Workforce and pensioners?

[Die Neue Zeit]

After some disappointments with autonomists and Guy Standing ([URL="http://www.revleft.com/vb/guy-standings-book-t152067/index.html") equally on the "precariat" (http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-things-precariat-t148669/index.html) (not to mention Chomsky's own recent attempt to popularize this term (http://libcom.org/library/great-moderation-international-assault-labor-noam-chomsky)), I thought back to my theoretical disagreement with comrade Mike Macnair's Revolutionary Strategy statement that "The ‘working class’ here means the whole social class dependent on the wage fund, including employed and unemployed, unwaged women ‘homemakers’, youth and pensioners. It does not just mean the employed workers, still less the ‘productive’ workers or the workers in industry." (http://www.iran-bulletin.org/Marxism/Macnair%20-11.htm)

This is from correspondence elsewhere that I had with a comrade recently.

Something cropped up in my head re. agitation (not education) for describing the productive proletariat and the proletarii (unproductive, criteria depending on Marx, Cockshott-Zachariah, or myself): Workforce and Pensioners. It sounds like "workers and peasants," but it encompasses the employed and unemployed workforce and retired workers. Of course, "workforce" re. education needs to be narrowed down to eliminate the coordinators and proletarii.

The comrade responded positively to the agitational term as a means of countering the term "middle class" and acknowledging the mainstream word "workforce."

Another comrade suggested "working people," saying "workforce" is klunky.

So many terms to throw around: toilers, precariat, workforce and pensioners, proletariat, working class... thoughts?

[blake 3:17]

Macnair's definition makes sense. The groups I've been involved in usually have referred to the working class in the broadest sense. That approach is basically useful but also suffers from vagueness.

The Australian DSP had a fairly good approach that didn't reduce the class to unions. I'll take a look for the reference.

[blake 3:17]

There are also specific problems, issues and challenges around the question of pensioners. They can be very very scrappy! Within some unions the retirees can be the most radical...

[jake williams]

"Working class" works fine. The only problem with it is the failure of the left to raise class consciousness to the point it can be understood. Coming up with even vaguer terms to which what little class consciousness remains have an even harder time relating seems, to me, unhelpful. If the intent is theoretical, while it can be worth looking at dynamics within the working class vis-a-vis employed and unemployed workers, youth, unemployed spouses/parents etc., the sort of terminology you're suggesting doesn't exactly get to the point. If the intent is agitational, I don't think it'll click enough with people to make it worthwhile.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I literally do not think it makes a fucking difference.

Just use working class.

[blake 3:17]

"Working class" works fine. The only problem with it is the failure of the left to raise class consciousness to the point it can be understood. Coming up with even vaguer terms to which what little class consciousness remains have an even harder time relating seems, to me, unhelpful. If the intent is theoretical, while it can be worth looking at dynamics within the working class vis-a-vis employed and unemployed workers, youth, unemployed spouses/parents etc., the sort of terminology you're suggesting doesn't exactly get to the point. If the intent is agitational, I don't think it'll click enough with people to make it worthwhile.


Then the question becomes how practical organizing and education uses the language and different terms that actually helps popular struggles, helps people see commonalities and differences and allows them work through them on the basis of solidarity.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Note the problem with "working people" - separating it from the unemployed, which "workforce" doesn't do:

http://www.westmeathexaminer.ie/news/roundup/articles/2011/06/17/4004886-united-left-alliance-seeking-to-set-up-local-branch/


A meeting aimed at explaining what the ULA is about, and what its aims and polities are, will take place at the Greville Arms Hotel, Mullingar on Wednesday of next week, June 22, at 8 p.m.

The move to set up a branch in this constituency comes on foot of the Alliance's success in having five TDs elected to the Dáil in the last general election.

The organisers say they are appealing to "working people, the youth and the unemployed" to come along and help build a fighting left alternative to the policies of the current Fine Gael/Labour government."

David McKay, meeting organiser said: "The launch of the United Left Alliance in Longford/Westmeath will help build a network of activists who are fed up with the bankers being paid out whilst hospitals face closures, schools face cuts and workers face the dole."

Mr. McKay said that Fine Gael and Labour in office were continuing with "the rotten politics" of Fianna Fáil.

"We need to build on the success of the 5 Left TDs in the Dail and build a Left alternative to the current cuts demanded by the EU/IMF bailout which is crippling the ordinary people," he stated.

Councillor Brid Smith (ULA Cllr Ballyfermot/Drimnagh) will address the meeting with details of the United Left Alliance "fight back" and campaigns from throughout the country as well as how a "fight back" can be established in Longford/Westmeath.

[Tim Finnegan]

I would assume that most unemployed people consider themselves to be "working people", in the sense that they pursue work, and simply have the bad luck to be out of employment at the present time. (Most people understand fine well that unemployment is, for most, an unwanted and often traumatic interlude in a working life.) I get the impression that the specific reference to "the unemployed" in this press release is a case of the ULA trying to make themselves clearly understood, rather than a concious deployment of any particular rhetorical terminology; they could just as easily have conveyed the same information with "working people (employed and unemployed)", had they been thinking a bit quicker. Honestly, I'm more bothered about their patronising use of "youth", which seems to simultaneously exclude young workers and to characterise adult students as mere overgrown adolescents. They should probably have mentioned pensioners, too.