What happened to the working class? Can we still win?

[twenty percent tip]

A preface: Although I am trying my best to have an internationalist view I was born and raised in America so I apologize for any provincialism on my part. It is unintentional. I am limited by my experience and knowledge.

I also want to say that I hope I can be proven totally wrong. My findings recently are very depressing.

Comrades!

After nearly 40 years of working hard for revolution I feel ready to collapse.

A sober look separated from my own hopes and aspirations shows things are bad.

Since the Paris Commune there have been major waves of workers uprisings every 10-20 years. But here we are in 2010 and there hasn’t been such a wave in 30 years. For the first time since 1875 there is nothing of real worth coming out of our class.

Something happened. There was a transformation. But what and how?

Look how things have changed.

From the beginning of the labor movement there were constant strikes and those strikes lead to strikes in multiple jobs. Today there are few strikes and they are isolated and individualized.

In 1919 the capitalists were scared to death of threats by train and trolley workers to strike for fear it would spread to other industries. In 2005 the New York subway workers went on strike and they were isolated and defeated in a matter of days. Workers on the commuter train lines and bus drivers IN THE SAME UNION who were working without a contract didn’t even join the strike.

For the most of their histories mines and factories had thugs with guns posted at their entrances to pressure workers and kill them if they got out of hand. Now there are none. Not because the bosses are nicer but because the bosses don’t need them. Today there is no threat.

There was anti-communism, McCarythism, Red Scare. Today there is nothing. Not because they love left wing revolutionaries but because they have nothing to fear in us.

After the industrial revolution the biggest part of the population worked the means of production which were of course owned by a capitalist minority. Now the minority of industrial capitalists is even smaller but they have a lot of financial parasites hanging on to them. Meanwhile production has become so automated that the biggest part of the population now works as servants of the industrial capitalists and financialists around them. We’re subject to the whims of their individual needs.

We work in Starbucks, restaurants, cinemas, the Apple Store, and all the rest. At best some of us transport things or people. We serve. We produce nothing.

The number of actual producers is small and shrinking.

Social labor has been replaced with individualized service.

People say ‘well look manufacturing jobs are just being sent to China, that’s why you don’t see them here’. But these are not new jobs. These are jobs moved from another place to there. Jobs went from America to Mexico to China. And actually the number of manufacturing jobs in China has actually decreased over the last 10 years.

Look at Japan. An article was just published that said by 2050 older people will exceed younger people for the first time in history. Ten percent of the population will be over age 80. For everyone person of working age there will be one person over age 65. How does a working class revolution come out of that?

There used to be mass revolutionary parties. Today there is nothing and there hasn’t been anything for years. Don’t tell me about nationalist wars or student struggles. That’s not communism and not what we need. And even those are limited anymore.

We’re going to seize the means of production? What means of production?

Are we going to seize Starbucks stores? Wal-Mart? The local TGIFridays?

Where is the base of mass workers struggle? Are you and your 13 coworkers at the local market going to launch something? Maybe the 3 people working at this shift at the coffee shop can go on wildcat strike? Will workers councils rise from individual McDonald's?

What about the internet? We have the most access to information we ever had. Are people smarter? Are they more exposed to communist ideas? Any serious analyst has to say no.

We have a means of communication beyond anything we had in history. Are we using it to organize struggles? Again no.

Look around you.

What has changed? What do we face now? How is revolution possible today?

What say ye?

[leftace53]

While there are workers, there is hope for a revolution.

I agree that class conciousness seems to be at a low point. A lot of people I've talked to have mentioned that they do want change, but they feel that if they do anything about it, they will lose their jobs (hence their means of sustenance). I will give capitalism "clever" points because it commodified life, so in a sense going against capitalism is like going against your means of life. I feel the workers will not truly rise up until their backs are against the wall and there is nowhere else to run, when it comes down to revolution or death. We can always continue to rant on, and raise awareness about communism and in turn raise class conciousness.

[twenty percent tip]

While there are workers, there is hope for a revolution.

There have always been workers since even before capitalism. Marx was clear about this.

Marx and Engels described the proletariat as the modern working class noting that there has always been a general "working class". Someone has to do the work of course in any type of society.

The question is is there a revolutionary proletariat anymore? A imbued with revolutionary spirit and potential because of its unique conditions of life. A class capable and needing and willing to liberate all of the human race in a revolution.

Why the transformation from mass movements and parties to tiny sects and useless little unions? Why did we go from Paris Communes to lack of even multiindustry strikes? Why arent the capitalists even scared any more? Do they know something we don't (or don't want to realize)?

Anyone looking seriously at the labor movement can't help but notice it has only gotten weaker and weaker since the days the Communist Manifesto was written.

And Marx was clear about something else: "the proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing."

[twenty percent tip]

Also I think time has proven that workers don't revolt simply because things are at their worst. During the Great Depression and in the midst of the absolute destruction of WW2 there were no revolutions. Atomic-bombed workers in Hiroshima, workers in the flaming carnage of Dresden after the allied bombing, Jewish workers in Auschwitz didn't have revolutions. They just buckled down and did their best to survive accepting any crumbs they could get their hands on.

[Tatarin]

Why the dark outlook? :)

As you may know, the battle is always ongoing. The brighter sides of the current age, I would say, is Venezuela, Bolivia, Nepal and India. Greece is one of the later "first world" country that has shown great resistance towards worsen conditions, and I believe it is not the last, because similar cuts will be made everywhere. Social democracy can never be viable - not because there may not be resources to it - but because it allows opposite interests to be sought after (i.e. that of the ruling class). The ruling class is always - in every age since the ape-to-human transformation - in a constant battle to make it's interests the rule of law. Let it take a thousand years, it will still happen.

And don't forget the "great defeat" of 1989/90, when "communism collapsed" (ah, you see, communism will inevitably collapse!), brought disillusionment to many. But the propaganda of capitalism did not stop after that, it is always continuing. After the communists came "rouge states", and now we have global terrorism. That is a very effective way to scare anyone, because anyone can for any reason be a terrorist. Hell, put a sticker on a wall, and that's propagating terrorism, if you will.

The recent explosion of xenophobia is also to consider, as it puts the light on those evil immigrants while the real problems are never talked about. Even the greeks became the bandits of the week, with suggestions in the papers of people who had been there, or were greek themselves (but didn't live there), of how "lazy" they all were, that no one did anything they all went to retirement directly after school.

Anyway, what is not to be forgotten is that in all of history, and especially just only the last century, people have fought back oppression. And it will simply happen again, fast or slow. The majority already disagree with "pure capitalism", there is already great awareness of corporate greed and human misery. That's always something to keep in mind.

[Tatarin]

They just buckled down and did their best to survive accepting any crumbs they could get their hands on.

Well, all are different situations. The Dresden bombings I find hard that they could lead to revolutions, rather to more hate against the allies. And why revolution, if they would be more loyal to the nazi state? The same could be said about Hiroshima (not to mention the still intact racist laws of Japan today).

And for that matter, 99% of everyone in India "should" join the ongoing revolution you would think, yet the Naxalites are the minority, a handfull of 50,000-something (in a country of a billion, most of whom live in horrible poverty). But, again in positive light, you would say the same when Castro got to Cuba with one simple boat, right?

[Across The Street]

"there is already great awareness of corporate greed and human misery. That's always something to keep in mind."

While the above is definitely true it doesn't negate the fact that we are largely consumers rather than producers. I haven't been around as long as the OP but I have noticed some disturbing trends as well. Take for instance the obsession in North America with individuality. There aren't many mass mobilizations anymore because people are thinking and acting on a singular level for the most part. I don't know what to say, twenty percent tip definitely brings up some things to think about. It seems like the US might be one of the last places in the world to see revolution, even though discontent and illegality are at an all time high.

[fa2991]

There will always be at least some hope to find, comrade. Personally, I feel that it's only a matter of time. You point out many things that have also troubled me, but when I really think about capitalism's current functions, I feel hope. So much of capitalism's solidity is a facade, in my eyes. We have more service jobs in the West, as most laborious jobs have been sent overseas. Now the workers are fighting back in Venezuela, in China, in Bolivia, in Nepal, etc. What will capitalism do when the countries it oppresses finally throw off its domination?

The epicenter of the struggle has just changed, but it's still there.

[Ned Kelly]

Don't be disheartened comrade..the proletariat in the third world is stirring, readying itself to rise.

[LETSFIGHTBACK]

When the revolution starts, to get the workers to take part,it has to be scheduled between football & baseball season

[DaringMehring]

As I said in my thread, what happened to the working class, was that communism got rooted out of it by bourgeois repression using both force and ideology. Once labor leadership fell entirely into the hands of class collaborators, the only possible result was the downfall of the labor movement.

But we're coming back. We've got labor radicals these days who believe quite radical things, and it's more and more completely mainstream to attack the bosses. Sooner rather than later, I'd say, the labor movement will be back on track, and led by communists, whether or not they acknowledge Lenin etc.

[Arlekino]

There is no unity any more with workers and always I question myself why why we still sit on internet and do nothing.

[bricolage]

We’re going to seize the means of production? What means of production?

Are we going to seize Starbucks stores? Wal-Mart? The local TGIFridays?

Where is the base of mass workers struggle? Are you and your 13 coworkers at the local market going to launch something? Maybe the 3 people working at this shift at the coffee shop can go on wildcat strike? Will workers councils rise from individual McDonald's?

I think this is the most interesting point you make and it is certainly true that the workforce in the Global North is more spread out than it was before. I remember some ex-miners were staying with my family once and one said to me how he used to know everything about the guys he went down the mine with, the mines got shut and he never saw them again. Ok the mining industry is in many ways an exceptional case to the rule and such industries do still exist but they are probably becoming thinner and thinner, as for what this holds I don't know.

[LETSFIGHTBACK]

Don't be disheartened comrade..the proletariat in the third world is stirring, readying itself to rise.



To get American workers to turn out, let's mix in with the revolution a chicken wing eating contest. it worked here in Philly, 25.000 turned out, really.And, you want more people to read your party's paper, throw a sports page in. lol lol

[Raúl Duke]

Why the dark outlook? While grim and partly hyperbole (via focusing on dark examples over other more hopeful ones that have occured in America),
The OP raises a valid point, one that has been raised before in different forms.

Why is the first world proletariat (particularly the US one; in some European countries the working class is more confrontational, albeit probably not very radicalized by a lot, than the US one) not confrontational and/or radicalized?

