Soseloshvili
28th August 2010, 00:37
I'm noticing a lot of people asking the question "Can the workers win?" I'd like to say we can. And I can prove it. I'd like to share something that happened the other day.
I have a friend, who for the life of her has pained herself not to be interested in politics. She's a student and a worker, making a small amount of money to help the family she lives with, also entirely working class. Yet she's blissfully unaware of the economic trap she's surrounded by. I've tried many times to explain to her the true nature of her circumstances, but she brushes me off.
One day I tried a new approach. I asked her what her father does for a living. She responded that he works at a meat packing factory. I then asked her how much her father makes, she responded that she believed it was $16 an hour.
My response was long, but it was something like this: "Okay, you're going to have to bare with me for a while. Let's say your father packs 20 packages of meat per hour, though that's a very conservative estimate and he probably packages much more. And let's say a package of meat, sold to a local grocer, costs $20, which could be high or low depending on the meat in question.
That means that your father is producing $400 worth of product an hour. Take into account that there are probably four other guys doing something to that meat along the line you've got four guys being paid a total of $80 to produce $400. Subtract the cost of the raw meat - say $150 total - and you've got $170 an hour going to the factory owner, who does nothing, while your father makes only $16. That means the owner makes 1060% more than your dad in just one hour"
She was astounded really. For the first time I'd interested my friend in something which she had previously taken to be boring politics. From that moment on she became a class conscious worker. Our political conversations are frequent, and she's come to thoroughly understand the science of socialism.
The point is that class consciousness among workers isn't fading, it's growing. This generation can't remember the Soviets, and the negative connotations left on the labour movement by it. This is our time, if you ask me, I just wanted to share this little story as proof of it :)
I have a friend, who for the life of her has pained herself not to be interested in politics. She's a student and a worker, making a small amount of money to help the family she lives with, also entirely working class. Yet she's blissfully unaware of the economic trap she's surrounded by. I've tried many times to explain to her the true nature of her circumstances, but she brushes me off.
One day I tried a new approach. I asked her what her father does for a living. She responded that he works at a meat packing factory. I then asked her how much her father makes, she responded that she believed it was $16 an hour.
My response was long, but it was something like this: "Okay, you're going to have to bare with me for a while. Let's say your father packs 20 packages of meat per hour, though that's a very conservative estimate and he probably packages much more. And let's say a package of meat, sold to a local grocer, costs $20, which could be high or low depending on the meat in question.
That means that your father is producing $400 worth of product an hour. Take into account that there are probably four other guys doing something to that meat along the line you've got four guys being paid a total of $80 to produce $400. Subtract the cost of the raw meat - say $150 total - and you've got $170 an hour going to the factory owner, who does nothing, while your father makes only $16. That means the owner makes 1060% more than your dad in just one hour"
She was astounded really. For the first time I'd interested my friend in something which she had previously taken to be boring politics. From that moment on she became a class conscious worker. Our political conversations are frequent, and she's come to thoroughly understand the science of socialism.
The point is that class consciousness among workers isn't fading, it's growing. This generation can't remember the Soviets, and the negative connotations left on the labour movement by it. This is our time, if you ask me, I just wanted to share this little story as proof of it :)