What follows is one chapter from the collection Revolutionary Writing. For more info on the book, please click here, and for a 55-page sample of the entire book as a .pdf (115K), please click here

Capital Moves

John Holloway

I

Capital moves.

This statement is so obvious that there seems no point in writing it down, much less making it the title of an article. And yet...

Annonymous Comrade writes:

"The Tribe of Moles"

Sergio Bologna (1977)

This article is a provisional attempt to trace the internal development of the autonomous class movement in Italy, which led to the explosive confrontation around the University occupations in Spring 1977. Such an analysis is only meaningful if it allows us to uncover the new class composition underlying these struggles, and to indicate the first elements of a programme to advance and further generalise the movement.

lazosubverto writes:

"The Art of Flight: An Interview"

Yann Moulier-Boutang with Stany Grelet

Part One: Exodus

Grelet: Since the introduction of your work De l'esclavage au salariat in 1998,
you have presented your central idea that, in the history of capitalism, the control of
the flight of workers would be the power of the constitution of the salaried worker.

hydrarchist writes "The following review was translated by Arianna Bove for the Generation Online reading list. The article was originally published in the Italian communist daily newspaper, Il Manifesto.

Bodies imprisoned by law


F. Barchiesi.

Il Manifesto 12/01/03

hydrarchist writes "Here's another interesting piece on organising in the sex industry, once again its from Issue 59 of Organise pubnlished by the Anarchist Federation.

Not in my backyard

This article sets out some of the main problems faced by sex workers in their
relationship with the State, and concludes with a brief interview with Jenn
Clamen of the International Union of Sex Workers.

You’re self-employed, running a legal
small business on a tight budget and
want to advertise your services. For
most, a card in the local shop window
or phone box might be just the ticket.
But not if you’re a sex worker, it
seems.

Clamp down

Though prostitution is legal, soliciting
on the streets isn’t. Until the Criminal
Justice & Police Act came into force in
2001, the prostitute’s tactic of
advertising sex by putting cards in
phone boxes was legal too - not
anymore. It’s estimated that 13m
cards are distributed across Britain
each year and in 2001 BT removed
150,000 from phone boxes in central
London alone - though it didn’t stop
schoolboys swapping cards in
playgrounds when the Pokemon craze
died down! Apart from the waste of
money, carding is now attracting
severe penalties as the police and local
councils clamp down.The police pose
as clients and get the addresses of
people selling sex. They are visited,
warned, often the landlord is informed.
With most landlords afraid of being
charged with abetting prostitution,
such a warning usually ends in
eviction. The woman (and it usually is
a woman, sometimes with children) is
moved on again and again. Their
livelihoods are lost as it takes time to
re-build your client base. Immigration
officials often accompany police, and
women working illegally are issued a
deportation order and dumped at the
nearest airport. Sometimes the only
way they can raise the airfare is to
head back into town and go back on
the streets. If they have been
trafficked (smuggled into the country)
they may still owe the traffickers their
fare and be in immediate danger here
and in their home countries. Cards at
flats are confiscated and the card boys,
if caught, face heavy fines, up to
£1,000, or 28 days in jail.

Anonymous Comrade writes "

Struggle against Value in a Swedish Hamburger Restaurant
[prol-position]

[Marcel, member of Kämpa Tillsammans/Sweden]][1]

This text has two goals. The first is to try to create an interest in the daily ongoing class struggle that is waged everyday in every workplace. I will try to show that something as completely unglamorous and ordinary as working at a restaurant, or rather the small hidden struggles that are waged against wage labour there, is part of the communist movement. [2] The other goal is to show that theoretical notions like capital, communism, use value and exchange value are not something abstract and academic, but rather something concrete that influence our lives and which we in turn influence.



Making hamburgers

My last job was at a privately owned hamburger restaurant. Although the restaurant didn't belong to any multinational company like McDonalds or Burgerking, it was quite big and was open every day in the week, only being closed between 7 and 10 in the morning. Most of the people who worked there were teenagers or people like me in their twenties, mainly girls. The majority had another job or went to school at while they were working at the restaurant. People came and went all the time. They didn't cope with the work conditions or they thought that the wage was too lousy. The majority of the staff were employed illegally and you had to work more than a year to get an ordinary contract and an ordinary wage. Before that, you were an apprentice with a much lower wage. Being an apprentice also meant that the boss could give you the sack whenever he felt like it. Most of the people who worked there chose not to work at the restaurant for more than a couple of months. We were all constantly looking for other jobs or other ways to get money.