This is the major failing of the first world left, one whose realization should lead to re-evaluation of praxis (practice) IMO.


the proletariat in the third world is stirring, readying itself to rise. That's irrelevant, I think the OP, despite the disclaimer, wants to know why the 1st world working class (particularly the American one) is not revolutionary these past 30 years and this is an important question to leftists in the 1st world (I'm not, and others as well, seeking to be reduce to a damn cheerleader for 3rd world revolutions).

[28350]

The US appears to have an ever-shrinking proletariat because most of the US economy is either services, information, or finance.

I recommend you read "The Working Class Majority" by Michael Zweig.

[LETSFIGHTBACK]

The US appears to have an ever-shrinking proletariat because most of the US economy is either services, information, or finance.

I recommend you read "The Working Class Majority" by Michael Zweig.


Or "farewell to the working class or paths to paradise".then the left will know what they are dealing with.

[Os Cangaceiros]

Keep the faith, brother...working class Rapture will come soon.

[Raúl Duke]

most of the US economy is either services, information, or finance.
I wouldn't say the working class is shrinking because of this but the nature of work and such have indeed change and this may affect the avenues and nature of struggle for many people.

[Tatarin]

While the above is definitely true it doesn't negate the fact that we are largely consumers rather than producers.

Hmm, how so? There must always be a working class which in turn must also be consumers. They can't keep exporting jobs forever too.


It seems like the US might be one of the last places in the world to see revolution, even though discontent and illegality are at an all time high.

Yes, but that is only the US. In that case, it is even worse in Europe, where social benefits are being picked away, replaced by evil immigrants (which is why the social nets are so bad) and recent upswing of right-wing parties. At least, the US already had this, but the EU is like going backwards, or something along those lines.

[La Comédie Noire]

I think the working class of the first world nations are used to a standard of living they think of as a civilized minimum and they wouldn't take lightly to things falling below that standard, as we've seen from Greece and France.

The biggest challenge will be getting rid of the xenophobic attitudes most traditional working class people have for their immigrant populations. That's a huge barrier to class consciousness.

I should also mention first world nations have less manufacturing jobs because most of our manufacturing industry is capital intensive, therefore our labor is much more productive thus requiring less people. This is a trend that Marx predicted and saw it as paradoxical that something that set more human hands free actually doomed us to privation and misery.

[DaringMehring]

It is amazing how many so-called Marxists in this thread mock workers and call them a played-out force. All the while real wages have been going down for the majority in the USA for over 30 years, the economy is crashing to hell and working people are being made to pay for it, and the masses are getting more and more pissed. There is plenty of organizing work that can be done right now.

[Lolshevik]

after the defeat of the paris commune in 1871, communism was proclaimed dead forever.

after nearly every party of the 2nd international betrayed socialism by supporting their "own" national bourgeoisies in the first imperialist world war, communism was dead forever.

etc etc...

We bounce back. :)

[twenty percent tip]

Many replies. Glad to see it. But also I feel like many comrades misunderstood me or avoid the questions that I am trying to get it. It's probably my fault for not being clear enough.

My points are as follows:

1. The working class is no longer engaged in production in mass. The majority of workers now have no contact or relation to the means of production but instead work in offices, service, public works. The majority of people alive right now produce nothing.

2. There were mass organizations and movements, huge unions and unonization drives, international meetings, general strikes, strikes that spread from job to job in 1900. Today there is none of that.

3. There were international revolutionary waves every 10-20 years from 1875-197?. There hasn't been even a hint of one in over 30 years. This is a new development; or lack of development.

4. The means of production are automated to the point of being manned by few people, isolated, nowhere around the majority of people.

So I will attempt to address the replies now. THanks.



And don't forget the "great defeat" of 1989/90, when "communism collapsed" (ah, you see, communism will inevitably collapse!), brought disillusionment to many.

I hear this a lot.

I think it upset leftists and others who saw the Eastern Bloc as something to aspire to. But I don't think it could have effected the proletariat or caused it not to be revolutionary since the proletariat is revolutionary by its conditions of life according to Marx.

The collapse of the Eastern Bloc didn't have any direct effect on the need for workers to be wage slaves to live. How could it effect their historic march?


The recent explosion of xenophobia is also to consider, as it puts the light on those evil immigrants while the real problems are never talked about.

Not only is this not new its less of a problem then it was 100, 50, even 30 years ago. Therefore it's not an excuse is it?


And for that matter, 99% of everyone in India "should" join the ongoing revolution you would think, yet the Naxalites are the minority, a handfull of 50,000-something (in a country of a billion, most of whom live in horrible poverty).

I don't think poverty is what leads to revolution. In that case homeless people would be the most revolutionary.

I also don't think 99 percent of everyone in India belongs to the working class.


But, again in positive light, you would say the same when Castro got to Cuba with one simple boat, right?

I'm not sure how that's relevant since the Cuban revolution wasn't a proletarian revolution against capitalism and alienation and didn't lead to communism or any kind of revolutionary wave.



While the above is definitely true it doesn't negate the fact that we are largely consumers rather than producers. I haven't been around as long as the OP but I have noticed some disturbing trends as well. Take for instance the obsession in North America with individuality. There aren't many mass mobilizations anymore because people are thinking and acting on a singular level for the most part. I don't know what to say, twenty percent tip definitely brings up some things to think about.

I don't think it's a question of 'bad ideas'. Ideas reflect reality. America has always promoted individualism. Now we promote it less than in the past to be honest. During the days of small farmers, westward expansion, rugged individualist cowboys and mountain men, there were more strikes and movement then now.

After all The Great Uprising happened in 1877 you'll remember.

THe vast majority of workers today work in a job with less than 50 employees, with 3-10 workers on a shift. How does a collective consciousness develop from that?


It seems like the US might be one of the last places in the world to see revolution, even though discontent and illegality are at an all time high.

I don't think it's limited to America.


There will always be at least some hope to find, comrade. Personally, I feel that it's only a matter of time. You point out many things that have also troubled me, but when I really think about capitalism's current functions, I feel hope. So much of capitalism's solidity is a facade, in my eyes. We have more service jobs in the West, as most laborious jobs have been sent overseas. Now the workers are fighting back in Venezuela, in China, in Bolivia, in Nepal, etc. What will capitalism do when the countries it oppresses finally throw off its domination?

The epicenter of the struggle has just changed, but it's still there.

I don't think that production jobs have just been moved. The majority of workers worldwide have no contact with the means of production.


I don't think Venezuela, Bolivia or Nepal have anything to do with proletarian revolution or Marx.

In Venezuela a populist army officer got elected to lead the capitalist state a decade ago.

In Bolivia a populist farmer leader got elected to lead the capitalist state a few years ago.

In Nepal a peasant group lead a guerrila war against the last elements of feudalism and then joined a newly formed capitalist government.

No sign of proletarian revolution there. Nothing Marx would recognize as being a part of the historic march to communism.

Remember that proletarian revolution is the real movement of the proletariat, not a general class movement to improve conditions.

In China there were a few decent sized strikes in some auto plants. The fact that this became such an absolute shock to the world shows I think that it is an exception to the rule, how far the working class movement has fallen, and that most workers are so far disconnected from the means of production that they see such actions as shocking oddities instead of something natural and normal to emulate.



Don't be disheartened comrade..the proletariat in the third world is stirring, readying itself to rise.

Where?



There is no unity any more with workers and always I question myself why why we still sit on internet and do nothing.

I don't think the left does nothing. The left has been doing things for 135 years. Fighting, dying, writing, publishing, distributing, protesting.

I think the question is not what can we do or why don't we do enough. I think the question first to be addressed is the conditions that exist now that I described.



As I said in my thread, what happened to the working class, was that communism got rooted out of it by bourgeois repression using both force and ideology. Once labor leadership fell entirely into the hands of class collaborators, the only possible result was the downfall of the labor movement.

Maybe I am a dogmatic materialist but this sounds reverse to me.

Ideas don't change reality. Reality changes ideas.

The means of production have been automated, the productive working class has shrunk. This was not caused by bad union leaders.


But we're coming back. We've got labor radicals these days who believe quite radical things, and it's more and more completely mainstream to attack the bosses. Sooner rather than later, I'd say, the labor movement will be back on track, and led by communists, whether or not they acknowledge Lenin etc.

I don't know how old you are or how familiar you are with history but we are not even at 1% of what we were in 1875-1935 in terms of proletarian action or conciousness.



I think this is the most interesting point you make and it is certainly true that the workforce in the Global North is more spread out than it was before. I remember some ex-miners were staying with my family once and one said to me how he used to know everything about the guys he went down the mine with, the mines got shut and he never saw them again. Ok the mining industry is in many ways an exceptional case to the rule and such industries do still exist but they are probably becoming thinner and thinner, as for what this holds I don't know.

I don't think it's limited to the 'Global North' but its definite.

Have you tried to develop some thoughts on the results of this?

Remember revolution is not a product to be sold but a reality of the march of the proletariat according to Marx.



While grim and partly hyperbole (via focusing on dark examples over other more hopeful ones that have occured in America),

What hopeful ones? I would like to know about them. Maybe it would help me regain some optomism.


The OP raises a valid point, one that has been raised before in different forms.

Thanks but where has it been raised? I would like to see it. Has it been addressed? Not in the least that I can see.


This is the major failing of the first world left, one whose realization should lead to re-evaluation of praxis (practice) IMO.

Do you have any ideas?

At the moment I'm more interested in figuring out how revolution is still possible in these new conditions than trying to conjure up some way to "make workers revolutionary." According to Marx the proletariat is revolutionary by its nature.


That's irrelevant, I think the OP, despite the disclaimer, wants to know why the 1st world working class (particularly the American one) is not revolutionary these past 30 years and this is an important question to leftists in the 1st world (I'm not, and others as well, seeking to be reduce to a damn cheerleader for 3rd world revolutions).

Actually I don't think the working class is limited to the first world or third world or anything like that. The proletariat is an international class and has been since at least 1875.

So I am talking about the proletariat in general. Which has not had a revolution and whose movements and organization have been in decline for a century to the point where it barely exists now.

As far as I know there are no mass workers organizations, revolutions, soviets anywhere in the third world, first world, outerspace.


The US appears to have an ever-shrinking proletariat because most of the US economy is either services, information, or finance.

I recommend you read "The Working Class Majority" by Michael Zweig.

I know it. It says working class is the majority.

But it doesn't address what I am saying.

The majority is no longer engaged in actual production.

The majority no longer work in social working places but small shops and isolated jobs.

The decline in the number of productive workers has matched the decline in the left over the same period.

Coincidence?

I would like someone to engage my points.

We want workers revolution. From who? Workers that don't identify as workers anymore?

We want soviets. From where? Jobs with 3-9 workers on a shift?

