UK looting

[Dr Mindbender]

Does the recent UK disturbance represent an upturn in class consciousness or is it just random looting?

[Blake's Baby]

Neither.

It's not 'random' because there are real social and economic causes - poverty, unemployment, lack of social cohesion or even the basis of class solidarity. It's not an upturn in class conciousness either because there's little sense that these are class actions rather than just anger. Anger against the system does not necessarily mean a developing class consciousness.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Austerity is random looting though.


Edit: maybe not random.

[Dr Mindbender]

that is what i suspected. I would not have a problem if they were targeting the really big chains - McDonalds, TESCO etc. It seems to be small to medium business incurring the wrath. This will threaten jobs and harm communities.

Nonetheless it is encouraging to see people channeling their anger against the state rather than scapegoats such as immigrants. Lets hope it develops into something productive.

[Tim Cornelis]

The UK needs a Black Panther Party of some sorth to channel the anger of these marginalised black youths into a political conscious resentment towards capitalism (and the state).

[brigadista]

wasn't the first looting wave from the bankers ?

[punisa]

This is escalation to the global economic meltdown, the anxiety is high and this is the result from the very bottom.
I wouldn't be surprised if such riots start in other major European cities.

[Manic Impressive]

The UK needs a Black Panther Party of some sorth to channel the anger of these marginalised black youths into a political conscious resentment towards capitalism (and the state).
no offence to the black panthers but no thank you. we don't need politics which split the working class along racial lines not when they are currently acting as one.

[Dr Mindbender]

The UK needs a Black Panther Party of some sorth to channel the anger of these marginalised black youths into a political conscious resentment towards capitalism (and the state).
The UK is very different to the US.

While black youth are in significant number, in the UK the most pronunced demographic that is a marginalised minority would probably be youth that are ethnically from the Indian subcontinent.

As has been said it would be disastrous for UK politics to be split down race lines (more than it already is). I think a black panther style party would only agitate BNP style activity into the mix.

[RedAnarchist]

The UK needs a Black Panther Party of some sorth to channel the anger of these marginalised black youths into a political conscious resentment towards capitalism (and the state).

It's not just black people rioting, it's people from many different groups.

[punisa]

First casualty, a young man 26 has been shot and died in hospital.
http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=233084

Al Jazeera also reported this.

[Threetune]

I can remember previous riots and watched as the ‘Militant Tendency’ (of the Labour Party) now calling themselves the ‘Socialist Party’ set-up loud speakers in a block of flats and told the youth on the streets below not to attack the police because they were “workers in uniform”.


Any movement the sectarian British left can’t parachute into or chuck a net over, they condemn one way or another while they think up ways of channelling class struggle into the safe calm waters of peaceful protest and electoral opportunism.


This latest uprising is as much a spontaneous attack on the ‘left’ as it is on the system that offers only a future of unemployment, low pay, police harassment, and criminal economic abuse at the hands of landlords, loan sharks, ‘entertain’ gurus, drug barons, and is then insulted by press and TV and the corrupt parliamentary racket, who really are a “law unto themselves”. And that’s all before the opportunism if the religious and community ‘leaders’ come knocking for a free hand out claiming to be able to alleviate the confusion and misery, and inevitable violence inherited from capitalism’s brutal “dog-eat-dog”, “cut-through” competition culture.


The economic crisis of the degenerate capitalist system, the ‘War on Terror’ and the New of the World ‘scandal’ are not just some complementary backdrops or adjuncts for theses latest riots, they are the conditions which produce the ‘grab it and run’ consciousness at present, not only, or even mostly of the rebellious crowds, but of every bit of personal opportunism deemed necessary for survival as the walls of ‘Babylon’ come crashing down.


Since forever, the ‘lefts’ have been telling workers to, protest peacefully, vote for the parliamentary racket, because the ‘left’ regardless of all its posturing about revolutionism, has in practice always dumbed down and trashed the real struggle for revolutionary theory about the capitalist crisis in favour of trendy activism that might one day get them elected. Them days are gone, but it won’t stop the ‘lefts’ trying to revive them. Again, if you don’t believe it, just watch out for next weekend’s ‘left’ press response to the riots. Understanding the counter-revolutionary anti-communist nature of the ‘left’ is revolutionary theory and will be decisive for the working class in the battles to come.

Develop this revolutionary theory!

Build Leninism!

Oh ye, and read Lenin first hand.

[Obs]

The UK needs a Black Panther Party of some sorth to channel the anger of these marginalised black youths into a political conscious resentment towards capitalism (and the state).
Please infract for racism

[Jimmie Higgins]

no offence to the black panthers but no thank you. we don't need politics which split the working class along racial lines not when they are currently acting as one.I don't think the Black Panthers caused segregation in the US - they developed in that way BECAUSE the working class was split along those lines. They also consciously tried to reach out to non-black radicals for allies and solidarity even though they felt politically it was important for black people to organize themselves.

But on the whole, a Black Panther Party wouldn't develop in the UK or even US right now because conditions are somewhat different right now: there is not an ongoing militant black liberation struggle in either country for example.


Please infract for racismWhat do you mean?

[Obs]

What do you mean?
Assuming it's only black people out rioting because obviously those vile n*****s are just so damn violent by nature. It's basically the same assumptions a right-wing asshole would make, only difference being he's praising "them" for it.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Assuming it's only black people out rioting because obviously those vile n*****s are just so damn violent by nature. It's basically the same assumptions a right-wing asshole would make, only difference being he's praising "them" for it.Ok, I see what you mean, but it's a bit of a stretch. I was thinking the poster referenced the BPP because of the defense against police violence aspect, not because he was saying that only black people were rioting.

[Tim Cornelis]

Assuming it's only black people out rioting because obviously those vile n*****s are just so damn violent by nature. It's basically the same assumptions a right-wing asshole would make, only difference being he's praising "them" for it.

Where did I say anything about riots? I was talking about marginalised black youths in general and apart from these riots. I can understand you interpreted it to mean that as I ignored white youths (and "brown"), and commented on "UK looting" with singling out black people, but that's not what I meant.


The UK needs a Black Panther Party of some sort to channel the anger of these marginalised black youths into a political conscious resentment towards capitalism (and the state).

EDIT:

What I meant was that if you have a predominantly white anti-capitalist association telling black people "you are victims, join us in the struggle against..." it's easy for these black people to dismiss it as white people can often hardly relate to the issues the black community faces, at least that's the perception--whether accurate is irrelevant. If there is a Black Panther organisation I imagine the black community is more likely to join as they can relate to the issues at hand.

[brigadista]

there is a thread about the Black Panther on revleft please read it - they were the Black Panther party for SELF DEFENCE had to organise to defend their community, they ahd a 10 point plan and joined with other activists

here is the thread

http://www.revleft.com/vb/black-panther-guide-t59295/index.html

[Obs]

Where did I say anything about riots? I was talking about marginalised black youths in general and apart from these riots. I can understand you interpreted it to mean that as I ignored white youths (and "brown"), and commented on "UK looting" with singling out black people, but that's not what I meant.



EDIT:

What I meant was that if you have a predominantly white anti-capitalist association telling black people "you are victims, join us in the struggle against..." it's easy for these black people to dismiss it as white people can often hardly relate to the issues the black community faces, at least that's the perception--whether accurate is irrelevant. If there is a Black Panther organisation I imagine the black community is more likely to join as they can relate to the issues at hand.
Are you black?

[Old Man Diogenes]

Please infract for racism

This has left me most vexed.

[AnonymousOne]

Assuming it's only black people out rioting because obviously those vile n*****s are just so damn violent by nature. It's basically the same assumptions a right-wing asshole would make, only difference being he's praising "them" for it.

Uh, Goti123 said nothing of the sort. All he said was having a similar organization like the BPP would helpful for marginalized black youth.

Calm down.

[Vanguard1917]

Does the recent UK disturbance represent an upturn in class consciousness...?

Only time will tell what kind of effect these riots will have on people's consiousness. I think that we can safely say, however, that, at least currently, they are being met with almost universal repulsion in Britain.

[Threetune]

Only time will tell what kind of effect these riots will have on people's consiousness. I think that we can safely say, however, that, at least currently, they are being met with almost universal repulsion in Britain.

Why do you say that? My experience is nothing like that.

[Crux]

I can remember previous riots and watched as the ‘Militant Tendency’ (of the Labour Party) now calling themselves the ‘Socialist Party’ set-up loud speakers in a block of flats and told the youth on the streets below not to attack the police because they were “workers in uniform”.


Any movement the sectarian British left can’t parachute into or chuck a net over, they condemn one way or another while they think up ways of channelling class struggle into the safe calm waters of peaceful protest and electoral opportunism.


This latest uprising is as much a spontaneous attack on the ‘left’ as it is on the system that offers only a future of unemployment, low pay, police harassment, and criminal economic abuse at the hands of landlords, loan sharks, ‘entertain’ gurus, drug barons, and is then insulted by press and TV and the corrupt parliamentary racket, who really are a “law unto themselves”. And that’s all before the opportunism if the religious and community ‘leaders’ come knocking for a free hand out claiming to be able to alleviate the confusion and misery, and inevitable violence inherited from capitalism’s brutal “dog-eat-dog”, “cut-through” competition culture.


The economic crisis of the degenerate capitalist system, the ‘War on Terror’ and the New of the World ‘scandal’ are not just some complementary backdrops or adjuncts for theses latest riots, they are the conditions which produce the ‘grab it and run’ consciousness at present, not only, or even mostly of the rebellious crowds, but of every bit of personal opportunism deemed necessary for survival as the walls of ‘Babylon’ come crashing down.


Since forever, the ‘lefts’ have been telling workers to, protest peacefully, vote for the parliamentary racket, because the ‘left’ regardless of all its posturing about revolutionism, has in practice always dumbed down and trashed the real struggle for revolutionary theory about the capitalist crisis in favour of trendy activism that might one day get them elected. Them days are gone, but it won’t stop the ‘lefts’ trying to revive them. Again, if you don’t believe it, just watch out for next weekend’s ‘left’ press response to the riots. Understanding the counter-revolutionary anti-communist nature of the ‘left’ is revolutionary theory and will be decisive for the working class in the battles to come.

Develop this revolutionary theory!

Build Leninism!

Oh ye, and read Lenin first hand.
Yeah, we know you're a bitter old man that hates the left and entertain the absurd notion your opinions have anything in common with leninism, thanks for reminding us in case anyone forgot from the last time you made a post.

[Vanguard1917]

Why do you say that? My experience is nothing like that.

Well, the only anger against the state i have witnessed from the wider public is against the police for their lack of policing, and against the government for not putting enough police on the streets. Such sentiments definitely do not signify a rise in working-class consciousness.

[Dr Mindbender]

Only time will tell what kind of effect these riots will have on people's consiousness. I think that we can safely say, however, that, at least currently, they are being met with almost universal repulsion in Britain.

Its spreading though inst it...?

I take the ruling class media with an extra large portion of salt. I'd say that the majority of working class people are probably somewhere between indifferent and sympathetic to the 'rioters'.

[Vanguard1917]

I'd say that the majority of working class people are probably somewhere between indifferent and sympathetic to the 'rioters'.

I'd think that is extremely unlikely, especially now that the riots have descended towards mere thieving and seemingly pointless destructivity.

[robbo203]

Its spreading though inst it...?

I take the ruling class media with an extra large portion of salt. I'd say that the majority of working class people are probably somewhere between indifferent and sympathetic to the 'rioters'.

Not too sure about that. At any rate from the comments on yahoo news and elsewhere I would say the overwhelming majority are hostile to the rioters, some virulently so to the point of being viciously racist or reactionary.

I think it is important not to approach this phenomenon in too black or white terms (no pun intended here). Much has been said about the social deprivation and the prevailing sense of hopelessness about the future among young people which has helped to fuel these riots. I have no qualms about the looting of large retail outlets but I am concerned when violence is misdirected against fellow workers, their homes and so on.

This is counterproductive and reactionary and underscores the fact that the riots are not driven by any clear political objective. Unfortunately the response to the riots could have the effect of making the entire social envrionment much less conducive to radical ideas should reaction set in.

This is why we have to be very careful about how we approach this whole matter and not get carried away with the moment

[bcbm]

the lesson from los angeles is that the modern middle class won't tolerate mob rule (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100099840/tottenham-riots-the-history-lesson-from-los-angeles-is-that-the-modern-middle-class-wont-tolerate-mob-rule/)

[Nox]

I think the #1 thing that sums up this event is that people are looting FOOD AND CLOTHES and other basic necesseties.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

the lesson from los angeles is that the modern middle class won't tolerate mob rule (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100099840/tottenham-riots-the-history-lesson-from-los-angeles-is-that-the-modern-middle-class-wont-tolerate-mob-rule/)

Not to worry, it seems that the middle class is shrinking, and if current trends continue, it won't exist for much longer.

[Die Rote Fahne]

There is no "middle class" dammit...

The "shrinking" is just the wealth gap between the bourgeoisie and proletariat widening.

To others: the rioting is not pointless. This is an act of agitation against, perhaps unwittingly, the ruling class, and the status quo of peaceful rule of that class. It will stir up fear in the rulers, and ideas in the workers. That action can be taken, and should. As well, people should be highly skeptical of the bourgeois media on the riots, as well as everything else.

[Rusty Shackleford]

Not to worry, it seems that the middle class is shrinking, and if current trends continue, it won't exist for much longer.
beat me to it.


on a side not. could this thread be the dumping ground for all the debate on the uprising? like, clean out the original thread and dump it in here? keep updates in the other thread?

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

There is no "middle class" dammit...

The "shrinking" is just the wealth gap between the bourgeoisie and proletariat widening.

You know what I mean, dammit. Just because a term is meaningless in Marxist terms does not mean it doesn't have a use in political parlance.

[CommunityBeliever]

the lesson from los angeles is that the modern middle class won't tolerate mob rule (http://www.anonym.to/?http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100099840/tottenham-riots-the-history-lesson-from-los-angeles-is-that-the-modern-middle-class-wont-tolerate-mob-rule/) Why can't the media just say the ruling class won't tolerate mob rule? Why do they have to pretend to speak for some other group (the "middle class") ?

[Die Rote Fahne]

You know what I mean, dammit. Just because a term is meaningless in Marxist terms does not mean it doesn't have a use in political parlance.
:lol: jokes my dude.

[Jimmie Higgins]

the lesson from los angeles is that the modern middle class won't tolerate mob rule (http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/timstanley/100099840/tottenham-riots-the-history-lesson-from-los-angeles-is-that-the-modern-middle-class-wont-tolerate-mob-rule/)

Well no surprise when it comes to history as told by the corporate media, but I think there are some problems with the basic argument in this piece.

First, they claim that the Watts riots were supported by the middle class when in fact they were not. The fact that some liberals moved towards (at least lip serviced) sympathy and called for reforms for the poor had more to do with the fact that there had been a 10 year civil rights movement before 1965. Additionally, most liberals didn't sympathize with the riots: the growing militancy of the black movement and the switch from targeting antiquated jim-crow racism to the racism suffered by working class people in the north split liberal support even for figures like MLK Jr. But the riots did have an effect and it wasn't just because of the Watts riots, it was a sustained period of urban insurrection with riots in every major city every summer for years! So the combination of clarity of demands and political consciousness through the black power movement along side urban insurrections of mostly black (though also other groups) youth made the necessity for action and reform obvious to the ruling class.

The LA uprising also wasn't a direct line to the racial attacks and backlashes by the politicians of the 1990s. It caused some ideological confusion and defensiveness after years of an aggressive "war on drugs" and brutal militarized "gang" squads that beat up people in poor black and Latino working class areas. The economy and the riots are two of the main things that Bush was attacked for - he was seen as cold and indifferent to the suffering of the poor. The riots brought a real political urgency to the "black consciousness" movement that had been building since the anti-Apartheid movement and made the issues of black poverty a prominent part of mainstream politics for a few years.

But this riot was isolated and there were no independent let alone militant movements to keep the pressure on so a lot of this consciousness and momentum got dragged (for lack of alternatives and lack of independent political leadership) into mainstream liberalism where it suffocated and died like the pro-abortion movement of the late 80s and the gay rights movement of that era.

So I guess my reason for this argument is just to say that riots do have a significant ideological impact and while there's no guarantees, it does matter what activists do once these riots have concluded and how they try and build something out of it - obviously radicals have a valuable role in that activism too.

[∞]

They're attacking small businesses. Thats not right.

[ZeroNowhere]

They're attacking small businesses. Thats not right.
One must stand before one can walk.

[Pirate Utopian]

Why is that not right? Why should we care about small business?

[Jimmie Higgins]

Why is that not right? Why should we care about small business?We should care that people's homes and cars and even small shops are destroyed... we just shouldn't use that concern to condemn working class and oppressed people when there are flair ups of anger brought on by the conditions we face. More people loose their homes and cars and shops due to austerity, housing speculation, capitalist crisis, unfair lending by banks and so on than ever loose their personal belongings to rioting, so some perspective is necessary first of all IMO.

Riots are unorganized by definition so there's no way to really organize for them or organize against them anyway. Blaming riots for anything is useless, this society is a pressure-cooker and riots are a natural reaction to inequality and oppression and have been in all recorded class societies. So if folks really don't want to see riots, then the only thing to do is change the circumstances that create them: inequality and oppression i.e. capitalism. Anything else is basically an appeal for people to take their oppression and shut up about it (unless they organize themselves in some pre-approved way in the eyes of critics). Would it be better and more effective if people organized a mass movement based on class politics... undoubtedly, but like I said, riots happen and aren't pre-meditated (even if some people try... won't work unless a riot was going to happen anyway) so it's not like people are choosing one form of rebellion over another in this case.

[Vanguard1917]

I think the #1 thing that sums up this event is that people are looting FOOD AND CLOTHES and other basic necesseties.

Are you claiming that what motivated these rioters were their lack of calories and insufficient clothing?

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I can remember previous riots and watched as the ‘Militant Tendency’ (of the Labour Party) now calling themselves the ‘Socialist Party’ set-up loud speakers in a block of flats and told the youth on the streets below not to attack the police because they were “workers in uniform”.


Any movement the sectarian British left can’t parachute into or chuck a net over, they condemn one way or another while they think up ways of channelling class struggle into the safe calm waters of peaceful protest and electoral opportunism.


This latest uprising is as much a spontaneous attack on the ‘left’ as it is on the system that offers only a future of unemployment, low pay, police harassment, and criminal economic abuse at the hands of landlords, loan sharks, ‘entertain’ gurus, drug barons, and is then insulted by press and TV and the corrupt parliamentary racket, who really are a “law unto themselves”. And that’s all before the opportunism if the religious and community ‘leaders’ come knocking for a free hand out claiming to be able to alleviate the confusion and misery, and inevitable violence inherited from capitalism’s brutal “dog-eat-dog”, “cut-through” competition culture.


The economic crisis of the degenerate capitalist system, the ‘War on Terror’ and the New of the World ‘scandal’ are not just some complementary backdrops or adjuncts for theses latest riots, they are the conditions which produce the ‘grab it and run’ consciousness at present, not only, or even mostly of the rebellious crowds, but of every bit of personal opportunism deemed necessary for survival as the walls of ‘Babylon’ come crashing down.


Since forever, the ‘lefts’ have been telling workers to, protest peacefully, vote for the parliamentary racket, because the ‘left’ regardless of all its posturing about revolutionism, has in practice always dumbed down and trashed the real struggle for revolutionary theory about the capitalist crisis in favour of trendy activism that might one day get them elected. Them days are gone, but it won’t stop the ‘lefts’ trying to revive them. Again, if you don’t believe it, just watch out for next weekend’s ‘left’ press response to the riots. Understanding the counter-revolutionary anti-communist nature of the ‘left’ is revolutionary theory and will be decisive for the working class in the battles to come.

Develop this revolutionary theory!

Build Leninism!

Oh ye, and read Lenin first hand.

Yeah, blokes pulling up in BMWs and Mercedes, grabbing a few PS3s and speeding off really are strugglign to survive in this Babylon.:rolleyes:

Stop trolling you idiot, we don't need you to repeat your Leninist-loving crap at the end of every post.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Are you claiming that what motivated these rioters were their lack of calories and insufficient clothing?

Perhaps not, but they were certainly motivated by all the goodies they've been seeing paraded on telly and in the shopping centres, and which has been denied to them for most of their lives.

[Vanguard1917]

Perhaps not, but they were certainly motivated by all the goodies they've been seeing paraded on telly and in the shopping centres, and which has been denied to them for most of their lives.

Alcohol, cigarettes, TVs, and Playstations? If this was simply all about a longing to acquire products the kids could never otherwise afford, how would that explain the random arsons, burning buses and people's cars, attacking people on the street, and all the other acts of random destruction and violence in their own neighbourhoods?

[RedRaptor]

The system was week and the people are disconnected from their society. Some may have been going for a political angle but the vast majority were just in it for fun. Now the crowd is just out their for mayhem and looting. This is NOT political. They are thugs, not rebels.

[CommunityBeliever]

They are thugs

Are these your own words or is this coming from some bourgeoisie news source?

I suppose you think we need to bring in the army to deal with these "thugs"?

[RedRaptor]

Im going by the actions being committed and the online invitations to the loot-a-thon.

[ÑóẊîöʼn]

Alcohol, cigarettes, TVs, and Playstations? If this was simply all about a longing to acquire products the kids could never otherwise afford, how would that explain the random arsons, burning buses and people's cars, attacking people on the street, and all the other acts of random destruction and violence in their own neighbourhoods?

Because it's a fucking riot. There's no conscious political intent behind it, but it's clear there are genuine socioeconomic issues behind these events. These are people who feel they owe nothing to society, who are alienated from it. Is it any wonder shit like this happens? It doesn't excuse the targeting of homes and individuals, but to join the borgeouis media in taking them to task for stealing goods is a monstrous distortion of perspective in light of the ongoing ruling class larceny that results in far more people losing their homes and livelihoods.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Because it's a fucking riot. There's no conscious political intent behind it, but it's clear there are genuine socioeconomic issues behind these events. These are people who feel they owe nothing to society, who are alienated from it. Is it any wonder shit like this happens? It doesn't excuse the targeting of homes and individuals, but to join the borgeouis media in taking them to task for stealing goods is a monstrous distortion of perspective in light of the ongoing ruling class larceny that results in far more people losing their homes and livelihoods.

After a revolution, people won't wonder why people in our society rioted, they will wonder why people didn't riot constantly.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

I think the #1 thing that sums up this event is that people are looting FOOD AND CLOTHES and other basic necesseties.

Sorry, no, this simply is not true. Predominantly being looted are high-end goods stores - mobile phone shops, sporting goods, electronic goods. The armani store in town reported £500,000 worth of damage (:laugh:!).

But, as some of the messages reported via on Blackberry messaging demonstrate:

"I don't care what (gangs) you're from, you're personally invited to come down and get in it"
"terror and havoc and free stuff"
"if you're up for making money we're going in hard in east London tonight. Yes, tonight"

It's all to do with ripping off stuff that will sell. What is this if not the cash nexus? Being the good guy that runs the local youthclub, barely being able to afford giving up your own time doesnt give you status, it makes you a mug.

STUFF and MONEY is status. Human relations devolved to how much cash you have, or how much stuff you have. Banks get bailed, education spending gets cut.

[Delenda Carthago]

Not to worry, it seems that the middle class is shrinking, and if current trends continue, it won't exist for much longer.
A wounded beast is at its most aggresive.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

Why is that not right? Why should we care about small business?


Most of the small businesses being attacked in the area I live in are owned by working class people simply trying to get by. As has been pointed out many times before on these boards, you can't avoid capitalism even if you oppose it. Some guy that's opened a shop underneath his house in an attempt to get some control in his life and be his own boss shouldnt be the target for violence.

The huge fire at the Sony depot in Enfield, on the other hand, was very funny.

[thefinalmarch]

Most of the small businesses being attacked in the area I live in are owned by working class people
Wait, what?

“By proletariat [is meant], the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.”- Engels, The Communist Manifesto 1888 English edition

[Hit The North]

When we are ruled over by the commodity, looting is consistent with the overthrow of power.

We should applaud these people for taking what they want. If this policy was generalised across the working class then we'd have a revolution on our hands.

As some comrades have pointed out, it is out of these spontaneous and often ugly and messy eruptions, that genuine insurrection emerges as a possibility.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

Wait, what?

“By proletariat [is meant], the class of modern wage labourers who, having no means of production of their own, are reduced to selling their labour power in order to live.”- Engels, The Communist Manifesto 1888 English edition

:blushing: I knew that was coming. But id already posted and by then it was too late.

