and historical component. Since capitalist exploitation is universal — i.e., because capital can take over other modes of production or make them coexist alongside it, exploit labor power together with those other modes or detach them from their former existential conditions — capitalism is thus an historical construction that brings about the coexistence of all the different strata of history in a single moment. Segmentation is not merely “manipulation.” It exists as the voluntary activity of the capitalist class and its professional ideologues, which forms and animates an objective process, a structural determination of the mode of production.
If the working class has always been segmented, then it is still necessary to contextualize this segmentation. That is to say, it must be situated in the general form of the contradiction between proletariat and capital within a given cycle of struggles. Without this, opposing identities — identities wrongly associated with communities — would be solely normative. Even if we were to confer great circumstantial importance on this segmentation, its being lies elsewhere, within a purity that is either accessible or not. We do not escape a mutually exclusive opposition of identities simply by pitting what is against what should be.
Regarding the relation between segmentation and racialization [racisation], there exist two unilateral stances facing one another. According to the first, materialism boils down to reducing identity to its foundation — without taking its effectiveness or its logic into account. The second, equally materialist stance buttresses itself on a refusal to consider the facts. It says that if racial identity is reduced in toto to its foundation, it’s nothing but an arbitrary [volontaire] and detrimental construct. Hence, those who turn it into an object merely divide the class and promote barbarism. (I’m hardly distorting their position). What always escapes both of these stances is the question of ideology, which is not a reflection [of the base] but an ensemble of practical and believable responses. Beneath these operate certain practices. Identity comes into being wherever there is a separation and autonomization of a proper sphere of activity. Each identity or ideology — in the sense of the term employed here — has its own history and modus operandi, which can be ascertained with reference to the practices operating beneath the ideology in question. Identity is therefore an essentialization which defines an individual as a subject.
A normative denial of racialized segmentation does not seek contradictions within that which exists, but is rather content to position itself in contradiction to that which exists: class against its segmentation, without considering that class only exists within this segmentation (i.e., within the contradiction of proletariat and capital that provides for its reproduction). Normative opposition to the real segmentation of the proletariat leads to an ideological eclipse of this reality — something the Parti des indigènes de la République [PIR] does inversely, in its own way.
Let us repeat: Proletarian struggles are always produced and developed within the categories of reproduction and self-presupposition of capital. Struggles only ever exist as “overdetermined.” The desire for a class which breaks away from its reciprocal implication within capital to affirm itself as such, substantiating itself in pure self-determinacy, is a programmatic dream. Further, this “surplus” or “overdetermination” is not some residual deficiency or détournement, but rather the very existence and practice of class as it is found. In other words, it is the reciprocal reproduction of proletariat and capital — wherein the latter always subsumes the former, which then acts according to categories defined by the reproduction of capital. The fractions of the proletariat, in its segmentation, appear on the labor market as preconditioned because the capitalist mode of production moves within the concrete forms it creates (even beyond the labor market). As a result, these forms confront the process of reproduction as preconditions determining the behavior of both capitalists and proletarians, providing them with their consciousness and motives for action.
This segmentation develops its own ideological efficacy, which then divides the population by solidifying differences. And this is where the Indigènes appear as entrepreneurs of racialization, just as there are entrepreneurs of nationalism, elites which constitute a racket that happily was without much effectiveness until shortly ago. Critique must be uncompromising on these points: tactical homophobia, latent antisemitism, the “understanding” [«compréhension»] of pro-Saddam elements during the Gulf War, the scrapping (“for the moment”) of women’s struggles, etc. — these are not “deviations,” which would presuppose a point of departure that was more or less “healthy.” Quite the opposite: these positions are constitutive of the activity of racialization entrepreneurs, the raison d’être of the PIR, which even divides a particular segment of the “immigrant” population with the term “postcolonial” in seeking to define an essential identity. Even if the PIR plays an insignificant role in the neighborhoods [quartiers], their ideological work is in line with the situation which currently prevails: “Since the mid-seventies, we have been able to distinguish three successive configurations, three ages of the banlieue. A disorganized world, but one close to us, territories reclassified [requalifiés] by drug trafficking and urban violence in a universe marked by enclosure and secession.”1
We can speak of a feeling of powerlessness in regards to our relation with society, which confronts the individual as reified [chosifiée] collective restraint. Here we have the form and content of an individual consciousness of itself that is properly religious: the consideration of individual alienation vis-à-vis the community (which is no longer a mode of production or ensemble of productive relations) as a state, the inherent misery of human nature. In the capitalist constitution of exclusion, the proletariat’s alienation from the web [ensemble] of social relations no longer appears as the product of its own activity. Nor does its contradictory relation with the rest of society seem to be something of its own doing, but rather an inherent feature of its individuality. These are just the poor, the plebs. Having become inherent in individuality, this separation from the community and other individualities can only be resolved through a relation which transcends all of them as something radically exterior. This is indeed the structure of religion and its production. Religion can thus reunite all the various determinations of individuality and become a powerful lever for the entrepreneurs of identities.
