  
La Diagonale des Autonomies (70FF from Periscope Transeditions, 41 rue J.P. 
Timbaud, 75011 Paris).
This 136 page book has been produced by a group of people involved in the 
"area of autonomy". While considered that Autonomy had great achievements 
(particularly in France, Germany and Italy) in the 1970s, it recognises that 
the 1980s took their toll, at least in terms of the participants' resiliance. 
The text therefore tries to situate Autonomy in relation to the changes in 
the relations and forces of production and consumption over the past 10 
years. This proposes that the changes which have taken place open a new area 
of production for direct social utility and that the supercession of 
Taylorist production by smaller, computer-based enterprises can carry forward 
the project of autonomy. Such an analysis may be influenced by the passage of 
individuals from the political to the entrepreneurial margins, as well as by 
the desire to avoid entrapment in an outmoded worldview. The decline of mass 
production and mass consumption is not therefore mourned (or regarded as a 
trick) in the manner of the sundry left groups. Instead, the new fragmented 
"personalised and polyphonic activities" are celebrated as the field in which 
"direct social utility" emerges. In this, it echoes the "New Times" argument, 
but refuses that attempt to tie down discrete social changes on the back of a 
particular political bandwagon.  
					Alex Richards
From Here & Now 11 1991  - No copyright