I still dont think the average grocery store owner, running to support his family with no staff other than relatives is really worthy of the wrath of the revolution. Call me a sell-out if you want, but there it is.

EDIT:

That said, the guy that owns the my local shop works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week to be able to afford to pay his rent and support his family. Is this not "selling his labour power in order to live"? He is superficially his own boss, with his own business, but still has to work his ass off in order to survive. Think he would do this if he had a choice? Nah....

This, in my book, makes him working class. Despite what Marx might have written over 150 years ago.

[Vanguard1917]

Because it's a fucking riot.

But it's a very distinct kind of riot, at least when compared to the politically motivated riots in places like Tottenham and Brixton in the '80s. There is no political content here; it's basically turned out to be just about theft and random destruction. Even the police-fighting (the only feature of these riots that i could have some knee-jerk sympathy with) appears to have just been incidental, just one aspect of a general desire to cause mayhem.

To me, this is looking more and more like a more violent, larger-scale version of a group of teenagers on the top deck of a packed bus smoking, fighting and playing Grime Daily videos loud on their smart phones as a general middle finger to the general population. Indeed, there has been no attempt whatsoever by these rioters to justify their actions and win some support from the public; the driving sentiment here is basically 'fuck you all'. In the riots of the '80s the black youth involved received a great deal of sympathy from the wider black population, because the riots looked like justified action with a cause. In this case, there's only general public disgust -- not least among the areas where these kids come from.

[thefinalmarch]

:blushing: I knew that was coming. But id already posted and by then it was too late.

I still dont think the average grocery store owner, running to support his family with no staff other than relatives is really worthy of the wrath of the revolution. Call me a sell-out if you want, but there it is.
In a hypothetical working class revolution I doubt the grocery store owner's few (related) employees would consider any sort of "wrath" like you imagine. I imagine the worst his employees would do is absorb him into the so-called association of free labourers, if indeed they took control of the grocery at all which I doubt.

[thefinalmarch]

EDIT:

That said, the guy that owns the my local shop works 12 hours a day, 7 days a week to be able to afford to pay his rent and support his family. Is this not "selling his labour power in order to live"? He is superficially his own boss, with his own business, but still has to work his ass off in order to survive. Think he would do this if he had a choice? Nah....

This, in my book, makes him working class. Despite what Marx might have written over 150 years ago.
You raise a good point - and that's why he's considered petty-bourgeois, and many are of the view that members of this class are likely to side with either of the two main classes in a revolution.

[CommunityBeliever]

But it's a very distinct kind of riot, at least when compared to the politically motivated riots in places like Tottenham and Brixton in the '80s. There is no political content here; it's basically turned out to be just about theft and random destruction. Even the police-fighting (the only feature of these riots that i could have some knee-jerk sympathy with) appears to have just been incidental, just one aspect of a general desire to cause mayhem.

There is no "random destruction."

This is a direct reaction to a system that leaves the people with no future.

The conditions don't justify the destruction of personal property, but they definitely indicate that they are not "random" or "incidental."

[Vanguard1917]

There is no "random destruction."

It's random in the sense of the objects and people they are targetting.

[CommunityBeliever]

It's random in the sense of the objects and people they are targetting. You should instead use the term disorganised to describe the selection process for targets. They aren't "random" in the sense that they aren't unpredictable.

This is just a disorganised revolt of people who are outraged by our corrupt system that has left them with no future in sight.

[Vanguard1917]

This is just a disorganised revolt of people who are outraged by our corrupt system that has left them with no future in sight.

Is that what you have deduced from the large amounts political literature, banners, street slogans and interviews put out by the rioters? Or is it something which you have imagined up in your own head?

What single shred of evidence is there that there was anything resembling political 'outrage' going on in the heads of the majority of the kids involved in the rioting?

A violent outburst from alienated youth, yes, probably. But a politically motivated 'revolt'? No proof of that as far as i can tell.

[Manic Impressive]

already posted but you obviously didn't see it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

[Vanguard1917]

already posted but you obviously didn't see it.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-14458424

That's your evidence of the political nature of these disturbances: a 50-second interview of two girls drunk and cheerful at 9am in the morning? Are we so desperate to attach our own political grievances to these events?

A burglar may tell me that he robbed my house because of the government. That does not mean that his actions were politically motivated.

[Hit The North]

A burglar may tell me that he robbed my house because of the government. That does not mean that his actions were politically motivated.

Are you saying you see nothing but criminality in these events? Are you arguing that the participants are immune to the cuts in public and youth services, the shrinking of educational opportunity, the record youth unemployment rates? Do you think their actions are not motivated by these grievances? Do you think the poor youth of London are not constantly confronted with, and affronted by, the rich youth of London, one of the world's most unequal cities? Do you expect that the thousands of disenfranchised, alienated, shut out and excluded youth should feel good about themselves and act like responsible, law abiding citizens? Do you think capitalism has done its best to give these kids a sense of self-worth, public service, and the tools to critically analyse and challenge their social conditions?

I mean, do you at all want to take your analysis beyond the prejudices of the bourgeois media? Ever thought about siding with the oppressed?

[DarkPast]

There's simply no way the country-wide unrests can be reduced to mere "looting", "hooliganism" or organised crime. While many individuals involved do not think of themselves as socialists, it doesn't mean the protests are not politically motivated.

Most of these people are very much aware that the current socio-political system is to blame for their grievances. They want their voices to be heard. They want change. They want a future.

A disease can hide away in an organism for a long time before visible symptoms appear.

[Vanguard1917]

Are you saying you see nothing but criminality in these events? Are you arguing that the participants are immune to the cuts in public and youth services, the shrinking of educational opportunity, the record youth unemployment rates? Do you think their actions are not motivated by these grievances? Do you think the poor youth of London are not constantly confronted with, and affronted by, the rich youth of London, one of the world's most unequal cities? Do you expect that the thousands of disenfranchised, alienated, shut out and excluded youth should feel good about themselves and act like responsible, law abiding citizens? Do you think capitalism has done its best to give these kids a sense of self-worth, public service, and the tools to critically analyse and challenge their social conditions?

I mean, do you at all want to take your analysis beyond the prejudices of the bourgeois media? Ever thought about siding with the oppressed?

I am not saying that there aren't a number of underlying social causes. Of course there are. But there are also underlying social causes when, say, football supporters from working-class communities attack the police, opposing fans and the terrace seating after a football match: deeper causes like unemployment, poverty, alienation and so on. But that doesn't make the violence at the stadium political violence, or mean that we should celebrate it. People are using words like 'uprising', 'revolt', 'insurrection', when none of those words capture the reality of what has been going in in the last few days.

[bcbm]

looting and the right to luxury (http://jacobinmag.com/blog/?p=994)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Most of these people are very much aware that the current socio-political system is to blame for their grievances. They want their voices to be heard. They want change. They want a future.

.

No they are not.

Stop putting words into peoples' mouths when you clearly know fuck all about them or this.

How patronising do you want to be?

When they want to show themselves to be aware of politics, you'll bloody well know.

Dousing naked men in petrol is not showing awareness of socio-political problems.

[Hit The North]

I am not saying that there aren't a number of underlying social causes. Of course there are. But there are also underlying social causes when, say, football supporters from working-class communities attack the police, opposing fans and the terrace seating after a football match: deeper causes like unemployment, poverty, alienation and so on. But that doesn't make the violence at the stadium political violence, or mean that we should celebrate it. People are using words like 'uprising', 'revolt', 'insurrection', when none of those words capture the reality of what has been going in in the last few days.

I think the wholesale looting of city centres and violent confrontation with the police is pretty close to an insurrection. You seem to be demanding that either these kids think out their political platform and build political organisation before they riot or that a coherent political agenda be spontaneously articulated in the space of four nights of burning and looting.

But as Marx and Engels point out in various places, whatever opinion and self-reflection social actors provide for themselves in order to justify their actions, should not be the starting point for our analysis and our results should not depend upon it.

Politically, in the here and now, as Marxists, it is important that we refuse to side with the law and order brigade, refuse to condemn the rioters from the standpoint of bourgeois morality, that is, from the viewpoint of the sanctity of private property, and offer a more penetrative analysis which actually sides with the people against the austerity drive of capitalism.

Even if you don't feel capable of celebrating these events, you should at least be resolute that the problem is made by the ruling class and their system. It is difficult to do this whilst engaging in the moralistic condemnation of the dispossessed.

[DarkPast]

No they are not.

Stop putting words into peoples' mouths when you clearly know fuck all about them or this.

How patronising do you want to be?

When they want to show themselves to be aware of politics, you'll bloody well know.

Dousing naked men in petrol is not showing awareness of socio-political problems.

Any breakdown of civil order is inescapably political. While their motives may differ, the actions of such a large, diverse number of people (this isn't just some random psycho or gang) cannot be anything but political.

[Vanguard1917]

I think the wholesale looting of city centres and violent confrontation with the police is pretty close to an insurrection. You seem to be demanding that either these kids think out their political platform and build political organisation before they riot or that a coherent political agenda be spontaneously articulated in the space of four nights of burning and looting.

If we look at the history of new radical movements, surely we see that such aspiring movements come on to the streets collectively, with at least some idea of what they respresent, and showing at least some attempt at winning some support, rather than as individuated outbursts self-consciously representing only a thorough 'fuck you' (through indiscriminate theft, destruction and assault) to society as a whole?



Even if you don't feel capable of celebrating these events, you should at least be resolute that the problem is made by the ruling class and their system. It is difficult to do this whilst engaging in the moralistic condemnation of the dispossessed.


It's possible to understand that such mindless nonsense did not come about in a social vacuum, and to denounce its causes, without feeling any need at all to celebrate or uphold the nonsense itself.

[Hit The North]

If we look at the history of new radical movements, surely we see that such aspiring movements come on to the streets collectively, with at least some idea of what they represent, and showing at least some attempt at winning some support, rather than as individuated outbursts self-consciously representing only a thorough 'fuck you' (through indiscriminate theft, destruction and assault) to society as a whole?


Firstly, who's claiming the rioters represent a new radical movement? The point is that it is up to the radicals to draw the correct analysis, not tail-end Cameron, Miliband and the Daily Mail. Secondly, the rioters did come to the streets collectively - that's why the police sat back and looked impotent and incompetent. As for them winning support, you have already filtered out the young people who say they're sick of being pushed around by the pigs, sick of being excluded form the good life, or out to show the police and the rich that that they can resist. You've already filtered out the graffiti that's gone up around these area saying "Fuck Cameron". Instead, following the media like a little lamb, you have only concentrated on the law and order issue. You have played into the hands of the ruling class with your moral outrage.


It's possible to understand that such mindless nonsense did not come about in a social vacuum, and to denounce its causes, without feeling any need at all to celebrate or uphold the nonsense itself. Or, in other words, you refuse to defend these young workers against the capitalist state. Good work.

[Vanguard1917]

Firstly, who's claiming the rioters represent a new radical movement?

But you did say that it represents something of an uprising that deserves support. What i am saying, and what all the evidence points towards, is that it has very little, if any, of the qualities that you are bestowing it. There is no cause being fought for, no notion of any collective spirit, and not even an inkling of a wish, let alone an attempt, to win wider support. This is not a politically motivated phenomenon.

[Hit The North]

But you did say that it represents something of an uprising that deserves support. What i am saying, and what all the evidence points towards, is that it has very little, if any, of the qualities that you are bestowing it. There is no cause being fought for, no notion of any collective spirit, and not even an inkling of a wish, let alone an attempt, to win wider support. This is not a politically motivated phenomenon.

By any measure it represents some kind of uprising: the rich ratchet up the oppression of the poor and the poor respond by taking it out on the petite bourgeoisie. It's pretty classic really.

We can make semantic arguments about what represents 'political action', but the crux is that you are refusing to defend these workers against the capitalist state, preferring to indulge yourself in hand-wringing moralism. This is unacceptable for socialists. At the moment in Croydon, teenagers in care and homeless adults are being remanded for Crown Court, so their punishment can be all the more severe, for crimes as heinous as stealing a packet of biscuits: link (http://news.sky.com/home/uk-news/article/16047604).

Cameron is promising swift retribution and the courts will be happy and willing instruments of the capitalist state's revenge.

[Martin Blank]

Brought these over from the long thread in Ongoing Struggles (now closed).


you might go on about the CWI being all liberal and reformist, but the fact is, the CWI has the most working class members of any organisation in the UK, we have members from hackney and tottenham and those areas who know what's going on, so what would you say to those comrades whose houses and streets were attacked? would you tell them to support their house being burnt down?

This was already covered in the original thread more than once. It was necessary to go out there and act as a voice of guidance and direction, seeking to turn the direction of the rebels away from targets that directly affect the working class and toward the real enemy. You can't do that, however, if you begin by condemning the rebels and their upheaval, as your organization has done.


Surely saying that the people organising to defend there homes are all reactionary and petty bourgeoise, that they are fascists, etc etc is just as bad as saying that the rioters are all "lumpen" and condemning the violence out of hand without thinking of the cause,

A worker defending one's home is one thing. But those out there defending the private property of the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie is another. The role of revolutionaries, if confronted with a situation where rebels were bearing down on a block of working-class homes, would be to talk them out of it, to do everything possible to turn the anger in a different direction. On the other hand, when it comes to these little shops and stores run by the petty bourgeoisie, fuck 'em with fish heads. Given the way these shopkeepers treat the poor and working-class young people who come in to buy something, let their shit burn. (If, however, there were flats about the shop that were occupied by workers, I'd suggest other means to express their class-based anger that didn't adversely affect the tenants upstairs.)


what we have to do is try to bring the whole working class together rather than just one part of it ? Thats the only way we can make a mass movement to bring down capitalism

Oh yes, another abstract slogan. That's all well and good, but facts are facts: you've already closed yourself off to a significant section of the young, non-white working class in Britain. Your "Little England" chauvinism has done you in.


and sitting on your arse from halfway across the world when you no nothing about whats going on here and *****ing and moaning about what we are doing is not going to help, our cormades are going into Tottenham and other areas where the riots are happening to talk to people involved and some people actually live there, if you actually think we are so shit then why don't you come and do something yourself, oh yeah you never would otherwise that could expose you to criticism!

If you want to pay for my plane ticket, I'll be there tomorrow. (I have $18 to my name, and about $40 worth of bills that still have to be paid.) And I would imagine that many of the other people from the U.S. and other countries who have looked at the British "left" with disgust during the last few days would say the same thing.


Are you quite aware of how small the number of active rioters were? Beyond arguing about the class content of this episode, to claim this as the action of the working class as whole is inaccurate to the point of delusion.

No one is claiming this was "the action of the working class as [a] whole". But, again, facts are facts: This was an action of a significant section of the working class -- albeit disorganized, spontaneous and lacking direction. You can figure that, for every person out on the streets, there are several more looking on in sympathy, including family, friends, co-workers, etc. Moreover, even though this rebellion was conducted by only a relatively small number of young workers, it will have a significant effect on the consciousness of the working class, especially those who experience the police violence and terrorism on a daily basis. History shows this to be the case. And I'll take the judgment of history over a thousand proclamations by members of the British "left" any day.


I worry that a lot of posters here are seeing what they want to see, imposing what they expect to see (often reasonably) in the future onto present events. I don't think that's a sensible way to approach this.

I would hope no one is actually doing this. At the same time, there has to be an acknowledgement by posters like you and others that some of us have much more experience with these kinds of rebellions than you do, and we can better grasp the dynamics that emerge from these kinds of upheavals because of that.


I frankly doubt that the far-left has been widely noticed in the first place.

Hence the problem.

[Jose Gracchus]

I don't understand why people who presumably do not have a bourgeois view on politics insist on calling (tailing the corporatist police, media, and officialdom) for docility and servility in the face of (we should remind ourselves) the capricious and arbitrary violence of the capitalist state's enforcers, and the more general social violence by deprivation which has been ratcheted up to the max as of late. This historical period is marked by essentially the full defeat of the working class, the decomposition of 20th c. capitalism's settled system of rule, and unprecedented depoliticization and social servility.

Therefore, any generalized, systemic, social break by working people with bourgeois legalism and social servility in the face of state repression and austerity should be backed by communists absolutely without equivocation or hesitation. It is these fumblings and bursts which will mark the breakthrough of the new world working class out of its historical period of defeat and retreat, onto a new epoch of heightened class struggle, both in terms of intensity, as well as complexity and organization.

[∞]

Why is that not right? Why should we care about small business?

Because the owners of small businesses are not mega-rich and at the end of the day have to provide for their family. Some of these are just pawn shops owned by some immigrant who came to the UK with very little money. I'm not against attacking major stores and retailers.

[CHE with an AK]

I prefer "reappropriation" to "looting"

[CHE with an AK]

Revolutions often start as Riots ...

http://cache.daylife.com/imageserve/05wMdW5ccQamy/610x.jpg
LET IT BURN !

[Martin Blank]

Because the owners of small businesses are not mega-rich and at the end of the day have to provide for their family.

So what? These are also the same petty-bourgeois shopkeepers that harass poor and working-class youth, call them "lazy" and "worthless" (quotes from BBC and Sky interviews with shopkeepers and their families), sic the cops on them for everything from "loitering" to false charges of "shoplifting", and generally exploit working-class communities by providing low-quality items at obscenely high prices. Fuck 'em. Let them burn.


Some of these are just pawn shops owned by some immigrant who came to the UK with very little money.

Have you ever had to actually deal with a pawn shop -- as someone pawning, not buying? It is one of the most degrading, dehumanizing experiences one can have. Double-fuck 'em. Let the people take their personal items back, distribute the rest, burn the pawn shop to the ground and piss on the ashes.


I'm not against attacking major stores and retailers.

So it's only attacks on small-scale exploiters that make you recoil in horror? OK. Good to know.

[StalinFanboy]

Alcohol, cigarettes, TVs, and Playstations? If this was simply all about a longing to acquire products the kids could never otherwise afford, how would that explain the random arsons, burning buses and people's cars, attacking people on the street, and all the other acts of random destruction and violence in their own neighbourhoods?
Their own neighborhoods? The majority of the world doesn't own the land they live on anymore. They aren't burning their neighborhoods, because they don't have their own neighborhoods. This isn't our world. Not one bit of it.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

So what? These are also the same petty-bourgeois shopkeepers that harass poor and working-class youth, call them "lazy" and "worthless" (quotes from BBC and Sky interviews with shopkeepers and their families), sic the cops on them for everything from "loitering" to false charges of "shoplifting", and generally exploit working-class communities by providing low-quality items at obscenely high prices. Fuck 'em. Let them burn.




How much do you want to generalise?

Not every small shop owner is petty-bourgeois and not every petty-bourgeois shopkeepers is the 'little Englander'-type that you are stereotyping here.

They're obviously not the most revolutionary group in society but they're the sort of people you want to win over to Socialism, rather than driving them to the defence of the Capitalists.

[Devrim]

Not every small shop owner is petty-bourgeois

What class are they then?

Devrim

[Martin Blank]

Not every small shop owner is petty-bourgeois

:blink::blink::blink:

The mind boggles....


and not every petty-bourgeois shopkeepers is the 'little Englander'-type that you are stereotyping here.

Actually, I haven't been talking about the shopkeepers having problems with "Little England" chauvinism. I've been using that against the paternalistic and parochial British "left".


They're obviously not the most revolutionary group in society but they're the sort of people you want to win over to Socialism, rather than driving them to the defence of the Capitalists.

Have you not been paying attention to what's going on around you? If you're looking to keep the petty bourgeoisie from coming to "the defence of the Capitalists", you're about 100 years too late. Seriously, have you even read any Marx?

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

So what? These are also the same petty-bourgeois shopkeepers that harass poor and working-class youth, call them "lazy" and "worthless" (quotes from BBC and Sky interviews with shopkeepers and their families), sic the cops on them for everything from "loitering" to false charges of "shoplifting", and generally exploit working-class communities by providing low-quality items at obscenely high prices. Fuck 'em. Let them burn.



Have you ever had to actually deal with a pawn shop -- as someone pawning, not buying? It is one of the most degrading, dehumanizing experiences one can have. Double-fuck 'em. Let the people take their personal items back, distribute the rest, burn the pawn shop to the ground and piss on the ashes.



So it's only attacks on small-scale exploiters that make you recoil in horror? OK. Good to know.


Hold on, how about a bit of compassion, though? I mean, what are we doing here? We are of the left, surely, because we feel the human race is dehumanized by capitalism and forced to live in the cash nexus? Right? Now some shopkeeper who has a family to feed and look after, potentially has his living destroyed and we're supposed to say "ah - fuck him". What his he supposed to do when the rent is due? "Sorry - I don't agree with capitalism, it infringes on my human rights, so I shan't be paying this months rent...." 1 more family on the street... oh well, fuck them - they were counter-revolutionary.

[CommunityBeliever]

Hold on, how about a bit of compassion, though? I mean, what are we doing here? We are of the left, surely, because we feel the human race is dehumanized by capitalism and forced to live in the cash nexus? Right? Now some shopkeeper who has a family to feed and look after, potentially has his living destroyed and we're supposed to say "ah - fuck him". What his he supposed to do when the rent is due? "Sorry - I don't agree with capitalism, it infringes on my human rights, so I shan't be paying this months rent...." 1 more family on the street.

Surely we can feel for both the aforementioned shopkeeper and for the youth who have no future and who have been led to the point of rioting.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

Surely we can feel for both the aforementioned shopkeeper and for the youth who have no future and who have been led to the point of rioting.


Absolutely. The "unless you're unemployed or a wage labourer we don't want you, you bourgeois scum" really isn't going to win the left any friends at all. At the last general election UKIP and the BNP got almost 1.5 million votes between them. The two highest scoring socialist parties combined a total of 20,000. The far-right is more credible than even the moderate left.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

The EDL would get more votes than socialists on their own, with half the candidates. But fuck it - let's keep flinging about "enemy of the people petty bourgeois scum" platitudes. Make them feel, like, really really ashamed. That'll do the trick.

[Hit The North]

Hold on, how about a bit of compassion, though?

It is not the job of the left to stand on the sidelines feeling compassion. No one is claiming that the burning and looting is morally justified. However, it is our job to represent the interests of our class, to demonstrate how the unrest is the fault of capitalism, specifically four decades of neo-liberalism, the expansion of the gulf between rich and poor, the current contraction of economic opportunity for the poor, while the rich continue to post record profits.

The petite bourgeoisie may not be the real enemy, but as a group caught between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, they will end up getting squeezed both ways - by the bankers withdrawal of loan-capital and by the poor when they riot.

But if you want to represent their interests, then join the Lib Dems or the Labour Party and give up your pretence of proletarian revolutionary politics.

Or worse...

The EDL would get more votes than socialists on their own, with half the candidates. But fuck it - let's keep flinging about "enemy of the people petty bourgeois scum" platitudes. Make them feel, like, really really ashamed. That'll do the trick.
Instead of joining the Lib Dems why don't you tail-end the EDL, if you think their strategy is so popular and popularity is your goal :rolleyes:

[Jose Gracchus]

Not every small shop owner is petty-bourgeois

I'm quite comfortable generalizing about matters of definition. :rolleyes:

Jesus Christ, has no one ever read Crime and Punishment? Somehow Dostoyevsky thought it'd come across as axiomatic that pawnbrokers could be considered parasitic and exploitative on the people as a premise of the book, but apparently we've dropped far off from the basic realizations of our past.

[CHE with an AK]

At the last general election UKIP and the BNP got almost 1.5 million votes between them. The two highest scoring socialist parties combined a total of 20,000. The far-right is more credible than even the moderate left.
If voting actually changed anything about capitalism, they would oulaw it.

As Mao said, political power comes out of the barrel of a gun (imo), not a voting booth.

Plus, this isn't a popularity contest, we don't think Marxism is right, we KNOW it is.

The petty-bourgeois can either see the writing on the wall and join us, or they'll have to be "persuaded" to, when their parasitic pawn shop is in ashes.

[StarCityPartisan]

I am glad people are hitting the streets in the UK, but looting is not the revolutionary way. During the Russian Revolution, sailors and other bolshiveks were looting one of the palaces. One unknown comrade yelled something to the effect of "Comrades, this is the property of the people!" And they put everything back. If we revolutionaries do not remind the masses of proper revolutionary discipline, the uprisings we want will be emotion based. I agree the working class anger at centuries of abuse by the established order is justified, but humans are rational creatures. Never act rashly when taking revolutionary action.

[Obs]

If voting actually changed anything about capitalism, they would oulaw it.