We want to seize the means of production. What means? Wal-Mart and Starbucks?



Or "farewell to the working class or paths to paradise".then the left will know what they are dealing with.

So what's your solution?



Keep the faith, brother...working class Rapture will come soon.

After so many years I am not sure. But also I don't think this is the right sort of thing.

Revolution is not a religious faith we use as a crutch like Christians. According to Marx it is a reality and what the working class was naturally aspiring to. (He wasn't inventing a utopia to convince people of, he was a scientist describing the existing motion of things that he lived in and saw).

Is that the case now?

I prefer reality to faith. If you understand reality you can act on it. Faith is just faith.


I wouldn't say the working class is shrinking because of this but the nature of work and such have indeed change and this may affect the avenues and nature of struggle for many people.

Correct. I'm glad my point wasn't missed on everyone.

This is what I am trying to engage.


Hmm, how so? There must always be a working class which in turn must also be consumers. They can't keep exporting jobs forever too.

It's not that they are exporting jobs. I already said this. Production jobs are disappearing worldwide. Automation comrade.

This doesn't mean that the working class is becoming 'bourgeois' or some such thing. But we are largely not involved in production anymore. We are now unproductive workers with no connection to the means of production.


I think the working class of the first world nations are used to a standard of living they think of as a civilized minimum and they wouldn't take lightly to things falling below that standard, as we've seen from Greece and France.

What have we seen? Certainly nothing revolutionary or even pointing in that direction.

In Greece with some isolated actions called by the unions then ended and upset students and individual terror on the periphery.

In France a few isolated actions called by union leaders then ended.


The biggest challenge will be getting rid of the xenophobic attitudes most traditional working class people have for their immigrant populations. That's a huge barrier to class consciousness.

The international working class hasn't risen up in over 3 decades because of immigration?

Sounds more like an excuse than an analysis. Immigration existed to an even larger extent in the past and immigrants were less accepted and less assimilated.
Have you heard of the pograms? Attacks on Roma? Japanese and German round ups in America? All of those happened when the working class in Europe and America was much more revolutionary than it is now!

The unions were built in America when workers in factories spoke 20 different languages! The Communist Party was largely built on language federations because of this.

The October Revolution happened in Russia when it was the prison house of nations! Jews, Germans, Poles were elected to soviets. Speaches by Lenin, Trotksy, had to be instantly translated so everyone in the crowds of mass meetings knew what they were saying.



I should also mention first world nations have less manufacturing jobs because most of our manufacturing industry is capital intensive, therefore our labor is much more productive thus requiring less people. This is a trend that Marx predicted and saw it as paradoxical that something that set more human hands free actually doomed us to privation and misery.

This is one of my points.

Marx thought revolution would happen in his lifetime. Automation has gone to the point where a minority is now engaged in actual production. The rest of us have been transformed into service workers who interact not with the means of production but with the capitalists and financialists and act according to their tastes and desires.



It is amazing how many so-called Marxists in this thread mock workers and call them a played-out force. All the while real wages have been going down for the majority in the USA for over 30 years, the economy is crashing to hell and working people are being made to pay for it, and the masses are getting more and more pissed. There is plenty of organizing work that can be done right now.

I agree.

I didn't mean to paint this as a "first world" vs. "third world" argument.

First first world workers are actually more exploited (that is more productive and have more surplus value taken away; this is the real definition of exploitation according to Marx, not an abstract moral concept of how long or how hard you work).

This is a general decline. All of what I said can apply everywhere.

Like I said the number of workers in industry in China has actually decreased in China over the last ten years. Also in the last ten years 200,000 manufacturing jobs have left Mexico. In the same period 2,000,000 industrial jobs were lost in America.

There hasn't been an international revolutionary wave in decades.

I just noted that I am in America in general so you comrades can know where I am coming from.



after the defeat of the paris commune in 1871, communism was proclaimed dead forever.

after nearly every party of the 2nd international betrayed socialism by supporting their "own" national bourgeoisies in the first imperialist world war, communism was dead forever.

etc etc...

We bounce back.

Have we bounced back? In what way?

Union membership is at a historic low.

The number of strikes worldwide is down.

The number of multi-job strikes, mass meetings, general strikes, is almost nill.

Mass parties of the first, second and third internationals have disappeared. Now there are only sects and weak reformist/parliamentary groups.

Liek I said there was a revolution wave every 10-20 years since the Paris Commune. For over 30 years there hasn't been one. This is the first time of such an absence since 1875.

Are you going to tell me that doesn't mean or reflect anything?

[Raúl Duke]

Do you have any ideas?

Yes and no

I have some ideas but I won't claim to know what are the exact "right" ideas; there are more experienced people who probably have a better idea of the situation than I do.

I don't view myself as an expert or am sure that I have "the answer" that the left needs; but I'm sure that the left has a problem that needs to be solved.


Thanks but where has it been raised? I would like to see it. Has it been addressed? Not in the least that I can see.

Not often in revleft, but critical views have been raised before. I can't really point to a single one, but there has been critical views.

For example, the pamphlet/text nihilist communism has a critical view of the whole left movement in relation to revolution and the working class.

[Rusty Shackleford]

The workign class still exists in the US, but in a different form than it used to. it is currently still proletaian in its socio-economic relation to the rest of the classes(bourgeoisie, petit-bourgeoisie, and the lumpenproletariat) in the US but on a global scale, is parasitic. not by their own doing but by policies of the bourgeoisie and the nature of imperialism. the working class's mindset is that of the ruling class still and as ill explain, is even less revolutionary(than they could be) because of the loss of a large amount of productive capital in the US.

when i use the word capital i mean any level of industrial production. Raw material production and refining, assembly and material manipulation, high-tech production, and any other form of productive equipment/plants.

Could the loss of proletarian class consciousness be tied to the flight of capital in the 80s? an easy way to destroy a labor movement is to take away anything that makes labor inherently labor. destroy or displace productive capital.

now there is very little capital left in the country so therefore any real sense of being proletarian is out of the window in the, i guess you could say, "old way of looking at it." now the working class is sufficiently parasitic. it is the full embodiment of labor aristocracy. why? well american workers across the board are afforded more than most other countries dominated by american financial institutions. the american worker surely faces troubles but not like that of the indian worker, or the latin american worker, or the migrant worker in the US.

for me, the hope for class consciousness is tied to there actually being a large amount of productive capital in the country. the only way i can see that really happening is if the us loses its stranglehold on the rest of the world. if revolutionary or nationalist movements defy IMF and american wishes the US would be forced to bring capital into the country again, re-proletarianizing(i cant think of a better word) the proletariat. there is a small movement of industry coming back announced by ford and a few small companies but its not enough.

it wasnt 'brown people' who took their jobs, it was the bourgeoisie.

seriously though. what are you going to do when you collectivize a starbucks or a mcdonalds? you dont produce anything. it takes factories and industry to build socialism(like FASINPAT Zanon). that is why capital needs to be accumulated in the US.

Ok, now look at china. i disagree with the dengist reforms but what they did manage to do accumulate so much capital that china is now the 'workshop of the world'. the proletariat now outweighs any class in china. it is ripe for return to marxism-leninism-maoism or even just marxism-leninism. The nep was even necessary after the revolution/civil war in russia. but china the CPC took it too far, obviously. what these two did though was build the proletariat. the revolutionary class.

so, since there is no capital what has the left been up to?
well there was the rise in anarchism in the 90s. the anti-globalization movement, anti-war movement, and various other movements. but labor may be active in this(like the ILWU and SFLC as far as i know) but its not as potent as it was in the 30s.

The way to revitalize the working class movement is to bring or develop capital in the US. We have no real power besides saying "we want jobs." the contradictions of capitalism may actually bring us capital though.

just a thought.

(EDIT: extensions on this thought. subject to a lot of change, including any grammar or spelling error fixes, im sure you know i suck at that whole grammar and proper spelling concept)

Most of the points in history are really only relevant to theory and that theory is to be applied to practice. but the history of labor in the US is by far weaker than most of the rest of the world. the time around the turn of the century was when it was strongest. and now it is weak. the fall of the soviet union has demoralized some of us, but it also ahs dropped the guard of the imperialists to an extent. we dont have a lot of practical history to build on here, or at least as much as what could be helpful. because of that, were left with concrete examples of the struggle, but almost all of them being outside of the west(by west i mean westen styles bourgeois democracy.) if there is one thing that could probably be counted on is that an american revolution would be more similar to the soviet union than the cuban revolution.

We dont have the wrong ideas(i mean most of the left) its just we dont have what we need to actually put our ideas into practice anymore. we cant be proletarian parties if there is no real mass proletariat.

Since the flight of capital, i also propose the notion that this has led to a large emphasis on theorizing. since we cant do as much work as we wish, we are stuck with debating and theorizing. it may put us into a coma.


hell, i think if i expanded on this i could make it into a blog post

[La Comédie Noire]

What have we seen? Certainly nothing revolutionary or even pointing in that direction.

In Greece with some isolated actions called by the unions then ended and upset students and individual terror on the periphery.

In France a few isolated actions called by union leaders then ended.
I think it’s a bad sign for the old order when they can’t keep up the standard of living being demanded by the working class.

The international working class hasn't risen up in over 3 decades because of immigration?
Well no, but in so far as the white working class thinks its gods elect when it comes to living conditions and wages it’s a problem. Most think immigrants are what are driving their wages down and if only they were gone everything would be okay. They need to be told outright the decline in the standard of living is a normal function of capitalism and not a temporary aberration caused by immigrant villainy.

All of those happened when the working class in Europe and America was much more revolutionary than it is now!
Do the late 19th and early 20th centuries represent some upper limit to class consciousness we can never hope to surpass? I think people are more willing to listen to the ideas of internationalism and social production now than ever. What with increased communication between increasingly intelligent members of the working class


Marx thought revolution would happen in his lifetime. Automation has gone to the point where a minority is now engaged in actual production. The rest of us have been transformed into service workers who interact not with the means of production but with the capitalists and financialists and act according to their tastes and desires.
Well now, we still have a sizeable population who work for wages and can still organize along such lines. Just because not everyone works in a factory doesn’t mean anything, during 1917 Russia had what? Three million workers out of a population of 175 million? But imagine what we’d be free to do if we each only had to produce just a little every week, socializing the manual labor over the entire world instead of consigning it to a small minority.
I think the loss in lower wage jobs reflects a change in material conditions pointing towards a more sophisticated proletariat which will have the confidence to take power.
Has it occurred to you what we mistook for revolutionary activity was actually the ruling class pacifying the working class with reforms? We won all kinds of reforms, the 8 hour working day, breaks, paid sick leave, but they were all within the context of Capitalism.
Perhaps the next step is moving beyond Capitalism?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Hi Comrade,

It has undoubtedly been a different sort of situation in the US during the past generation. Marx and Engles describe the class struggle as "sometimes hidden" and at other points it bursts onto the surface of society and certainty the last few decades in the US have been the "hidden" times. In fact, it's been a one-sided class war with a very confident and conscious ruling class in the US that has an ongoing project to dismantle reforms in the past (both labor reforms and social reforms from the struggles in the 1960s) to clear the table for increased business power and lower living standards for workers. But this does not mean that the system has fundamentally changed in structure to prevent future worker's movements in my view.


