Tropige Trauben

Tronti: The protest follows the wrong targets. Labor – precisely because it suffered in the previous phase of neoliberal globalization – was utilized for flexibilization and precarization. It didn’t get what it was owed. From this a crisis emerged because wage incomes and the growth of consumption could not be maintained in balance. Wages were pushed down too much. The imbalance between wage incomes and capital income was even too excessive for capital. They overdid it with wage cuts. This is why what we are experiencing appears also as an overproduction and underconsumption crisis. The social contradiction did play a role in the eruption of the crisis. That is why it is important to bring the force of labor back into the game, in order to make it visible and to show that it is not demobilized.

Bucci: This is a difficult operation in two respects. Firstly with respect to culture. For decades we have been told that labor is no longer central and that individual and collective identities constitute themselves through consumption. But there is also a political problem. Precisely when the economic crisis of capital reached its lowest point our political ability to organize is also at its lowest point.