As Mao said, political power comes out of the barrel of a gun (imo), not a voting booth.

Plus, this isn't a popularity contest, we don't think Marxism is right, we KNOW it is.

The petty-bourgeois can either see the writing on the wall and join us, or they'll have to be "persuaded" to, when their parasitic pawn shop is in ashes.
Jesus Christ, you even think in catchphrases, don't you?

[CHE with an AK]

Jesus Christ, you even think in catchphrases, don't you?
I don't believe in Jesus, sorry. :)

As for "catch phrases", if someone already said it better - I am confident in using their words. Nothing is original.

[InMom'sBasement]

My mom said all the rioters were black, or nearly all of them.

I said mom, that's racist!

Even if it's true you can't say it!

UP WITH THE REVOLUTION!

[piet11111]

Not every small shop owner is petty-bourgeois

Actually its the definition of petty-bourgeois.

[вор в законе]

I find the title of this thread, "UK looting" very reactionary. It accepts the ideological propaganda of the capitalist system. It should be renamed into "UK Redistribution of Wealth".

[CHE with an AK]

http://static.life.com/ugc/491/ugc1150491/watermarkcomp.jpg


Camilla: "Charles darling, how tall are the palace gates again?"

[Sam_b]

You do understand those Charles and Camilla pictures are from last year, yes?

[AnonymousOne]

You do understand those Charles and Camilla pictures are from last year, yes?

They also aren't serious, or relevant to what's being discussed. :)

[Sam_b]

Yes, I agree. Doesn't make what you did in another thread any better like.

[CHE with an AK]

You do understand those Charles and Camilla pictures are from last year, yes?
Yes. But just as with the made up quotes, it is not supposed to be taken literal.




They also aren't serious, or relevant to what's being discussed.
Relevance is in the eye of the beholder. As for "serious"ness - some on this board are already too uptight most of the time.

[∞]

You're right, fuck them.

[Tommy4ever]

Plus, this isn't a popularity contest, we don't think Marxism is right, we KNOW it is.


Good luck leading your glorius Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard to revolution with just you and a couple of your friends.

[CHE with an AK]

Good luck leading your glorius Marxist-Leninist-Maoist vanguard to revolution with just you and a couple of your friends.
Good luck leading your glorious Non-Doctrinaire Communist study group to the Edinburgh Starbucks. :thumbup1:

[∞]

I know its off-topic but I really hate this smilie---->:thumbup1:

Whenever someone uses it they look so stupid.

[MattShizzle]

BTW that lunatic Ann Coulter advocates just killing them all - along with blaming the UK for having a social safety net that isn't as horribly lacking as in the US
http://www.addictinginfo.org/2011/08/11/ann-coulter-suggests-genocide-in-london/

[Tim Finnegan]

No one is claiming this was "the action of the working class as [a] whole". But, again, facts are facts: This was an action of a significant section of the working class -- albeit disorganized, spontaneous and lacking direction.
Well, you originally claimed that "the working class has again outpaced you", which to seems to suggest that you're talking about the working class either as a whole. Am I misinterpreting?


You can figure that, for every person out on the streets, there are several more looking on in sympathy, including family, friends, co-workers, etc.Well, we can assume. I don't know about "figure". I'd have to see a bit more evidence for that than what I'm seeing, which can be roughly described as "mixed feelings". http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif


Moreover, even though this rebellion was conducted by only a relatively small number of young workers, it will have a significant effect on the consciousness of the working class, especially those who experience the police violence and terrorism on a daily basis. History shows this to be the case. And I'll take the judgment of history over a thousand proclamations by members of the British "left" any day.Quite probably. I'm in no disagreement on this point.


I would hope no one is actually doing this.I hardly say it with enthusiasm.


At the same time, there has to be an acknowledgement by posters like you and others that some of us have much more experience with these kinds of rebellions than you do, and we can better grasp the dynamics that emerge from these kinds of upheavals because of that.I'm quite prepared to recognise that, but I don't think that prevents me from expressing scepticism of this point or that. Quite frankly, if you can't convince me without attempting to pull rank, then you're not going to get very far talking to the young people who are actually involved in this sort of thing.


(Also, am I the only one detecting a certain hostility towards "the British left" on the part of some non-British posters? Perhaps I'm just being over-sensitive- although I have little to no investment in the organised British left, so I wouldn't figure myself as overly prone to that- but there seems to be a certain emerging attitude that "if only we were there, it would all be different!", and I'm really not sure how I feel about that.)

[Tommy4ever]

I know its off-topic but I really hate this smilie---->:thumbup1:

Whenever someone uses it they look so stupid.

:thumbdown:

[Vanguard1917]

The petite bourgeoisie may not be the real enemy, but as a group caught between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, they will end up getting squeezed both ways - by the bankers withdrawal of loan-capital and by the poor when they riot.

But if you want to represent their interests, then join the Lib Dems or the Labour Party and give up your pretence of proletarian revolutionary politics.

What's so great about looting the corner shops of immigrants? Would your view have been so rosy had the rioters been predominantly white as well as working class -- e.g. white English kids attacking the shops of Bengalis and Kurds? Why not?

Clearly there is nothing inherently progressive about violence against small-shopkeepers and their property. If there was, we would have been supporting the white working-class yobs with their 'paki shop' rampages in the '70s and '80s.

While not for a moment upholding the class position of petit-bourgeois businessmen (who in many cases indeed have feelings of contempt against the working class, especially its youth), it's entirely legitimate to disagree with violence that has nothing to do with furthering working-class interests.

[LegendZ]

What happens to the small shop owners who have to replace everything in their store? What if they can't afford to do so or they do and business doesn't pick up? They close up and become proletariat's?

Big business I could give less than two donkey shits about. But the small business owner who came from a working class family and spent years as a proletariat just to get a small store and "do better" now goes back to where they started. Of course they are the very small minority but I still feel sympathy for them.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

What happens to the small shop owners who have to replace everything in their store? What if they can't afford to do so or they do and business doesn't pick up? They close up and become proletariat's?

Big business I could give less than two donkey shits about. But the small business owner who came from a working class family and spent years as a proletariat just to get a small store and "do better" now goes back to where they started. Of course they are the very small minority but I still feel sympathy for them.

Yep. The process of proletarianisation.

My grandparents had a small shop. It was essentially the first floor of their house on the main road, they didn't employ anyone.

They closed up and my grandpa worked in a post sorting room til he was 75.

Those evil small shop owners.:rolleyes:

[Martin Blank]

Now some shopkeeper who has a family to feed and look after, potentially has his living destroyed and we're supposed to say "ah - fuck him". What his he supposed to do when the rent is due?

Go get a real job -- i.e., proletarianize.


What happens to the small shop owners who have to replace everything in their store? What if they can't afford to do so or they do and business doesn't pick up? They close up and become proletariat's?

YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!

[Martin Blank]

Well, you originally claimed that "the working class has again outpaced you", which to seems to suggest that you're talking about the working class either as a whole. Am I misinterpreting?

It can be both. It may have been only a portion of workers out on the streets, but, as I've said before, it will have a broader effect on the working class as a whole. That was what I was thinking of when I wrote that the working class has outpaced the British "left".


Well, we can assume. I don't know about "figure". I'd have to see a bit more evidence for that than what I'm seeing, which can be roughly described as "mixed feelings". http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

I was using "figure" in the same sense as "assume" or "reckon". (Actually, my first draft used "reckon", but that didn't seem like it would be as well understood.)


Quite probably. I'm in no disagreement on this point.

That's good, because I think this is a critical point to consider.


I hardly say it with enthusiasm.

Again, I'm glad to hear that.


I'm quite prepared to recognise that, but I don't think that prevents me from expressing scepticism of this point or that. Quite frankly, if you can't convince me without attempting to pull rank, then you're not going to get very far talking to the young people who are actually involved in this sort of thing.

No, it doesn't, and I wasn't attempting to shut you down by bringing it up. My point was that some of us have first-hand experience with similar rebellions. We witnessed them, analyzed them and saw what developed in their wake. I think the point that we are trying to make is that there are a specific set of dynamics that emerge from these rebellions, and some of them can be very positive, in terms of making progress toward a mass workers' movement and a revolution, if self-described partisans of the working class do not make fundamental mistakes and squander the potential that exists. We've seen what to do and what not to do -- what works and what doesn't -- and want to see that the old mistakes are not repeated. That was the point.


(Also, am I the only one detecting a certain hostility towards "the British left" on the part of some non-British posters? Perhaps I'm just being over-sensitive- although I have little to no investment in the organised British left, so I wouldn't figure myself as overly prone to that- but there seems to be a certain emerging attitude that "if only we were there, it would all be different!", and I'm really not sure how I feel about that.)

I don't think you're wrong about there developing some hostility toward the British "left". Their response to this rebellion has been atrocious and, in the case of some groups, criminal. I do think there are a lot of us here who have lost all respect we may have had for the various organizations and groups in the British "left", and if that has fed into an air of, "If only we were there", it is because of the frustration and anger that the rest of us are feeling as a result of the paternalist and parochial character of those groups. We're watching the British "left" commit an historic betrayal that will cost them for at least a generation, if not longer, and they don't even fathom what they have done. For those of us who are internationalists in practice, having to sit thousands of miles away and watch this unfold is maddening. So, yeah, it will breed a lot of hostility and anger.

[Tim Finnegan]

Fair enough, fair enough. To be honest, I'm having a hard time cobbling together a coherent opinion on this whole episode, so I won't bother pushing any particular point.

Anyway, this was interesting:


http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/europe/08/11/ukriots.accused/index.html

Shock over 'respectable' lives behind masks of UK rioters



London (CNN) -- Before they started appearing in court, most people assumed London's rioters and looters were unemployed youths with no hope and no future.

So there was much surprise when details of the accused began to emerge, and they included some from wealthy backgrounds or with good jobs.

Those passing through London's courtrooms on Tuesday and Wednesday -- some courts sat overnight to cope with the numbers -- have included a teaching assistant, a lifeguard, a postman, a chef, a charity worker, a millionaire's daughter and an 11-year-old boy, newspapers reported.

The tabloid Sun (http://www.thesun.co.uk/sol/homepage/news/3745609/Riots-Meet-the-accused.html) newspaper wrote in its opinion page on Thursday of the "sick" society described by Prime Minister David Cameron: "The sickness starts on welfare-addicted estates where feckless parents let children run wild."

But its front-page headline told a different story about the accused: "Lifeguard, postman, hairdresser, teacher, millionaire's daughter, chef and schoolboy, 11."

The Daily Mail (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024396/London-riots-2011-looters-court-Primary-school-worker-postman-dad-boy-11.html) reported: "While the trouble has been largely blamed on feral teenagers, many of those paraded before the courts yesterday led apparently respectable lives."

The upmarket Daily Telegraph (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/crime/8694655/UK-riots-grammar-school-girl-is-accused-of-theft.html) devoted its page three to the case of Laura Johnson, the 19-year-old daughter of a company director who pleaded not guilty to stealing £5,000 ($8,000) of electrical goods, under the headline: "Girl who has it all is accused of theft."

The newspaper said she lived in a converted farmhouse in the leafy London suburb of Orpington, Kent, with extensive grounds and a tennis court, had studied at one of the best-performing state schools in the country and now attends the University of Exeter.

Reporter Andrew Gilligan wrote in the Daily Telegraph: "Here in court, as David Cameron condemned the 'sickness' in parts of British society, we saw clearly, for the first time, the face of the riot: stripped of its hoods and masks, dressed in white prison T-shirts and handcuffed to burly security guards.

"It was rather different from the one we had been expecting."

He added of the defendants at Highbury Magistrates Court in north London: "Most were teenagers or in their early twenties, but a surprising number were older.

"Most interestingly of all, they were predominantly white, and many had jobs."

Most newspapers highlighted the case of Alexis Bailey, a 31-year-old learning mentor in an elementary school, who pleaded guilty to burglary with intent to steal at an electrical store in Croydon, south of London.

It was reported that Bailey surrendered to police without stealing anything.

The youngest defendant so far -- an 11-year-old boy -- also gained much attention in newspapers.

The boy, who cannot be named for legal reasons, from Romford, east of London, admitted stealing a £50 ($80) trash can from a department store, the Guardian (http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk/2011/aug/10/london-riots-school-assistant-pleads-guilty/) reported.

The Daily Mail highlighted the cases of Barry Naine, a 42-year-old charity worker charged with burglary; postman Jeffrey Ebanks, 32, and his student nephew Jamal Ebanks, 18, allegedly caught in a car stuffed with electrical goods near a looted Croydon store.

It also reported that Jason Matthews, a 35-year-old new father arrested in a Tesco supermarket, told police he "was not one of the bad ones" and needed diapers for his baby; and that Christopher Heart, a 23-year-old scaffolder and father of two, shouted "sorry for the inconvenience" and broke down in tears after admitting burglary at a sports shop in east London.

Lifeguard Aaron Mulholland, 30, wept as he appeared in court accused of joining thieves in a cell phone shop, the Daily Mail reported.

The Sun reported that an organic chef, Fitzroy Thomas, 43, and his 47-year-old brother Ronald, denied smashing up a branch of the Nando's chicken restaurant chain.

The Metropolitan Police (http://content.met.police.uk/Page/NewsAppeals/) in London said on its website on Thursday that 401 people have been charged so far.

Greater Manchester Police (http://www.gmp.police.uk/mainsite/pages/news.htm) said five men aged between 46 and 23 had already been jailed for their part in the disorder.

West Midlands Police (http://www.west-midlands.police.uk/) said 26 people, including a 44-year-old man, had appeared before an overnight court session in relation to the disorder in Birmingham.I don't know what the implications of this are, and I certainly suspect that they're exaggerating the role played by individuals like this in the fighting with the police to support a line that would claim this as purely individualistic and apolitical criminality, but it does seem to suggest that, on the one hand, disenchantment with capitalism extends far further than just the ghettos, and on the other that the impoverished and minority youths who were involved apparently spent more time fighting the police and less time looting than has been recognised. (It certainly seems to challenge some of the talk about "lumpens" and "reflecting capitalist ideology" that has been going around.) I don't know what a keener mind than mine would make of it. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

[brigadista]

never thought i would see something like this in the telegraph...

http://blogs.telegraph.co.uk/news/peteroborne/100100708/the-moral-decay-of-our-society-is-as-bad-at-the-top-as-the-bottom/




David Cameron, Ed Miliband and the entire British political class came together yesterday to denounce the rioters. They were of course right to say that the actions of these looters, arsonists and muggers were abhorrent and criminal, and that the police should be given more support.
But there was also something very phony and hypocritical about all the shock and outrage expressed in parliament. MPs spoke about the week’s dreadful events as if they were nothing to do with them.
I cannot accept that this is the case. Indeed, I believe that the criminality in our streets cannot be dissociated from the moral disintegration in the highest ranks of modern British society. The last two decades have seen a terrifying decline in standards among the British governing elite. It has become acceptable for our politicians to lie and to cheat. An almost universal culture of selfishness and greed has grown up.
It is not just the feral youth of Tottenham who have forgotten they have duties as well as rights. So have the feral rich of Chelsea and Kensington. A few years ago, my wife and I went to a dinner party in a large house in west London. A security guard prowled along the street outside, and there was much talk of the “north-south divide”, which I took literally for a while until I realised that my hosts were facetiously referring to the difference between those who lived north and south of Kensington High Street.
Most of the people in this very expensive street were every bit as deracinated and cut off from the rest of Britain as the young, unemployed men and women who have caused such terrible damage over the last few days. For them, the repellent Financial Times magazine How to Spend It is a bible. I’d guess that few of them bother to pay British tax if they can avoid it, and that fewer still feel the sense of obligation to society that only a few decades ago came naturally to the wealthy and better off.
Yet we celebrate people who live empty lives like this. A few weeks ago, I noticed an item in a newspaper saying that the business tycoon Sir Richard Branson was thinking of moving his headquarters to Switzerland. This move was represented as a potential blow to the Chancellor of the Exchequer, George Osborne, because it meant less tax revenue.
I couldn’t help thinking that in a sane and decent world such a move would be a blow to Sir Richard, not the Chancellor. People would note that a prominent and wealthy businessman was avoiding British tax and think less of him. Instead, he has a knighthood and is widely feted. The same is true of the brilliant retailer Sir Philip Green. Sir Philip’s businesses could never survive but for Britain’s famous social and political stability, our transport system to shift his goods and our schools to educate his workers.
Yet Sir Philip, who a few years ago sent an extraordinary £1 billion dividend offshore, seems to have little intention of paying for much of this. Why does nobody get angry or hold him culpable? I know that he employs expensive tax lawyers and that everything he does is legal, but he surely faces ethical and moral questions just as much as does a young thug who breaks into one of Sir Philip’s shops and steals from it?
Our politicians – standing sanctimoniously on their hind legs in the Commons yesterday – are just as bad. They have shown themselves prepared to ignore common decency and, in some cases, to break the law. David Cameron is happy to have some of the worst offenders in his Cabinet. Take the example of Francis Maude, who is charged with tackling public sector waste – which trade unions say is a euphemism for waging war on low‑paid workers. Yet Mr Maude made tens of thousands of pounds by breaching the spirit, though not the law, surrounding MPs’ allowances.
A great deal has been made over the past few days of the greed of the rioters for consumer goods, not least by Rotherham MP Denis MacShane who accurately remarked, “What the looters wanted was for a few minutes to enter the world of Sloane Street consumption.” This from a man who notoriously claimed £5,900 for eight laptops. Of course, as an MP he obtained these laptops legally through his expenses.
Yesterday, the veteran Labour MP Gerald Kaufman asked the Prime Minister to consider how these rioters can be “reclaimed” by society. Yes, this is indeed the same Gerald Kaufman who submitted a claim for three months’ expenses totalling £14,301.60, which included £8,865 for a Bang & Olufsen television.
Or take the Salford MP Hazel Blears, who has been loudly calling for draconian action against the looters. I find it very hard to make any kind of ethical distinction between Blears’s expense cheating and tax avoidance, and the straight robbery carried out by the looters.
The Prime Minister showed no sign that he understood that something stank about yesterday’s Commons debate. He spoke of morality, but only as something which applies to the very poor: “We will restore a stronger sense of morality and responsibility – in every town, in every street and in every estate.” He appeared not to grasp that this should apply to the rich and powerful as well.
The tragic truth is that Mr Cameron is himself guilty of failing this test. It is scarcely six weeks since he jauntily turned up at the News International summer party, even though the media group was at the time subject to not one but two police investigations. Even more notoriously, he awarded a senior Downing Street job to the former News of the World editor Andy Coulson, even though he knew at the time that Coulson had resigned after criminal acts were committed under his editorship. The Prime Minister excused his wretched judgment by proclaiming that “everybody deserves a second chance”. It was very telling yesterday that he did not talk of second chances as he pledged exemplary punishment for the rioters and looters.
These double standards from Downing Street are symptomatic of widespread double standards at the very top of our society. It should be stressed that most people (including, I know, Telegraph readers) continue to believe in honesty, decency, hard work, and putting back into society at least as much as they take out.
But there are those who do not. Certainly, the so-called feral youth seem oblivious to decency and morality. But so are the venal rich and powerful – too many of our bankers, footballers, wealthy businessmen and politicians.
Of course, most of them are smart and wealthy enough to make sure that they obey the law. That cannot be said of the sad young men and women, without hope or aspiration, who have caused such mayhem and chaos over the past few days. But the rioters have this defence: they are just following the example set by senior and respected figures in society. Let’s bear in mind that many of the youths in our inner cities have never been trained in decent values. All they have ever known is barbarism. Our politicians and bankers, in sharp contrast, tend to have been to good schools and universities and to have been given every opportunity in life.
Something has gone horribly wrong in Britain. If we are ever to confront the problems which have been exposed in the past week, it is essential to bear in mind that they do not only exist in inner-city housing estates.
The culture of greed and impunity we are witnessing on our TV screens stretches right up into corporate boardrooms and the Cabinet. It embraces the police and large parts of our media. It is not just its damaged youth, but Britain itself that needs a moral reformation.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Fair enough, fair enough. To be honest, I'm having a hard time cobbling together a coherent opinion on this whole episode, so I won't bother pushing any particular point.

Anyway, this was interesting:

I don't know what the implications of this are, and I certainly suspect that they're exaggerating the role played by individuals like this in the fighting with the police to support a line that would claim this as purely individualistic and apolitical criminality, but it does seem to suggest that, on the one hand, disenchantment with capitalism extends far further than just the ghettos, and on the other that the impoverished and minority youths who were involved apparently spent more time fighting the police and less time looting than has been recognised. (It certainly seems to challenge some of the talk about "lumpens" and "reflecting capitalist ideology" that has been going around.) I don't know what a keener mind than mine would make of it. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

It reflects more the hypothesis that the consumerist, individual go-it-alone element of neo-liberalism has become so entrenched in society that even so called 'respectable' (whoever is the judge of that!) people can resort to looting, not because they need, but because they can.

The looting element, and the idea that it wasn't all based on need but want, is really a sad indictment of the past 30-40 years of economic and social policy by successive governments.

[Hit The North]

What's so great about looting the corner shops of immigrants? Would your view have been so rosy had the rioters been predominantly white as well as working class -- e.g. white English kids attacking the shops of Bengalis and Kurds? Why not?


Ok, firstly, let's stop talking in terms of hypotheticals. The rioters were not white kids engaging in racist pogroms against immigrants. In fact, as the unfolding court cases are proving, the rioters were an extremely diverse group, especially in terms of ethnicity. But, almost without exception, they were persons of the proletariat. Moreover, the only racist discourse which has emerged from these events are coming explicitly from the EDL and implicitly by the Government. So really your question is an attempt at evasion and I figure you already know what my answer would be.


Clearly there is nothing inherently progressive about violence against small-shopkeepers and their property. If there was, we would have been supporting the white working-class yobs with their 'paki shop' rampages in the '70s and '80s.
Well I never said the looting was progressive, only that these kind of events open up the possibilities and opportunities for radicalisation. It is a mistake to view these events in the abstract. It is possible to argue that even if the looting in general was counter-productive and only increased the suffering, there remained positive, even radical, elements to the chaos. For a start, one feature of the London riots was that the various gangs put aside their differences and invited their rivals to the carnival of destruction. Is this the first stirring of solidarity between the various 'ends'? Many of these kids don't have the luxury of a workplace in order to learn lessons of solidarity so maybe they have to learn in another way.

Also it doesn't take a genius to see that looting can sometimes be radical in itself. It's not the act that counts but the intent of the actors and the social relations. So here's my hypothetical: If these kids had got on their blackberries and decided to go looting up West in Chelsea and Fulham and they were trashing the bistros and the ludicrous boutiques, and spraying graffiti calling for the death of the rich, I'd probably call that radical. I suspect you wouldn't, though, because, like, looting is just bad, right?


While not for a moment upholding the class position of petit-bourgeois businessmen (who in many cases indeed have feelings of contempt against the working class, especially its youth), it's entirely legitimate to disagree with violence that has nothing to do with furthering working-class interests.I'm not sure what you mean by "legitimate", it is certainly possible and defensible. But it's a question of how far you allow your disagreement with the events to colour your response - particularly your public response.

Finally, I don't think it is yet clear how this rioting has furthered or retarded the working class interest. It will depend on a number of factors in interplay. But surely any events which contribute, even in a small way, to the fall of this rotten government and its austerity-driven war on the poor is good for the working class?

The government and the police top-brass are currently at each others throats playing the blame game. The Tory instinct to go in hard against the rioters will rankle with the liberals and we can expect more stress lines to appear in that partnership. Public opinion is worried about the impact of further cuts. The trustworthiness of the bankers, the mass media, the police and the politicians is seen as dubious by many. It is fun and games right now. The legitimacy of the state is being called into question. I don't understand how a revolutionary is not excited by all this.

[manic expression]

I don't think you're wrong about there developing some hostility toward the British "left". Their response to this rebellion has been atrocious and, in the case of some groups, criminal.
For the most part, you're totally right. However, we should not lose sight of those among the British left that have come out with a principled position on the events of the past week. The Revolutionary Communist Group (http://www.revolutionarycommunist.org/index.php/britain/2291-eyewitness-report-of-the-manchester-uprising-9-august-2011) is one such organization.

[I.Drink.Your.Milkshake]

It is not the job of the left to stand on the sidelines feeling compassion.