1. The working class is no longer engaged in production in mass. The majority of workers now have no contact or relation to the means of production but instead work in offices, service, public works. The majority of people alive right now produce nothing.Even workers who are not directly manufacturing a product are still important to producetion - if not, then they would be fired.

One of the biggest employment areas is shipping and trucking for example and a UPS strike (not to mention a more central distribution area like dockworkers or train operators or truck drivers) could seriously cripple business in a major way. Teachers do not produce a product, but their labor is needed to give value to the future commodified labor of their students. The increasing monopoly of large companies in service industries also means that if Wal-Mart workers or Starbucks workers unionized, it would have a huge effect on these industries. If I work in an office as a dispatcher for the telephone company, a strike in my industry could hugely impact telephone, cable, and internet service.

Even maid-service workers play a big part in the economy of a country where better-paid workers and some higher-up people do not have the time to keep up regular household tasks on a regular basis. In a country where workers work more hours than people do in Europe or Japan or much of Latin America (not to mention people in the US from a generation ago) maids are an essential part of the economy and in letting business get away with longer hours and long commutes for their workers.

So even as capitalism develops, the same basic rules apply even as the terrain changes.

To get all Marxist about it, as companies become more monopolized, workers have more of an impact. As business has larger and larger investments in technology and machinery (commodities which do not create surplus value) jobs are lost, but the side-effect is that a small number of workers are even more important for creating profits and so a small group of workers (like dockworkers or telecom workers) can have a dramatic effect.

If Wal-Mart workers went on strike and teamster truck drivers honored the picket-line, it would be like a general strike in one section of the economy.


2. There were mass organizations and movements, huge unions and unonization drives, international meetings, general strikes, strikes that spread from job to job in 1900. Today there is none of that.This is very true, but it's also subjective. In short, much of this has to do with the state of labor unions today and their cooperative approach to management. IMO it will be rank and file movements from the outskirts of the labor movement (either mostly locally initiated or new unions or radical unions or internal reform movements) that rekindle labor militancy and basically force the major unions to take a more confrontational approach (if only to protect their control of the labor movement from more effective bottom-up movements)


3. There were international revolutionary waves every 10-20 years from 1875-197?. There hasn't been even a hint of one in over 30 years. This is a new development; or lack of development.Well the business cycle also used to have more regular recessions and depressions (about once a decade) and that kind of business cycle went away for the post-war generation... but now it's most definitely back and has been since the 1970s. So I don't think there is any formula that means that every so-often there is an upsurge - in my view it's more like the conditions are always there to make people want a different sort of arrangement, but the conditions that allow this sense to congeal into a movement are not guaranteed.


4. The means of production are automated to the point of being manned by few people, isolated, nowhere around the majority of people.Like I said, fewer people just means that each worker is more important to the process since the profits aren't from automation, but from labor.

So why hasn't there been an upsurge for an absurdly long time? This is a very good question. For one thing, I think the living examples of working class militancy have been more or less effectively neutralized. The last general strike in the US was what - 1946? Aside from a strike-wave in the 1970s, the only experience most workers have with strikes are ones that lost or were not very ambitious to begin with and all along the union leadership was probably apologizing for having to take such a drastic measure as a strike! The liberation movements of the 60s and 70s were either smashed or co-opted (usually by the Democratic party or pro-capitalist liberal type politics). Basically we are starting over from scratch in the US because most people don't think that struggle is effective and so people here are very cynical and I think this also feeds into the "libertarian" streak of "common sense" ideas. Without positive examples of collective struggle, people turn inwards and decide to "just do their little part" by not buying BP gas - or they figure only individual struggle matters and that means trying to get rich or just withdrawing from social issues.

IMO there is no shortcut to rebuilding a working class left with radical politics organically informing it. I think we will have to continue working on small struggles, training people how to be effective activists in general (and some of these people will become radicals as well), connecting various struggles so that people can understand how there is a common problem (capitalism) that underlies all of the various problems that we all face.

At some point some of these small struggles are bound to break through and like the sit-down strikes or the lunch-counter sit-ins, small struggles of scores of people that are effective will open the floodgates as people see that there are ways to challenge the staus-quo.

[twenty percent tip]

Forgive me for saying so but it appears comrades (other than Raul) have failed to address my points and have instead simply provided the sort of inspirational "it will get better" passages common to poor religious faithful.

And of course no one has responded to my replies to their posts.

I would hope to see more. I hope more if forthcoming for my sake and all of our sakes.


For example, the pamphlet/text nihilist communism has a critical view of the whole left movement in relation to revolution and the working class.

Thanks. Seems you are on the few people seriously engaging this. But also seems you are as devoid of answers as me.

They make some good points but it seems like they are theorizing their failure/ineffectiveness.

They're also all over the place. Some places they go one extreme (do nothing), other places they fall back on leftist traditions.


The workign class still exists in the US, but in a different form than it used to. it is currently still proletaian in its socio-economic relation to the rest of the classes(bourgeoisie, petit-bourgeoisie, and the lumpenproletariat) in the US but on a global scale, is parasitic. not by their own doing but by policies of the bourgeoisie and the nature of imperialism. the working class's mindset is that of the ruling class still and as ill explain, is even less revolutionary(than they could be) because of the loss of a large amount of productive capital in the US.

when i use the word capital i mean any level of industrial production. Raw material production and refining, assembly and material manipulation, high-tech production, and any other form of productive equipment/plants.

Sorry comrade this (and so the rest of your post) is basically impossible to respond to.

It's beyond clear that you have no understading of what capital or the proletariat is. I would have hoped that your organization would have educated you at least in these basic matters but apprarently that is not the case. For all their faults at least the "old" left groups like the CPUSA and SWP ensure their members know what things like capital and labour-power are.

When you study and understand what these concepts are I would welcome your input further.


I think it’s a bad sign for the old order when they can’t keep up the standard of living being demanded by the working class.

The standard of living is relatively new eg. post-WW2.

And standards have fallen before.

I agree that it is a bad sign for the system.

But a worse sign for us that there is no organized resistence.


Well no, but in so far as the white working class thinks its gods elect when it comes to living conditions and wages it’s a problem. Most think immigrants are what are driving their wages down and if only they were gone everything would be okay. They need to be told outright the decline in the standard of living is a normal function of capitalism and not a temporary aberration caused by immigrant villainy.

This seems like an excuse and a poor one at that. The 'white working class' of 2 generations ago in the United States was nearly all immigrants, and most spoke different languages. At the same time black workers were subject to Jim Crow and other laws that allowed them to be used as semi-slave labor and low paid workers and strike breakers and scabs. At that time, when the working class was most 'ethnically' divided organization was much stronger than it is now. That's a fact.


Do the late 19th and early 20th centuries represent some upper limit to class consciousness we can never hope to surpass? I think people are more willing to listen to the ideas of internationalism and social production now than ever. What with increased communication between increasingly intelligent members of the working class


I hope not. But I am looking for a real explanition of what happened and how we will not only return to that level but surpass it.

Mass numbers of workers in factories has always meant increased organization. The socialization of labor leads to a tendency for a push by labor for socialism. That was what Marx was describing in his life (remember he did not invent communism from whole cloth but was trying to understand processes already in motion).

Well here we are. The number of workers in factories has continued to shrink and the level of organization has done the same.

Since we know capitalism will continue to automate and continue to be less and less workers engaged in production how can we say revolution is possible?


Well now, we still have a sizeable population who work for wages and can still organize along such lines.

A huge number of workers are not exploited now in the Marxist sence. This is not only in America but worldwide.

So how can they and why will they lead a socialist revolution?

And what will they seize? And how will they organize? Divided as they are.

These are real questions.


during 1917 Russia had what? Three million workers out of a population of 175 million?

I don't think the Russian revolution is a model for us. Do you? Look how that turned out. And it was largely because the industrial proletariat was so small.

How does that bode for us since the industrial proletariat is now shrinking and the point is coming when less than 1/6th of the population will be engaged in actual production.

Marx said the socialist revolution is the first of the majority. How can that be the case when the number of exploited proletarians will be a minority??


It has undoubtedly been a different sort of situation in the US during the past generation. Marx and Engles describe the class struggle as "sometimes hidden" and at other points it bursts onto the surface of society and certainty the last few decades in the US have been the "hidden" times. In fact, it's been a one-sided class war with a very confident and conscious ruling class in the US that has an ongoing project to dismantle reforms in the past (both labor reforms and social reforms from the struggles in the 1960s) to clear the table for increased business power and lower living standards for workers. But this does not mean that the system has fundamentally changed in structure to prevent future worker's movements in my view.

Looking at this objectively we can only say that since the revolutionary wave of 1917 (and especially since 1970s):

- the number of workers engaged in production has shrunk

- the size of workers organizations has shrunk

- the size of unions has shrunk

- the number of strikes has shrunk

- the number of revolutionary waves has petered out

After 100 years of this should we continue to say the same things we said 100 years ago or try to understand what's going on?


You go on to talk about maids and other things. Marx did infact say the number of nonproductive workers would grow. But he thought capitalism would be overthrown in his lifetime when the biggest chunk of the working class was engaged in productive labor.

The question is not whether or not workers live shitty lives. We all know they do.

The question is what potential there is for socialist revolution when the majority of workers are isolated, seperated from the means of production, seperated from each other, do not identify as a class, do not strike, do not belong to or even know about workers orgazations, do not produce surplus value, work in small shops.

According to Marx the proletariat was revolutionary because:

- It was socialized by working in large enterprises.
- It had its hands on the means of production.
- It was exploited for surplus value.
- It was the majority of the population.
- It was fighting for an end to wage-labour.

Are any of those things true today?

[Revolution starts with U]

the book "Whats the Matter with Kansas" by Thomas Frank, even though written by a democrat, says a lot about what happened in america (especially considering the dems bought into repub hegemony and became even more of a party of business).
Another problem I see is that noone really likes hippies, and you don't see many communists nowadays in the US that aren't dreadlocked hippies.
(just as a side note, i have no problem with hippies, w/e floats your boat. Just sayin, we need more anarchists/communists that look at least somewhat respectable)

[La Comédie Noire]

The standard of living is relatively new eg. post-WW2.