Every identity gives itself an imaginary genealogy, which is both efficacious and real by virtue of its reconstruction. However, this is also the entire problem of identity, aside from its labile, plastic, and fragile character (despite appearances). The contradiction that occurs during the phase of real subsumption also takes place at the level of reproduction. But then again, the path of real contradictions — between normative denial and the enterprise of racialization — is a narrow one indeed. [For what follows it would be useful to refer to the brief text, “An attempt to define class,” forthcoming]
The site of production of identities is thus the multitude of relations within which class membership is created and lived. Not all of them are strictly economic. We must add these to the process of production: unequal levels of development and their mise en abyme under contemporary capitalism, the division of labor, the historic aspect of the value of labor power, the interplay between relations of production and distribution (as well as the predominance they acquire in conjunction with the previous things listed), and the denationalization of the state. The mechanics of production applied here are diverse, contingent on factors like class membership, segmentation of the labor power, creation of the individual as subject, oppression (the “coercive moment,” which contains a renewed faceoff between labor power and capital), and relations of distribution. Here it must be noticed that the Indigènes only speak of oppression and the oppressed. Among other things, this is their way to carve out [découper] and produce an identity. They give form to a true logic of identity addressed to individuals for whom the defining aspect is “being cast aside” from “true society,” along with a “lack of respect.” What we see here is a constant overdetermination, a constant carving out [découpage], of the logic of class from itself: this, then, is the entire problem with normative denial and the cult of pure class.
These mechanisms inherent to the self-presupposition of capital work on relations that are not themselves strictly economic, which form their material. From this work results all sorts of products: religious communities, ethnicities, races, territorial belonging [appartenance territoriale], etc.; the possible combinations are quasi-infinite. It’s is all a part of class struggle, and it’s not always pretty. But we have to take part in it because it’s the world in which we live. Not the world of Pure Ideas, but the bottom of the Cave.
One frequent error consists in restoring a constructed identity to its “base,” i.e. segmentation, without understanding that if segmentation is indeed its base, then constructed identity will “follow” the logic which belongs to it and function accordingly. This logic organizes a whole worldview, and an approach to the relations of production as well. All these factors are pertinent agents for the invention of distinctions, their variation or disappearance. In Marseille, for instance, an Italian or a Spaniard is just another nice bowling buddy. Racialization, or the production of specific identities, does not belong to the concept of capital. (Unlike the distinction of gender, which is inherent to work as a productive force). But this having been said, race is nevertheless a necessary form of appearance [une forme de manifestation nécessaire]. The transformation of a social relation into a thing — in other words, a “paradoxical” subject — is at the same time the transformation of this thing into a social relation between subjects. In a sense, the subject is heir to the movement which creates it. This inversion is the way relations of production really act, disguised [dissimulés] as the wills and decisions of subjects.
But the whole social construct out of which this arises now effaces itself. Racial or ethnic distinction plays its own role according to prescribed determinations for itself within the autonomy of the domain of action in which it is created: a black man could become president of the United States, but he is still black. And a black proletarian is not a white proletarian. Existing for itself, within its own domain of action, such distinction can also be made the object of instrumental political activity. We saw this in France during the great wave of strikes in the automobile industry between 1983 and 1984, even up to today. Distinction is an ideology, and as such works well in the assignment and relation of individuals to their conditions of existence and reproduction. Or, to put it another way, their position within the relations of production. Since all of this real and objective, it can’t be dismissed with the grand, ritual invocation of class. No more than we could simply demand that proletarians secede.