Nope. Didn't say it was. I was attempting to appeal to inherent compassion in human beings. Anyone with an ounce of humanity in their heart has compassion, don't they? I know, personally, some of the small business owners in Handsworth that got their windows smashed, I see them and talk to them every day. I also know a couple of small business owners that have very strong left wing leanings and, at the risk of being called a sell-out, I would have to say that under capitalist society I would much rather be a small business owner/own my own shop and be my own boss than work in a factory because it's the good honest prole thing to do. The point of my post was that we should care about people and not pigeonhole people based on superficial knowledge of them. That's what the right do.



No one is claiming that the burning and looting is morally justified. However, it is our job to represent the interests of our class, to demonstrate how the unrest is the fault of capitalism, specifically four decades of neo-liberalism, the expansion of the gulf between rich and poor, the current contraction of economic opportunity for the poor, while the rich continue to post record profits.


I totally agree. But I think it's the job of the left not simply to represent the interests of our class (Actually, in traditional terms, I would be classed as middle class........... there I've SAID it.... someone here has actually admitted to it. The only middle class person on revleft (yeah, right!).). I'm neither proud nor ashamed of that. It just is. Same as being English, which Im neither proud nor ashamed of either, I was just there and got called it.), but to represent the interests of humanity as a whole. Obviously the oppressed, wage labourers and particularly the traditional working class etc should be the at the heart of those the left appeals to, especially initially, but it should be the job of the left to demonstrate why socialism is of benefit to humanity as a whole and why, we believe, events such as those that have taken place over the last week in England would not happen when socialism is implemented.



The petite bourgeoisie may not be the real enemy, but as a group caught between the proletariat and the bourgeoisie, they will end up getting squeezed both ways - by the bankers withdrawal of loan-capital and by the poor when they riot.


yeah I'll go with that, too...

but:



But if you want to represent their interests, then join the Lib Dems or the Labour Party and give up your pretence of proletarian revolutionary politics.

Or worse...

Instead of joining the Lib Dems why don't you tail-end the EDL, if you think their strategy is so popular and popularity is your goal :rolleyes:


Brilliant, yeah. I express frustration that the left is so sidelined therefore "WHY DONT U GO SUPPORT THE EDL?!?!?!LOLOLOLOL"?>£!">RW$ERYOLKJGT. SPLITTER!!!!". As a reply it's on the same level as "IF YOU DONT LIKE IT HERE GO LIVE IN CHINA". Isn't popularity the goal of the left? Popularity of our ideals? Im a socialist because I believe it makes blindingly obvious sense, but that does not mean I can't feel frustrated when we are more marginalised than the EDL/BNP. Are we not here discussing the very fact that these riots prove that there is a general feeling in the public that can be capitalised on? Is that not the point of all these discussions?

Now, related to the riots generally and not a response to ProleArtThreat:

I can only speak for Birmingham, but right-wing views were far more prevalent than left wing views amongst a lot of the people taking part. A couple of the shots on the police website are of notorious Birmingham skinheads (unfortunately I only know them by face and not name and address otherwise I would be more than happy to grass them up.) There was a also lot of anti eastern european immigrant feeling. I think this is a failure of the left (as well as propaganda in the media). But then popularity isnt our goal is it?

[Bitter Ashes]

I'm going to have to spell this out.

Fuck the filth. Fuck shop owners. Fuck the government. Fuck the rich twats who watch their property prices. Fuck the nazis. Grab whatever you can and get one up for a fucking change.

Now, what is our problem with that? Pick your side. You're either with those twats above, or you're with the people who we've said for years we are actually supposed to be standing up with. If you were so concerned that you wanted to stop direct action missing it's targets, then for fuck's sake, get out there and point out the legitimate and illegitimate targets.

I cannot believe there are folk here selling out to gain the favour of the Middle Class.

FUCK THE MIDDLE CLASS!

[Die Neue Zeit]

How much do you want to generalise?

Not every small shop owner is petty-bourgeois and not every petty-bourgeois shopkeepers is the 'little Englander'-type that you are stereotyping here.

They're obviously not the most revolutionary group in society but they're the sort of people you want to win over to Socialism, rather than driving them to the defence of the Capitalists.


Actually, I haven't been talking about the shopkeepers having problems with "Little England" chauvinism. I've been using that against the paternalistic and parochial British "left".

Have you not been paying attention to what's going on around you? If you're looking to keep the petty bourgeoisie from coming to "the defence of the Capitalists", you're about 100 years too late. Seriously, have you even read any Marx?

Within the context of the most developed capitalist countries, El_Granma, Miles is spot on.


I don't understand why people who presumably do not have a bourgeois view on politics insist on calling (tailing the corporatist police, media, and officialdom) for docility and servility in the face of (we should remind ourselves) the capricious and arbitrary violence of the capitalist state's enforcers, and the more general social violence by deprivation which has been ratcheted up to the max as of late. This historical period is marked by essentially the full defeat of the working class, the decomposition of 20th c. capitalism's settled system of rule, and unprecedented depoliticization and social servility.

Therefore, any generalized, systemic, social break by working people with bourgeois legalism and social servility in the face of state repression and austerity should be backed by communists absolutely without equivocation or hesitation. It is these fumblings and bursts which will mark the breakthrough of the new world working class out of its historical period of defeat and retreat, onto a new epoch of heightened class struggle, both in terms of intensity, as well as complexity and organization.

Similar circumstances occurred after the 1848 defeats, but it was movements of the likes of Lassalle (with healthy and heavy doses of mass civil disobedience) that paved the way, not looting sprees.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Miles was correct about the shop owners. I was just getting a bit pissed off with riot-love, and made a bit of a theoretical blooper.

Hannah: why does this have to be an either/or? I don't see what shop owners have really done wrong in this situation, so one can quite conceivably have no sympathy for the large companies that suffered looting yet be sympathetic to people who own shops yet do not control the means of production.

[S.Artesian]

I'm going to have to spell this out.

Fuck the filth. Fuck shop owners. Fuck the government. Fuck the rich twats who watch their property prices. Fuck the nazis. Grab whatever you can and get one up for a fucking change.

Now, what is our problem with that? Pick your side. You're either with those twats above, or you're with the people who we've said for years we are actually supposed to be standing up with. If you were so concerned that you wanted to stop direct action missing it's targets, then for fuck's sake, get out there and point out the legitimate and illegitimate targets.

I cannot believe there are folk here selling out to gain the favour of the Middle Class.

FUCK THE MIDDLE CLASS!

Much prefer using the word "twit" myself-- less sexual and gender connotations the better-- but other than that-- beautifully expressed. Direct, simple, painfully accurate. I picked my side long ago.

"All hail, then, to the mob, the incarnation of progress" James Connolly.

[Nox]

Grab whatever you can and get one up for a fucking change.

Yeah! Take your fair share by force! :thumbup1:

[A Marxist Historian]

I don't think the Black Panthers caused segregation in the US - they developed in that way BECAUSE the working class was split along those lines. They also consciously tried to reach out to non-black radicals for allies and solidarity even though they felt politically it was important for black people to organize themselves.

But on the whole, a Black Panther Party wouldn't develop in the UK or even US right now because conditions are somewhat different right now: there is not an ongoing militant black liberation struggle in either country for example.

What do you mean?

There is a lot of ignorance about the BPP among whites in general and non-American whites in particular.

The Black Panthers started as black nationalists but evolved away from that, turning from black nationalism towards Marxism in its Maoist variant. So Huey Newton adopted the slogan of "revolutionary intercommunalism" and set about building a "rainbow coalition" with groups of other ethnicities, most certainly including whites.

I have no brief for their false theories, and especially the one about the lumpenproletariat as the vanguard of the revolution, but calling them racists is just slanderous.

Oakland, their base, was the *only* American city with a big black population that *did not* have destructive and ultimately useless targetless random rebellion of the kind now going on all across England, because the Black Panther Party offered a much better channel for the anger of the black community against a racist society.

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

They also aren't serious, or relevant to what's being discussed. :)

The entertaining pictures of the Royal Looters are very relevant to what is being discussed.

Off with their heads!

-M.H.-

[Lenina Rosenweg]

Go get a real job -- i.e., proletarianize.



YES, YES, A THOUSAND TIMES YES!

Do you understand how horrendous the process of proletarianization can be?

[Lenina Rosenweg]

What affect does the rioting have on class consciousness? Everything should be looked at in those terms.

[electro_fan]

I think a point that's being missed here is also that even if the shopkeepers are petty-bourgeois (and yep having a small business IS being petty bourgoise), their kids probably won't be (who has the money to buy a shopfront these days?) their relatives won't be. Therefore saying to a kid living in those areas that daddy deserved his shop to burn down, and have his family not be able to pay the rent/mortgage and potentially lose their homes, have no way of making a living, etc, because they're petty bourgeois scum, what's that going to do with a kid who may not have much more money than average working class people living in those areas? Isn't it just going to alienate them from the left and push them into something that we really really don't want???

[A Marxist Historian]

Well, you originally claimed that "the working class has again outpaced you", which to seems to suggest that you're talking about the working class either as a whole. Am I misinterpreting?

Well, we can assume. I don't know about "figure". I'd have to see a bit more evidence for that than what I'm seeing, which can be roughly described as "mixed feelings". http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

Quite probably. I'm in no disagreement on this point.

I hardly say it with enthusiasm.

I'm quite prepared to recognise that, but I don't think that prevents me from expressing scepticism of this point or that. Quite frankly, if you can't convince me without attempting to pull rank, then you're not going to get very far talking to the young people who are actually involved in this sort of thing.


(Also, am I the only one detecting a certain hostility towards "the British left" on the part of some non-British posters? Perhaps I'm just being over-sensitive- although I have little to no investment in the organised British left, so I wouldn't figure myself as overly prone to that- but there seems to be a certain emerging attitude that "if only we were there, it would all be different!", and I'm really not sure how I feel about that.)

You are detecting it accurately, I will say, speaking as a non-British poster. In America we have all been there and done that over and over with urban rebellions, mostly but not always by black people, that invariably involve attacks on small shopkeepers, usually of ethnic persuasions other than those of the rebels.

And in America, the white racists always say exactly the same kind of stuff being said by various Brit leftists about how all the rioters are scum. So yes, you get a knee jerk hostile emotional reaction from all American left posters against some of the stuff being posted here by Brits. After all, all us yanks have disliked all you Brits at one level or another ever since 1776.;)

In America, it has sometimes been to easy for leftists to forget that yes, if Jewish small shopkeepers got their stores burned down in Harlem in the 1960s, or Koreans in LA in the 1990s, this was not a good thing.

The outrage of the youth in England needs to be *channeled* in a revolutionary direction, and not be wasted in counterproductive directions as is happening now. But this is basically because of an absence of leadership.

As Lenin pointed out long ago, socialist consciousness needs to be brought into the movement from outside, as the spontaneous consciousness of working class rebellion in a capitalist society is bourgeois consciousness in one form or another. As is being demonstrated right now on the English streets.

So this promising rebellion has dribbled off into random, useless, counterproductive looting. Just like in America, where the black ghetto rebellions of the late '60s touched off a huge white working class backlash playing a big role in the huge turn to the Right in America of the last few decades.

What is needed is a revolutionary party with a revolutionary program that will be a tribune of the people, not trade union secretaries or municipal socialists.

That can meldthe anger of the youth with the organized, disciplined struggle of the labor movement vs. the greedy looters of the English ruling class.

Immediately, what the English left needs to do is step forward against the fascization of the British state by the Tories in response to the rebellions, and defend the victims, not of the looters, but of the police and the British ruling class. While attempting to discourage attacks on small shops, to the very limited degree that any of the rebels in the streets want to listen to the English left.

Any other path will turn the British left into auxiliaries of the Tories.

-M.H.-

[S.Artesian]

Go get a real job -- i.e., proletarianize.

Come on, Miles. I agree pretty well point by point with you in these discussions, but that "get a real job..." has no place in our discourse, unless it's mean humorously-- that's exactly what the posh twits tell the poor, the unemployed, the marginally employed-- "go get a real job"-- when of course "real jobs" are being destroyed by the hundreds of thousands.

What are we supposed to do if the shopkeeper gets driven out of business by the damage of the riots? The same fucking thing we do when the shopkeeper can't get a loan, can't pay the rent increase, has to kickback to suppliers to even get merchandise.

Just about nothing we can do, EXCEPT to organize a class conscious movement that opposes the source of the economic disorder, and might attract the support of the pauperized petit-bourgeoisie.

[brigadista]

:cursing::cursing::cursing:FFS!!!!!!!



http://www.wandsworth.gov.uk/news/article/10626/first_rioter_given_eviction_notice

A council tenant whose son has appeared in court charged in connection with Monday night’s disturbances in Clapham Junction will today (Friday) be served with an eviction notice.
The tenant is believed to be the first in the country to now be facing the prospect of losing their council-owned home as a result of Monday night's rioting and looting.
The notice is the first stage in the legal process of eviction. The notice gives warning that the council will be seeking possession of the property and that an application will be made to the courts seeking the tenant's eviction. The final decision will rest with a judge sitting at the county court.
Neither the tenant nor their son can be named at this stage for legal reasons.
Wandsworth Council has acted immediately in the wake of local magistrates courts hearings to instigate tough action against tenants or members of their households who were directly involved in the disturbances.

Council leader Ravi Govindia welcomed the swift action by the housing department and added: "In Wandsworth we are determined to take the strongest possible action against any tenant or member of their household responsible for the truly shocking behaviour perpetrated on local homes and businesses earlier this week.
"This council will do its utmost to ensure that those who are responsible pay a proper price for their conduct. Ultimately this could lead to eviction from their homes.
"Our officers will continue to work with the courts to establish the identities of other council tenants or members of their households as more cases are processed in the coming days and weeks."
"Most residents on our housing estates are decent law-abiding citizens who will have been sickened at the scenes they witnessed on their TV screens this week. Many will have seen their places of work trashed at the hands of these rioters. As much as anything else we owe it to them to send out a strong signal that this kind of violence will not be tolerated."
The council is able to commence eviction proceedings against this tenant for breaching their tenancy agreement. Under the terms of the agreement, which applies to all the council's rented accommodation, all tenants, their household members and visitors are forbidden from a range of criminal and anti-social activities. Breaches of the agreement render them liable to eviction
Cllr Govindia added: "When you move into a council property, you have to agree to comply with certain tenancy conditions. If you break those conditions you risk losing your home.
"There is no room on our estates for people who commit violent crimes, who show no consideration for their neighbours or harass, threaten, intimidate or cause disturbance to others."

[electro_fan]

Yep. the housing system should have nothing to do with the justice system. once you've served your time, that should be it

[Bitter Ashes]

I don't know if this is normal, but when I got my council tennancy I was told that if I got an ASBO then I'd lose my flat. Is that normal?

[brigadista]

I don't know if this is normal, but when I got my council tennancy I was told that if I got an ASBO then I'd lose my flat. Is that normal?

it can be a term of the tenancy agreement - check yours ,however wandsworth borough was the flagship tory borough that started the council house/flat sales so no surprise that this is the first move to evict in wandsworth.

You can fight it but you need a good legal aid lawyer however-......

with the legal aid cuts - there will be very little support for people to fight this nonsense - just going to cause more problems - makes me really mad ..

Im cussing and vexed here

[A Marxist Historian]

Within the context of the most developed capitalist countries, El_Granma, Miles is spot on.



Similar circumstances occurred after the 1848 defeats, but it was movements of the likes of Lassalle (with healthy and heavy doses of mass civil disobedience) that paved the way, not looting sprees.

Be it noted that the position of Lassalle was that the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry were a "reactionary mass." The ghost of Lassalle nods whenever somebody says "fuck the middle class."

-M.H.-

[Tommy4ever]

Seems to me that the same people who claim that the riots were exclusively criminal opportunism are taking actions that will leave people with far fewer options beyond criminality.

[Jimmie Higgins]

Within the context of the most developed capitalist countries, El_Granma, Miles is spot on.While I agree with Miles on not condemning the rioters, on this more general question, how is it that suddenly the petty-bourgeois has a solid class position and interests? That sort of goes against the whole nature of being the "in-between" class.

Sure in times of little or no struggle, the petty-bourgeois a almost completely going to support the ruling status quo. But in times of real struggle where there has been more organization and push from workers, the in-between classes usually split with some supporting capital and the others supporting workers. This happened in the US during the struggles of the depression and it seems like similar things began to happen in Argentina during their financial crisis. And both of these are merely cases of heightened struggle, not situations where people have to decide to fully support capital or labor.

Having said all that, this is not a revolution and so the progressive things is not "winning over" shop keepers and low-level professionals, but not allowing the state to isolate and crack down on the rioters (which also means not supporting but countering the state-propaganda about being 'tough on crime' etc).

[Die Neue Zeit]

Be it noted that the position of Lassalle was that the petty bourgeoisie and the peasantry were a "reactionary mass." The ghost of Lassalle nods whenever somebody says "fuck the middle class."

-M.H.-

In the most developed capitalist countries, certainly like those with today's economic conditions, One Reactionary Mass is very much a correct line to take. It allows class-conscious workers to build institutions of their own with a workers-only voting membership policy. The likes of Student Leftists can stay on the sidelines as, at best, non-voting members (even those taking up my preferences for labour law and labour economics).


Sure in times of little or no struggle, the petty-bourgeois a almost completely going to support the ruling status quo. But in times of real struggle where there has been more organization and push from workers, the in-between classes usually split with some supporting capital and the others supporting workers. This happened in the US during the struggles of the depression and it seems

Even in a revolutionary period, it's better to rely upon majority working-class political support than it is to rely upon "majority political support" that has no class base. Both Kautsky the Marxist and his disciple Lenin were wrong to not stress the working class in this. Oh, did I just diss a role model theoretician of mine?

[A Marxist Historian]

In the most developed capitalist countries, certainly like those with today's economic conditions, One Reactionary Mass is very much a correct line to take. It allows class-conscious workers to build institutions of their own with a workers-only voting membership policy. The likes of Student Leftists can stay on the sidelines as, at best, non-voting members (even those taking up my preferences for labour law and labour economics).

Depends on precisely what kind of institution you mean. Certainly to be a member of a union you need to be a member of the trade involved, and "proprietor members" as some unions have allowed are a dubious proposition. But there too you have grey areas.

Like in the US, the Teamsters being compelled by American labor law not to allow "owner operated" truck owners, in fact often hideously exploited immigrant "subcontractors" who both have a lower income and are more militant than the average fleet trucker (that's lorry driver for you Brits), so they end up trying to organize their own unions, not too successfully unfortunately.

And to be in a factory or shop or workplace committee, well you have to work there.

In workers councils, student unions and shopkeeper unions by all means should affiliate if they are on the side of the workers, but should get fewer votes, just like peasants got fewer votes in the original Soviet constitution than did factory workers.

But if you are referring to *political parties* this is wrongheaded. Their membership should be based on political belief and commitment, not class position, as they are organs of the class for itself, not in itself, organizations of those who have working class consciousness.

Although the party needs a heavily progressive dues structure, so petty bourgeois etc. will not come in on the cheap and dominate. If they claim to be for the workers, fine, but let them put their money where their mouth is to prove it.

The Mormon ten percent tithe is probably about right for your average factory worker in usual circumstances. If the Mormons can do that, hopefully so can we. For those with higher income levels, a sharply progressive income tax is needed. If for no other reason than to pay the bills.


Even in a revolutionary period, it's better to rely upon majority working-class political support than it is to rely upon "majority political support" that has no class base. Both Kautsky the Marxist and his disciple Lenin were wrong to not stress the working class in this. Oh, did I just diss a role model theoretician of mine?

The qustion is revolutionary leadership, not taking a Gallup poll every week. If the masses follow when you call them into the streets, then you have majority support. If not, then not, however many votes you may get on election day.

And it is the worker masses that are most important, as they can control or stop production, transport, communication etc., whereas all the shopkeepers can do is tempt people to break in and loot their stores. And the students, of course, have no social power whatsoever, they can strike all day and the ruling class just yawns, unless this touches off broader mobilizations.

-M.H.-

[Martin Blank]

Do you understand how horrendous the process of proletarianization can be?

Boo-motherfucking-hoo! Do you understand how horrendous the life of a proletarian is? Let them learn the hard way.


Come on, Miles. I agree pretty well point by point with you in these discussions, but that "get a real job..." has no place in our discourse, unless it's mean humorously-- that's exactly what the posh twits tell the poor, the unemployed, the marginally employed-- "go get a real job"-- when of course "real jobs" are being destroyed by the hundreds of thousands.

I have no qualms about turning the language of the ruling classes back at them, and neither do most of the workers I know.

There were times I'd be sitting there with co-workers, taking one in and passing it around, and a friend of one of them, who has a small business he's running, would come over to chill. It wouldn't take long before he starts venting about how he's not able to make his ends and starts asking what we think he should do. The answer, almost always, is unanimous: go get a real job ... which, BTW, was also followed up with one or more of us offering to help them get a job.

Ideally, that would be my way of dealing with them: tell them they need to get a real job, then see what I can do help with that.

My point, though, is that I don't say it as sarcasm or humor. I am a communist. I am for the abolition of classes and class antagonisms -- not just in an abstract future, but at all times. The more proletarianization that takes place before the revolution, the better, since it will add to the ranks of the working class. And maybe if they do have a hard time of it, they will begin to understand why people like, oh! I don't know, communists exist -- why things like the London Rebellion happen -- why no one felt sympathy for them before. And so on.


What are we supposed to do if the shopkeeper gets driven out of business by the damage of the riots? The same fucking thing we do when the shopkeeper can't get a loan, can't pay the rent increase, has to kickback to suppliers to even get merchandise.

Just about nothing we can do, EXCEPT to organize a class conscious movement that opposes the source of the economic disorder, and might attract the support of the pauperized petit-bourgeoisie.

The pauperized and ruined petty bourgeoisie does not turn to the workers' movement as their salvation. For that, they turn to fascism -- i.e., they turn to the movement that represents their class interests, that seeks to defend and protect their property and profits against both expanding imperialist capitalism and the threat of working class. It has been this way since the rise of imperialism as the higher stage of capitalism. These days, the petty bourgeoisie represents a special malignancy in class society, not an ally of the working class.

Historically speaking, when a workers' movement makes it a priority "to organize a class conscious movement that opposes the source of the economic disorder, and might attract the support of the pauperized petit-bourgeoisie", the end result is that the petty bourgeoisie (and, through them, the small and "non-monopoly" bourgeoisie) end up in control, with the workers' movement subordinated to it. This argument you are making is no different in principle than Dimitrov's argument for the people's front. He saw the PF as being, in the words of the CPUSA, a "labor-led, non-monopoly people's front against the bourgeoisie". Indeed, the whole point of the people's front was to build a "labor-led" alliance with the petty bourgeoisie against big capital. But it never ended up that way.

The petty bourgeoisie would continue to hold the threat of their joining with the bourgeoisie over the heads of the workers' organizations like a Sword of Damocles, in order to force them into a subordinate position. Once the social relations were restored to a "normal" situation (from the perspective of capitalist class society, that is), then the political content was replaced by slogans and analysis most advantageous to the petty proprietors.

I have been and remain of the opinion that such alliances with the petty bourgeoisie are disastrous for the workers' movement. If elements from non-proletarian backgrounds want to participate in the workers' movement, that's fine. But if they want to be seen as a part of the workers' movement, then they have to proletarianize -- i.e., go get a real job.



ON EDIT: The posts by Jimmie Higgins and "The Marxist Historian" will have to wait for later -- maybe late tonight, but more than likely tomorrow.

[Tim Finnegan]

But if you are referring to *political parties* this is wrongheaded. Their membership should be based on political belief and commitment, not class position, as they are organs of the class for itself, not in itself, organizations of those who have working class consciousness.

It seems to me that posing class conciousness as something that meaningfully exists on an individual level, as opposed to something which makes itself manifest in aggregate, is to miscomprehend what class conciousness actually is, and how it is actually achieved. It makes its achievement a mark of "political correctness", in the original sense, rather than as a social phenomenon which is beyond the control of any individual; something which is achieved through an individual process of enlightenment, rather than the collective process of class struggle. Unless I am seriously mistaken, class conciousness is something that is attained by the working class as a class rather than as individuals, an historical phenomenon produced by the process of class struggle, so the organisation of the working class-for-itself is necessarily one and the same thing as the organisation of the working class-in-itself.

[S.Artesian]

I have no qualms about turning the language of the ruling classes back at them, and neither do most of the workers I know.

You have yet to give an example of turning the language of the ruling class back on the ruling class.



Ideally, that would be my way of dealing with them: tell them they need to get a real job, then see what I can do help with that.