And standards have fallen before.

I agree that it is a bad sign for the system.

But a worse sign for us that there is no organized resistance.

C. Wright Mills, I think, had something to say about this. When it happens to one person or a few, it’s a personal problem, but when it happens to a large portion of the population, it’s a social problem. Good Jobs are hard to find without a college degree, college is becoming more expensive, what happens when you have to decide between $8.00 an hour or living on the street? Perhaps you start questioning the current system?


This seems like an excuse and a poor one at that. The 'white working class' of 2 generations ago in the United States was nearly all immigrants, and most spoke different languages. At the same time black workers were subject to Jim Crow and other laws that allowed them to be used as semi-slave labor and low paid workers and strike breakers and scabs. At that time, when the working class was most 'ethnically' divided organization was much stronger than it is now. That's a fact.Not really, the higher strata’s of the working class (whites and Asians in America ect.) don’t really identify with their class roots because they feel like they are moving up in the world. Why strike or organize for better working conditions when you feel you’re just gonna leave that job anyways? But what happens when you can’t? What happens when you are suddenly in direct competition for jobs with “illegal aliens”? I work with many people who would be considered “working poor” and they’re unabashedly racist, especially towards immigrants. I try my best to be part of a growing minority of leftists who are trying to directly challenge these ideas.

Not to mention for all the organizing labor unions did, capitalists still found ways to exploit cheaper labor anyways, usually by dividing up factory work and giving the really demeaning jobs to certain ethnicities or using the aforementioned scabs and letting the unions have at their fellow workers. Then they became ritualistic and were content to haggle over contracts every few years, which, while important, did not lead to revolution. For all it’s good work, the labor movement became “business as usual”.

I think we can do better this time around.




Mass numbers of workers in factories has always meant increased organization. The socialization of labor leads to a tendency for a push by labor for socialism. That was what Marx was describing in his life (remember he did not invent communism from whole cloth but was trying to understand processes already in motion).Marx thought centralization was inherent to capitalism, but he did not live to see how electricity would disperse production, which means he also did not live to see the way telephones and computers made organizing production over long distances easier. Do we all necessarily need to be packed into one building to organize? I work in a restaurant that is connected to a network of other restaurants that get their supplies from the same bakery and warehouse. They’re also connected by the same computer network, which we affectionately call “Chelsea”.

There’s no reason that particular setup couldn’t be socialized.


Well here we are. The number of workers in factories has continued to shrink and the level of organization has done the same.


Since we know capitalism will continue to automate and continue to be less and less workers engaged in production how can we say revolution is possible?

I’d think it’d actually make things easier for revolution. The more automation there is, the less work we have to do and therefore that will leave free time for us to do other things. Imagine if you only had to produce shoes for like 10 hours a week and then you could do whatever you wanted for the rest of the time, including learning other skills and leisure?

Plus there is something you aren’t thinking about, who is more revolutionary during a crisis the employed or the recently unemployed? During the Weimar Republic the SPD had the unions behind them, while the more radical KPD was the organization of the unemployed. If you get your hours cut it’s an annoyance, but what happens when you lose your job entirely?

Think about it would you really support a socioeconomic system that employed a privileged few while leaving the rest to starve? I think you’d find ways to organize, as material conditions dictated.




So how can they and why will they lead a socialist revolution?There are lots of ways, (councils, cooperatives, existing unions even) and because the alternative is chronic unemployment in a stagnating economy.


And what will they seize?Places of work, machine shops and factories, but to be fair there will probably be a demand to build more factories and repair infrastructure.We'll also probably convert a lot of office buildings into make shift places of living.


And how will they organize? Divided as they are.

Councils, committees, collectives.



How can that be the case when the number of exploited proletarians will be a minority??

I don’t think we stopped being proletarians just because we cut hair or fold clothes. But maybe the working class is just an aspect of capital and the material conditions are moving us beyond that?

[Rusty Shackleford]

Sorry comrade this (and so the rest of your post) is basically impossible to respond to.

It's beyond clear that you have no understading of what capital or the proletariat is. I would have hoped that your organization would have educated you at least in these basic matters but apprarently that is not the case. For all their faults at least the "old" left groups like the CPUSA and SWP ensure their members know what things like capital and labour-power are.

When you study and understand what these concepts are I would welcome your input further.

im still learning. and learning comes from experience. its better to have incoherent posts on here and learn from them, than to be ridiculous while doing real work.

[Jimmie Higgins]

The question is not whether or not workers live shitty lives. We all know they do.

The question is what potential there is for socialist revolution when the majority of workers are isolated, seperated from the means of production, seperated from each other, do not identify as a class, do not strike, do not belong to or even know about workers orgazations, do not produce surplus value, work in small shops.Lack of organization and consciousness are subjective factors and the areas that we need to focus on to rebuild a working class movement in the US. Where you are jumping the shark in my opinion is by giving these subjective factors (low unionization etc) objective significance.


According to Marx the proletariat was revolutionary because:

- It was socialized by working in large enterprises.Wal-mart, chain stores, telecom industry, office jobs of all sort.

- It had its hands on the means of production.How is this not true today? Just because strikes are not taking place, does not mean that they can't.

- It was exploited for surplus value.Yes, every day I go to work and every day everyone I know goes to work.

- It was the majority of the population.Not in Marx's day - but this is definitely the case in our day when there is a large working class population in India and China and so one when two generations ago, these proletarians were peasants.

- It was fighting for an end to wage-labour. This is the subjective situation again.


Are any of those things true today?More true than in Marx's day when basically these conditions existed only in a few urban areas on the US east coast, England, France and Germany.

So I agree with you that what we need is not currently happening, but I disagree that this is some sort of reflection of an essential change in the nature of capitalism or society: a bird is sitting on the ground and not flying doesn't necessarily make it a penguin or some other flightless bird. Capitalism is very malluable and has always made adjustments to preserve its hegemony of over society: personal credit, various reforms, changing the structure and nature of working and so on. Despite these attempts, new problems (often the same problems) re-emerge because of the flaws that are built into the foundation of the system: exploitation, competition, anarchy of the market, overproduction etc.

I think that a world-wide proletariat majority, higher rates of basic education and life-spans, better communication abilities mean that the potential for working class fight-back and revolutionary organizing is the same if not GREATER than before on a general level. So to throw a McCain out there for you, "the fundamentals of capitalism are sound"... in their ability to ruin life for workers and provide reasons to fight back. What's missing for us right now is all the subjective things that turn generalized class-based anger (of which there is a lot... random arguments, fights, resentment, and even bigotry in some way come from the anger of people living life in this fucked up society) into class consciousness (wanting to actually do something rather than be mad... and seeing the need for collective and concerted action) and eventually socialist/revolutionary consiousness (realizing we need to replace the vile thing).

[twenty percent tip]

Sorry comrade this is idealism plain and simple. There is no attempt to actually examine the material conditions in existence.


Lack of organization and consciousness are subjective factors and the areas that we need to focus on to rebuild a working class movement in the US. Where you are jumping the shark in my opinion is by giving these subjective factors (low unionization etc) objective significance.

No. I am not doing that. I said that union membership is on a decades long decline that directly corresponds to the dissappearance/automation of productive jobs. The lack of productive jobs is the problem. Low unionization is a symptom.


Wal-mart, chain stores, telecom industry, office jobs of all sort.

None of these workers besides perhaps some in telecom are engaged in productive labor.

They are not exploited. Remember for Marx exploitation doesn't mean being yelled at by a boss but is a process from which surplus value is withdrawn from workers directly engaged in production.

Besides that none of these jobs are really socialized.

Wal-Mart may have 30 people on for a shift. That's it. Even in the store they are atomized. Four on registers, five doing stock, 1 in jewlery, 1 in women's clothes. And the shifts don't match each other so people are coming and going at different times. Much much different from the socialization of an iron mill with 4000 people coming in on the same shift and working together on a common process.

Forget chain stores. They have 2-3 people on a shift. Been to a Walgreens lately? Lucky if you can find a worker other than the cashier.

Offices are usually small and or compartmentalized. That's probably the closest thing to socialized labor that exists on a mass scale but the problem them is that office workers are not exploited if they are workers at all (many offices are staffed by petit-bourgeois professionals).

And still. Imagine the best scenario for socialized labor: a call center in India. 500 peopel working in one large room. Suppose they want to rise up. What is there to seize? The phones? Occupy the call bank? Come on.


How is this not true today? Just because strikes are not taking place, does not mean that they can't.

Sorry what? It's a fact that the majority of workers do not have their hands on the means of production.

Most workers are now engaged in transporation, distributions and services.

The means of productions you'll remember are the machinery used to produce commidities for sale on the market: toy factories, car factories, textile mills, meat packing houses, mines.

Wal-Mart is not a means of production. Neither is your office.


Yes, every day I go to work and every day everyone I know goes to work.

So does Obama.

Exploitation for Marx is not a moral concept of the "problem" of having to go to work. It's a process through which capitalists withdraw surplus value from workers engaged in production. Check "Wage-Labour and Capital" for an easy refresher course.

So according to Marx most of the working class today is not exploited.

By the way you must be privileged or lucky if everyone you know goes to work. It must be nice. At least half of the people I know are unemployed or disabled.


Not in Marx's day - but this is definitely the case in our day when there is a large working class population in India and China and so one when two generations ago, these proletarians were peasants.

According to Marx the proletarian revolution [which for him was a fluid process not a snapshot that could taken at one point in time] marked the first revolution of the majority against a minority. He was attempting to explain what he saw developing during his life. The fact is that it did not result in proletarian revolution and the factors he thought would cause it to no longer exist. You can either deal with that or burry your head in the sand and practice activism for your own good feelings.


This is the subjective situation again.

Not according to Marx. According to him the proletariat is objectively revolutionary by its very nature [a majority exploited by a minority]. "The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing." It hasn't been revolutionary in 30 years. So . . . .

Engels said 'in all probability, the proletarian revolution will transform existing society gradually and will be able to abolish private property only when the means of production are available in sufficient quantity.'

He thought that the proletarian revolution would happen before the means of production had even been sufficiently developed. Here we are a a century later and the means of production are so advanced that a minority of the worlds population works them yet produces enough for all.


According to Marx socialist revolution comes from:

An exploited majority engaged in production that is constantly fighting capital and trying to take power.


The reality right now is:

A majority of the working class is not engaged in productive labor or exploited and instead works in services with no basis for even defending itself let a lone attempting to take power.

