Why mere labour disputes almost never end up being political

[Die Neue Zeit]

A few months ago I coined the term "mere labour struggles," to which one poster responded by calling himself a "mere labour strugglist." The following is a correction.

The core of the problem with emphasizing, glorifying, fetishizing mere labour disputes (sectional wage struggles and such), attempting to grow political struggles out of them, etc. is the means by which they can be resolved. They are solved by negotiation, mediation, arbitration, and litigation, and almost never go beyond that. Even wage theft disputes are rarely solved politically.

On the other hand, growing economic struggles out of political struggles yields better class consciousness, such as this:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/supply-side-political-t152098/index.html

Why? Because the political struggles from the outset are aimed at society as a whole, not at the immediate players in some mere labour dispute, and because every genuine class struggle is a political struggle, not an economic one.

[blake 3:17]

I kind of mostly agree, but not so sure that things are so distinct between the economic and political.

There was large and very long strike I did solidarity work for, and I met a particularly annoying leftist who said he supported the strike, but it was "only about human decency" and therefore not really radical. I told him that I thought human decency was radical.

Obviously the post war labour pact in many of the advanced capitalist countries have helped unions become bureaucratic and legalistic. The drastic shift to the right by most social democratic parties creates even more challenges for labour activists who see the need for political action.

[Os Cangaceiros]

The economic is political.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I kind of mostly agree, but not so sure that things are so distinct between the economic and political.

There was large and very long strike I did solidarity work for, and I met a particularly annoying leftist who said he supported the strike, but it was "only about human decency" and therefore not really radical. I told him that I thought human decency was radical.

Obviously the post war labour pact in many of the advanced capitalist countries have helped unions become bureaucratic and legalistic. The drastic shift to the right by most social democratic parties creates even more challenges for labour activists who see the need for political action.

Did you get the chance to read my newest commentary as referred to in the link above? ;)

[Tavarisch_Mike]

The economic is political.


Agree.


Die Neue Ziet, youve right that many parts of the left tend to fetishize labour disputes, especialy spectaculary things like strikes with no regarding or analysing "how and why?". Is it a wild cat strike made by and fore the workers themselves? Ore just something already planned by the beroucratic leaders of the reformist union, initiated just to make people belive that there might be some small part of radicalism in them.

Small conflicts that occure on daily basis isnt something that the left likes to uphold too much. Im talking about when coo-workers get togheter to make a plan on how they are going to steal things frome theire work place, or standing up for eachother when youre boss want someone to work overtime. Theese small things is wats build solidarity and will eventually make a strike possible. But class struggle is much more then work, in Brittain in the early 80s the left focussed very much on the striking coal miners, which ofcourse is just good! but they didnt give the same attention and support when young unemployeed (mostly black) youngsters rebelled in the sub-urbs and in Brixton against the polices abuse and the effects och Tatchers ruling.

The left didnt support this clear class-struggle, born out of alienation and explotation, because it couldnt simply identify it with it, or maybe because there wasnt any book to tell them how to act.

[bricolage]

seeing as i'm the mere labour strugglist mentioned I should probably right a decent reply but seeing as this is going to be boring and you are just going to flood it with links to things you have written I'm gonna bullet point it;

1. the point is not that mere labour struggles are communism in practice but that they are expressions of unified class action. capitalism is built upon alienation and atomisation but at the same time groups us into centres from which we can destroy it. we are rammed into workplaces giving us the terrain and potentiality for revolt yet only when we turn ourselves against this same workplace is this actualised. do the workers always win? no. is this often decided via, like you said, negotiation of litigation? yes. on the other hand sometimes its won because the other side of the class war simply cannot handle it and on the other hand (three hands and counting...) it's not so much the end result as the class collectivity that is utilised to get there. that being said obviously this is much stronger if there is a victory.

2. mere labour struggles can very easily expand beyond their immediate sectional interests, they have done and will continue to do so as long as the nature of class struggle necessitates the unification of workers beyond their immediate confines.

