Doug, I think this is a huge philosophical problem. In a nutshell I think it is the corollary of the 'hegemony' notion, as well as (post)structuralism, Althusser and all the other 'anti-humanist' notions that have invaded the vocabulary and thought processes of the left since the early 1970s. We developed a hugely powerful vocabulary regarding structure, and at the same time a very impoverished one of agency. Subjectivity became divorced from such hopelessly enlightenment notions as agency and the will - we began to see subjectivity as simply an imperative from outside, an effect of "interpellation", if I may reproduce part of Althusser's hideous vocabulary here.
One of the reasons why I like autonomism is because it puts emphasis back on the self-activity of the working class and de-emphasises the state - so that state power becomes seen rather as part of the problem, i.e. as the negation of worker autonomy, not part of the solution. I attended a seminar recently at the university where I work on poverty and inequality in S. Africa and almost the whole discussion revolved around government policy and how the ANC was doing nothing for the poor, etc. But this is the mode of thought that we need to break with; governments do what governments do, for heaven's sake, they will never be the solution. Only at the end of that seminar someone rather tentatively suggested that maybe we should be looking at the poor themselves as active subjects.
Now I want to make one further suggestion regarding the "seeds of the new", which I think is potentially very fruitful. This is the notion of the 'general intellect', which is attracting a lot of attention right now, with the writings of Virno, Negri, etc., on the subject. The term is used by Marx in the Fragment on Machines (Grundrisse p.705 or thereabouts, following). I would especially recommend Chapter 9 of Dyer-Witheford's book on Cyber-Marx: Cycles and Circuits of Struggle in High Technology Capitalism. Basically the argument is about the changing nature of work and new subjectivities, and how the 'immaterial worker' is being compelled by this to become a subject of communication and user of ICTs. This is a two-sided phenomenon: as Lazzarato and others have argued, this is potentially even more authoritarian than the situation of the Fordist worker, because the command to be a subject of communication appears to arise from within the subject him/herself (theorists of hegemony will be on comfortable ground here); but as Dyer-Witheford and others point out, and as Marx pointed out, there is also something potentially very subversive in the worker becoming a subject of communication, responsible for making 'management' decisions, etc. (we only have to reflect here on the internet as a means of organising anti-globalisation movements to get the basic point). We cannot deny agency on the part of workers and yet grant full agency to capital. Capital has its plans when it introduces technology, but these can go awry, and workers CAN decide to command that technology for other purposes. If there are major changes occuring in the general intellect, due to the recomposition of the workforce and the technological strategies of capital, then it may be that these have the seeds of the future anti-capitalism in them, despite the capitalist intentionality that orignally gave rise to them.
I myself will be presenting a paper on 'Higher Education and the General Intellect' at the Learning Network conference in Havana (the place is not significant) in June. My argument is that we need to look at phenomena such as lifelong learning in the broader context of the general intellect, to see the two-sided nature of it: the capitalist use of machines, but also the potentially subversive new subjectivities.
I have made it clear that I despise leftist dicussions that go on and on about the attributes of this or that politician (as if our saviours lie in this unsavoury stratum of society) but never look at what is happening in the subjectivity of the workers, as if this subjectivity is just an epiphenomenon of capital itself. I am pointing to the autonomy of the working class, and particular sections of the class, and the general intellect as an alternative.
Tahir