[syndicat]

Worker collective struggle is necessary for change in concsiousness. People aren't going to think in terms of people like themselves having the power to take on the system without that. The core industrial economy in the USA isn't just manufacturing but also public utilities, transportation, construction, agriculture, and extractive industries (mininng, oil & gas). These industries employ 26 percent of the workforce.

And then there are also social services that play an important part in society, such as education and health care. As manufacturing has been moved to certain third world countries (especially China, which has 100 million factory workers), this leads to long global production chains. The use of just in time logistics makes these chains susceptible to disruption and coordinated struggle. "Production" isn't just what goes on in the factory. A toy made in China is of no value to the kid til it reaches the stores in the USA where it is sold (at a few major chains). Thus networks across boundaries and coordinated international struggles and campaigns become more important.

Socialist consciousness has always been lower in the USA than in other countries. It rose to its highest level in the 1900-1920 era, because socialists in that era were focused more on public socialist education, arguing for an alternative to capitalism, combined with waves of strikes in that era as well.

Socialist consciousness is not likely to expand without mass actions and mass movements that can win gains and encourage people to believe in the possibility of change.

The entire working class is in fact exploited. Exploitation occurs where a group are dominated and thus vulnerable to being taken advantage of, which is what exploitation means. When the dominating classes gain income and wealth through their domination of the working class, this is exploitation. This includes the bureaucratic class of managers and high end professionals, they participate in exploitation, even tho the main beneficiaries are the capitalist elite (owners of major pools of capital).

you shouldn't get hung up on fundamentalist 19th century Marxist notions of "productive vs unproductive" labor.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Sorry comrade this is idealism plain and simple. There is no attempt to actually examine the material conditions in existence.How is my argument idealism? I'm arguing that the material nature of capitalism has not changed FUNDAMENTALLY - i.e. there still needs to be labor to produce profit and value and it is exploitation that creates profit. This has not changed even as the METHODS that the capitalists use to accomplish this have changed.

Has the reorganization of production in the US changed the FUNDAMENTAL nature of capitalism? Is what is written in Capital irrelevant now that there are Wal-Marts?

Absolutely not. In fact, when Marx was writing, most production was not as socialized as production is now. Most factories did not have huge centralized groups of workers other than textile mills.

In fact, what were the big US labor battles in the first Depression? Rail workers! Who are SERVICE WORKERS in TRANSPORTATION and who are NOT socialized together in work since they are often on trains with just a handful of porters and so on.


No. I am not doing that. I said that union membership is on a decades long decline that directly corresponds to the dissappearance/automation of productive jobs. The lack of productive jobs is the problem. Low unionization is a symptom.This is deterministic - do you also argue that unionization was simply the result of industrialization... if so, why did people have to fight to unionized and why did it take so long... people were industrial workers for 70 years before trade unions became a permanent feature of US society.


None of these workers besides perhaps some in telecom are engaged in productive labor.If you make a frapacino, your labor is adding to the labor of others who don't have to go out and chop up beans and cure them and brew coffee from scratch.


They are not exploited. Remember for Marx exploitation doesn't mean being yelled at by a boss but is a process from which surplus value is withdrawn from workers directly engaged in production.What the fuck do you think happens at Wal-Mart? Do items sell themselves? Do they bag themselves? To they stock and ship themselves? Products in a container on a ship that is not moving do not have a value if they are just sitting there and can not be sold.


Besides that none of these jobs are really socialized.I guess the UPS strike of the 1990s never happened. I guess immigrant janitors in LA who work in no more than groups of two never organized themselves.


Wal-Mart may have 30 people on for a shift. That's it. Even in the store they are atomized. Four on registers, five doing stock, 1 in jewlery, 1 in women's clothes. And the shifts don't match each other so people are coming and going at different times. Much much different from the socialization of an iron mill with 4000 people coming in on the same shift and working together on a common process.Each have their pros and cons from an organizing standpoint, but neither deterministically mean that a strike will or will not happen.


Forget chain stores. They have 2-3 people on a shift. Been to a Walgreens lately? Lucky if you can find a worker other than the cashier.I live in an urban slum, of course I've been to Walgreens. Starbucks also has small shops, but the IWW is making good inroads there.

Again, you are basically saying: look, I once saw a shark in the ocean, but today I see no shark, therefore sharks have gone extinct. Just because something isn't happening right now does not necessarily mean that things can only be this way. It definately doesn't make it a materialist analysis.


And still. Imagine the best scenario for socialized labor: a call center in India. 500 peopel working in one large room. Suppose they want to rise up. What is there to seize? The phones? Occupy the call bank? Come on.Yeah, they must not serve a purpose for the capitalist... they are only hired so that people are provided jobs:rolleyes:. They may not be a CENTRAL to production, but they are still an important part of the process for the capitalists otherwise they'd be fired.


Sorry what? It's a fact that the majority of workers do not have their hands on the means of production.

Most workers are now engaged in transporation, distributions and services. Yes, all part of the process wherein the capitalist turns his initial investment and pays people less than what their labor ultimately allows the capitalists to sell the product of that investment for.


The means of productions you'll remember are the machinery used to produce commidities for sale on the market: toy factories, car factories, textile mills, meat packing houses, mines.

Wal-Mart is not a means of production. Neither is your office.I work in service, not an office.


Exploitation for Marx is not a moral concept of the "problem" of having to go to work. It's a process through which capitalists withdraw surplus value from workers engaged in production. Check "Wage-Labour and Capital" for an easy refresher course. Never argued differently. You seem to have some pre-conceived notions about me just because I disagree with your premise. I don't appreciate the condescension you are putting my way because we disagree politically - it's a childish way to get around arguing a point. Rather than refute my points, you throw up a straw-man about being opposed to work on "moral grounds" and then suggest I don't know basic Marxist economics.

I'm sorry, if you don't like your ideas to be challenged, then you should try a blog instead of a discussion board.

I went into this discussion with all sincerity, but if you want to treat me as your inferior because I disagree with you, then you can frankly go fuck your elitist self. If you want an honest exchange, then that is up to you.


By the way you must be privileged or lucky if everyone you know goes to work. It must be nice. At least half of the people I know are unemployed or disabled. Yeah I'm so privileged to be in debt, to have broken teeth in my mouth, to have friends in jail, to have friends in the military, to have friends who destroyed their lives on drugs. Yeah, serving bay area yuppies and living paycheck to paycheck is such a good life:rolleyes:


According to Marx the proletarian revolution [which for him was a fluid process not a snapshot that could taken at one point in time] marked the first revolution of the majority against a minority. He was attempting to explain what he saw developing during his life. The fact is that it did not result in proletarian revolution and the factors he thought would cause it to no longer exist. You can either deal with that or burry your head in the sand and practice activism for your own good feelings.And you propose putting your head in the sand and doing fuck all and then justifying it by claiming that workers aren't really exploited.

So what's your answer... no working class, then do you think it's time for some armed "saviors" to help us out with an enlightened despot or something? Vote for the Democrats?

What are you doing on REVOLUTIONARY left if you don't think that working class revolution is possible... what's your alternative?


Not according to Marx. According to him the proletariat is objectively revolutionary by its very nature [a majority exploited by a minority]. "The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing." It hasn't been revolutionary in 30 years. So . . . .Yes, objectively revolutionary but what happens subjectively, the balance of class forces, the recent history of wins or losses by the working class, the level of repression, the level that people have been convinced that reforms are enough and so on are all also in play.

If your argument is correct, it begs the question... when unionization rates were this low before, in the 1920s... was the working class "nothing". Did the 1920s change the method and form of production radically creating an end to labor and radical organizations and movements?

Or was it the subjective factors: a defeated and repressed working class, disorginazation among the left, etc.

What about in Europe and Latin America where class struggle did not decline in the same way? Weren't French workers going out on a general strike working in offices and stores and in - gasp - transportation! What about Greek workers now? Are they all in 4,000 worker shops?

No Europe was going through the same bosses offensive at the same time as the US, but unionization here was already weaker and less militant and so SUBJECTIVE factors of the class struggle in France vs. the US more more of a factor than objective structural changes in capitalism.


According to Marx socialist revolution comes from:

An exploited majority engaged in production that is constantly fighting capital and trying to take power.

The reality right now is:

A majority of the working class is not engaged in productive labor or exploited and instead works in services with no basis for even defending itself let a lone attempting to take power.All our work is exploited because our labor from teaching to trucking to stocking shelves help add value to commodities which are sold even when the labor is secondary rather than at the point of original production. This is still the achillies heel of the system and they way it will go down.

The fact that Bush threatened to sent the military to force dockworkers to go to work in the early 2000s shows the potential power of a organized and militant working class.

[syndicat]

Not according to Marx. According to him the proletariat is objectively revolutionary by its very nature [a majority exploited by a minority]. "The proletariat is revolutionary or it is nothing." It hasn't been revolutionary in 30 years. So . . . .

Actually the working class in the USA has never been revolutionary. They have the potential to become revolutionary, but that's not the same thing.

You're leaving out what Marxists call "class formation." Marx distinguished between the working class being a class "in itself" -- an objectively dominated and exploited class -- and a class "for itself." To become a class "for itself" does not happen automatically or deterministically from its exploitation. It happens as a protracted process of change in working class people themselves, in their level of self-activity (action in their own interests, for their own aspirations), their level of collective self-organization, skills and knowledge related to struggle and organization becoming more widespread in the class through involvement in struggles, and also through the development of a conscious aspiration for their liberation and the creation of a socialist society they control.

Thus the problem in the working class in recent decades lies in the relative disappearance of things like strikes and the low level of struggle and worker-controlled organization. This problem has its origins in a long process. First of all there is the whole process of bureaucratization and conservatization of the labor movement after World War 2. The unions turned into "service agencies", controlled by a paid hierarchy, which tends to demoblize the class and undermine its social power, which comes from the actual participation and consciousness of numbers of workers.

This process of demoblization and bureaucratization happened before the changes in the mix of jobs that you refer to.

Also, manufacturing does not consist of people all doing the same thing or working in huge rooms. I worked in a manufacturing plant in the '80s. It made large computer systems. There were separate departments. In one room you might have 20 assemblers -- mostly women -- soldering parts onto a circuit board. In another very large room you had a crew who assembled the various subassemblies into a computer system and ran tests. There might be 30-40 people working in that room. Then you had people doing a wide variety of other things in various other rooms and other buildings of the "campus." You had for example a department of trainers teaching electronic techs on how to install the systems at a customer's site. You have departments of customer service people. And so on. And then you had various subcontract firms that employed some of the groups, such as the security guards and janitors.