3. revolution does not emerge from abstract theorising in a vacuum but from the confrontation of immediate everyday conditions. mere labour conditions produce mere labour struggles (and by the way I'm not just talking about strikes here, I think they are the most pertinent form of class struggle but there are many others yet re: brixton what DNZ calls mere labour struggles is anything not based on some kind of programme of pre-existing party, I assume he equally dismisses the Brixton uprising as he dismisses the miners strike. well considering he dismisses every other form of 'hooliganism' I know he does). mere labour struggles produce mere labour revolution, mere labour revolution produces a lot more, here's a quote of a man quoting another man;

Something Marx wrote can help put this in a fundamental theoretical framework. In The German Ideology, one of his early writings, he wrote: "Both for the production on a mass scale of the communist consciousness, and for the success of the cause itself, the alteration of men on a mass scale is necessary, an alteration which can only take place in a practical movement, a revolution; this revolution is necessary, therefore, not only because the ruling class cannot be overthrown in any other way, but also because the class overthrowing it can only in a revolution succeed in ridding itself of all the muck of ages and become fitted to found society anew."�
I suggest that this is the opposite of what most people think Marx said. Marx didn't say we have to create new people in order to make a revolution. He said we have to make a revolution in order to create new people.

4. if not mere labour struggles then what? the problem with what you propose is you are acting out of nowhere, there is nothing social to build upon. the point is not to shun any kind of theory or any kind of organisation but that the former only gains relevance in the heat of struggle and the later only emerges from it. I think the ICC say something like we don't need the party to build the struggle we need the struggle to build the party, that is the heart of it all.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Universal suffrage struggles did not emerge from mere labour disputes. Struggles to form worker militias did not emerge from mere labour disputes, either. Struggles over the extent of public management over the money supply (up to and including financial sector expropriation) did not, again, emerge from mere labour disputes.


you are just going to flood it with links to things you have written

One link in the original post is hardly a "flood." The material raises really key points, though.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Is this not just a re-statement of the difference between the minimum programme and maximum programme? :confused:

[Zanthorus]

I'll preface this by saying that originally I would have agreed with DNZ, but now I think his reasoning amounts to an abandonment of Marxism.


Universal suffrage struggles did not emerge from mere labour disputes.

This is utter bullshit, why do you think the three petitions carried out by the Chartists each coincided with economic slumps? The main impetus behind the Chartist movement was the poverty of the British industrial working-class and the desire to acquire a lever through which to push social and economic reforms. To quote Joseph Raynor Stephens:


This question of Universal Suffrage was a knife and fork question after all; this question was a bread and cheese question, notwithstanding all that had been said against it; and if any man ask him what he meant by Universal Suffrage, he would answer, that every working man in the land had a right to have a good coat to his back, a comfortable abode in which to shelter himself and his family, a good dinner upon his table, and no more work than was necessary for keeping him in health, and as much wages for that work as would keep him in plenty, and afford him the enjoyment of all the blessings of life which a reasonable man could desire.

What your whole rambling here assumes is that the Chartists were wrong, and that the "knife and fork" question can be satisfactorily solved by workers' struggling on the battleground of 'civil society'. The point is that because the "knife and fork" question cannot be solved within the limits of the factory, it's internal logic is inherently political, whatever terrain it may start on. "As to the limitation of the working day in England, as in all other countries, it has never been settled except by legislative interference. Without the working men's continuous pressure from without that interference would never have taken place. But at all events, the result was not to be attained by private settlement between the working men and the capitalists. This very necessity of general political action affords the proof that in its merely economical action capital is the stronger side."

For the working-class at least, this statement could not be more true:


The economic is political.

What you're whole approach here amounts to is basically utopian socialism on steroids.

[graymouser]

What I think has to be appended to Zanthorus's excellent post is that it took a titanic political struggle to win the ability to have "mere labor struggles," and that this right is constantly under pressure from the ruling class. The earliest strikes and union movements were completely illegal, and until they won by their force the right to strike and form unions in some countries - rights which the bourgeoisie always seeks to rip away when possible - workers literally had to fight just to get to the point where they could struggle for shorter hours, higher wages, etc. And in many cases, such as the 8-hour day, these did become political struggles.

It was only with the purposeful derailment, by bought-off union leaders, in the period of consolidation that these struggles ceased to be thoroughly political in content. It took a great effort to create a situation where a job action was a "mere labor struggle," and I'd argue that this was never completely cemented. Political ramifications keep popping up, and union bureaucrats constantly have to smash them back down. Working-class strategy consists in pushing them the other way, where labor struggles become part of a broader political struggle.

