F. Framont is a trained sociologist, he is the editor-in-chief of the
magazine Frustration which aims to be a media of the class struggle andis also a trainer as a sociologist of work for union representatives in
employer bodies (CSE). He recently published two books: "Parasites"
(2023, reissued in paperback in 2024) and "You Don't Hate Mondays ...
But You Hate Domination at Work" (2024). These two books complement each
other and have rare qualities. Clearly positioned on the terrain of the
class struggle, they seek to argue in a simple and illustrated way the
parasitic side of the bourgeoisie and the need to put an end to the
dictatorship of capital. These are very easy-to-read books because they
are essentially built on examples to support the developments made,
without jargon or other concepts reserved for specialists, without
multiple references that overwhelm the person reading them. In short,
they are very effective and therefore relevant activist tools to raise
awareness of the need to overthrow capitalism. That said, we will
develop in conclusion some limitations that should not hinder their
reading because the essential and successful objective of these books is
to restore legitimacy to the class struggle, terms that have become
taboo even in trade union or left-wing political organizations.
Parasites
This book shows the parasitic side of the big bourgeoisie in the primary
sense of the term: the big bourgeoisie is a class that lives at the
expense of the working class and is a toxic element in society, which
defines a social parasite. He first seeks to demonstrate that the big
bourgeoisie owes its fortune in no way to its courage, its work force,
... because 80% of the fortune of billionaires is inherited, the
remaining 20% is given by the State on the backs of workers. He gives
through concrete examples an image of the bourgeoisie, which exists in
flesh and blood, to stop making it invisible behind "globalization",
"the market", ... He illustrates the consciously maintained lures of
"equality of opportunity" or that the ruling class would work for the
"general good": "The powerful are a social class whose primary objective
is the increase in the rate of profit - and to this end, the increase in
the control of our political, cultural and media life". To do this,
companies seek to develop the adhesion of employees, helped by the
media, intellectuals, political and union organizations (domesticated);
the latter maintaining the illusion that one could convince the bosses
or the government to do otherwise, as if the latter were not fully aware
of the consequences of their decisions and of the class struggle that
they are waging against the working classes.
Rather than long theoretical speeches, N. Framont takes many striking
examples of the capital-State collusion that allows the growth of the
capitalists' fortunes on the backs of the population: inheritance,
predation and exploitation. He shows that capitalists cost more than
they bring in if we compare State aid and the real investments made.
Shareholders gorge themselves on the extraction of the value produced by
the workers without bringing anything useful to society: real parasites.
This parasitism continues at the political level. Twisting the neck of
the reformist left, he shows how, since Mitterrand, governments have
consciously stripped taxes to feed the appetite of the bourgeoisie. He
very clearly explains that the political world is of the same class as
the capitalist world and that there is nothing to expect from any
left-wing government that would push for another policy. He effectively
develops the aberration of market liberalization, the social cost that
this represents and the concrete consequences for us (impoverishment,
complexity and bureaucratization of our lives). In a second judicious
part, he dissects how the media, films, intellectuals, artists, etc. are
the transmission belt of an ideology favorable to capital: they make the
working class invisible and devalue its members while they overexpose
the bourgeois class by valuing its members, all this on the basis of
striking examples. On ecology, he maintains this joyful class position:
the carbon footprint of the richest 1% in France is equivalent to that
of the poorest 50%, so let's stop moralizing people about the small
gestures that would save the planet. Developments on work, discussed in
this book, are more developed in the second and we will come back to them.
The end of the book discusses solutions to get out of this situation:
why don't people revolt? For the author, there are two obstacles:
bourgeois thought has corrupted many minds through permanent ideological
pressure, political and union organizations are relays of the
bourgeoisie (which he calls sub-bourgeois). He illustrates in an
interesting way how class contempt exists even among activists and
therefore posits that we must relearn the social pride of our camp
collectively and keep hope: "If hope is not optimism, it is because it
is not the guarantee of a better future. But rather the only possibility
for there to be one". This hope is not a moral but a political position:
"Relearn social pride, fight bourgeois codes and the myths of the
superiority of this class, learn about the balance of power and refuse a
dialogue that is lost in advance[...]They are too rich to keep our calm,
it is too late to remain polite".
You don't hate Mondays
In this second book, N. Framont discusses salaried work. The basis of
his discussion is the frustration felt by our professional activity that
results from the relationship of capitalist exploitation. He seeks to
pose this relationship of exploitation as still central today, and this
against many militant discourses even of the radical left. If the left
indeed discusses remuneration and working time, working conditions are
absent from political discourses. He therefore discusses the current
framework of work to obviously point out the violence that results from
it but above all that everything would work much better if we worked
outside of capitalism. The book first returns to the development of
capitalism and the generalization of salaried work where the worker is
dispossessed of his work tool and the object of his work. Through a
quick and very accessible historical return (and therefore with a few
shortcuts that are not very annoying), he recalls that this structuring
of work is not natural and that it is recent. Capitalism imposed itself
through violence (triangular trade, slavery, enclosures leading to the
expropriation of peasants, industrial revolution with the extension of
wage slavery and the stupefying division of labor). The employment
contract is not a contract between two free and equal people, it is
economic necessity that forces the proletarian to accept the conditions
of his exploitation. Such exploitation imposes a tyrannical hierarchy
and in return provokes an incessant class struggle. His examples and
analyses are effective in countering the legends of "compromise", as
during the "30 glorious years", while it is a class struggle led by the
proletariat that pushes back the bourgeoisie at that time. From there,
he discusses the current period where control is permanent. Domination
in work is imposed by a strong hierarchy composed of N+1, N+2, N+3, ...