After the industrial revolution the biggest part of the population worked the means of production which were of course owned by a capitalist minority.

The factory system was introduced in the USA and France in the 1830s. The working class was not the majority class in the 19th century. In the USA there was still a huge population of farm owners and other small business owners. The working class has been the majority only in the 20th century. Since the beginnings of Taylorism in the World War 1 era, the proportion of jobs in manufacturing has been shrinking, due to investment in labor-saving equipment and forms of job reorganization that squeeze more output per worker hour. But this merely shifts the jobs around. The power of the working class lies in its potential to shut the economy down, through strikes. This can and does occur in industries other than manufacturing. Some of the major late 19th century and early 20th century class battles were in railways, public transit and mining. Public transit is an area where workers still have the ability to have an impact, even tho it is now run as a subsidized public service...consider the fight over the last New York City transit strike.

[eyedrop]

Wal-mart, chain stores, telecom industry, office jobs of all sort.
As this was a response to how people wouldn't work in big working places any more, I would like to point out that the stats for my country is that about 46.4% work in businesses with more than a hundred workers.

To me it seems like the old school unions have had a resurgence this year with more strikes than I have ever seen earlier. (I'm 24 now)

[Delenda Carthago]

After nearly 40 years of working hard for revolution I feel ready to collapse.

A sober look separated from my own hopes and aspirations shows things are bad.

Since the Paris Commune there have been major waves of workers uprisings every 10-20 years. But here we are in 2010 and there hasn’t been such a wave in 30 years. For the first time since 1875 there is nothing of real worth coming out of our class.

I musta be living in a different planet,cause I can count,within one breath,at least ten revolts and revolutions within the last ten years worldwide...

[Delenda Carthago]

One thing I m gonna agree with you,is the internet.Nowdays that spreading knowledge is easier than ever,the revolutionaries are the last to realise it.Just take a look at youtube,blogs etc.
Very poor and with a small variety... Thats sad...

[Jimmie Higgins]

As this was a response to how people wouldn't work in big working places any more, I would like to point out that the stats for my country is that about 46.4% work in businesses with more than a hundred workers.God I love statistics... yes that figure helps.


To me it seems like the old school unions have had a resurgence this year with more strikes than I have ever seen earlier. (I'm 24 now) In the US this hasn't been the case and the poor pre-recession years of low strike figures dove even lower with the onslaught of the strike.

But, I think this has to do with people being politically disoriented on the one hand and also the shitty state of unions in the US who are dominated by business-unionism and hire college kids as organizers rather then allow the rank and file to actually be the organizers themselves (too dangerous... that rank and file can't be fired like a college student and has a real stake in the outcome... and might get ideas that they don't need a bureaucratic top-down union anymore)


I musta be living in a different planet,cause I can count,within one breath,at least ten revolts and revolutions within the last ten years worldwide...Yeah the OP said that he only really took the US into consideration. In that case he is more or less correct. Essentially the strike actions that have happened have been timid and quick to loose which then demoralizes more people and makes other unions less willing to strike. But there have still been pockets of inspiring fight-back that show that people do want to change their work arrangements and so on: Republic Windows and Doors being the prime example.

[twenty percent tip]

So we really didn't get down to brass tacks here after all this time.

How is revolution to unfold when productive labor becomes a minority of the population, since productive labor is the only force capable of bringing a stop to capitalism, dissolving capital relations, and reforging society in its own interests (which also happen to be the interests of the human species as a whole)?

Let's hear something concrete. Anyone have any real ideas outside of "let's do what we've been doing for the last 100 years and expect a different result"?

[yobbos1]

The west will return to labour when this current round of "stimulus" fails. The economy will become so bad that most people will return to manual labour to support themselves. Working picking crops for example. Maybe taking a job in some kind of public works project. When the workers get to know one another, talk and eat together daily, discuss matters of mutual concern these are the kernels of a true labour movement. Not the corrupt, self serving, pathetic excuses for unions that we see in North America these days.

[Decolonize The Left]

How is revolution to unfold when productive labor becomes a minority of the population, since productive labor is the only force capable of bringing a stop to capitalism, dissolving capital relations, and reforging society in its own interests (which also happen to be the interests of the human species as a whole)?

Let's hear something concrete. Anyone have any real ideas outside of "let's do what we've been doing for the last 100 years and expect a different result"?

The revolution is to unfold when the material conditions become such as to necessitate the overthrow of the capitalist class.

I really don't see anything that needs to be discussed beyond this point...

- August

[Agent Ducky]

It looks even more bleak considering the recent assault on the unions in Wisconsin and other areas... How are we even able to organize?

[bcbm]

The revolution is to unfold when the material conditions become such as to necessitate the overthrow of the capitalist class.

I really don't see anything that needs to be discussed beyond this point...

- August

i think tpt's point is that the material conditions that are supposed to lead to proletarian revolution didn't and now no longer exist?

[black magick hustla]

holy hell you are vicious.

i don't know the answers. i just try to not get over excited and have a sober view of what is happening so that i dont go insane/commit suicide when i am old.

communist until the day i die tho motherfuckers

[Amphictyonis]

i think tpt's point is that the material conditions that are supposed to lead to proletarian revolution didn't and now no longer exist?

Rosa Luxemburg
Reform or Revolution

Part Two

Chapter IX
Collapse


Bernstein began his revision of the Social-Democracy by abandoning the theory of capitalist collapse. The latter, however, is the corner-stone of scientific socialism. By rejecting it Bernstein also rejects the whole doctrine of socialism. In the course of his discussion, he abandons one after another of the positions of socialism in order to be able to maintain his first affirmation.
Without the collapse of capitalism the expropriation of the capitalist class is impossible. Bernstein therefore renounces expropriation and chooses a progressive realisation of the “co-operative principle” as the aim of the labour movement.
But co-operation cannot be realised without capitalist production. Bernstein, therefore, renounces the socialisation of production and merely proposes to reform commerce and to develop consumers’ co-operatives.
But the transformation of society through consumers’ co-operatives, even by means of trade unions, is incompatible with the real material development of capitalist society. Therefore, Bernstein abandons the materialist conception of history.
But his conception of the march of economic development is incompatible with the Marxist theory of surplus-value. Therefore, Bernstein abandons the theory of value and surplus-value and, in this way, the whole economic system of Karl Marx.
But the struggle of the proletariat cannot be carried on without a given final aim and without an economic base found in the existing society. Bernstein, therefore, abandons the class struggle and speaks of reconciliation with bourgeois liberalism.
But in a class society, the class struggle is a natural and unavoidable phenomenon. Bernstein, therefore, contests even the existence of classes in society. The working class is for him a mass of individuals, divided politically and intellectually but also economically. And the bourgeoisie, according to him, does not group itself politically in accordance with its inner economic interest but only because of exterior pressure from above and below.
But if there is no economic base for the class struggle and, if consequently, there are no classes in our society, not only the future but even the past struggles of the proletariat against the bourgeoisie appear to be impossible and the Social-Democracy and its successes seem absolutely incomprehensible or they can be understood only as the results of political pressure by the government – that is, not as the natural consequence of historic development but as the fortuitous consequences of the policy of the Hohenzollern (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/orgs/h/o.htm#hohenzollern-dynasty) not as the legitimate offspring of capitalist society but as the legitimate offspring of capitalist society but as the bastard children of reaction. Rigorously logical, in this respect, Bernstein passes from the materialist conception of history to the outlook of the Frankfurter Zeitung and the Vossische Zeitung.
After rejecting the socialist criticism of capitalist society, it is easy for Bernstein to find the present state of affairs satisfactory – at least in a general way. Bernstein does not hesitate. He discovers that at the present time reaction is not very strong in Germany, that “we cannot speak of political reaction in the countries of western Europe,” and that in all the countries of the West “the attitude of the bourgeois classes toward the socialist movement is at most an attitude of defence and not one of oppression,” (Vorwärts, March 26, 1899). Far from becoming worse, the situation of the workers is getting better. Indeed, the bourgeoisie is politically progressive and morally sane. We cannot speak either of reaction or oppression. It is all for the best in the best of all possible worlds…
Bernstein thus travels in logical sequence from A to Z. He began by abandoning the final aim and supposedly keeping the movement. But as there can be no socialist movement without a socialist aim he ends by renouncing the movement.
And thus the Bernstein’s conception of socialism collapses entirely. The proud and admirable symmetric construction of socialist thought becomes for him a pile of rubbish in which the debris of all systems, the pieces of thought of various great and small minds, find a common resting place. Marx and Proudhon (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/p/r.htm#proudhon), Leon von Buch and Franz Oppenheimer, Friedrich Albert Lange (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/a.htm#friedrich-lange) and Kant (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/k/a.htm#kant-immanuel), Herr Prokopovich and R. Ritter von Neupauer, Herkner, and Schulze-Gävernitz, Lassalle (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/l/a.htm#lassalle) and Professor Julius Wolff: all contribute something to Bernstein’s system. From each he takes a little. There is nothing astonishing about that. For when he abandoned scientific socialism he lost the axis of intellectual crystallisation around which isolated facts group themselves in the organic whole of a coherent conception of the world.
His doctrine, composed of bits of all possible systems, seems upon first consideration to be completely free from prejudices. For Bernstein does not like talk of “party science,” or to be more exact, of class science, any more than he likes to talk of class liberalism or class morality. He thinks he succeeds in expressing human, general, abstract science, abstract liberalism, abstract morality. But since the society of reality is made up of classes which have diametrically opposed interests, aspirations and conceptions, a general human science in social questions, an abstract liberalism, an abstract morality, are at present illusions, pure utopia. The science, the democracy, the morality, considered by Bernstein as general, human, are merely the dominant science, dominant democracy and dominant morality that is, bourgeois science, bourgeois democracy, bourgeois morality.
When Bernstein rejects the economic doctrine of Marx in order to swear by the teachings of Bretano, Böhm-Bawerk, Jevons, Say and Julius Wolff, he exchanges the scientific base of the emancipation of the working class for the apologetics of the bourgeoisie. When he speaks of the generally human character of liberalism and transforms socialism into a variety of liberalism, he deprives the socialist movement (generally) of its class character and consequently of its historic content, consequently of all content; and conversely, recognises the class representing liberalism in history, the bourgeoisie, as the champion of the general interests of humanity.
And when he wars against “raising of the material factors to the rank of an all-powerful force of development,” when he protests against the so-called “contempt for the ideal” that is supposed to rule the Social-Democracy, when he presumes to talk for idealism, for morals, pronouncing himself at the same time against the only source of the moral rebirth of the proletariat, a revolutionary class struggle – he does no more than the following: preach to the working class the quintessence of the morality of the bourgeoisie, that is, reconciliation with the existing social order and the transfer of the hopes of the proletariat to the limbo of ethical simulacra.
When he directs his keenest arrows against our dialectic system, he is really attacking the specific mode of thought employed by the conscious proletariat in its struggle for liberation. It is an attempt to break the sword that has helped the proletariat to pierce the darkness of its future. It is an attempt to shatter the intellectual arm with the aid of which the proletariat, though materially under the yoke of the bourgeoisie, is yet enabled to triumph over the bourgeoisie. For it is our dialectical system that shows to the working class the transitory nature of this yoke, proving to workers the inevitability of their victory and is already realising a revolution in the domain of thought. Saying good-bye to our system of dialectics and resorting instead to the intellectual see-saw of the well known “on the one hand – on the other hand,” “yes – but,” “although – however,” “more – less,” etc., he quite logically lapses into a mode of thought that belongs historically to the bourgeoisie in decline, being the faithful intellectual reflection of the social existence and political activity of the bourgeoisie at that stage. The political “on the one hand – on the other hand,” “yes – but” of the bourgeoisie today resembles, in a marked degree, Bernstein’s manner of thinking which is the sharpest and surest proof of the bourgeois nature of his conception of the world.
But, as it us used by Bernstein, the word “bourgeois” itself is not a class expression but a general social notion. Logical to the end he has exchanged, together with his science, politics, morals and mode of thinking, the historic language of the proletariat for that of the bourgeoisie. When he uses, without distinction, the term “citizen” in reference to the bourgeois as well as to the proletarian intending, thereby, to refer to man in general, he identifies man in general with the bourgeois and human society with bourgeois society.



http://www.marxists.org/archive/luxemburg/1900/reform-revolution/ch09.htm

[bcbm]

i don't think that has anything to do with what was posted here

[MarxistMan]

I go this from Counterpunch website http://www.counterpunch.org/

IS THE NEXT GREAT AWAKNING AT HAND?

The First Great Awakening led after many years to the American and Jeffersonian Revolutions.

The Second Great Awakening led, after many years, to the Civil War and Abolition.

The Third Great Awakening led, after setbacks, to the Populist and then Progressive Movements.

The Fourth Great Awakening led to the New Deal

The Fifth Great Awakening led to the second Reconstruction, the Great Society, Feminism, and social upheavals.

Is The Sixth Great Awakening now due? What quarter will it come from?

.





A preface: Although I am trying my best to have an internationalist view I was born and raised in America so I apologize for any provincialism on my part. It is unintentional. I am limited by my experience and knowledge.

I also want to say that I hope I can be proven totally wrong. My findings recently are very depressing.

Comrades!

After nearly 40 years of working hard for revolution I feel ready to collapse.

A sober look separated from my own hopes and aspirations shows things are bad.

Since the Paris Commune there have been major waves of workers uprisings every 10-20 years. But here we are in 2010 and there hasn’t been such a wave in 30 years. For the first time since 1875 there is nothing of real worth coming out of our class.

Something happened. There was a transformation. But what and how?

Look how things have changed.

From the beginning of the labor movement there were constant strikes and those strikes lead to strikes in multiple jobs. Today there are few strikes and they are isolated and individualized.

In 1919 the capitalists were scared to death of threats by train and trolley workers to strike for fear it would spread to other industries. In 2005 the New York subway workers went on strike and they were isolated and defeated in a matter of days. Workers on the commuter train lines and bus drivers IN THE SAME UNION who were working without a contract didn’t even join the strike.

For the most of their histories mines and factories had thugs with guns posted at their entrances to pressure workers and kill them if they got out of hand. Now there are none. Not because the bosses are nicer but because the bosses don’t need them. Today there is no threat.

There was anti-communism, McCarythism, Red Scare. Today there is nothing. Not because they love left wing revolutionaries but because they have nothing to fear in us.

After the industrial revolution the biggest part of the population worked the means of production which were of course owned by a capitalist minority. Now the minority of industrial capitalists is even smaller but they have a lot of financial parasites hanging on to them. Meanwhile production has become so automated that the biggest part of the population now works as servants of the industrial capitalists and financialists around them. We’re subject to the whims of their individual needs.

We work in Starbucks, restaurants, cinemas, the Apple Store, and all the rest. At best some of us transport things or people. We serve. We produce nothing.

The number of actual producers is small and shrinking.

Social labor has been replaced with individualized service.

People say ‘well look manufacturing jobs are just being sent to China, that’s why you don’t see them here’. But these are not new jobs. These are jobs moved from another place to there. Jobs went from America to Mexico to China. And actually the number of manufacturing jobs in China has actually decreased over the last 10 years.

Look at Japan. An article was just published that said by 2050 older people will exceed younger people for the first time in history. Ten percent of the population will be over age 80. For everyone person of working age there will be one person over age 65. How does a working class revolution come out of that?

There used to be mass revolutionary parties. Today there is nothing and there hasn’t been anything for years. Don’t tell me about nationalist wars or student struggles. That’s not communism and not what we need. And even those are limited anymore.

We’re going to seize the means of production? What means of production?

Are we going to seize Starbucks stores? Wal-Mart? The local TGIFridays?

Where is the base of mass workers struggle? Are you and your 13 coworkers at the local market going to launch something? Maybe the 3 people working at this shift at the coffee shop can go on wildcat strike? Will workers councils rise from individual McDonald's?

What about the internet? We have the most access to information we ever had. Are people smarter? Are they more exposed to communist ideas? Any serious analyst has to say no.

We have a means of communication beyond anything we had in history. Are we using it to organize struggles? Again no.

Look around you.

What has changed? What do we face now? How is revolution possible today?

What say ye?

[Amphictyonis]

i don't think that has anything to do with what was posted here

Crisis/breakdown theory has everything to do with what was posted. I'm not sure if the OP has been around socialist theory for 40 years because at one time or another breakdown theory would have popped up.

I understand being frustrated but now (during one of the worsening and for the first time truly global crisis) isn't the time to doubt our cause now is the time to champion our cause :) I would have understood the OP more if the post had been made in the 1980's 1990's when it did look like capitalist crisis were a thing of the past. When it seemed there may be no limit to capitalism. Most Marxists are aware capitalism isn't going to be overthrown until material conditions necessitate it- morally yes it should be overthrown yesterday but realistically, to quote Nietzsche, "If it's weak push it over". I don't think a healthy capitalism will be pushed over.

The doubt that the OP shows (which at times can be understandable) eventually leads to a reformist mind frame. I also understand the form of her/his doubt was not necessarily having anything to do with crisis theory but crisis theory is the answer to the posters doubt. Bernstein argued Marx was wrong about breakdown theory, that there was no limit to capitalism so a revolution is not necessary- we should slowly reform the system. That would prove to be catastrophic because of the limits capitalism itself has shown to have. We're in the middle of a crisis as we speak and are just getting set to feel the repercussions- repercussions which will only worsen with each crisis as the system is now just about totally globally integrated. I think we may only have one or two more crisis, perhaps three, before an entire systematic breakdown where hundreds of millions of people die as a result. We need a revolution before that happens. I'd say within the next 75 to 100 years. Maybe sooner. Anyhow I'll spare you the long drawn out post and just refer you to this:

http://www.isreview.org/issues/56/feat-grossman.shtml



Henryk Grossman
Capitalist Expansion and Imperialism By RICK KUHN
MARX AND Engels identified the process of capitalist globalization in the Communist Manifesto:
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.…
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production…
(To this account Marx/Engels linked economic crises.)

For many a decade past, the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeois and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that, by their periodical return, put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on its trial, each time more threateningly.… In these crises, there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs, would have seemed an absurdity—the epidemic of over-production…. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented.

[black magick hustla]

[QUOTE=twenty percent tip;1833252]
After nearly 40 years of working hard for revolution I feel ready to collapse.
QUOTE]

i think this is the problem. you burnt out.

you don't "work for the revolution". you can't build it as if it were a sort of personal project. personally, i just push the communist line whenever possible and i drink with my friends and my coworkers and we talk about better worlds and how much we hate our bosses and this infernal social condition. sometimes we form reading groups and we write our own leaflets. sometimes i travel around the country to meet fellow communists because i know they feel the same thing i do.

i don't know if we will see communism. i imagine i will probably not. but makes more sense than sitting and accepting a grim fate just like that. i want fucking communism. i don't want to feel like this. i don't want to feel miserable and i at the very least want the capacity to express what i want.

it is true we wont be able to seize the mcdonalds and wal marts. i don't care, i would rather dismantle those miserable places. the class still keeps fighting. we see wisconsin, and we see maybe michigan here in the us. the brave miners in the north of mexico have fought for years. we will probably lose but the fight itself is important to me because if there is such thing as a final assault against capital it starts with smaller fights. the class has periods of struggle and periods of slumber. we are not in the magnitude of the 70s yet but we are getting to it i think because the state is uncapable of managing catastrophe today.

the line you are pushing is certainly not new. after the defeat of the fclass in the 70s, and the 80s, many ex communist militants turned to anti-civ or postmodernism. one of the biggest tragedies probably being cammatte, who was a good militant and now he writes sentimental texts about the original condition of man as if he ever knew it. he fucked off to survivalist communes somewhere in france. the same thing happened to fredy perlman. they expressed their jadedness with a fixture for the past and for nature and you express your jadedness through nihilism. their problem is that they thought revolution was around the corner and now they feel betrayed. i dont think revolution is around the corner, and i dropped out of leftism because of that. but i still push the communist line and i will be a communist till death because i dont tolerate this situation and seems a better way to live than just offing myself.

[Decolonize The Left]

i think tpt's point is that the material conditions that are supposed to lead to proletarian revolution didn't and now no longer exist?

I would say in reply that this would be both innocently ignorant and rather presumptuous. Economics, let alone capital, is not a simple mechanism isolated from countless influences within a socio-political climate. I believe that there are vastly too many happenings to predict when something as large as a collapse will occur.

What I can say, and perhaps this will provide a more sound answer to the OP, is that the economic principles which are in existence in the capitalist system cannot sustain themselves. At the very least, this small claim is true. And if this is the case, then the material conditions which shall give rise to the overthrow of the capitalist system will come into being.

But we are not gods. We cannot physically move these conditions into place and it would be foolish to attempt to do so (though it has been tried for sure). As maldoror so humanly put it above, we just do what we can.

We're just people. There's dirt and grime and pieces of halos lodged in our skin and we won't have it any other way.

- August

[bcbm]

But we are not gods.

speak for yourself