My point, though, is that I don't say it as sarcasm or humor. I am a communist. I am for the abolition of classes and class antagonisms -- not just in an abstract future, but at all times. The more proletarianization that takes place before the revolution, the better, since it will add to the ranks of the working class. And maybe if they do have a hard time of it, they will begin to understand why people like, oh! I don't know, communists exist -- why things like the London Rebellion happen -- why no one felt sympathy for them before. And so on.

Look around, Miles, where do you see "more proletarianization" taking place? Anywhere? Manufacturing and industrial [mining, utilities, construction] employment has been in decline everywhere, including China.



The pauperized and ruined petty bourgeoisie does not turn to the workers' movement as their salvation. For that, they turn to fascism -- i.e., they turn to the movement that represents their class interests, that seeks to defend and protect their property and profits against both expanding imperialist capitalism and the threat of working class. It has been this way since the rise of imperialism as the higher stage of capitalism. These days, the petty bourgeoisie represents a special malignancy in class society, not an ally of the working class.

Historically speaking, when a workers' movement makes it a priority "to organize a class conscious movement that opposes the source of the economic disorder, and might attract the support of the pauperized petit-bourgeoisie", the end result is that the petty bourgeoisie (and, through them, the small and "non-monopoly" bourgeoisie) end up in control, with the workers' movement subordinated to it. This argument you are making is no different in principle than Dimitrov's argument for the people's front. He saw the PF as being, in the words of the CPUSA, a "labor-led, non-monopoly people's front against the bourgeoisie". Indeed, the whole point of the people's front was to build a "labor-led" alliance with the petty bourgeoisie against big capital. But it never ended up that way.


I never said a thing about "seeking salvation." I never said a thing about "making an alliance" with the petit bourgeoisie. I said build a class conscious movement that might attract some of the petit bourgeoisie. That has absolutely nothing in common with an argument for a popular front or the bullshit CPUSA "non-monopoly" crap. Maybe you'd like what I say to have something in common with that, make you feel that much more secure in your "workerism" but I'm happy to disappoint you.

Some might be attracted to such a movement, just as some of the shopkeepers in London came out against the police and identified the source of the rebellion in capitalism.


The petty bourgeoisie would continue to hold the threat of their joining with the bourgeoisie over the heads of the workers' organizations like a Sword of Damocles, in order to force them into a subordinate position. Once the social relations were restored to a "normal" situation (from the perspective of capitalist class society, that is), then the political content was replaced by slogans and analysis most advantageous to the petty proprietors.

I have been and remain of the opinion that such alliances with the petty bourgeoisie are disastrous for the workers' movement. If elements from non-proletarian backgrounds want to participate in the workers' movement, that's fine. But if they want to be seen as a part of the workers' movement, then they have to proletarianize -- i.e., go get a real job.



Thanks for your opinion. I'm sure some will find it very enlightening, but it has nothing to do with what was being pointed out-- that telling people to "go get a real job" is total horseshit since the same source for the rebellion destroys those jobs by the thousands.

But keep on keepin on "turning the ruling class' words against them"-- except you're not turning them against them, the ruling class, and since anyone can say that to anybody. In short the statement has zero class consciousness.

[Tim Finnegan]

Look around, Miles, where do you see "more proletarianization" taking place? Anywhere? Manufacturing and industrial [mining, utilities, construction] employment has been in decline everywhere, including China.
Why is the expansion of industrial employment a precondition of proletarianisation? The ousting of independent petty bourgeois businesses by larger bourgeois entities and the subsumption of professional labour to capital are both ongoing trends, and the latter if anything seems to be accelerating- does that not constitute proletarianisation? (Or, in the latter case, at least in some instances?) Granted, that doesn't constitute the sort of mass proletarianisation which accompanies industrialisation, but that wasn't what Miles was talking about- he was talking specifically about the proletarianisation of the middle classes.

(And that's not to take a position on the rest on the actual debate, which I couldn't hope to substantially contribute to, just asking about this one point.)

[Martin Blank]

... but that wasn't what Miles was talking about- he was talking specifically about the proletarianisation of the middle classes.

Yes, and that is what has S.Artesian, robbo203 and some others all up in arms. This isn't actually about communist theory or methodology for them; this is about defending the integrity of their own class. This is about defending the protected status that the petty bourgeoisie has had within almost all of the "left" -- in their theories, in their practice and in their organizations -- since the end of the 19th century (and over and against the objections of Marx and Engels). And they are willing to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at me and others in order to shut us up, break us down and bury us in a mountain of slander.

That's why S.Artesian (and numerous others, if you look back through past threads) howls at the top of his lungs that I'm a "workerist". Quelle horreur! Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're just plain wrong. A workerist is someone -- usually petty bourgeois -- who romanticizes the worst and most backward aspects of being a working person. A petty-bourgeois student who moves into a poor working-class neighborhood in order to be "closer to the [working-class] masses" is a workerist (and a slummer to boot!). Someone who uses racist, sexist and homophobic language because "workers say those things" is a workerist.

If he wants to accuse me of something, he's welcome to call me a classist. I make no bones about it: I am a proud proletarian classist. If he could show a little honestly, though, he'd just call me a communist and be done with it.

Getting back to the point, though, I don't think people on here should let themselves be taken in by their attempts to confuse and overwhelm -- all for the singular purpose of generating sympathy and support for the petty bourgeoisie, and, more importantly, for rejecting the basic communist principle of abolishing all classes, not just one (the large bourgeoisie).

Let's be honest, this is really what all their complaining is about: keep the petty bourgeoisie in a protected status; don't challenge them as a class; don't violate their property or profits; and, most of all, don't threaten to proletarianize them, either now or in the transition to communism. In their view, workers need the petty bourgeoisie to think for them, to write for them, to lead them as a "declassed" (sic!!!!) "vanguard" (or, to use a more blunt analogy, uttered by one of these petty-bourgeois "leaders", to drag the working class around "like a big bag of shit"). Oppression oppresses, goes the tautology of the petty bourgeois left. But one thing always remains constant: the worker remains a worker, whether laboring for a company boss or a party boss.

So, I'm done responding to them. Let them tremble with anger and fear at the thought of being proletarianized. Let them experience the horror that they have condemned workers to for their entire lives. As George Clinton put it so appropriately: "Mother made 'em, motherfuck 'em!"

[Die Neue Zeit]

The pauperized and ruined petty bourgeoisie does not turn to the workers' movement as their salvation. For that, they turn to fascism

Again, within the context of the most developed capitalist countries like the UK, where the petit-bourgeois population isn't so big relative to society as a whole, there's not much evidence to the contrary. However, not every "pauperized and ruined" petty bourgeoisie turns to fascism everywhere across the globe. Consider peasant suicides in India, for instance.

[Jose Gracchus]

Look around, Miles, where do you see "more proletarianization" taking place? Anywhere? Manufacturing and industrial [mining, utilities, construction] employment has been in decline everywhere, including China.

To revisit Tim Finnegan's point myself, as an aside: are only "productive" or "industrial" workers real "proletarians"? I'm not critical, I'm genuinely interested in where you come down on this debate.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Sam Walton was once a small shop keeper.

[CHE with an AK]

Sam Walton was once a small shop keeper.
Exactly! And Ray Croc started out with one single McDonalds ...


http://www.cmhpf.org/MACDO.JPG


– and now this is a U.S. map of locations ...


http://chelseamac.files.wordpress.com/2011/07/mcdonaldsmap.jpg


Shops need to be 'strangled in their proverbial cribs' before they become metastasizing franchises.

[S.Artesian]

Yes, and that is what has S.Artesian, robbo203 and some others all up in arms. This isn't actually about communist theory or methodology for them; this is about defending the integrity of their own class. This is about defending the protected status that the petty bourgeoisie has had within almost all of the "left" -- in their theories, in their practice and in their organizations -- since the end of the 19th century (and over and against the objections of Marx and Engels). And they are willing to throw everything, including the kitchen sink, at me and others in order to shut us up, break us down and bury us in a mountain of slander.

Oh fuck you. Where can you point to any indication of that. I take exception to your bullshit comment about "tell them to get real jobs." And you make that into defending my privileges? I haven't thrown anything at you, and I have not slandered. You on the other hand slander others by linking any questioning of your jingoism to the CPUSA.

What a self-righteous and ignorant person you are.


That's why S.Artesian (and numerous others, if you look back through past threads) howls at the top of his lungs that I'm a "workerist". Quelle horreur! Sorry to burst your bubble, but you're just plain wrong. A workerist is someone -- usually petty bourgeois -- who romanticizes the worst and most backward aspects of being a working person. A petty-bourgeois student who moves into
a poor working-class neighborhood in order to be "closer to the [working-class] masses" is a workerist (and a slummer to boot!). Someone who uses racist, sexist and homophobic language because "workers say those things" is a workerist.Right. Somebody who talks about how he and his worker friends tell people to "get real jobs"-- that's not "romanticizing" because workers actually say that.


If he wants to accuse me of something, he's welcome to call me a classist. I make no bones about it: I am a proud proletarian classist. If he could show a little honestly, though, he'd just call me a communist and be done with it.
Who are you talking to here, me? I said you made a ridiculous remark, the kind ignorant privileged people make to the less fortunate. You think that makes you a communist?



Getting back to the point, though, I don't think people on here should let themselves be taken in by their attempts to confuse and overwhelm -- all for the singular purpose of generating sympathy and support for the petty bourgeoisie, and, more importantly, for rejecting the basic communist principle of abolishing all classes, not just one (the large bourgeoisie).
Among your other qualities, you're a liar. I'm not trying to generate any sympathy for the petit-bourgeoisie. You however are such a self-aggrandizing jerk that you have to regard any criticism of you, of what you say, as a "foreign" statement, a statement against the working class, a statement for an alien class.



Let's be honest, this is really what all their complaining is about: keep the petty bourgeoisie in a protected status; don't challenge them as a class; don't violate their property or profits; and, most of all, don't threaten to proletarianize them, either now or in the transition to communism. In their view, workers need the petty bourgeoisie to think for them, to write for them, to lead them as a "declassed" (sic!!!!) "vanguard" (or, to use a more blunt analogy, uttered by one of these petty-bourgeois "leaders", to drag the working class around "like a big bag of shit"). Oppression oppresses, goes the tautology of the petty bourgeois left. But one thing always remains constant: the worker remains a worker, whether laboring for a company boss or a party boss.Yeah let's be honest. Your contact with reality here is pretty tenuous. That you can get all of that from someone taking exception to your "tell them to get a real job" statement is, at best, is bizarre. Nobody's talking about vanguards. Certainly not me since I'm not a vanguardist.

What you are expressing here are your personal tics.


So, I'm done responding to them. Let them tremble with anger and fear at the thought of being proletarianized. Let them experience the horror that they have condemned workers to for their entire lives. As George Clinton put it so appropriately: "Mother made 'em, motherfuck 'em!"Yeah, well as George Clinton also said, "Who says a funk band, can't play rock?"

Anger and fear at being proletarianized? Now that's funny... having spent time in the coke ovens of steel mill, in the paint shop of an auto plant, and a few years as a brakeman on a railroad. I'm real fucking scared. Scared to death. Almost as scared as am of a real proletarian like you must be, because you say so.

You need a check up from the neck up.

And since you're not going to respond to me anymore [if I had feelings, they'd be hurt. If I had a heart it would be broken. But I don't]......good. I'll put you on my ignore list with so many others of your ilk. Oh wait, I can't. Moderators/admin have special privileges. Not very proletarian of you, is it?

[S.Artesian]

To revisit Tim Finnegan's point myself, as an aside: are only "productive" or "industrial" workers real "proletarians"? I'm not critical, I'm genuinely interested in where you come down on this debate.


Ask Miles, he's the one who knows what real proletarians are.

[S.Artesian]

Why is the expansion of industrial employment a precondition of proletarianisation? The ousting of independent petty bourgeois businesses by larger bourgeois entities and the subsumption of professional labour to capital are both ongoing trends, and the latter if anything seems to be accelerating- does that not constitute proletarianisation? (Or, in the latter case, at least in some instances?) Granted, that doesn't constitute the sort of mass proletarianisation which accompanies industrialisation, but that wasn't what Miles was talking about- he was talking specifically about the proletarianisation of the middle classes.

(And that's not to take a position on the rest on the actual debate, which I couldn't hope to substantially contribute to, just asking about this one point.)


So show me where the proletarianization is actually taking place. What sectors producing surplus value are expanding employment? Is a sales rep at Macy's or Bloomingdale's a proletarian?

Where is there expansion of the working class as opposed to creation of marginalized workers, temporary workers-- workers who don't really have "real jobs"?

Where in let's say Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, has the crush on smaller enterprises lead to more proletarianization rather than pauperism? Where are the real fucking jobs that Miles says define a "proletarian."

I can answer that-- nowhere. Because the crush on small enterprises starts with marginalizing those workers that have "real jobs." That's been the history of small town USA since the 1980s, with factories closing, downsizing, and the general decline in "real economic" activity-- with "recovery" in those areas being based on real estate, tourism, and gambling.


EDIT: I strongly recommend that people take the time to look at what has happened in the "rural areas" in the US after the defeat of the Hormel strike. The US had a particular configuration of industry situated in/alongside rural communities. That configuration was devastated by the collapse in farm incomes in the 1980s, the defeat of the strikes, and the asset-stripping of the leveraged-buyout tactic.

Or... if you don't want to do the research because "real proletarians" don't have time for that shit, simply read the book Methland which pretty well captures it all.

Miles was talking about real jobs after all as the marker of proletarianization. So look at the US or the UK and/or El Salvador, Mexico and what are the trends regarding "real jobs."

Look at unemployment among youth in Spain. And you know what the bourgeoisie say when those youth lead protests-- "go get a real job."

So yeah, the expansion of industrial employment would mean, as it did in the US in the 50s and 60s, more real jobs, more proletarianization, not because ONLY industrial jobs are proletarian jobs, because without industrial expansion, the accumulation of capital does not reproduce the critical social relation between labor and capital that produces a proletarian consciousness.

That's part of the reason why it's difficult to get a class-conscious movement going when the core to the class is being pared, shaved, sliced, and off-shored to the max.

[Die Neue Zeit]

^^^ Read Cockshott's paper Hunting Productive Work.

[S.Artesian]

^^^ Read Cockshott's paper Hunting Productive Work.


Do some work on your own. Try actually parsing through what has happened with capitalism in the last 30 years.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Boo-motherfucking-hoo! Do you understand how horrendous the life of a proletarian is? Let them learn the hard way.



I have no qualms about turning the language of the ruling classes back at them, and neither do most of the workers I know.

There were times I'd be sitting there with co-workers, taking one in and passing it around, and a friend of one of them, who has a small business he's running, would come over to chill. It wouldn't take long before he starts venting about how he's not able to make his ends and starts asking what we think he should do. The answer, almost always, is unanimous: go get a real job ... which, BTW, was also followed up with one or more of us offering to help them get a job.



See, for me this is both an abominable attitude, not to mention a strategically naive position.

1. Not only is the encouragement of proletarianisation something that will alienate petty bourgeois interests (which, as you correctly identify, isn't 'key' to revolution), it is something that would alienate members of the working class as well. Obviously, not every member of the working class, as defined in Marxist terms, lives on a sink estate. Indeed, many people who in Capitalist Sociological terms are firmly in the middle class (such as myself, due to where I live, what job one of my parents used to do, education) are certainly workers under a Marxist definition. I can tell you that proletarianisation is an absolutely negative fucking process. Wishing it on people is a sour fucking tactic, and belittles any attempt you then make to have compassion for the working class. Just strikes me as a bit of reverse snobbery.

2. The petty bourgeoisie and 'middle class' elements of the working class are not the ruling class, nor do they share any of the economic characteristics or power.

3. I don't want to be seen to be advocating petty bourgeois Socialism and i'm confident enough that my posts show where my true politics lie, but it's worth pointing out that many 'shopkeepers' have a real job, work harder than many workers, willingly, knowing they will never take home a bigger wage than the average worker.

To all intents and purposes, Marx's Sociological model is in need of an update, because the working class is more of an economic class rather than a socio-economic one these days. Two workers who share a similar wealth & income situation can be worlds apart by where they live, what school they went to and who their parents mix with.

[Os Cangaceiros]

I don't like the phrase "real job".

(And yes, I have a "real job".)

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

It's not a real job if you're not a card carrying proletarian.:thumbup1::mad:

[Jimmie Higgins]

Even in a revolutionary period, it's better to rely upon majority working-class political support I didn't think that was a question.

I did not mean direct support of professionals behind some specific organization or party of revolution, I meant that professionals and petty-bourgeois people would see the working class rule and organization of society, as opposed to the capitalist rule and organization. That a section of these in-between classes decide that, yeah, it would be better for us to have worker and community councils as our organizing bodies and to build a society on democratic decisions rather than profit. Some will just be naturally closer to working class concerns (like a professor who's husband is a worker in a communications company or a shop-owner who caters to a working class community and has ties to that community). Others might be close but scared by social disruption and turn to fascist ideas or others might not think that an alternative is possible or are too dependent on the ruling class for their position to even imagine a world not run by capital.

At any rate, that will really only be important as the working class is about to take power, not now, so it's not really imperative that the rioters win over shop-owners. Radicals should, however, try and win over workers to rejecting the demonization of the rioters going on by politicians and in the media - these measures will do nothing to address the root causes, will actually increase the likelihood of future riots, and end up giving the police and the state much better tools to repress other uprisings and attempts to protest the coming (ongoing) austerity.

[Jolly Red Giant]

Joe Higgins Socialist Party / CWI Member of Irish Parliament - Article from the Daily Mail 12/08/2011

‘Mob Rule’, ‘Mindless Destruction’, ‘Wreckers’, ‘Looters’ ‘Four Days of Mayhem’. Here’s a one mark question. Headlines like those above were emblazoned across much of the capitalist press this week. Were they referring to, a) those convulsing urban areas of England with rioting or, b) those convulsing the European and world economies with their frenzied speculation in the financial markets? The answer is ‘a’ of course and earns only one mark because it is so predictable.

But is it far fetched to make a connection between the two happenings that dominated world headlines over the last week, chaos on the streets of England and chaos in the world’s financial markets and stock exchanges? Not so.

Tearing up neighbourhoods, looting small enterprises, recklessly torching buildings where people live, driving cars at people defending their areas – all this is irresponsible in the extreme, unjust and wrong. It is working class people and working class communities which bear the brunt. It also represents a political dead end.

To point this out, however, is not the same as being in the camp of the legion of commentators in the establishment press and of Tory Prime Minister Cameron, who confine their reaction to the riots to denunciations of the mainly young people who are involved. Screaming ‘mindless criminality’, ‘opportunist thieves’ and ‘scum’ at the rioters merely covers up the hollow sound of nothing to say by way of explanation for these extraordinary events.

There can be no doubt about a huge disconnect between people living in sprawling and soulless housing estates or in high rise towers of flats and the police, the local authorities and the political system generally. Mass unemployment is very real, and for many who do work, it is really only survival on miserable wages. In contrast to much of the media coverage, the British Independent in a leading article on Wednesday says baldly, ‘This disturbing phenomenon has to be understood as a conflagration of aggression from a socially and economically excluded underclass.’

This alienation is sharply reflected in relations between young people and the police who represent the arm of the economic and political establishment. It is no coincidence that the current wave of riots began in Tottenham following the shooting dead of a man who police first said had fired a gun at them and then were forced to correct this to say that he had not. There is huge resentment toward the police in many marginalised communities, exacerbated in neighbourhoods with black and Asian youth who suffer most from routine stop and search police powers.

The Independent also stated, ‘The fuse for this explosion has been burning for years, perhaps even decades.’ If we follow this fuse it will lead us to the question as to whether there is a connection between the chaos in the financial markets over the past weeks and the alienation that has led to the social outburst.

Many areas of Britain have been hollowed out socially by the destruction of manufacturing industry which was a key employer of millions of workers including the youthful equivalents of those tearing up their streets in the last week. But capitalism in Britain and in many parts of Europe which had been mainly organised around the creation of goods for profits changed quite radically over the last decades. Put simply, many capitalists instead of investing in making things, put huge funds into speculation in the casinos that are the financial markets. As David Harvey says in ‘The Enigma of Capitalism’, ‘Strange new markets arose,…permitting investment in credit swaps, currency derivatives and the like. These markets grew from almost nothing in 1990 to $250 trillion in 2005.’

The political establishment merely accepts this evolution of their system as ‘the reality of the markets.’ They seek ‘to satisfy’ or ‘reassure’ the markets, meaning legitimise the greed of the speculators and allow them to hold society to ransom. The chaos in the markets over the last weeks arises from the fear of the speculators that their gambles might fail but also from naked speculation with entire countries for private profit. The British working class is also bearing the brunt of the crisis in the financial system with savage cuts being implemented by the Tory/Liberal government. Unfortunately the outbreak of rioting is a symptom of the sickness and does not point toward a solution.

Those who should be showing an alternative and working to mobilise both the workers and the marginalised to fight for it, are standing idly by. Trade unions in Britain still organise millions of workers and with an alternative and leadership could be one very significant vehicle for those whose lives show them the desperate need to fight for change in how society is organised. That is a task which the real Left in Britain is now seriously engaged in.

http://www.joehiggins.ie/2011/08/opinion-piece-london-riots/

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Al Jazeera with an insightful piece:

http://english.aljazeera.net/indepth/opinion/2011/08/201189165143946889.html

[A Marxist Historian]

It seems to me that posing class conciousness as something that meaningfully exists on an individual level, as opposed to something which makes itself manifest in aggregate, is to miscomprehend what class conciousness actually is, and how it is actually achieved. It makes its achievement a mark of "political correctness", in the original sense, rather than as a social phenomenon which is beyond the control of any individual; something which is achieved through an individual process of enlightenment, rather than the collective process of class struggle. Unless I am seriously mistaken, class conciousness is something that is attained by the working class as a class rather than as individuals, an historical phenomenon produced by the process of class struggle, so the organisation of the working class-for-itself is necessarily one and the same thing as the organisation of the working class-in-itself.

Indeed. Socialist and Marxist ideas are indeed reflections in the mind of social reality and the class struggle.

Due to the division in bourgeois society between mental and manual labor, something Marx discussed rather a lot, it happens that socialist conceptions first arise in the minds of bourgeois intellectuals, creating a contradiction that needs a dialectical resolution.

The role of the Leninist party is to *transcend* this contradiction.

-M.H.-

[Tim Finnegan]

So show me where the proletarianization is actually taking place. What sectors producing surplus value are expanding employment? Is a sales rep at Macy's or Bloomingdale's a proletarian?

Where is there expansion of the working class as opposed to creation of marginalized workers, temporary workers-- workers who don't really have "real jobs"?

Where in let's say Iowa, Missouri, Arkansas, has the crush on smaller enterprises lead to more proletarianization rather than pauperism? Where are the real fucking jobs that Miles says define a "proletarian."

I can answer that-- nowhere. Because the crush on small enterprises starts with marginalizing those workers that have "real jobs." That's been the history of small town USA since the 1980s, with factories closing, downsizing, and the general decline in "real economic" activity-- with "recovery" in those areas being based on real estate, tourism, and gambling.

Miles was talking about real jobs after all as the marker of proletarianization. So look at the US or the UK and/or El Salvador, Mexico and what are the trends regarding "real jobs."

Look at unemployment among youth in Spain. And you know what the bourgeoisie say when those youth lead protests-- "go get a real job."

So yeah, the expansion of industrial employment would mean, as it did in the US in the 50s and 60s, more real jobs, more proletarianization, not because ONLY industrial jobs are proletarian jobs, because without industrial expansion, the accumulation of capital does not reproduce the critical social relation between labor and capital that produces a proletarian consciousness.

That's part of the reason why it's difficult to get a class-conscious movement going when the core to the class is being pared, shaved, sliced, and off-shored to the max.
Is that relevant? :confused: I was under the impression that the defining characteristic of the proletarian experience was of the alienation of the worker from the conditions of their labour, which, unless I am failing most grievously to comprehend, implies that whether or not they actually produce surplus value is neither here nor there. After all, that would imply that a janitor in a private office building was a proletarian, while one in a government building was not, which doesn't really gel with my understanding of what the working class actually is. The rest of your post seems to rest on that distinction, so I can't really respond to the rest of it until you clarify this point. (And perhaps distinguishing what you actually think from what is just heavy-handed sarcasm aimed at Miles...)

Indeed. Socialist and Marxist ideas are indeed reflections in the mind of social reality and the class struggle.

Due to the division in bourgeois society between mental and manual labor, something Marx discussed rather a lot, it happens that socialist conceptions first arise in the minds of bourgeois intellectuals, creating a contradiction that needs a dialectical resolution.