Saying that the economic is political doesn't mean that Marxists should hole down in the most "proletarian" jobs; I think both workerism and economism are serious problems among left groups. But that doesn't excuse this kind of denigration of "mere labor struggles," which should pretty much close the book on DNZ's ideas as Marxism.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Is this not just a re-statement of the difference between the minimum programme and maximum programme? :confused:

Not at all, comrade. In fact it is a differentiation between different elements of the Marxist minimum program (including the DOTP), since the maximum program (communist production) is primarily economic.


I'll preface this by saying that originally I would have agreed with DNZ, but now I think his reasoning amounts to an abandonment of Marxism.

I think Bob the Builder once called me a "politicist" as an opposite to economism.


But that doesn't excuse this kind of denigration of "mere labor struggles," which should pretty much close the book on DNZ's ideas as Marxism.

I don't denigrate mere labour disputes. I can give critical support to them. But as other posters said, bourgeois society tends to separate the economic from the political, so both cannot be really united until much later. The material in the OP link suggests that the kind of political awareness needed is way above any sort of awareness in mere labour disputes.


What you're whole approach here amounts to is basically utopian socialism on steroids.

Look at the collective bargaining strikes in the US right now. Lassalle, hardly a utopian socialist, was absolutely correct as the first great anti-economist relative to British tred-iunionizm and "self help" cooperativism (ditto with Bebel and W. Liebknecht for not starting the SAPD at the level of "trade union work"). We're not seeing even the formation of some "Laborite" party in reaction to Republican assaults and Democratic waffling.



Various radical economists aren't blameless for their inability to popularize their policies, like those of the Post-Keynesian School. Nevertheless, policies are policies and mere labour disputes are mere labour disputes.

[graymouser]

I don't denigrate mere labour disputes. I can give critical support to them. But as other posters said, bourgeois society tends to separate the economic from the political, so both cannot be really united until much later. The material in the OP link suggests that the kind of political awareness needed is way above any sort of awareness in mere labour disputes.
You still have failed to grasp that the struggle has to be an active one against the separation of the economic and political - which is the upshot of a transitional program. So of course, since you are against transitional programs, you reject such an idea, and instead play along with the separation of labor disputes from politics on the "other side."

[Die Neue Zeit]

No I haven't at all. I'm just suggesting growing economic struggles out of political ones, the exact opposite of the "transitional program" (read: Boris Krichevskii updated). Read the two proposals in the OP link to see how the economic benefits are trickling from political struggles.

[black magick hustla]

call me when you buiild the social democratic party of america (kautskyist) i am gonna smoke and slam some brews while i wait

[Die Neue Zeit]

"As to the limitation of the working day in England, as in all other countries, it has never been settled except by legislative interference. Without the working men's continuous pressure from without that interference would never have taken place. But at all events, the result was not to be attained by private settlement between the working men and the capitalists. This very necessity of general political action affords the proof that in its merely economical action capital is the stronger side."

I'll ask this rhetorically: What are the reasons for the limitation of the working day or week?

Hint: It is the emphasis on some reasons and not others that is symptomatic of economism. It is the emphasis on one and sidelining of all the others that is symptomatic of "politicism."

[Tower of Bebel]

Hi Zanthorus. What you write - I think - doesn't refute what Jacob Richter has tried to explain. Chartism, although it based its propaganda and agitation partially on the economic situation of the working class, was also a political movement. A political one in the marxist sense. I will try to explain what I mean by political in the marxist sense. But first: what's (mere) political and what's (mere) economic, and where do both go hand in hand?

Obviously you can't simply distinguish one from another. The economic situation determines politics, and politics has a real influence on economics. But bourgeois reasoning forces us to distinguish politics and economics from each other because class societies have turned politics (decission-making) into the lifestyle of a privileged few and the miserable economic sphere (labour) into the harsh reality for the majority of society.

What then is a political movement of the working class? It is a movement with a democratic character. The common people try to organize themselves, step by step, in order to force their own organs of decission-making upon bourgeois society. Lenin called the economists bourgeois ideologists because they based themselves almost solely on the economic, because they only organised the class as a class of wage slaves, because they did not bring the bourgeois sphere of politics any closer to the proletariat, and thus simply because they were not social-democrats.

