Here we commence the presentation, section by section, of a draft written 'in conversation with' radical economist Robin Murray in 2019.
This wiki version (April 2021) elaborates on the text version (Nov 2020), making use of hyperlinks and of associated work, also in wiki. Scroll right down the page for a clickable map.
> On Robin Murray, see the wonderful archive compiled by Frances Murray and Julie Simon website 
and these notes Robin Murray.
# From economics to organising - Formacion, scope and making the living economy
This is a conversation I’ve been having with Robin for 50 years; with our peers and with our previous generations too . . as activists, affiliating with traditions, making traditions. The conversation with Robin started in the 70s as ‘the labour process’, and for 50 years it has continued to be and still is labour process first and last: > Work, production, making . . the making of **the living economy**, the making and delivering of the necessary material means of subsistence and wellbeing, the making of the **lives** of the activists who - skilfully and with vision, we hope - do the remaking of present society.
Over these years the understandings behind that practice have deepened and diversified, and I've taken a path quite distinct from that which Robin took (more of this later). But the basic framing remains . .
- On one hand, the challenge of making adequate **’theory of practice’** (rigorous historical and practical understanding of the large-scale making and remaking of the conditions in which humans live).
- And on the other hand, the challenge of **organising**, as a prefigurative practice of deepening and widening - today, *urgently* deepening and widening - intentional transformation: of material forms, cultural formations and aesthetic forces.
# Economics? Organising After Robin died, a group of his associates began a stream of ongoing work - initially, reading and group reflection - connected with his work and vision. As that stream got going I began to be puzzled by something.
In our discussions it seemed easy to slip into an engagement with economics (albeit ‘industrial economics’ rather than bankers’ economics) and with policy: *forms* of provision, post-Fordist *forms* of organisation, *forms* of practice in emergent ‘social’ economy, *forms* of regulation, legislation, taxation, funding. It seemed embarrassingly easy to not address the organising: the *labour* - and the *labour power* - of organisers, in the grassroots sense . . in industry or community, trade-union or coop, city administration or regional food chain . . in the weaving - and the *production* - of radical *formations* of activists in a living dance of transformation (dance? wrestling match! disposition of forces, on the hoof, in the midst of battle?).
I noticed this in our group; but noticed it too in the written works we were studying. There was a tendency I found worrying, for Robin to focus in his writing on forms - frequently, innovative post-Fordist forms of organisation; also, forms of innovative industrial and commercial practice. But not to write about either . . - the activist *formations* that will produce transformation or - the practice of **producing** the formations - the work and skill and craft tradition of animating, weaving, choreographing and being-in activist practices of making: the politics of production that is central for the practice of labour process theory-of-practice.
At times I felt I was reading accounts of the *technics* of radical industrial-economic forms: Robin did *relish* post-Fordist inventiveness! Where was the aspiration of liberation, the cultivation of skill, the rehearsal of genres, the texture and movement of an activist life, the aesthetic of mutuality and open-heartedness, the capacity for instigating *movement* in the movements, the dance of knowing and organising; and the capability in that dance; and the *production* of that capability?
This was a huge puzzle because I knew that the man who wrote these pamphlets and delivered these podcasts was entirely animated by such things, and that one of the things we associates of his were hugely inspired by was his constantly present *aesthetic*, his continual *cultural* presence and orientation, and his remarkable skill and capacity and attentiveness in the *performance* of these kinds of work: as an activist-artist rather than just a technician of economic forms.
So why was I not finding them on the page, where we could pick them up and do more work with them?
I suspect that Robin kind-of took such things for granted - because they were so present for him, and in him; and he was generous in his belief that they are present in others too. But we are not Robin, and we don’t all have such capacity.
# Taking literacy and skill for granted? Moreover, it’s my own belief - being a person of melancholic means rather than sanguine as Robin was - that such things are by no means to be taken for granted in humans (either the capacity or the generosity of spirit: people continually do stunningly dumb, lazy, self-deceiving, self-centred and primitive things) and that mundane *theory* of such desirable practice - the practice of radical organising - is a must. And thus, that theory of the practice of *producing* the radical life and vision and skill of the organiser is as necessary as (somewhat grand) theory of the practice of capitals or theory of the practice of classes in struggle or theory that might underpin a radical economic policy of a country or region or enterprise.
In our discussions, the term that began to stand in this problematic place was *formaciòn*. I remembered it from Robin’s usage at the GLC in the 80s, and others seemed to resonate with it and remember it too. No-one was quite sure what it meant - or even how it was spelled, or why it seemed to be Spanish. Anyway: in this chapter I’m on the trail of *formaciòn*.
--- The structure of this piece is as follows . . - 1 Formaciòn and the conduct of theory of practice - 2 Particularity and containers for understanding - 3 Making a living economy - A curriculum - 4 A dance of knowing - Theory of practice - 5 A college - Hidden curriculum - 6 Beyond the fragments - Coda - Scope, particularity, formacion, livelihood
>Note: Many references are not yet inserted. They are marked thus: \[Reference xxx]
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