The role of the Leninist party is to *transcend* this contradiction.

-M.H.-
I'm not really seeing the jump from class conciousness to "socialist conceptions", to be honest. Wasn't Marx quite clear in his discussion of the Paris Commune, and elsewhere, that the movement towards communism is a product of material circumstances, a compulsion of the historical process of class struggle, and not just the triumph of one set of ideas over another?

[S.Artesian]

Is that relevant? :confused: I was under the impression that the defining characteristic of the proletarian experience was of the alienation of the worker from the conditions of their labour, which, unless I am failing most grievously to comprehend, implies that whether or not they actually produce surplus value is neither here nor there. After all, that would imply that a janitor in a private office building was a proletarian, while one in a government building was not, which doesn't really gel with my understanding of what the working class actually is. The rest of your post seems to rest on that distinction, so I can't really respond to the rest of it until you clarify this point. (And perhaps distinguishing what you actually think from what is just heavy-handed sarcasm aimed at Miles...)

Yes, it's extremely relevant and your are in fact failing grievously. First Marx isn't talking about "alienation" in any psychological sense, he is talking about alienation in the economic, commercial, exchange mechanism-- he is referring to alienation as the sale of labor power.

Secondly, yes the production of surplus value matters, and a lot. It's the key to capital accumulation, and the contradiction in capital accumulation. Since these contradictions do not exist other in their human agencies, i.e. class, yes the workers producing surplus value have a critical role in both that accumulation of capital and its abolition.

Third-- look around at what's going on with employment-- the service, custodian, type work is more and more outsourced to agencies that employ labor as casual labor, on an "on call" as needed basis. This marginalization of the workers in which they are organized, or forced to present themselves almost, and not just almost as individual sub-contractors has taken a severe toll on workers ability to act collectively.

The growing sectors of employment in the US economy consists in large part of these "casualized" jobs, with marginalized workers identified as "associates," representatives, partners, all that crap....

And of course the growing sector for employment is in the private security guard field... hardly a proletarianizing experience.

[Tim Finnegan]

Yes, it's extremely relevant and your are in fact failing grievously. First Marx isn't talking about "alienation" in any psychological sense, he is talking about alienation in the economic, commercial, exchange mechanism-- he is referring to alienation as the sale of labor power.I didn't mean to suggest as much.


Secondly, yes the production of surplus value matters, and a lot. It's the key to capital accumulation, and the contradiction in capital accumulation. Since these contradictions do not exist other in their human agencies, i.e. class, yes the workers producing surplus value have a critical role in both that accumulation of capital and its abolition.I understand that, but I'm not really sure how that produces the distinction between the productive worker and the unproductive... whatever they're called, that you seem to see. It seems to me that the alienation of the worker from their work renders the question of whether or not their work actually generates a surplus value irrelevant to them as individuals, but relevant rather as a relationship between whole classes. Perhaps I am, yet again, failing in some horrible fashion?


Third-- look around at what's going on with employment-- the service, custodian, type work is more and more outsourced to agencies that employ labor as casual labor, on an "on call" as needed basis. This marginalization of the workers in which they are organized, or forced to present themselves almost, and not just almost as individual sub-contractors has taken a severe toll on workers ability to act collectively.

The growing sectors of employment in the US economy consists in large part of these "casualized" jobs, with marginalized workers identified as "associates," representatives, partners, all that crap....How does that suggest what seem to be implying is some mass de-proletarianisation? :confused: As far as I can see, it just represents the reorganising of labour-capital relations as suits capital, something which is not exactly a novel process.


And of course the growing sector for employment is in the private security guard field... hardly a proletarianizing experience.I think you'd need to demonstrate that there is a significant number of former shopkeepers becoming security guards before this becomes particularly relevant.

[A Marxist Historian]

Is that relevant? :confused: I was under the impression that the defining characteristic of the proletarian experience was of the alienation of the worker from the conditions of their labour, which, unless I am failing most grievously to comprehend, implies that whether or not they actually produce surplus value is neither here nor there. After all, that would imply that a janitor in a private office building was a proletarian, while one in a government building was not, which doesn't really gel with my understanding of what the working class actually is. The rest of your post seems to rest on that distinction, so I can't really respond to the rest of it until you clarify this point. (And perhaps distinguishing what you actually think from what is just heavy-handed sarcasm aimed at Miles...)

I'm not really seeing the jump from class conciousness to "socialist conceptions", to be honest. Wasn't Marx quite clear in his discussion of the Paris Commune, and elsewhere, that the movement towards communism is a product of material circumstances, a compulsion of the historical process of class struggle, and not just the triumph of one set of ideas over another?

"Alienation" is early Marx, and involvement in the production of surplus value is later Marx and better. As for that janitor in a government building, he is preserving the value of the capital he is maintaining, and whether it is in private hands or public is quite irrelevant, certainly in a capitalist state, or for that matter in a workers' state, since as long as the state still exists you are not yet in a socialist society.

Marx explains pretty clearly in vol. 2 I think it was on how preservation, like transportation etc., adds value to a commodity (fixed capital in the case of that building) to the degree that it is socially necessary. He further expounds on that in vol. 4, Theories of Surplus Value, or at least so I've been told, never made it through the whole thing, as I've never read the economists he critiques except for Smith and partially Ricardo.

And to Marx, ultimately there is *no difference* between class consciousness of the *working class* and socialist consciousness. The proletariat is the class whose liberation can only be attained by abolishing class society and moving towards socialism.

So any other form of working class consciousness is only partial class consciousness, and is ultimately bourgeois consciousness. Narrow trade unionism being only one of many examples of that.

Indeed the triumph of socialism takes place in material reality, not in people's heads. But that's pretty obvious I should think, so I don't really get what your point is.

If all you mean to say is that persuading everybody on Revleft of the desirability of socialism does not mean we get socialism next week, I think everyone knows that, at least I hope so.

-M.H.-

[S.Artesian]

How does that suggest what seem to be implying is some mass de-proletarianisation? :confused: As far as I can see, it just represents the reorganising of labour-capital relations as suits capital, something which is not exactly a novel process.


The issue was "go get a real job." The "real jobs" are being destroyed. That's the point. To say, "it just represent the reorganizing of labour-capital relations as suits capital" is in actuality to say nothing meaningful about the content of that process. And the content of that process is that "proletarianization" of sectors of the population is not occurring as the existing proletariat is continuously expelled from production and casualized.

Quote:
And of course the growing sector for employment is in the private security guard field... hardly a proletarianizing experience.
I think you'd need to demonstrate that there is a significant number of former shopkeepers becoming security guards before this becomes particularly relevant.

No, I don't have to show that. Again the issue was "go get a real job" and the supposed ongoing proletarianization of society. The real jobs are being destroyed, and the increasing proletarianization of society is not taking place. Just the opposite is occurring.

(http://www.revleft.com/vb/newreply.php?do=newreply&p=2205743)

[Tim Finnegan]

"Alienation" is early Marx, and involvement in the production of surplus value is later Marx and better.
And a distinction between "early" and "late" Marx is not universally suspected, so don't expect anyone to take that without question.


As for that janitor in a government building, he is preserving the value of the capital he is maintaining, and whether it is in private hands or public is quite irrelevant, certainly in a capitalist state, or for that matter in a workers' state, since as long as the state still exists you are not yet in a socialist society.

Marx explains pretty clearly in vol. 2 I think it was on how preservation, like transportation etc., adds value to a commodity (fixed capital in the case of that building) to the degree that it is socially necessary. He further expounds on that in vol. 4, Theories of Surplus Value, or at least so I've been told, never made it through the whole thing, as I've never read the economists he critiques except for Smith and partially Ricardo.In which case we're back to square one, because the very same could be said of a retail assistant. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif


And to Marx, ultimately there is *no difference* between class consciousness of the *working class* and socialist consciousness. The proletariat is the class whose liberation can only be attained by abolishing class society and moving towards socialism.

So any other form of working class consciousness is only partial class consciousness, and is ultimately bourgeois consciousness. Narrow trade unionism being only one of many examples of that.

Indeed the triumph of socialism takes place in material reality, not in people's heads. But that's pretty obvious I should think, so I don't really get what your point is.

If all you mean to say is that persuading everybody on Revleft of the desirability of socialism does not mean we get socialism next week, I think everyone knows that, at least I hope so.

-M.H.-The class-for-itself is the organised and struggling class, but not necessarily an actively revolutionary class, so is it right to equate class conciousness so directly with adherence to revolutionary socialist ideas? Most of the workers in the Paris Commune were not socialists after all, and yet Marx defined this episode quite clearly as the dictatorship of the proletariat. How do you reconcile this with your claims?

If you'll allow me to be frank, conditioning a recognition of class conciousness on the adoption of socialist ideas, a process which demands some delineation between the legitimate and illegitimately socialist, seems to me a pretext for ensuring party control of the working class movement.


The issue was "go get a real job." The "real jobs" are being destroyed. That's the point. To say, "it just represent the reorganizing of labour-capital relations as suits capital" is in actuality to say nothing meaningful about the content of that process. And the content of that process is that "proletarianization" of sectors of the population is not occurring as the existing proletariat is continuously expelled from production and casualized.

No, I don't have to show that. Again the issue was "go get a real job" and the supposed ongoing proletarianization of society. The real jobs are being destroyed, and the increasing proletarianization of society is not taking place. Just the opposite is occurring.
I'm not taking sides on the "real jobs" thing, I'm just asking about what does and does not constitute "proletarianisation". So what I'm apparently not getting is exactly how these jobs constituted a departure from the proletariat. That's something that I'm afraid that you're going to have to explain to me, so very thick as I appear to be.

[S.Artesian]

I'm not taking sides on the "real jobs" thing, I'm just asking about what does and does not constitute "proletarianisation". So what I'm apparently not getting is exactly how these jobs constituted a departure from the proletariat. That's something that I'm afraid that you're going to have to explain to me, so very thick as I appear to be

1. Proletarianization means reproducing capital on an expanded scale [that's where the surplus value creation comes in. With the continued and increasing productivity of labor, more labor is expelled, relatively from production, than is absorbed through expanding the proletariat-- the "v" in c+v+s. Thus you get both the relative decline, in relation to the amount of capital animated, and an absolute decline in the quantity of labor employed in production.

2. Proletarian labor, as Marx, analyzes it is a collective, social labor, organized and reproduced on a mass basis. However as the means of production constituted as value increases, driving down the rates of profit, capital's rate of expansion slows. With that the labor employed by capital even during its expansions is temporary, casualized, marginalized. The bottom line is that there is diminished need for "v" labor power in all aspects of society-- there is a diminished need for the expansion of the proletariat.

3. The economic forces-- competition, monopoly, interest rates, rents-- that historically have ground up the petit-bourgeoisie are still functional. The profit margins that the shopkeeper may realize are eroded, transferred actually, to the big capitalists. Forced out of business, down on its uppers, the petit-bourgeois doesn't get proletarianized, because there is no increased demand for proletarian labor. What's left? Marginal employment, personal services, maybe Wal-Mart; probably impoverishment. Pauperization.

[Tim Finnegan]

1. Proletarianization means reproducing capital on an expanded scale [that's where the surplus value creation comes in. With the continued and increasing productivity of labor, more labor is expelled, relatively from production, than is absorbed through expanding the proletariat-- the "v" in c+v+s. Thus you get both the relative decline, in relation to the amount of capital animated, and an absolute decline in the quantity of labor employed in production.

2. Proletarian labor, as Marx, analyzes it is a collective, social labor, organized and reproduced on a mass basis. However as the means of production constituted as value increases, driving down the rates of profit, capital's rate of expansion slows. With that the labor employed by capital even during its expansions is temporary, casualized, marginalized. The bottom line is that there is diminished need for "v" labor power in all aspects of society-- there is a diminished need for the expansion of the proletariat.That dictates employment, sure, but does it dictate class status? A proletarian who is not currently finding a buyer for his labour power is still, I would've thought, a proletarian. I mean, wasn't that what the whole concept of the "reserve army of labour" is all about? :confused:


3. The economic forces-- competition, monopoly, interest rates, rents-- that historically have ground up the petit-bourgeoisie are still functional. The profit margins that the shopkeeper may realize are eroded, transferred actually, to the big capitalists. Forced out of business, down on its uppers, the petit-bourgeois doesn't get proletarianized, because there is no increased demand for proletarian labor. What's left? Marginal employment, personal services, maybe Wal-Mart; probably impoverishment. Pauperization.Well, firstly, that only covers petty bourgeois shopkeepers. It doesn't address petty bourgeois professionals, who experience proletarianisation not as defeat in the marketplace, but as the subsumption of their labour to capital. How do you deal with them?
Secondly, what do you mean by "marginal employment, personal services, maybe Wal-Mart", and why are those set apart from proletarian employment?

And, just out of interest, if the proletariat is actually a shrinking class, then what are the future prospects of proletarian revolution? It sounds an awful lot like the natural conclusion of all this is for capitalism to remain unchallenged until whatever point it causes all of human civilisation to crash and burn. :bored:

[bcbm]

And, just out of interest, if the proletariat is actually a shrinking class, then what are the future prospects of proletarian revolution? It sounds an awful lot like the natural conclusion of all this is for capitalism to remain unchallenged until whatever point it causes all of human civilisation to crash and burn.

is proletarian revolution the only way out? are the remaing proletarians in the essential industires incapable of action?

[Jose Gracchus]

Yes proletarian revolution is the only way out, and yes, it seems obvious in view of history that there's been a relative decline in the potentiality of world struggles since the failure of the classical workers' movement and its revolutionary moment in the wave of 1917-1921, and an absolute decline since the last shock of the mass strikes in Stalinist Poland in 1980. Some struggles seem to be reemerging but they are less class-oriented and conscious than ever, and we must admit this, and I think deal seriously with how it could really turn around from here, if we admit such a possibility.

[S.Artesian]

That dictates employment, sure, but does it dictate class status? A proletarian who is not currently finding a buyer for his labour power is still, I would've thought, a proletarian. I mean, wasn't that what the whole concept of the "reserve army of labour" is all about? :confused:

Except we're not talking about the already-existing proletariat, we're talking about the proletarianization of the non-proletarian sectors. We're talking about the historical process that supposedly absorbs the petit-bourgeois into the proletariat.



Well, firstly, that only covers petty bourgeois shopkeepers. It doesn't address petty bourgeois professionals, who experience proletarianisation not as defeat in the marketplace, but as the subsumption of their labour to capital. How do you deal with them?


Ummh........the discussion is about the shopkeepers, remember? That's how this started. If you want to talk about systems analysts, human resource professionals, engineers, accountants, financial analysts, bond traders, manager who get laid off in downsizing we can talk about that, but that's not the original issue.

In general, they don't experience proletarianization. They remain petit-bourgeois finding new employment in similar fields but at a lower rate of pay, or they too get marginalized into temporary, casual, labor, personal services, etc.


Secondly, what do you mean by "marginal employment, personal services, maybe Wal-Mart", and why are those set apart from proletarian employment?


Personal services includes such things as being a "consultant," hardly proletarian employment. Marginal employment means obtaining employment as a temp. The use of temp professionals has increased significantly in the US over the last ten years.


And, just out of interest, if the proletariat is actually a shrinking class, then what are the future prospects of proletarian revolution? It sounds an awful lot like the natural conclusion of all this is for capitalism to remain unchallenged until whatever point it causes all of human civilisation to crash and burn. :bored:


There is no "if" The proletariat is definitely shrinking, and it adds significant challenges to the prospects for revolution. Doesn't change the antagonisms inherent in capital, does mean that all the tactics, strategies that have proven themselves inadequate and failures, weren't failures because they were "mistakes," but because they were obsolete.

[Die Neue Zeit]

There is no "if" The proletariat is definitely shrinking, and it adds significant challenges to the prospects for revolution. Doesn't change the antagonisms inherent in capital, does mean that all the tactics, strategies that have proven themselves inadequate and failures, weren't failures because they were "mistakes," but because they were obsolete.

That depends, again, on your definition of productive labour, which you acknowledged is tied directly to class (no proletarian is paid by performing mainly unproductive labour).

A possible conclusion would be that, if the proper proletariat as defined by a more flexible definition of productive labour is shrinking, then an exclusive "dictatorship of the proletariat" not embracing the other dispossessed classes would not be feasible. Under your restrictive scenario, a DOTP would have to make the hard, utilitarian choice of crash re-industrialization.

For example, scrapping and not socializing the military-industrial complex would be nonsense. Another example: liberal and "traditional order" approaches to class enemies, serious counter-revolutionaries, serial murderers and other capital offenders, grossly corrupt officials, serial rapists, etc. would be nonsense.

[S.Artesian]

That depends, again, on your definition of productive labour, which you acknowledged is tied directly to class (no proletarian is paid by performing mainly unproductive labour).

A possible conclusion would be that, if the proper proletariat as defined by a more flexible definition of productive labour is shrinking, then an exclusive "dictatorship of the proletariat" not embracing the other dispossessed classes would not be feasible. Under your restrictive scenario, a DOTP would have to make the hard, utilitarian choice of crash re-industrialization.

For example, scrapping and not socializing the military-industrial complex would be nonsense. Another example: liberal and "traditional order" approaches to class enemies, serious counter-revolutionaries, serial murderers and other capital offenders, grossly corrupt officials, serial rapists, etc. would be nonsense.

^^^Self-aggrandizement at work. Take anything you disagree with and twist it into supporting your personal fantasy about how the world must work.

Over there you are thanking Miles for his insisting on maintaining the "physical" and political purity of the proletariat against what he considers degenerate petit-bourgeois influence.

And over here you're using my take on the issue of proletarianization to advocate just such "mixing" of the proletariat and petit-bourgeoisie.

Back on the ignore list for you DNZ.

[A Marxist Historian]

And a distinction between "early" and "late" Marx is not universally suspected, so don't expect anyone to take that without question.

In which case we're back to square one, because the very same could be said of a retail assistant. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

Indeed. Don't quite know the English terminology, but a white collar worker in a shop, working *for* the shopkeeper, assisting in the circulation process, a necessary function of capitalism, adds value to the commodity he is selling with his labor, and some of that value goes to him as wages and the employer gets the surplus which turns into profit, as well as rent to the landlord, interest to the banker etc.

So objectively he/she is part of the working class, whether this is realized subjectively by him or her or not.

And that, though I admit I'm a bit rusty, is exactly what Marx says in vol. 2 unless I am having a senior moment.

The reason for the greater attention to the industrial proletariat is that production, not circulation and consumption, is the key to the economy. Industrial proletarians therefore have more social weight and in general are more important from the Marxist POV. Indeed this is the fundamental difference between Marxist economics, whose basic category is labor and the labor theory of value, and bourgeois economics, based in marginalism and consumer preference and denying that there is really any objective measure of economic value at all.

The shopkeeper himself, or an independent professional, is another matter.


The class-for-itself is the organised and struggling class, but not necessarily an actively revolutionary class, so is it right to equate class conciousness so directly with adherence to revolutionary socialist ideas? Most of the workers in the Paris Commune were not socialists after all, and yet Marx defined this episode quite clearly as the dictatorship of the proletariat. How do you reconcile this with your claims?

The class for itself is the class that *understands* its role in society, is a class for itself and not just a class for others. In the particular case of the proletariat that means it is a class which understands that it in its very nature is the negation of class society. And wants not just to defend itself from exploitation by other classes, but actively change society according to its objective needs, which happen to be socialism.

Or, putting it another way, it must go into politics, and therefore its natural and best vehicle when it has become a class for itself is a political party.

Non-socialist class consciousness certainly exists, but it is a limited, partial and inadequate form of class consciousness. As is seen by the invariable fate of non-socialist labor parties, which is either to become socialist or to become simple vehicles for the personal corruption of their leaders, like the rather infamous "Union Labor Party" that dominated San Francisco politically in the first decade of the twentieth century.

Or turn into bourgeois parties, which is where the Labour Party certainly seemed to be headed under Blair and Brown. The impression I have is that the only thing that prevented this was the party's financial dependence on the unions.

As for the Paris Commune, it is a political-sociological fact that the working class was in charge of Paris during the Commune. I don't see how whether the workers were fully class conscious, i.e. socialists, or not is relevant to that.

Indeed Spartacist theoretician Joseph Seymour a year ago issued a controversial speculation, challenged by the "revolutionary program" minority group that recently split away from them, that given the worldwide retrogression in class consciousness since the demise of the Russian Revolution and the intense and accelerating economic class contradictions, that a working class revolution in the absence of class consciousness is a historic possibility, even without a revolutionary party. As he put it,

"is it possible that a spontaneous upheaval, involving a substantial section of the working class, against a right-wing government can lead to a prerevolutionary and even a revolutionary situation (i.e., organs of dual power) even though the mass of workers and other toilers involved do not aspire to socialism? I think the answer is yes."

http://www.icl-fi.org/english/wv/949/postsoviet.html

But the question is what that would look like. Perhaps current events in England show up what some of the problems of that would be.


If you'll allow me to be frank, conditioning a recognition of class conciousness on the adoption of socialist ideas, a process which demands some delineation between the legitimate and illegitimately socialist, seems to me a pretext for ensuring party control of the working class movement.

Depends on the party of course. As far as I am concerned, control of the working class movement by a revolutionary party is a good thing, by a nonrevoluionary party a bad thing. But given the absence lately of revolutionary parties, I am not enthused about party control of the labor movement at the moment. Of course, the nonparty leaderships of the labor movement lately are just as bad if not worse.

-M.H.-



I'm not taking sides on the "real jobs" thing, I'm just asking about what does and does not constitute "proletarianisation". So what I'm apparently not getting is exactly how these jobs constituted a departure from the proletariat. That's something that I'm afraid that you're going to have to explain to me, so very thick as I appear to be.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Indeed. Don't quite know the English terminology, but a white collar worker in a shop, working *for* the shopkeeper, assisting in the circulation process, a necessary function of capitalism, adds value to the commodity he is selling with his labor, and some of that value goes to him as wages and the employer gets the surplus which turns into profit, as well as rent to the landlord, interest to the banker etc.

At least somebody here recognizes the value-adding function of circulation. :)


The reason for the greater attention to the industrial proletariat is that production, not circulation and consumption, is the key to the economy. Industrial proletarians therefore have more social weight and in general are more important from the Marxist POV. Indeed this is the fundamental difference between Marxist economics, whose basic category is labor and the labor theory of value, and bourgeois economics, based in marginalism and consumer preference and denying that there is really any objective measure of economic value at all.

My wrinkle to your post is this: production of and for what? Factory workers working in arms trade may produce surplus value, but they don't produce or aid in the circulation of things necessary for the reproduction of labour power ("consumption"), as opposed to public education instructors.


Or, putting it another way, it must go into politics, and therefore its natural and best vehicle when it has become a class for itself is a political party.

But a non-mass "revolutionary party" cannot be, during a revolutionary period, either the working class for itself or representative of the working class for itself.

[A Marxist Historian]

At least somebody here recognizes the value-adding function of circulation. :)



My wrinkle to your post is this: production of and for what? Factory workers working in arms trade may produce surplus value, but they don't produce or aid in the circulation of things necessary for the reproduction of labour power ("consumption"), as opposed to public education instructors.

Actually this is not the case. Since the military are a "necessary" function of capitalism, which cannot continue with the production and circulation process without a capitalist state to keep the workers and other classes in line, this is incorrect. You can't have armed bodies of men keeping the working class in line without supplying them with guns. So the military sector should be seen as constant capital, rather than just a form of surplus value consumed by capitalists, like, say, thousand dollar wines, beluga caviar and diamond necklaces.

Long, long ago Spartacist theorist and economist Joseph Seymour wrote a brilliant article entitled "Myths of Neo-Capitalism" on the subject of productive and unproductive labor. Unfortunately it is a 1972 rarity in their youth paper, never reprinted anywhere or available on the web.

In this connection he was particularly polemicizing against the Tony Cliff conception back then of a "permanent arms economy," which he saw as a revision of Marxism, as he also saw Mandel's neo-capitalist theories, as well as Sweezy, Mattick and so forth. (Mattick somewhat less so, he cut him some slack.)



But a non-mass "revolutionary party" cannot be, during a revolutionary period, either the working class for itself or representative of the working class for itself.

True. If it isn't a mass party, it doesn't represent enough of the working class to be describable as the class for itself.

For a revolutionary party to become not just the "theoretical" representative of the working class but the actual, requires a transformation process, and acquiring a mass membership is obviously a key part of that transformation.

