Revolutionary zeal in Unionized Workers?

[Winter]

Do you think that a worker in a highly organized union, that gets paid an amount to live on, and has health care has the same, less, or more revolutionary potential than a non-unionized worker who is struggling to pay bills and rarely has an opportunity to get medical check-ups?

[#FF0000]

Do you think that a worker in a highly organized union, that gets paid an amount to live on, and has health care has the same, less, or more revolutionary potential than a non-unionized worker who is struggling to pay bills and rarely has an opportunity to get medical check-ups?

Maybe. I don't think comfort level is the only factor involved. France, for example, has a pretty active and militant working class with people going out and protesting and making a racket all the time. Meanwhile the U.S. has the worst conditions for workers in the industrialized, western world and there's almost nothing.

[Floyce White]

The question is about potential not actual. Every working-class person has the same potential. For sure, starving does force workers into action at whatever level of consciousness, organization, and morale they currently have. So if starving workers are prematurely forced into action, and botch it up, that doesn't change their potential.

[Antiks72]

Maybe. I don't think comfort level is the only factor involved. France, for example, has a pretty active and militant working class with people going out and protesting and making a racket all the time. Meanwhile the U.S. has the worst conditions for workers in the industrialized, western world and there's almost nothing.

I blame that on the massive propaganda effort the bourgeoisie have precipitated during the last 30 years. Cheap and easy credit has masked the decline of living standards to boot.

[FreeFocus]

The instances are rare indeed in which people with some sort of comfort (food on the table, roof over their head, some luxuries here and there) will leave it behind in an attempt to change or overthrow a system. By definition, revolution means doing just that - relinquishing any comfort you have and even the certainty of your life continuing.

On a side note, I think the militancy of the French working-class has a lot to do with it being embedded in the broader French culture now. Since the late 1800s, France has had a very respectable tradition of open working-class resistance and militancy that is almost never seen in the West really.

[blake 3:17]

Organized workers do have a great deal more power than the organized. Many recent strike waves in the Global North have challenged state and employers power.

Certain workers have substantively more more power in capital intensive industries -- especially metal workers and workers in shipping and transport -- have massive social power at their disposal. Close a steel plant down for a day? That's a crazy blow to the employer.