This is the self-presupposition of capital we have here: the reproduction of the faceoff between proletariat and capital. Inscribed within the contradictions of the self-presupposition of capital, within its contradictory existence in process, and finally within class struggle, these identities are thus plastic (in accordance with the needs of this distinction, which passes through all instances not directly economic) as well as fragile (in accordance with the capacity of this distinction to reproduce itself).
Here identities can even be points of support in its struggle (contrary to normative wishes), but they are never fixed (contrary to what entrepreneurial practices would like to make of them). Even when they are “affixed” to communities, they reproduce their core class contradictions. We must never forget that all identities are constructed, historical and fragile. Revolution, as well as current struggles like the riots in the banlieues, confront the sclerosis of class defined as a socioeconomic category. But they also confront all the identities built upon it as overdeterminations, its conditions of existence: undermining, interrogating, and calling into doubt ethnic nationality, racial nationality, etc. (2005 was not an ethnic revolt). This isn’t an intellectual question bringing us back to recall who is who, since this sclerosis and the struggle against it is the practical confrontation that links revolution to counterrevolution. Class does not always appear clearly. Any such clarity is rare, as it is not the nature of revolution to announce the final hour. It is only within a multiplicity of practices and contradictions internal to capital — in confrontations between all sorts of identities, the actions which stem from and overcome them — that class can transform itself into a communizing class. Or in other words, one that is self-abolishing. No longer can revolution be the affirmation of a proletariat recognizing itself as the revolutionary force facing capital within the capitalist mode of production.
Whenever struggling as a class is the limit of class struggle, revolution becomes a struggle against that which produced it: the whole architecture of the mode of production, the distribution of its instances and levels, which find themselves drawn into a process of upending [bouleversement] the normality/fatality of its reproduction. This, in turn, is defined by a determinative hierarchy of instances in the mode of production. (Each thing in its own place acts as “cause” of what follows, in the order of bases, infrastructures, superstructures, etc., all of which are placed into the hierarchy). For revolution is itself this very upheaval [bouleversement]. Only if it is successful can it become the moment in which proletarians cast off the rot of the old world which sticks to their skin and keeps them proletarians. Men and women will do the same with that which constitutes their individuality. It’s not a question of pure causation, but rather the concrete movement of revolution — in which the various instances of the mode of production (ideology, law, politics, nationality, economy, gender, etc.) one by one become the dominant focus of the ensemble of contradictions. This conjuncture designates the very mechanism of crisis, as a crisis of the self-presupposition of capital: the upending [bouleversement] of the determinative hierarchy of instances in the mode of production. The revolution as communization would have to nourish itself on this impurity, this non-simplicity, of the capitalist mode of production’s contradictory process. Changing circumstances and changing oneself coincide: this is revolution, this is a conjuncture. Identities are not essences, even if they offer themselves and function as such. Pretty much everyone agrees on this point. If we consider their place and their production mechanism, the question of overcoming leads to questions concerning revolution as conjuncture: upending [bouleversement] the hierarchy of instances and circulation of the dominant.
It would be false to see something novel in this, something that would only arrive within this “conjuncture.” We already entertain the idea that identities are fragile in their very construction, whether these are racial, ethnic, religious, etc. Often identities include a mix of these factors, a mix that originates in the contradictions of class and traverses them.
The object of theoretical and, when possible, practical communist critique, is not the enterprise of identity. Nor is it the normative opposition, which considers terms like class and “identities” to be mutually exclusive. Still less is it “distantiated comprehension” [«compréhension distanciée»]. The object of critique, its target, is rather the lability [labilité], plasticity, and fragility of identity: historicization, “deconstruction,” contextualization. In certain situations, why not, the object of critique could even be the fact that these identities are dynamic processes constituting a particular struggle. And by way of this, a specific reformulation of the general relation of forces among classes. Why not? But even this is quite complicated. The lability of identity construction varies a great deal, in keeping with social and cultural levels. We acknowledge that this lability is stronger in the struggles that are won. Don’t forget that the disappearance of racialization will not by itself bring about the disappearance of classes; it is not a prerequisite. Racialization is also the voice of capital.