which is heard even in public services, NGOs and associations. This
violent domination seeks to extend itself through the desire for control
over the minds of employees: we no longer seek to get the work done, we
seek to make the exploited adhere to their exploitation. "Know-how"
becomes dominant in managerial propaganda, we must affirm that we find
happiness in our work and thereby annihilate any protest. In addition,
the book has relevant thematic inserts such as on "moral harassment"
which individualizes structural reports of violence, "meditation" and
other subterfuges to acclimatize us to exploitation, .... In a second
part and in connection with Parasites, it illustrates very well the
contradiction between the official discourse of the bourgeoisie (working
for the collective good) and its actions (exploitation). In this way, it
humorously recalls the "Peter principle": in a hierarchy, every employee
tends to rise to his level of incompetence. Using examples of big bosses
or ministers, whom he ridicules in the face of their mediocrity, he
shows that these so-called "responsible" people are in fact never
responsible for their glaring failures. He poses different forms of
hierarchy (violent, paternalistic, left-wing boss, etc.) to point out
that their functions are identical: to exploit. Power, whatever it may
be, is therefore effectively denounced. Power takes precedence over
efficiency because, above all, all power seeks to preserve itself. The
intensification of exploitation mechanically leads to bureaucratized
work with the multiplication of intertwined hierarchical layers (what D.
Graeber called "bullshit jobs"). Hence the use of "good stress" or
"emergency" management in current management to prevent us from thinking
calmly about the aberration of this hierarchy.
For N. Framont, we must dismantle the pessimism of activist circles and
restore collective class confidence. The author elaborates on conflict
at work, inherent in the current work environment and which often
remains invisible. The first sign is the significant increase in
resignations and/or the quest for independence (self-employment, organic
market gardening, etc.). The second is sabotage linked to the methods of
revolutionary unionists of the late 19th century to assert a class
morality: slowing down the pace of work, sticking to the minimum,
stopping production by destroying or diverting the object of work, the
wig (using materials and machines for one's own use), etc. These
dynamics of resistance are necessary for the author but do not replace
the strike that he highlights (figures and examples) to restore concrete
visibility to this form of class struggle. In addition, strikes pay
because companies that have experienced strikes see, to a much greater
extent than others, more fruitful wage negotiations. In short, the class
struggle led by the oppressed is very present and this is often
independent of the unions that the author rightly characterizes, in
their bureaucratic confinement, co-managers and disconnected from the
base. He advocates collective grassroots activism, the end of social
dialogue, the promotion of rebellion to build a balance of power, not to
"discuss and convince" our enemies (like the days of union
mobilizations) but to make the bosses give in. But he finds in the
leaders or "loudmouths" a necessary lever to unite... which is largely
debatable.
Conclusion
These two books by N. Framont do not only denounce or illustrate the
parasitism of the bourgeoisie or the need to change the social
framework, they allow us to reverse the contempt: it is the capitalists
who are contemptible. Above all, they do not stop at an observation,
they have a militant will: to (re)give people the desire to fight to
overthrow capitalism.
However, the end of the two books marks their limits. In both books, the
author ends with an anticipation of the future where capitalism has
ended. These anticipations develop interesting aspects that should make
people think even in radical circles: the end of hierarchy at work, the
end of wage inequality (same salary for everyone), etc. But the movement
that overthrew capitalism and the future society remain embedded in the
commercial world, with employees being collective owners of their
production tools. N. Framont remains at a kind of orthodox Marxism where
capitalism is characterized solely by the exploitation of the
proletariat; the objective is consequently only to expropriate the
bourgeoisie and communism is then reduced only to a more efficient
management of industrial development.
Many post-Marxist authors have developed relevant analyses on the role
of the commodity and the relationship to work that it implies (Postone,
Kurtz, Jappe, Holloway, etc.) and therefore of the need to go beyond
"work". From this point of view, revolutionizing capitalism is therefore
not only the overthrow of capitalists to better manage the industrial
economy, but beyond that, reversing the relationship to work and going
beyond the market mode. This means building a society where the
activities necessary for our lives are no longer separated from the rest
of social life, that is to say a society where work, in the capitalist
sense, will have disappeared and will have disappeared many tensions,
problems, linked to capitalist work: hierarchy, individualism,
atomization, useless production, over-consumption, ...
That said, books on this post-Marxism are on the other hand much more
difficult to access because they develop theoretical reasoning that is
sometimes hermetic to those who have not read Marx. In this, the two
books by N. Framont have the rare quality of making accessible to a wide
audience the aberration of capitalism, the need for its overthrow and
the topicality of the class struggle.
RV
http://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4371
_________________________________________
A - I N F O S N E W S S E R V I C E
By, For, and About Anarchists
Send news reports to A-infos-en mailing list
A-infos-en@ainfos.ca
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten