SIC - International Journal for Communisation 2

Misery and the Value Form 1. Crisis in the Class Relation Taking the capitalist class relation as a self-reproducing whole, the horizon of its overcoming appears as an invariant aspect of this whole, albeit one with a historically variant quality. Surplus population and capital's basic problem of labour characterise core dynamics underlying the shift in this horizon beyond the old programme of workers' power. 2. Misery and Debt A re-reading and historical interpretation of Marx's “general law of accumulation”— the tendency for the expanded reproduction of capital to throw off more labour than it absorbs—in light of the growth of surplus populations and surplus capital in the world today. 3. Notes on the New Housing Question Preliminary materials for a theory of home-ownership, credit, and housework in the post-war US economy. How is the fundamental separation between production and reproduction transformed when the home becomes the commodity through which all others are sold? 4. Communisation and Value-Form Theory The theory of communisation and Marxian value-form theory emerge from the same historical moment, mutually complement each other, and point towards the same radical conception of revolution as the immediate transformation of social relations, one in which we cease to constitute value and it ceases to constitute us. 5. The Moving Contradiction A reconstruction of the systematic dialectic of capital as a dialectic of class struggle. The forms of value which are constituted by and regulate social practice are totalising and self-reproducing through the subsumption of labour under capital. The totality so constituted is inwardly contradictory, and ultimately self-undermining: capitalist accumulation is a moving contradiction, i.e. a historical contradiction, between capital and proletariat. 6. The History of Subsumption The philosophical/logical concept of subsumption is employed in various periodisations of capitalist society, such as those of Théorie Communiste, Jacques Camatte, and Antonio Negri. A critical examination of this concept and its historical uses. 7. Sleep-Worker’s Enquiry Worker's enquiry in the cynical mode: the unrevolutionary working life of the web developer.

Past, present and future of the Endnotes project. THE HOLDING PATTERN Since 2007, states have been forced to undertake extraordinary actions. Bailouts have shifted private debts onto public balance sheets. And the world’s central banks are spending billions of dollars, every month, to convince capital to invest in a trickle. So far these state interventions have managed to stall the unfolding crisis. Yet its petrification has been the petrification of class struggle. Like the crisis itself, the struggles of 2011–2013 entered a holding pattern, unable to venture beyond the weak unity—defined by anti-austerity, anti-police, and anti-corruption sentiments—that was established in the movement of the squares. THE LOGIC OF GENDER Marxist-feminists have employed a number of binary oppositions: productive/reproductive, paid/unpaid and public/private. We interrogate these categories and propose new ones. Starting from the specificities of the production and reproduction of labour-power, we define gender as the anchoring of individuals into two separate spheres of social reproduction. We trace the development of these spheres through the history of the capitalist mode of production, and survey the dynamics of gender in the recent crisis, which we characterize as arise of the abject. A RISING TIDE LIFTS ALL BOATS A reading of the 2011 England riots and British student movement against a backdrop of decades-long social processes of abjection, class decomposition and the tendential disintegration of the wage relation. LOGISTICS, COUNTERLOGISTICS AND THE COMMUNIST PROSPECT Jasper Bernes An inquiry into the consequences of “the logistics revolution” for contemporary struggles. In light of the disaggregation and diffusion of productive capacity across the globe, direct seizure of the means of production no longer describes an implementable project for the majority of proletarians. New horizons and prospects materialise. THE LIMIT POINT OF CAPITALIST EQUALITY Chris Chen Without taking identity, cultural difference, or normative "privilege" as fundamental categories of anti-racist analysis, this article sketches a racial genealogy of superfluous populations as a constitutive feature of the emergence and spatial expansion of capitalism. The possibility of abolishing "race" as superfluity is therefore bound to contemporary anti-capitalist struggles, and vice-versa. SPONTANEITY, MEDIATION, RUPTURE How can we recover the key concepts of revolutionary theory today, that is, after the end of the workers’ movement? We offer the following reflections on three concepts — spontaneity, mediation, rupture — as an attempt to re-fashion the core of revolutionary theory, for our times. By taking cognisance of the gap that separates us from the past, we hope to extract from past theories something of use to us in the present.  

SIC 1: International Journal for Communisation November 2011 200 pages | £7.00 An international publication produced in collaboration by numerous groups and individuals including Théorie Communiste, Riff-Raff, Blaumachen and Endnotes. Contents Editorial Leon de Mattis, What is communisation? Peter Åström, Crisis and communisation Woland, The historical production of the revolution of the current period Jeanne Neton & Peter Åström, How one can still put forward demands when no demands can be satisfied Rocamadur, The ‘indignados’ movement in Greece R.S., The present moment B.L., The suspended step of communisation Screamin’ Alice, On the periodisation of the capitalist class relation

Can we find alternatives to the failed radical projects of the twentieth-century? What are the possible forms of struggle today? How do we fight back against the misery of our crisis-ridden present?"Communization" is the spectre of the immediate struggle to abolish capitalism and the state, which haunts Europe, Southern California, and wherever the real abstractions of value that shape our lives are contested. Evolving on the terrain of capitalism new practices of the "human strike," autonomous communes, occupation, and insurrection have attacked the alienations of our times. These signs of resistance are scattered and have yet to coalesce, and their future is deliberately precarious and insecure.Bringing together voices from inside and outside of these currents Communization and Its Discontentstreats Communization as a problem to be explored rather than a solution. Taking in the new theorisations of Communization proposed by Tiqqun and The Invisible Committee, Théorie Communiste, post-autonomists, and others, it offers critical reflections on the possibilities and the limits of these contemporary forms, strategies, and tactics of struggle.Contributors include: Alberto Toscano, Nicole Pepperell, Anthony Iles, Marina Vishmidt, Evan Calder Williams, Jason E Smith, Théorie Communiste, Endnotes, Jasper Bernes, John Cunningham, George Ciccariello-Maher, and Alexander Galloway.BACK IN STOCK!