A repeat of the struggles in France is in large part currently suspended, under a favorable balance of power, in the autonomous and particular struggle of racialized proletarians against their racialization [prolétaires racisés contre leur racisation]. This could not have been done simply by declaring racialization null and void. It is absolutely useless to call on individuals to defend themselves “as proletarians,” as if segmentation and racialization were not a part of their existence as proletarians. Foregrounding an identity can at once bring about its recognition and de-essentialization, however, which then passes on to an attack on certain historical and cultural characteristics being made into one’s personal definition, operative agents of social and economic cleavage (because chosen and delimited). Or in other words, to bring war upon the distance that separates the official Law of equality, citizenship, and the other abstractions with which capital operates from the real rules (which the whole world knows are inverse of official Rule) and real conditions of work and life. It’s not a matter of simply assuming “difference,” so as to rub it out at the same time. “Difference” is nothing more than an inferior status indelibly inscribed onto a person. We must admit that “integration” is a test no one stands a chance in passing, even less so when coupled with the “war on terror.” Break with the rules of the game, show that the official Rule is not the real rule, that racial division derived from the segmentation of labor power functions in accordance with its own needs. There is no a priori “all together.” Even if this seems “reformist,” or an “intermediary objective,” this has still not yet been achieved…
Once one possesses a general comprehension of the production of identities, contrary to that of entrepreneurs of identity like the PIR or that of the norm like La Lutte de Classe, everything returns to the particular analysis of a particular situation.
Why does such a subject make sense today? Just look at nearly all the social questions. Most struggles cannot help but express themselves in the language of identity, ethnicity, religion, and race, all of which would be sufficient cause for a response But this does not explain the violence and tension this subject provokes in our “milieu.” Purely normative opposition to the real segmentation of class is there to stave off what would surely be the annihilation of the proletariat’s general identity, which the militant claims as his own and without which he implodes. He knows his very existence is at stake concerning this issue. What a narcissistic wound it would be, to no longer be able to identity with the “thugs of the banlieue”!
Attempt at a definition of the proletariat
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The essential definition of the proletariat is a concretion of thought that excludes no single manifestation. It is always present in each of them; these cannot exist except in the totality of its forms and attributes. What then is a class? Let us attempt to provide a possible definition of the proletariat as a class. Definitions of this class have always navigated two poles: a socioeconomic definition and an historical category defined by practice (in early critiques of programmatism, this ambiguity had been artificially overcome by distinguishing between working class and proletariat).
But let’s start from an even simpler point: the imperative to sell our labor power. We might add that this imperative has no meaning outside the valorization of capital, which leads us to say that this sale for valorization defines itself both as a contradiction for capital and for itself. The sale of labor power does not tell us what the proletariat is if not seized by its relation à la capital’s valorization, as contradiction. On its own, the sale of labor power explains nothing; it no longer defines the class, even if linked to the valorization of capital. A definition only appears when either this situation (the sale of labor power) or relation (of this sale to valorization) are seized as a contradiction by that of which they are a dynamic force: the contradiction between necessary labor and surplus labor, the tendency of the rate of profit to fall, the contradiction comprised by proletariat and capital. It is also capital as a contradiction in process. So we have a unity of the definition of class as a situation and as a practice (or “in itself” and “for itself,” if one prefers).
Moving on, if it is true that classes define themselves as a specific position within the relations of production, then relations of production are also relations of reproduction. Here the definition of class becomes complicated. We find that normative denial faces a “disharmony” between what is happening in any given moment and Marx’s famous phrase about “what the proletariat must do in conformity with its being.” This “disharmony” not only attaches to certain momentary circumstances, but is inherent in the fact that class is objectively situated within a structure whose conflictual reproduction mobilizes the whole mode of production. This implies a multitude of relations that are not strictly economic, in which individuals live out this objective situation, which they also take on as they self-constitute as a class.
P.S. — It would be necessary to produce this tentative definition from a particular place within the totality. Here we depart from a single pole, and not from the whole. This is not so bad, but it is a bit inconvenient.2
Notes
1 Michel Kokoreff et Didier Lapeyronnie, Refaire la cité, l’avenir des banlieues, Ed. Le Seuil
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