The question that needs to be solved is "who rules?" Mere economic or labour struggles don't solve the question. They pose the question. So the withdrawal of labour for example is not an answer to capitalist rule. The arming of the people, the creation of their own organs, etc. are partial answers to that question of democracy. Those are political. The case of factory committees shows that the economic can become political in certain nodal points (as once written by Talheimer). But those committees don't suffice. Because you are still left with the question of beating the labour bureacracy (for example).

Chartism based its struggle for political demands only partially on economic struggles. Partially because, although many never intended to, some branches of the Chartist movement armed themselves and the workers. They were threatening with violence. The bourgeoisie was frightened and its rule, so they reasoned, was threatened by the working class. Arming the working class is in essence a political measure. I'll finish with a quote from Engels his military policy (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1865/02/12.htm): "The more workers who are trained in the use of weapons the better. Universal conscription is the necessary and natural corollary of universal suffrage; it puts the voters in the position of being able to enforce their decisions gun in hand against any attempt at a coup d'état"

[Q]

The economic is political.

To summarise Rakunin's post: economists continue the bourgeois divide by merely focusing on labour disputes and denying the need for the working class to organise politically because that question is posed by labour disputes.

Economists are, in essense, spontaneists because they believe labour disputes will form the class as a class (correct) with a revolutionary awareness (false). What you'll get, most of the time in most of the places, is a trade-union awareness: the class doesn't transcend its position as a slave-class.

In most of the cases economists will only argue for the dictatorship of the proletariat in the abstract or even merely in private among comrades, as they naively wait for the day the working class is "ready" for such a demand. This is what I believe Lenin meant when he said that the working class "cannot achieve social-democrat awareness on its own, they need the social-democrats to teach this to them" (paraphrased from WITBD?). After all, this is exactly what the party is supposed to do: educate (on the need of political power), agitate (for its programme), organise (in a mass movement), in that order.

Ok, I suck at summaries ;)

[graymouser]

No I haven't at all. I'm just suggesting growing economic struggles out of political ones, the exact opposite of the "transitional program" (read: Boris Krichevskii updated). Read the two proposals in the OP link to see how the economic benefits are trickling from political struggles.
The accusation that the transitional program is somehow connected with the economism of Krichevskii is quite simply false. The economists sought a vague and impressionistic emphasis on "spontaneity" while Trotsky's transitional method sought to convert every economic demand into one that moved outside the economic sphere and into the political.

Going the other way round - having strikes and job actions based on political conditions - is only possible in a period of very high radicalization. It's not that it's negative at all, but until there is a revolutionary party deep in the economic struggle, you simply wind up on the outskirts of politics even talking about it. Not being able to take current struggles and imbue them with political content, you lose any chance of having either authority or initiative. This is why your denigration of labor struggles is so viscerally and immediately opposed in places like this, and as long as you don't understand it, you will never be in a mass party, or even a group with more than the proverbial "two men and a dog." (Although given the rest of your politics, I'm okay with that.)

[Die Neue Zeit]

Economists are, in essense, spontaneists because they believe labour disputes will form the class as a class (correct) with a revolutionary awareness (false).

You're wrong there. ;)

Mere labour disputes never fully form the class as a class for itself.

[Tower of Bebel]

Graymouser, what do you mean by the economists' vague and impressionistic emphasis on spontaneity? They put forward political demands like the need for a party, universal suffrage, etc. That's something Lenin aknowledged in WITBD. But what they didn't do was (1) to create a genuine political party and (2) to link that political programme to the dictatorship of the prolateriat.

Their minimum programme was partially political, though its main impetus was the economic struggle. Therefore the economic programme had to be the initial basis for the political struggle of the working class. That's what Krichevski is all about. In the end the problem was that they had no vision on how to organize the class against tsarism in the here and now, and against the labour bureacracy (or in the Russian case: the secret police).

Their political ideas were bourgeois because they could not see the link between the political programme and the seizure of power. They had no vision of proletarian democracy or the DOTP. Therefore any political demand looked more like a radical bourgeois slogan or a slogan that could coincide with capitalism, than something that would organise the working class independently. Even the call for revolution meant nothing as they had no vision of how to organise it! That's why Lenin's call for an end to tsarism was more revolutionary and socialist than any of the economists calls for a revolution of the workers. While Lenin thought of a revolution led by the workers the economists' practice would lead to a revolution giving power to the bourgeoisie. This became the practice and theory of the right Mensheviks and the Stalinist version of the united front, which defended bourgeois democracy from fascism.