-M.H.-

[Die Neue Zeit]

Actually this is not the case. Since the military are a "necessary" function of capitalism, which cannot continue with the production and circulation process without a capitalist state to keep the workers and other classes in line, this is incorrect. You can't have armed bodies of men keeping the working class in line without supplying them with guns. So the military sector should be seen as constant capital, rather than just a form of surplus value consumed by capitalists, like, say, thousand dollar wines, beluga caviar and diamond necklaces.

Like I said to someone more stubborn in this thread, please check out Paul Cockshott's paper Hunting Productive Work. Not all "socially necessary labour" is productive.


True. If it isn't a mass party, it doesn't represent enough of the working class to be describable as the class for itself.

For a revolutionary party to become not just the "theoretical" representative of the working class but the actual, requires a transformation process, and acquiring a mass membership is obviously a key part of that transformation.

-M.H.-

I guess where I disagree with you is "for a revolutionary party." It's more accurate to say "for a revolutionary group." It's contrasting 1917 myths with the lost history of the pre-war SPD model.

[Tim Finnegan]

Except we're not talking about the already-existing proletariat, we're talking about the proletarianization of the non-proletarian sectors. We're talking about the historical process that supposedly absorbs the petit-bourgeois into the proletariat.
That doesn't answer my question. In what sense is a former petty bourgeois who is forced into unemployment for want of a job distinct from a worker who is forced into unemployment for want of a job? Unless he's still trying, in some way, to compete on the market, then he sounds like a proletarian to me, just an unlucky one- hardly a unique experience.


Ummh........the discussion is about the shopkeepers, remember? That's how this started. If you want to talk about systems analysts, human resource professionals, engineers, accountants, financial analysts, bond traders, manager who get laid off in downsizing we can talk about that, but that's not the original issue.
Well, yes, but I was also talking about proletarianisation more generally. If it is actually an ongoing process in the professional fields, through the reorganisation of those areas of the economy and the subsumption of that labour to capital (the increasing monopolisation of the healthcare industry by large companies at the expense of small private practices, for example), then it seems to be of relevance.


In general, they don't experience proletarianization. They remain petit-bourgeois finding new employment in similar fields but at a lower rate of pay, or they too get marginalized into temporary, casual, labor, personal services, etc.
I'm not just talking about lay offs, I'm talking about the changes that have occurred and are occurring in professional labour, both the formal and real subsumption of professional labour to capital. I don't see how a waged worker becomes "petty bourgeois" just because they a professional degree, if all other conditions of their employment are in essence identical- how the junior engineer at an engineering firm is not a worker, but a filing clerk is, for example.


Personal services includes such things as being a "consultant," hardly proletarian employment. Marginal employment means obtaining employment as a temp. The use of temp professionals has increased significantly in the US over the last ten years.
In what sense is this by definition non-proletarian employment? It was very common, before the introduction of legislation in these areas, for manual labourers to operate on an essentially "temp" basis. That was a very important issue in the early labour movement, at least in the UK (don't know enough of American labour history to say).


There is no "if" The proletariat is definitely shrinking, and it adds significant challenges to the prospects for revolution. Doesn't change the antagonisms inherent in capital, does mean that all the tactics, strategies that have proven themselves inadequate and failures, weren't failures because they were "mistakes," but because they were obsolete.
Well, that's certainly something to think about.

I also have to wonder about what implications all this has for the riots in London, which you asserted as being of a working class nature, given that your definition of class seems to exclude the majority of those involved, given the local rate of unemployment, the disproportionate level of unemployed young people represented among the rioters, and the primarily tertiary-sector, apparently non-proletarian forms of employment which predominate in those areas.

[S.Artesian]

That doesn't answer my question. In what sense is a former petty bourgeois who is forced into unemployment for want of a job distinct from a worker who is forced into unemployment for want of a job? Unless he's still trying, in some way, to compete on the market, then he sounds like a proletarian to me, just an unlucky one- hardly a unique experience.

But that was never the question of this topic in this thread. The question was the process of proletarianization. A shopkeeper who loses his shop is a shopkeeper who has lost his property. An unemployed worker is an unemployed worker.

Simply losing one's property does not complete the process of proletarianization. Actually entering the working class as a worker does.


More later

[Tim Finnegan]

But that was never the question of this topic in this thread. The question was the process of proletarianization. A shopkeeper who loses his shop is a shopkeeper who has lost his property. An unemployed worker is an unemployed worker.

Simply losing one's property does not complete the process of proletarianization. Actually entering the working class as a worker does.
Well, yes, but what I'm asking is how losing your property and being forced to try and sell your labour power is distinct from entering the working class. Perhaps you're saying that it is necessary for them to actually find employment to "confirm" themselves as a worker?

[S.Artesian]

Well, yes, but what I'm asking is how losing your property and being forced to try and sell your labour power is distinct from entering the working class. Perhaps you're saying that it is necessary for them to actually find employment to "confirm" themselves as a worker?

No, I'm talking about the historical process, where they are petit-bourgeois and are ruined or impoverished, but not absorbed into the body of the working class.

For example, in the past, and currently, most farmers earning the majority of their income from non-farm activities, outside the actual process of agriculture. Prior to the great asset-stripping rampage of the Reagan era, many of these farmers were employed in factories in and around rural communities in the US.

In the 1980s many of them lost their farms due to increased debt loads and falling incomes. Many of them lost their farms because they first lost that "secondary" employment in factories. For another many, just the reverse took place. First they lost their farms and then they lost their jobs due to continued downsizing.

Do you think this amounts to "proletarianization"? I don't. No more than I think there "secondary" employment amounted to proletarianization even when the majority of their income was obtained from the secondary employment.

When a former design engineer at GM or Chrysler loses his or her employment and winds up as a manager at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, that process does not amount to proletarianization.

When a person who was vice-president of marketing for a retail clothing chain gets downsized and has to find employment as a "consultant" sans benefits, steady income, etc. that process does not amount to proletarianization.

[A Marxist Historian]

Like I said to someone more stubborn in this thread, please check out Paul Cockshott's paper Hunting Productive Work. Not all "socially necessary labour" is productive.

That is a secondary question. Since capitalist production includes both the moment of production and the moment of circulation, if employment in the circulation sector involves the adding of value to the product, whether directly or indirectly, then the laborer is part of the working class if he is employed and has to share that value with his employer, or is "exploited" in the technical sense.

-M.H.-



I guess where I disagree with you is "for a revolutionary party." It's more accurate to say "for a revolutionary group." It's contrasting 1917 myths with the lost history of the pre-war SPD model.

[Tim Finnegan]

No, I'm talking about the historical process, where they are petit-bourgeois and are ruined or impoverished, but not absorbed into the body of the working class.

For example, in the past, and currently, most farmers earning the majority of their income from non-farm activities, outside the actual process of agriculture. Prior to the great asset-stripping rampage of the Reagan era, many of these farmers were employed in factories in and around rural communities in the US.

In the 1980s many of them lost their farms due to increased debt loads and falling incomes. Many of them lost their farms because they first lost that "secondary" employment in factories. For another many, just the reverse took place. First they lost their farms and then they lost their jobs due to continued downsizing.

Do you think this amounts to "proletarianization"? I don't. No more than I think there "secondary" employment amounted to proletarianization even when the majority of their income was obtained from the secondary employment.

When a former design engineer at GM or Chrysler loses his or her employment and winds up as a manager at Starbucks or Dunkin' Donuts, that process does not amount to proletarianization.

When a person who was vice-president of marketing for a retail clothing chain gets downsized and has to find employment as a "consultant" sans benefits, steady income, etc. that process does not amount to proletarianization.
You're kind of dancing around the point, here. Nobody's saying that all petty bourgeoisie must become proletarians simply because their old position becomes unavailable, but that some do (and probably most in the case of shopkeepers, given that they usually lack additional training or education), because some are obliged to go out and pursue the same waged labour as the existing proletariat. Examples where they pick up some other, cruddier kind of petty bourgeois work don't have much bearing on cases where that option is not available, and so don't really constitute evidence for a general non-absorption into the proletariat.

(Also, I'm not sure I understand why an engineer would not be considered a worker, albeit a privileged and quite probably politically compromised one. Would you be able to elaborate on that?)

[A Marxist Historian]

That doesn't answer my question. In what sense is a former petty bourgeois who is forced into unemployment for want of a job distinct from a worker who is forced into unemployment for want of a job? Unless he's still trying, in some way, to compete on the market, then he sounds like a proletarian to me, just an unlucky one- hardly a unique experience.

This is a practical question. If he is trying to get a job at McDonald's, he has become an unemployed worker. If he is trying to get by on some petty marginal scheme, such as drug peddling for the extreme example, then he is a bankrupt petty bourgeois.

Nor is it at all unknown for an unemployed worker to try to survive by some economic method other than getting another job. Especially with the outright destruction of the social safety net going on now. That is deproletarianization, a very common phenomenon these days, not least in the Third World, where you never had any social welfare measures in the first place.



Well, yes, but I was also talking about proletarianisation more generally. If it is actually an ongoing process in the professional fields, through the reorganisation of those areas of the economy and the subsumption of that labour to capital (the increasing monopolisation of the healthcare industry by large companies at the expense of small private practices, for example), then it seems to be of relevance.

I'm not just talking about lay offs, I'm talking about the changes that have occurred and are occurring in professional labour, both the formal and real subsumption of professional labour to capital. I don't see how a waged worker becomes "petty bourgeois" just because they a professional degree, if all other conditions of their employment are in essence identical- how the junior engineer at an engineering firm is not a worker, but a filing clerk is, for example.

The proletarianization of the professional petty bourgeoisie is an accelerating process, which Marx already talked about at some length more than a century ago. At one point does a junior engineer become a proletarianized cubicle slave working to a time clock and not necessarily paid that well? Since the process is highly reversible, the criterion is ultimately subjective.

When they unionize and go on strike for higher wages and better conditions, and not to become independent professionals again, is when I'll consider them proletarianized. As far as I know, that hasn't really happened anywhere yet.

In America, it has happened with nurses, with school teachers, is increasingly happening with lowpaid college level non-tenured adjuncts, and even shows some signs of happening with doctors, given the accelerating disintegration of the American medical system.


In what sense is this by definition non-proletarian employment? It was very common, before the introduction of legislation in these areas, for manual labourers to operate on an essentially "temp" basis. That was a very important issue in the early labour movement, at least in the UK (don't know enough of American labour history to say).

Very important in America historically, and coming back in as an issue now, as it is everywhere else. There is a classic American solution to this which is extremely applicable now.

In America, dockworkers have always been employed on a "temp" basis. The solution found was not decasualization. Rather, it was union seizure of control over the hiring process, and the phenomenon of the "union hiring hall," which is still the basic structure in longshore, and not unheard of elsewhere. Indeed, union control over hiring in one fashion or another was a historic hallmark of American craft unionism in particular. You still have quite a bit of it in the construction trades for example, not just longshore.

That was the great victory in particular of the 1934 San Francisco General Strike, which is why the longshore union was and continues to be the backbone of the California labor movement.

In longshore, it is the *employers* who have fought for decasualization, trying to replace the union hiring hall by hiring "steady men," who have one particular employer and don't get work by going to the hall, signing up, and waiting for their spot on the union-run hire rotation.

Given that temporary work corresponds well to the current structure of capitalism, in many cases this is a better model to follow than struggling for decasualization, the usual union response these days.



Well, that's certainly something to think about.

I also have to wonder about what implications all this has for the riots in London, which you asserted as being of a working class nature, given that your definition of class seems to exclude the majority of those involved, given the local rate of unemployment, the disproportionate level of unemployed young people represented among the rioters, and the primarily tertiary-sector, apparently non-proletarian forms of employment which predominate in those areas.

Indeed.

And what is more, the issue of racial oppression was the initial spark, though here as in Los Angeles 1992 it set off a more general uprising than just a racial minority uprising.

Indeed, here is one of the most important differences between Leninist conceptions of a party and Social Democratic as with Kautsky and the rest of the Second International.

The workers party needs to be a "tribune of the people" as Lenin put it, and must undertake the organization of nonproletarian sectors of the oppressed. So in addition to unemployed organizations, one needs to see what the Spartacists refer to as "transitional organizations" of women, racial minorities, etc., linked to the revolutionary party but with a fair amount of organizational autonomy, just like a youth organization.

On a very small scale they have undertaken this in America with their "labor black leagues."

Something similar in the UK is desperately necessary.

-M.H.-

[S.Artesian]

You're kind of dancing around the point, here. Nobody's saying that all petty bourgeoisie must become proletarians simply because their old position becomes unavailable, but that some do (and probably most in the case of shopkeepers, given that they usually lack additional training or education), because some are obliged to go out and pursue the same waged labour as the existing proletariat. Examples where they pick up some other, cruddier kind of petty bourgeois work don't have much bearing on cases where that option is not available, and so don't really constitute evidence for a general non-absorption into the proletariat.

(Also, I'm not sure I understand why an engineer would not be considered a worker, albeit a privileged and quite probably politically compromised one. Would you be able to elaborate on that?)


No, you're the one who keeps dancing around the point, and shifting the targets, and moving the goal posts.

Miles said "let them get real jobs" the real jobs being proletarian jobs. That's how this started. You took from that "proletarianization"-- as a historical process. I'm saying there is no proletarianization taking place.

Why not check the US Dept of Labor statistics and see if the percentages of managers, professionals, self-employed, marginally employed, consultants, etc. as a percentage of the overall employed labor force has gone up or down in the last 30 years.

If you like, I could do that for you, but I think the experience of actually acquiring and analyzing the empirical data would be good for you as so far all you've offered is speculation and "what about this, what about that?"

EDIT:

Here's a start: In 2001, the total US civilian labor force was approximately 138,000,000. The labor force peaked in early 2008 [before the recession took hold] at approximately 155,000,000. At the end of 2010, the labor force was app. 153,000,000.

However, the total number employed in that civilian labor force at the end of 2001 was actually larger than the total number employed in December 2010. Now maybe you think that's because capital got rid of so many bankers and officer managers, and administrators, well you'd be wrong. It got rid of a few. What it got rid of in bulk however are all the jobs people associate with proletarianization, new and old-- production workers, nurses, construction workers, teachers, transport workers. As a matter of fact in almost every wage category employment was reduced-- except in the petroleum industry. Money talks.

So tell me again where is the proletarianization, when fewer are employed, and fewer are employed in almost every wage-paying category?

[NonNobisSolum]

Are you black?


I am and I completely agree with his analysis.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

So tell me again where is the proletarianization, when fewer are employed, and fewer are employed in almost every wage-paying category?I don't know if you can precisely pinpoint the movement of and within the petty-bourgeoisie with BoL statistics alone.

There are things you have to keep in mind.

Not all petty-bourgeoisie will become wage slaves upon loosing their business. Some will retire, some will sell their businesses, some will take up some petty-bourgeois position in another business (eg. become a manager), some will end up on the margins of the economy (unemployed, even criminal activities), etc. In large measure, the petty-bourgeoisie will do everything they can not to become a part of the working class. And I think that's a part of the point.

Also remember that there are going to be less people on the BoL stat sheets now than in previous years since official unemployment is at much higher levels than it has been since 1982 (source (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+unemployment+chart#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&ifdim=state&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en)) and real unemployment is at historic heights (source (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/US_Unemployment_measures.svg)).

That said...

In 1970 there were 71,006,000 employed in "goods producing" industries.
In 1980 there were 90,528,000.
In 1990 there were 109,487,000.
In 2000 there were 131,785,000.
In 2010 there were 129,818,000.

(Source (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt):Employees on nonfarm payrolls by major industry sector, 1961 to date)

So that's a 82.8% increase between 1970 and 2010. The total population increased 51.9% in the same period.

And how about "service providing" (from the same source)?

1970: 48,827,000
1980: 66,265,000
1990: 85,764,000
2000: 107,136,000
2010: 112,064,000

A 129.5% increase from 1970-2010, while the population increased 51.9%.

Of course that includes some petty-bourgeois categories in finance, etc.

According to this (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat1.txt), the number of people not in the labor force was 54,315,000 in 1970. In 2002 it was 72,707,000. That's a 33.9% increase, which means it didn't keep up with the rise in population over the same period.

According to the same source, the percentage of the civilian non-institutional population in the work force in 1970 was 57.4. In 2002 it was 62.7. That in spite of unemployment rising from 4.9% to 5.8% in the same period.

So with a 38.5% increase in population between 1970 and 2000, the total number of employed "non-institutionalized" people increased by about 76.75%.

Don't forget too that huge numbers of people were thrown in jail between 1970 and 2000. In 1970 there were 196,429 people incarcerated in the U.S. In 2010 there were 1,331,278. (Source (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:U.S._incarceration_rates_1925_onwards.png))

According to this (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat9.txt), the number of people 16 & over employed in "Management, professional, and related occupations" dropped from 52,219,000 in 2009 to 51,743,000 in 2010. During the same period, the number of people 16 & over employed in "service occupations" increased from 24,598,000 in 2009 to 24,634,000; and the number of people 16 & over employed in "Production, transportation, and material moving" increased from 15,951,000 in 2009 to 16,180,000 in 2010.

But then we have this (http://censtats.census.gov/cgi-bin/nonemployer/nonsect.pl). According to those statistic, there were 17,646,062 "nonemployers" (self-employed) in 2002. In 2009 there were 21,090,761. That's a 19.5% increase. Between 2000 and 2010, the population increased by 9.7%. But, "Most nonemployer businesses are very small, and many are not the primary source of income for their owners," which means a chunk of these is made up of workers doing something on the side to help make ends meet.

As Michael Zweig pointed out in the book The Working Class Majority, "Millions of these self-employed 'small business people' have working class jobs as their main source of support; their business activity is just another source of personal income, often much smaller than their job income. Sometimes a working class person will be forced to connect to their employer as an independent contractor...".

Also: "Brian Head, Economist with the SBA [U.S. Small Business Administration] Office of Advocacy, noted that the latest statistics are a much more accurate assessment of new business success rates, and that 'as a general rule of thumb, new employer businesses have a 50/50 chance of surviving for five years or more.'" - http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/business-failure.htm

It's hard to get a real accurate picture from this, at least on this question. If anyone knows of better statistics or information to draw from please let us know.

And obviously, this is just for the U.S. In China we've seen a massive influx of small farmers from the countryside flood the cities in recent years:

"The number of cities increased more than three times from 191 in 1978 to 661 in 2005. The proportion of China’s urban population increased from 18 percent in 1978 to 43.9 percent in 2006... In 1989, there were already about 30 million migrant workers in China. In 1993, the number increased to 62 million and by the end of 2006 to 131.8 million." (source (http://www.clb.org.hk/en/node/100259))

[S.Artesian]

I don't know if you can precisely pinpoint the movement of and within the petty-bourgeoisie with BoL statistics alone.

There are things you have to keep in mind.

Not all petty-bourgeoisie will become wage slaves upon loosing their business. Some will retire, some will sell their businesses, some will take up some petty-bourgeois position in another business (eg. become a manager), some will end up on the margins of the economy (unemployed, even criminal activities), etc. In large measure, the petty-bourgeoisie will do everything they can not to become a part of the working class. And I think that's a part of the point.

Exactly. That's part of the point that proletarianization is not occurring.


Also remember that there are going to be less people on the BoL stat sheets now than in previous years since official unemployment is at much higher levels than it has been since 1982 (source (http://www.google.com/publicdata/explore?ds=z1ebjpgk2654c1_&met_y=unemployment_rate&tdim=true&fdim_y=seasonality:S&dl=en&hl=en&q=us+unemployment+chart#ctype=l&strail=false&nselm=h&met_y=unemployment_rate&fdim_y=seasonality:S&scale_y=lin&ind_y=false&rdim=state&ifdim=state&tdim=true&hl=en&dl=en)) and real unemployment is at historic heights (source (http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/9/9b/US_Unemployment_measures.svg)).
Yes and no. Yes, that may be happening, but no, that's not the real issue. The real issue is employment,



In 1970 there were 71,006,000 employed in "goods producing" industries.
In 1980 there were 90,528,000.
In 1990 there were 109,487,000.
In 2000 there were 131,785,000.
In 2010 there were 129,818,000.

(Source (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/suppl/empsit.ceseeb1.txt):Employees on nonfarm payrolls by major industry sector, 1961 to date)

So that's a 82.8% increase between 1970 and 2010. The total population increased 51.9% in the same period. Wrong. You've misread the statistics. Total non-farm payrolls are the numbers you have provided. That includes all non-farm employment. Total goods producing employment peaks in 1979 at 24,997,000, in 2000 its at 24, 649, and by 2010 it's at 17, 755,000.


And how about "service providing" (from the same source)?

1970: 48,827,000
1980: 66,265,000
1990: 85,764,000
2000: 107,136,000
2010: 112,064,000

A 129.5% increase from 1970-2010, while the population increased 51.9%.

Of course that includes some petty-bourgeois categories in finance, etc.

Some? 1/6 of employment in the US is accounted for by office administrators, executive assistants, managers.

How about we look at the fastest growing portions of that service employment: professional and business services , education and healthcare, leisure activities.


That does not look very much like proletarianization to me.


I'll answer the rest of the stats later. However, China's manufacturing, mining, employment peaked prior to 2000.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Wrong. You've misread the statistics. Total non-farm payrolls are the numbers you have provided. That includes all non-farm employment. Total goods producing employment peaks in 1979 at 24,997,000, in 2000 its at 24, 649, and by 2010 it's at 17, 755,000.I got messed up when typing the thing up in the little quick reply box. I meant to make separate paragraphs for the total payroll figures, which is what I erroneously listed under "goods producing," and goods producing.

Goods producing:

1970: 22,179,000
1980: 24,263,000
1990: 23,723,000
2000: 24,649,000
2010: 17,755,000

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

Exactly. That's part of the point that proletarianization is not occurring.Historically it has. It is continuing to occur to some extent now too (more efficient production in China, etc., not withstanding -- clearly some shop keepers, craftsmen, etc., fail at business and go get jobs, I know of plenty myself). The question is how to measure it.

For an accurate account, we'd have to find the number of people who had no other way to survive than to sell their labor-power (whether or not they could actually find someone to buy their labor-power) from as early back as possible until today. Then we'd have to find similar figures on the petty-bourgeois (and numbers on things like # of small shops vs. # of managers in capitalist enterprises would also be useful).

And if we find that the majority of the individual members of the petty-bourgeois refuse to proletarianize, even when the only other "options" are things like flying small planes into IRS buildings, and that the tendency is increasing, then it becomes another question all together. And I think that's one of the things that matter most.


That does not look very much like proletarianization to me.IDK, go to a place like Wal-Mart, which now has something like 1,200,000 employees in the U.S. alone. You'll find that a chunk of the people working in the automotive section were formerly mechanics (self-employed or working in small shops), people in the home improvement section were formerly contractors (same goes for places like Home Depot, Lowe's, etc), people in the bakery and deli sections used to be self-employed or work in small shops, etc.

Not every ruined shop keeper has the ability to wrap up and go home.

[Tim Finnegan]

No, you're the one who keeps dancing around the point, and shifting the targets, and moving the goal posts.

Miles said "let them get real jobs" the real jobs being proletarian jobs. That's how this started. You took from that "proletarianization"-- as a historical process. I'm saying there is no proletarianization taking place.

Why not check the US Dept of Labor statistics and see if the percentages of managers, professionals, self-employed, marginally employed, consultants, etc. as a percentage of the overall employed labor force has gone up or down in the last 30 years.

If you like, I could do that for you, but I think the experience of actually acquiring and analyzing the empirical data would be good for you as so far all you've offered is speculation and "what about this, what about that?"

EDIT:

Here's a start: In 2001, the total US civilian labor force was approximately 138,000,000. The labor force peaked in early 2008 [before the recession took hold] at approximately 155,000,000. At the end of 2010, the labor force was app. 153,000,000.

However, the total number employed in that civilian labor force at the end of 2001 was actually larger than the total number employed in December 2010. Now maybe you think that's because capital got rid of so many bankers and officer managers, and administrators, well you'd be wrong. It got rid of a few. What it got rid of in bulk however are all the jobs people associate with proletarianization, new and old-- production workers, nurses, construction workers, teachers, transport workers. As a matter of fact in almost every wage category employment was reduced-- except in the petroleum industry. Money talks.

So tell me again where is the proletarianization, when fewer are employed, and fewer are employed in almost every wage-paying category?
How does unemployment factor into all this, exactly? Employment statistics alone really don't really give you much information about the relative sizes of a class.

