Re: <nettime> Debtors' of The World Unite! The Initiative to form an International Debtors' Party.

[Matze Schmidt <matze.schmidt@n0name.de>]

Hello,

> The party was used as an example of a "cause" based party, which I argue
> can not mobilize the masses, and therefore can only remain politically
> fringe.

I agree, the Pirates can only mobilise their clients, that is the
"Hypermobile 'Class'" (symbolic workers). The probabaly best organised
political party in the FRG is The Left (Die Linke), formerly known as
PDS, the follow-up of the socialist party of the GDR.

>> So important is first and foremost the time-horizon and not the places
>> shifted or the drift of places. For with every hour of wage work workers
>> (and service providers) pay a sort of bill, the time bill.

> Not clear what you are saying here, I didn't discuss free time or leisure
> at all.

Well, you've been telling that the the workplace is not the place where
appropriation is felt. Feeling and knowing are diffrent types of
consciousness or awareness. To feel "I'm not exploited" does not mean
that your're not. Fact is that workers are exploited, and this has to do
with their free time after and before the job. So all I meant is, that
what's most important in understanding the relationship of work and
appropriation is the exploitation of time -- working time = life time.
The place is important as the spot where the work is done. Thinking of
people controlled by their own protestant moi (self) working for a
project within in a time set by them (project orientated work) does not
change a thing, does not change the notion of time exploited during wage
labour.

> The argument is that politics must be based around economic classes and
> framed according the felt conditions of those classes, not theory or
> opinion, but terms of struggle.

Right, around economic classes. But the struggles people are in are
mostly based at the moment on 'their' money, that are the wages. So
there is still a difference concerning feeling (not exploited because
payed) and knowing (exploited because not payed for overtime or more
precise surplus time). That's why there was the concept of avantgarde
that provides not only help for a movement but education. Education
about e.g. the time exploited by the capitalist.

BTW, I think it is not the case that the Pirates could not mobilize
masses, they just don't have  and don't want to have a notion of what a
mass may be since they are a pluralist group dealing with every
opportunity. They are a caricature of a politcal (parliamentary) party
yet.

> Such terms that have shifted in a
> financialized, post=industrial society where most are no longer
> direct-producers, and thus class politics needs to adapt to that if it is
> to have resonance.

I don't agree. All, even more know, the so called free lancers are
pseudo self-employed people directly depending on the plans of a bigger
system, the industry. There is no such thing like a post-industrial
society, since all producers of knowledge have to give their time and
skills to the production of surplus goods still. Class politics as
politics for the working class nowadays often wants to follow the
messages coming from "Apple-Gores" with iPads on the lap, THE fetish of
the single producers organised in networks. They are in apple's (and
others) gores.

Best too,





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