The transitional programme is based on the practical and theoretical struggle waged in, around and by the early Comintern. Based on concrete circumstances, which had to be mentioned in the programme, the communists had to offer the proletariat immediate demands that would prepare that class for the struggle for power. This had to be done within a broader programme that would propagate and prepare the seizure of state power by the proletariat.

In that sense any transitional programme is useless without the programme for an alternative centre of power (or decission-making). Linking the struggle for jobs with the idea of an alternative society based on democratic decission-making (instead of privately owned firms) does not create a genuine link between the economic and the political. It must have demands that help to prepare the creation of an alternative centre of power, which would make such a new society possible. Those demands are mainly political because they would attack the privileges of the labour bureaucracy, make sure that workers controle their pensions and other such funds, end the presidential or royal regimes that govern, arm the people, etc.

You talk about ending up in the outskirts, but sectarianism is, just like opportunism, one side of the same coin. Opportunism or economism exists where you'd give up the goal of genuine revolution in order to be able to infiltrate the existing bureaucratised movement. In the end you end up without a genuine socialist revolution. You become the tail of a bureaucratised movement that supports the bourgeois programme of capitalism.

I'm not saying that you are an opportunist or a sectarian, I hardly know you. I just wanted to make things clear. Of course DNZ is bending the stick, but so is saying that historically the economists did not (or did not want to) put forward demands which were meant to advance (the proletariat's struggle) from the economic to the political sphere.

[Q]

You're wrong there. ;)

Mere labour disputes never fully form the class as a class for itself.

Well, I did say that the class is formed with a trade-union awareness. So it cannot transcend its slave-class status on that basis. So yes, the working class is formed as a class, but is also submitted to the capitalist order because of its mere trade-unionist awareness (and corresponding bureaucratic leadership that has an objective need that capitalism continues to exist).

What communists seek to do is enter these trade-unions, democratise them, organise workers without a clientalistic methode whereby the bureaucracy does everything, but the workers do everything themselves. Connected to this is the need of transcending sectional and labour disputes and connect them of a social plain, ie to politicise the trade-unions. Only a party, based on a programme that argues for a dotp, can do this (and this is exactly why the IWW for example fails).

So yes, you're correct that the class isn't formed in subjective sense as a class für sich, but merely in an organisational sense. However, for many places this would still be a step forwards from the current situation in which unions a mere hollow shells.

[graymouser]

I'm not saying that you are an opportunist or a sectarian, I hardly know you. I just wanted to make things clear. Of course DNZ is bending the stick, but so is saying that historically the economists did not (or did not want to) put forward demands which were meant to advance (the proletariat's struggle) from the economic to the political sphere.
You seem to write an awful lot from relatively brief notes.

That the transitional program moves toward soviets should be elementary for anybody in any Trotskyist group; however, in this particular topic yes, I am "bending the stick" in the direction of an understanding of the growth of economic demands to revolutionary ones in a way that economism was not able to do. The charge that the transitional program is an update of Krichevskii is hollow air and should be opposed.

[Jose Gracchus]

Look at the collective bargaining strikes in the US right now. Lassalle, hardly a utopian socialist, was absolutely correct as the first great anti-economist relative to British tred-iunionizm and "self help" cooperativism (ditto with Bebel and W. Liebknecht for not starting the SAPD at the level of "trade union work"). We're not seeing even the formation of some "Laborite" party in reaction to Republican assaults and Democratic waffling.

This grates on me, because you know just as well as I do, and I know you do know, from talking about it with you - that there are large legal-constitutional barriers to workers' party formation in the United States. There are quite plain reasons why even a much better AFL-CIO labor bureaucracy lacks the capacity that, say, German unions have vis-a-vis disciplining the SPD by moving into the Left Party. Our electoral system prohibits effective parties outside the two-party system. Any successful workers' party would have to be explicitly anti-electoral, anti-establishment from the outset, and that's a more difficult bar to reach, than say, the NPA in France or the Left Party in Germany, or the like.

[Devrim]

... and as long as you don't understand it, you will never be in a mass party, or even a group with more than the proverbial "two men and a dog." (Although given the rest of your politics, I'm okay with that.)