Daybreak! writes:

"The Death of Independent Family Farms"

by Peligro

The family farm has been a sustaining myth in America. It's been seen as proof that if someone was willing to work then they’d be able to have a little land to live on, at least enough to take care of themselves and their family. As if we needed more proof that the American Dream has become little more than a twisted corpse, a story politicians tell us to put our dreams to sleep, we need look no further then the situation of the family farm in the Midwest today.

Issue 5.1 of Workplace: A Journal for Academic Labor is now available
online at workplace

Sections include "Technology, Democracy, and Academic Labor" (edited by
Laura Bartlett and Marc Bousquet in collaboration with Richard Ohmann
and *Radical Teacher*), "Organizing the Family" (edited by Noreen
O'Connor), and "Activist Front" (with features by Bill Vaughn and
Nick Tingle).

"Suburbia or Global Communities?

And the Next Mutiny on the Bounty"

By P.M.

[A longer article, presented in three parts.]

"I was more worried about myself then than I was at any other time of my life... You’ve fallen into something that’s so ugly and horrible. Instead of My Drugs Hell, it’s My Suburban Hell.That’s not being flippant. One thing I really fear is living that whole kind of home/garden/kids kind of suburban existence. DIY and all that. I’d much rather be selling my arse in King’s Cross than living that kind of life. It’s sick and sordid that people have set such limitations on themselves, thinking that’s all they’ll get.“ (Irvine Welsh, author of Trainspotting, about his life after his drug-addiction)

"Paradise has been found.“ Bruce Steinberg, of Merrill Lynch, about the US. (Tages-Anzeiger 1-26-2002)

Suburban Utopia

At this moment everyone on the planet is watching the people of the USA and wondering how they are reacting to the present global crisis. For the most "dangerous" working class on this planet is the US working class. When its compliance with capital ends, US capital will collapse and thereafter, like dominoes, all the secondary capitals. Some of those lesser proletariates seem ready for such an eventuality, are even prepairing for the "day after“, expecting the big holiday. The Germans and the French are rehearsing work-free lifestyles for five to six weeks every summer, the Japanese have only been pretending to be part of the game for 100 years and seem to be about to quit now. The Italians, Spanish, Russians are ready to let go. The Chinese, the Indians and Argentinians are desperately looking for a way out. Many others never really tried.

But the US working class is not only potentially dangerous to world capital. If it keeps supporting it actively or passively, there can’t be an end to the world’s turmoil, destruction and misery. The key historic question of our age is therefore: why is the US working class not letting go? Why are they still putting up with capital’s arrogance and constant demands? What have they got to lose?

Try this: The US proletariate is living in a kind of continental "Truman Show“, in a consumers‘ paradise. They’re already living in near-paradise, in a state of bliss, in a virtual utopia, beyond, in non-capitalism, in suburbia. And they seem to love it. They’re disgustingly happy – or : they think they are. (Which is even worse.) As long as suburbia can exist or as long as there is at least a believable pretense or realistic hope for it to come true, there can be no change on this planet, just the defence of the status quo with all means. Nobody wants to lose paradise, especially not to crazy terrorists who are willing to die in order to get there.

The Antimilitarist Committee of the Anarchist Federation of Italy Umanita Nova writes:

We have decided to be at the demonstration against all wars that
will take place in Florence (Italy) next November 09, with our
banderoles, flags, press and leaflets.
We made this choice for the simple reason that since ever we are
contrary to any war.

We made this choice because it is needed that we are in huge
numbers to cry it out. But we decided as well that it must be
clearly outspoken, with the contents that are part of our history as
anarchists.

— It is required to be antimilitarists. It's no use saying "NO wars"
unless with as much strength we say: NO to the tools of wars -
fabrication and sale of arms, prisons, law courts, polices, armies,
sexism, racism? the militarizing of our consciences.
— It is required to be against states. The existence of a bound
territory to be defended from suspected invaders is in itself cause
of wars. Nobody should ever be our enemy only because he lives
somewhere away from us.

— It is required to be against capitalism. The exploitation of the
capitalist system is under the eyes of everyone of us. Be it in the
rich and wealthy West or in other places, with different means and
more or less intensity, capitalism exploits, reduces to starvation,
kills. War is the ruling method of this system. To think one can
stand against war without opposing the model that produces it is
like being maimed.

— It is required to be anticlerical. Churches, the clergy,
ecclesiastical hierarchies? since ever they are vehicle of lacerations
among peoples, each pretending the upper role for their own God
and their own way to salvation. They speak peace while they foster
hate towards those that do not conform to their moral and
moralistic precepts.

WAR NEEDS YOU

YOU DON'T NEED WAR

AGAINST ALL MILITARISM OR HIERARCHY:

OBJECT
AND DESERT

FOR AN IMMEDIATE GENERAL STRIKE
IN CASE WAR
STARTS!