I don't see why it is 'proverbial'. I can imagine him buying a dog, but not quite finding a second man.

Devrim

[Tower of Bebel]

You seem to write an awful lot from relatively brief notes.Maybe that's because my ideas are in full development. I still need some time so I can learn how to express them correctly.


That the transitional program moves toward soviets should be elementary for anybody in any Trotskyist group (...)Soviets are not the means by which we (the working class) can take power, unless you think a revolutionary workers' party is not needed. In that sence the 'transitional' slogans of the early Comintern were developed to prepare workers for the struggle for power, not the actual seizure of it.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Graymouser, what do you mean by the economists' vague and impressionistic emphasis on spontaneity? They put forward political demands like the need for a party, universal suffrage, etc. That's something Lenin aknowledged in WITBD. But what they didn't do was (1) to create a genuine political party and (2) to link that political programme to the dictatorship of the prolateriat.

Their minimum programme was partially political, though its main impetus was the economic struggle. Therefore the economic programme had to be the initial basis for the political struggle of the working class. That's what Krichevski is all about. In the end the problem was that they had no vision on how to organize the class against tsarism in the here and now, and against the labour bureacracy (or in the Russian case: the secret police).

Note to graymouser: You need to understand that Lenin was criticizing Krichevskii for having a slippery slope, not for siding with the likes of the Credo and Rabochaya Mysl, who made Bernstein look like a radical.

In the mid to late 1890s there was a struggle against Russian foes of Erfurtism. After this, there was a struggle within Russian Erfurtism.


Soviets are not the means by which we (the working class) can take power, unless you think a revolutionary workers' party is not needed. In that sence the 'transitional' slogans of the early Comintern were developed to prepare workers for the struggle for power, not the actual seizure of it.

Comrade, doesn't the Kautskyan minimum program do a much better job at that than transitory action platformism?

The Erfurt Program could have used a few more radical political demands even if short of the "democratic republic," the demarchic commonwealth, the DOTP, etc. An average workers' wage for legislators (not all public officials), a more class-strugglist formulation of "freedom of assembly and association," communal power replacing provinces and large municipalities, etc. would have implied economic struggles growing out of radical political struggle.

Today, for example, "mass media democracy" (too lazy to copy word-for-word the final immediate demand in my immediate reforms draft within my programmatic work) is something that doesn't come about through mere labour disputes.

[Die Neue Zeit]

This grates on me, because you know just as well as I do, and I know you do know, from talking about it with you - that there are large legal-constitutional barriers to workers' party formation in the United States. There are quite plain reasons why even a much better AFL-CIO labor bureaucracy lacks the capacity that, say, German unions have vis-a-vis disciplining the SPD by moving into the Left Party. Our electoral system prohibits effective parties outside the two-party system. Any successful workers' party would have to be explicitly anti-electoral, anti-establishment from the outset, and that's a more difficult bar to reach, than say, the NPA in France or the Left Party in Germany, or the like.

Comrade, I was polemicizing with Trotskyists. Again I'm aware of logistical and legal issues re. forming mere "labourite" parties.

Trotsky's transitory action platformism was an update of Boris Krichevskii because:

http://www.revleft.com/vb/transitional-program-updated-t99491/index.html

"Krichevskii advanced his soon-to-be notorious 'stages theory' within this Erfurtian framework. Workers advanced to political class awareness through a series of predictable stages. The first and lowest stage was 'purely economic agitation'. Next was political agitation still strongly tied to immediate economic interests. Then came agitation still linked to economic interests but intended to show how the wider political planks in the Social-Democratic platform (for example, political freedom) were necessary for economic struggle. Finally, came political agitation not tied to economic interests but, rather, to the proletariat's role as leader of the people. At this stage, political agitation should 'embrace without exception all questions of social-political life', since everything affects the class interests of the proletariat." (http://books.google.ca/books?id=8AVUvEUsdCgC&pg=PA294&lpg=PA294&dq=krichevskii+stages+theory+erfurtian&source=bl&ots=5i3q6svIZt&sig=RDY-JaK_p7csygxX1YTywcOmzEE&hl=en&sa=X&oi=book_result&resnum=1&ct=result#PPA294,M1) (Lars Lih)

This is the slippery slope I'm referring to.