You also haven't really dealt with the gradual subsumption of professional labour under capital, which I am given to understand is a very real process which is actually occurring at an accelerated rate as a result of the recent crisis - independent professionals being less capable of maintaining themselves and employed professionals having their bargaining position undermined by circumstances- which I think is important in regards to your general comments on "proletarianisation". You seem to be operating under the assumption that the expansion of capital must be in the direction of greater material production, and as such that it is possible to take statistics as to the number of managerial and professional employees as directly indicative of the size of the petty bourgeoisie, which I'm really not as sure about. (And before anyone says anything, I'm not going to claim that "managers are workers", or anything like that, simply that the actual employees who are listed in categories like "office administrators, executive assistants, managers" are not all managers in the proper sense.)

[S.Artesian]

Historically it has. It is continuing to occur to some extent now too (more efficient production in China, etc., not withstanding -- clearly some shop keepers, craftsmen, etc., fail at business and go get jobs, I know of plenty myself). The question is how to measure it.

The numbers you cite do not support this at all. That's the point. You can't cite numbers that include "professional and business services" "financial services" "leisure" etc. and then don't break those numbers down and conclude anything

We are talking about the proletarianization of the petit-bourgeois-- the displaced shopkeepers, officer managers, lower and middle management, professionals, even small farmers. It's simply not happening.


And if we find that the majority of the individual members of the petty-bourgeois refuse to proletarianize, even when the only other "options" are things like flying small planes into IRS buildings, and that the tendency is increasing, then it becomes another question all together. And I think that's one of the things that matter most.
This is not a question of will, it's a question of the composition of capital. The proletarianization process has not dispossessed the petit-bourgeoisie of their individual resources and reconstituted them as part of the proletariat in the US.

Now maybe some people want to claim "Ah there's a new proletariat, made up of white collar professionals, engineers, government employees etc. etc." But then somebody is going to have show us a "new" capital, where the labor of the white collar professionals, engineers, government employees is yields a surplus value attached to useful articles; where these sectors are actually engaged in commodity production as Marx describes it in his critiques of capital.


IDK, go to a place like Wal-Mart, which now has something like 1,200,000 employees in the U.S. alone. You'll find that a chunk of the people working in the automotive section were formerly mechanics (self-employed or working in small shops), people in the home improvement section were formerly contractors (same goes for places like Home Depot, Lowe's, etc), people in the bakery and deli sections used to be self-employed or work in small shops, etc.

Not every ruined shop keeper has the ability to wrap up and go home.The failure rate of the petit-bourgeois "self-employment" sector has always been very high. The 50% failure rate in any one year after start-up has been around a long, long time.

I have no idea how many of those working in the automotive section of Wal-Mart were previously auto-mechanics who had their own shops, or owned their own gas stations etc. Perhaps a lot. But for every one of them who does get hired, I'll bet there are 2 or 3 that don't get hired, and wind up with less income than before, but nevertheless still not absorbed into the proletariat.

We can trade anecdotes all day, but the bottom line is that jobs are being destroyed; and the jobs that have been created since 2001 are by and large not proletarian.

That's what the numbers show in the broadest measures, which are the only things they do measure-- the actual trends. That's why fewer people are now employed as a percentage of the available labor force than at anytime since end of WW2.

Does anyone really think that structural change is going to be reversed? That we are going to see capitalism, world-wide, restore itself to high rates of growth, and higher rates of employment? If so, I marvel at that person's optimism. I think that it is much more likely that we will see growth failing, a series of asset liquidations that will make the 1980s look like the "found" decade.

[S.Artesian]

How does unemployment factor into all this, exactly? Employment statistics alone really don't really give you much information about the relative sizes of a class.

You also haven't really dealt with the gradual subsumption of professional labour under capital, which I am given to understand is a very real process which is actually occurring at an accelerated rate as a result of the recent crisis - independent professionals being less capable of maintaining themselves and employed professionals having their bargaining position undermined by circumstances- which I think is important in regards to your general comments on "proletarianisation". You seem to be operating under the assumption that the expansion of capital must be in the direction of greater material production, and as such that it is possible to take statistics as to the number of managerial and professional employees as directly indicative of the size of the petty bourgeoisie, which I'm really not as sure about. (And before anyone says anything, I'm not going to claim that "managers are workers", or anything like that, simply that the actual employees who are listed in categories like "office administrators, executive assistants, managers" are not all managers in the proper sense.)

Sorry, the challenge is yours, not mine. Show us, using the empirical data where proletarianization occurs. I don't really care to hear about the theoretical subsumption of professional labor which you claim is accelerating unless you can show me the numbers that indicate how and how many of these workers are being proletarianized-- not ruined, not impoverished, not expelled from their previous niches, but actually proletarianized.

I can point to the actually decline in industrial, manufacturing, mining [minus petroleum-- or actually including petroleum in the total] construction. I can point to the actual decline in total number of non self-employed persons in the labor force; the actual decline of the percentage of the labor force employed for wages or salary.

The challenge is yours to produce some numbers to back up your assertions. I can produce the numbers to back mine. Actually, NHIA has already produced them for me.

If you can't find the evidence somewhere in the real world, if all you can offer is anecdote and speculation, well... clearly then it's safe to conclude there is no evidence beyond anecdote and speculation.

And by the way, yeah, I do believe capital is most definitely tied to material, goods production. Without a doubt. Look at world trade, tell me what led to the "glory days" of world trade if not material production?

But if you've got another "anchor" for capital, something else that has replaced material production, or production of material goods, please feel free to track its importance in the reproduction not simply of capital as money, but the reproduction of capital as a social relationship of production, valorizing the entire process of production.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

I think the movement of people from the countryside to the cities of China to take up employment in numbers that equate to almost half the population of the United States in a matter of a few years is pretty significant.

Of course I don't think capitalism has any "progressive" content left.

The questions here were originally of the petty-bourgeoisie, it's character, it's future, it's role vis-a-vis the proletariat, the hostility workers feel toward it, whether or not it can be "won" to a "class conscious" movement, etc.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

The 50% failure rate in any one year after start-up has been around a long, long time.

That's actually a myth.

The 50% figure is accurate at 5 years. 70% survive at least two years. (Source (http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/business-failure.htm))

And I don't think those figures do or can say it all. How did the owners of these failed businesses begin? Where do they go afterward (open a new business, take up a management position in a capitalist enterprise, withdraw from society, get a job, look for a job to no avail, sell illegal items, start an NGO, become a TEA Party functionary, fly a plane into an IRS building, etc.)?

[S.Artesian]

I think the movement of people from the countryside to the cities of China to take up employment in numbers that equate to almost half the population of the United States in a matter of a few years is pretty significant.

Of course I don't think capitalism has any "progressive" content left.

The questions here were originally of the petty-bourgeoisie, it's character, it's future, it's role vis-a-vis the proletariat, the hostility workers feel toward it, whether or not it can be "won" to a "class conscious" movement, etc.

If you're referring to China, the simple movement of population into the cities while certainly constituting urbanization does not in and of itself constitute proletarianization. During and after WW2 millions moved from the rural areas of the countries of Latin America into and around the cities but with very little chance at employment. That was the problem with capital, that even in its expansion it was not capable of employing nearly the numbers it dispossessed and threw into cities . And that's the difference between late 20th century capitalism anywhere, advanced or developing and the mid 19th century capitalism of the US.

The original question was about "getting a real job." What force were there that were actually capable of "proletarianizing" the petit-bourgeois.

I don't think that as a class, the petit-bourgeois can be won to a revolutionary socialist movement. I think individuals can, or might be. But all of this is just so much speculation as that developing class conscious movement is what's required, not the petit-bourgeoisie's allegiance to, or absorption into, it.

[Tim Finnegan]

Sorry, the challenge is yours, not mine. Show us, using the empirical data where proletarianization occurs. I don't really care to hear about the theoretical subsumption of professional labor which you claim is accelerating unless you can show me the numbers that indicate how and how many of these workers are being proletarianized-- not ruined, not impoverished, not expelled from their previous niches, but actually proletarianized.

I can point to the actually decline in industrial, manufacturing, mining [minus petroleum-- or actually including petroleum in the total] construction. I can point to the actual decline in total number of non self-employed persons in the labor force; the actual decline of the percentage of the labor force employed for wages or salary.

The challenge is yours to produce some numbers to back up your assertions. I can produce the numbers to back mine. Actually, NHIA has already produced them for me.

If you can't find the evidence somewhere in the real world, if all you can offer is anecdote and speculation, well... clearly then it's safe to conclude there is no evidence beyond anecdote and speculation.
You seem to be under the impression that I'm trying to debate some point with you, when I'm really just trying to ask what I thought were fairly reasonable questions. You really don't need to be quite so confrontational.


And by the way, yeah, I do believe capital is most definitely tied to material, goods production. Without a doubt. Look at world trade, tell me what led to the "glory days" of world trade if not material production?

But if you've got another "anchor" for capital, something else that has replaced material production, or production of material goods, please feel free to track its importance in the reproduction not simply of capital as money, but the reproduction of capital as a social relationship of production, valorizing the entire process of production.I didn't say that capital didn't have to be tied to be material production- I'm not an idiot- simply that accumulation doesn't necessarily have to occur only in the direction of the direct production of material goods. The collapsing of, say, a dozen small architects firms into a major firm is surely just as much an example of accumulation as a similar process involving construction firms- isn't it?

[S.Artesian]

That's actually a myth.

The 50% figure is accurate at 5 years. 70% survive at least two years. (Source (http://www.businessknowhow.com/startup/business-failure.htm))

And I don't think those figures do or can say it all. How did the owners of these failed businesses begin? Where do they go afterward (open a new business, take up a management position in a capitalist enterprise, withdraw from society, get a job, look for a job to no avail, sell illegal items, start an NGO, become a TEA Party functionary, fly a plane into an IRS building, etc.)?

The figure I remember reading was that 35-40% fail in the first year, but no matter. So what?

I don't think the figures do or say it all, either. But they're what we have to work with. The figures you cite simply do not support what you want them to support.

I have no idea where the petit-bourgeoisie "go afterwards," but when wage and salary jobs as a % of the labor force actually decline steadily over 3-4 years to a point where they are now below the mark set in the 2001 recession, clearly they are not going into the proletariat, right?

And to get back to the original issue, telling the ruined shopkeeper to go get a "real job" is as much horseshit as telling any kid in Tottenham to "go get a real job."

[S.Artesian]

You seem to be under the impression that I'm trying to debate some point with you, when I'm really just trying to ask what I thought were fairly reasonable questions. You really don't need to be quite so confrontational.

I didn't say that capital didn't have to be tied to be material production- I'm not an idiot- simply that accumulation doesn't necessarily have to occur only in the direction of the direct production of material goods. The collapsing of, say, a dozen small architects firms into a major firm is surely just as much an example of accumulation as a similar process involving construction firms- isn't it?

No, the collapsing of a dozen small firms is centralization of capital, it is most definitely concentration of capital, but it is not necessarily accumulation, expanded reproduction. Happened all the time during the Great Depression, right? Certainly wasn't accumulation, capital being valorized.

Not be confrontational? Look you say "You're dancing around the issue" "You haven't answered my questions" and I say, "Oh yes I have. But here's the deal. We don't need to speculate and pose theoretical "maybes." We can look to the real world and find, or not find, evidence to support or refute the view that proletarianization of the petit-bourgeois is taking place on a significant scale, as a significant tendency in this phase, frame, iteration, whatever of capitalism."

So let's find some evidence. I agree with NHIA that the numbers will not tell us anything, but it should tell us if the numbers of self-employed are declining and the numbers of wage workers are increasing.

Re material production, here's what you said:
You seem to be operating under the assumption that the expansion of capital must be in the direction of greater material production,

And yes, that is my assumption, that at core, capital must direct itself towards greater material production, as the valorization process is specifically about valorizing the capitalist production process, the capital embedded, spent in "c" and "v." Now the conflict between that greater material production and that valorization is precisely the contradiction that drives capital up the inside of the walls of the cage of its own making.

[Bitter Ashes]

How do I unsubscribe to this thread now? Some folk are going around in circles and I can't be bothered reading these updates.

[S.Artesian]

Uhh.......go to your CP, view all your subscribed threads and select unsubscribe, comrade forum moderator, global moderator.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

If you're referring to China, the simple movement of population into the cities while certainly constituting urbanization does not in and of itself constitute proletarianization.
"While the United States was losing 1.4 million manufacturing jobs from 2002 to 2006, China was substantially increasing the number of workers in its manufacturing sector, according to a new report on Chinese manufacturing employment and compensation costs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manufacturing employment in China during those five years increased by 10 percent to 112 million, about 100 million more than the number of manufacturing workers in the United States.

"Manufacturing employment in China bottomed out in 2002 at 100.7 million, down from a high of 126 million in 1996. 'In the late 1990s, privatization of China's manufacturing establishments and intense global competition brought increases in labor productivity accompanied by a drop in manufacturing employment,' says the new BLS study. But things started to turn around in 2002, with foreign demand for Chinese-manufactured goods growing by 25 percent per year. 'By the end of 2006, China's manufacturing employment had increased once again to 112.63 million, nearly eight times the level of manufacturing employment in the United States (14.16 million).'

"Not only are there a lot more manufacturing employees in China, but the amount of hours they are working also increased substantially during the 2002 to 2006 period. 'The published data on weekly hours worked in urban China showed a sharp increase from the 2003 to 2004 period to the 2005 to 2006 period, not only in manufacturing, which exhibited a sudden 9 percent increase but in most other economic sectors as well,' says the study. This big increase in hours worked 'is unusual from an international perspective,' says the BLS report." - http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/09/0529/chinesewages.html

From that BLS report (http://www.bls.gov/opub/mlr/2009/04/art3full.pdf):

Reported manufacturing employment in China:

1978 53.32 million
2002 83.07 million

From the same source:

Manufacturing employment in town and village enterprises (TVEs)
1990 51.50 million
2006 79.11 million

Manufacturing employment in urban units plus TVEs
1991 106.92 million
2006 111.61 million

It seems to me there was probably more growth in the TVEs because (according to that same source - Chart 3) in TVEs the average hourly compensation costs of manufacturing employees is much less than half of what it is in urban units, and it has remained nearly the same from 2002-2006, while costs in the urban units have soared.


The original question was about "getting a real job." What force were there that were actually capable of "proletarianizing" the petit-bourgeois. This is why I think the statistics are problematic. They don't tell us what we need to know. If employment is falling across the board, we can't point to falling employment figures as evidence that small business owners aren't being stripped of their businesses, tools, money, etc.

We can't look at figures of "self employed" people when they include huge numbers of workers doing piece work on the side to make ends meet (and that percentage is not defined in the statistics).

Class is defined by relation to the means of production. Unemployed workers are still workers. If you have no ownership or control of means of production and thus no way to survive other than by selling your labor power to someone who does, you do not escape from that if you can't find a capitalist to hire you for some period of time.

Have the millions of unemployed workers in the United States ceased to be workers now that they're no longer on employment rolls (and even unemployment rolls for those who have given up on finding work)?

One could look at the statistics now as compared to earlier years and say the proletariat is shrinking in this country. Is that true?


I don't think that as a class, the petit-bourgeois can be won to a revolutionary socialist movement. I think individuals can, or might be. But all of this is just so much speculation as that developing class conscious movement is what's required, not the petit-bourgeoisie's allegiance to, or absorption into, it. What would it mean to "win" petty-bourgeois individuals to a "revolutionary socialist movement" anyway? Would that mean having more people like Robbo, yelling "I'm one of you!" while denouncing people who dare damage the properties of his fellow small businessmen?

And how would we "win them over" anyway? By shedding tears of sorrow if they lose their business and have no way to survive other than by selling their labor power -- just like billions of other proletarians around the world?

Why would we do that? Especially when a real way for individuals from the petty-bourgeoisie to join the proletarian struggle would be to join the proletariat.

[S.Artesian]

"While the United States was losing 1.4 million manufacturing jobs from 2002 to 2006, China was substantially increasing the number of workers in its manufacturing sector, according to a new report on Chinese manufacturing employment and compensation costs from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Manufacturing employment in China during those five years increased by 10 percent to 112 million, about 100 million more than the number of manufacturing workers in the United States.

"Manufacturing employment in China bottomed out in 2002 at 100.7 million, down from a high of 126 million in 1996. 'In the late 1990s, privatization of China's manufacturing establishments and intense global competition brought increases in labor productivity accompanied by a drop in manufacturing employment,' says the new BLS study. But things started to turn around in 2002, with foreign demand for Chinese-manufactured goods growing by 25 percent per year. 'By the end of 2006, China's manufacturing employment had increased once again to 112.63 million, nearly eight times the level of manufacturing employment in the United States (14.16 million).'

As is said earlier, the peak in manufacturing employment in China occurred before 2000. I thought it was in 1998 but 1996 is close enough for government work.


"Not only are there a lot more manufacturing employees in China, but the amount of hours they are working also increased substantially during the 2002 to 2006 period. 'The published data on weekly hours worked in urban China showed a sharp increase from the 2003 to 2004 period to the 2005 to 2006 period, not only in manufacturing, which exhibited a sudden 9 percent increase but in most other economic sectors as well,' says the study. This big increase in hours worked 'is unusual from an international perspective,' says the BLS report." - http://www.manufacturingnews.com/news/09/0529/chinesewages.html

This however, might be an indicator of lower productivity in many if not most of China's manufacturing enterprises.

I think China faces serious serious problems, concentrated in the fact that almost half the population, some 700 million people is tied to agricultural production and the average plot size is less than 1 hectare.

Obviously the key to developing the domestic market requires rationalization of agriculture, improved agricultural productivity, which will involve dispossession of significant numbers of the rural population. But where are they going to go? With manufacturing employment having peaked awhile ago, with unemployment unofficially near, if not above, 200 million, how are you going move 500 million or 600 million people into urban or industrial areas and employ them?





This is why I think the statistics are problematic. They don't tell us what we need to know. If employment is falling across the board, we can't point to falling employment figures as evidence that small business owners aren't being stripped of their businesses, tools, money, etc.


But that's not what the issue is. Certainly the petit-bourgeois are being stripped of their assets, we can follow bankruptcy rates and see that. The issue is are they being engaged as "proletarians"? And I think the number showing wage and salary employment declining across the board making it painfully clear to the most casual observer that they are NOT.


We can't look at figures of "self employed" people when they include huge numbers of workers doing piece work on the side to make ends meet (and that percentage is not defined in the statistics).


But again, we can look at wage and salary employment overall. If it's falling then clearly the petit-bourgeoisie is not being absorbed into the proletariat.



Class is defined by relation to the means of production. Unemployed workers are still workers. If you have no ownership or control of means of production and thus no way to survive other than by selling your labor power to someone who does, you do not escape from that if you can't find a capitalist to hire you for some period of time.


Thanks for the a-b-c lesson. Declassed marginalized dispossessed petit-bourgeoisie are not proletarians. Dispossessed farmers are not made into proletarians simply by having their farms foreclosed upon. Same thing for the urban petit-bourgeoisie.



Have the millions of unemployed workers in the United States ceased to be workers now that they're no longer on employment rolls (and even unemployment rolls for those who have given up on finding work)?


Of course not. It's been stated before, numerous times that the unemployed workers are unemployed workers. The dispossessed petit-bourgeois do not be come proletarians simply by the act of dispossession. This isn't 17th 18th 19th century England, and we're not dealing with enclosure, and the ruination of the commons in order to create an agricultural proletariat, and an urban proletariat.



One could look at the statistics now as compared to earlier years and say the proletariat is shrinking in this country. Is that true?


Ummh.....yeah, kind of one of the major issues of the discussion, and I think the answer is most definitely "yes" in the US.


What would it mean to "win" petty-bourgeois individuals to a "revolutionary socialist movement" anyway? Would that mean having more people like Robbo, yelling "I'm one of you!" while denouncing people who dare damage the properties of his fellow small businessmen?

And how would we "win them over" anyway? By shedding tears of sorrow if they lose their business and have no way to survive other than by selling their labor power -- just like billions of other proletarians around the world?

Why would we do that? Especially when a real way for individuals from the petty-bourgeoisie to join the proletarian struggle would be to join the proletariat.

I have no desire to win the petit-bourgeoisie, and I shed absolutely no tears for them-- no tears for those who had their shops torched, or looted, or trashed. [But as an individual, Robbo's not a bad guy, and he has certain talents that I think a revolution would benefit by. Doesn't mean we change a thing about analysis, propaganda, action. Just means that not everyone has to agree with everything everyone else says in order to contribute to a social revolution].

I've never suggested doing any of what you call "that." That's Miles conducting his usual "more proletarian than thou" pissing contest, which of course, includes labeling every disagreement with his use of any words as "petit-bourgeois."

I think telling the petit-bourgeois to join the proletarian struggle by "getting a real job" is just fuckwad stupid when the jobs are being destroyed. It's exactly the kind of thing the judges will tell the youth before sentencing them to the slammer.

Better to not say anything. Better to simply say, "too bad. there's no way to avoid this. that's what happens when rebellion begins. it doesn't spring full blown from the forehead of Marx, with perfect class-consciousness; or even basic organization. If it did already have that class-consciousness or basic class-wide organization, then the struggle itself wouldn't be just starting out."

[Vanguard1917]

I came across this letter by Engels to August Bebel about a riot that broke out in London in 1886. An interesting read. Perhaps not all riots constitute insurrections or uprisings...



Two meetings accordingly took place; the "fair traders" were round the Nelson Column while the S.D.F. people spoke at the north end of the Square, from the street opposite the National Gallery, which is about 25 feet above the square. Kautsky, (http://www.marxists.org/glossary/people/k/a.htm#kautsky-karl) who was there and went away before the row began, told me that the mass of the real workers had been around the "fair traders," whilst [Henry] Hyndman and Co. had a mixed audience of people looking for a lark, some of them already merry... [W]hen everybody already seemed to be scattering, they proceeded to carry out a favourite old idea of Hyndman's, namely a procession of "unemployed" through Pall Mall, the street of the big political, aristocratic and high-capitalist clubs, the centres of English political intrigue. The unemployed who followed them in order to hold a fresh meeting in Hyde Park, were mostly the types who do not want work anyhow, hawkers, loafers, police spies, pickpockets. When the aristocrats at the club windows sneered at them they broke the said windows, ditto the shop windows; they looted the wine dealers' shops and immediately set up a consumers' association for the contents in the street, so that in Hyde Park Hyndman and Co. had hastily to pocket their blood-thirsty phrases and go in for pacification. But the thing had now got going. During the procession, during this second little meeting and afterwards, the masses of the Lumpenproletariat, whom Hyndman had taken for the unemployed, streamed through some fashionable streets nearby, looted jewellers' and other shops, used the loaves and legs of mutton which they had looted solely to break windows with, and dispersed without meeting with any resistance. Only a remnant of them were broken up in Oxford Street by four, say four, policemen.


http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_02_15.htm

[Thirsty Crow]

Declassed marginalized dispossessed petit-bourgeoisie are not proletarians. Dispossessed farmers are not made into proletarians simply by having their farms foreclosed upon. Same thing for the urban petit-bourgeoisie.

Sorry for jumping in on the debate, but I got two questions:

1) how come that this example in bold does not represent "downward social mobility" (god, do I hate the term, but given the fact that the notion of proletarianization is problematic...) which results in the fact that a person who was once a petty proprietor of capital is now forced to sell her labour power for a wage, assuming that a better part of this person's social experience will be marked by this new condition? What I'm trying to ask is this: I thought that the concept of the working class in Marxsim takes the necessity to sell one's labour power to capital, irrespective of that labour being productive or unproductive, as the basis for distinguishing one class from another. To twist it a bit, if the above mentioned is not enough that we can conclude that these people have become parts of the working class, what would be enough?

2) this is a suggestion of sorts: can a mod split this debate since these issues are important and interesting IMO but do not touch upon the subject matter of the thread in other ways than merely tangential ones.

[S.Artesian]

1. Because a dispossessed farmer may now lease land from a bigger farmer and resume farming, under lease, a smaller portion of land. It all depends on what happens next. The simple dispossession does not transform labor into wage-labor; it is the necessary but not sufficient part of the process. The other part is the actual exchange of wage-labor for the means of subsistence, i.e. actually entering the labor force.

Is a farmer whose loans and mortgages eat up all of his income, who in essence is selling his labor to service the banks a "proletarian"? I don't think so.

[Thirsty Crow]

1. Because a dispossessed farmer may now lease land from a bigger farmer and resume farming, under lease, a smaller portion of land. It all depends on what happens next. The bolded part is crucial to this whole debate, I think.
Yes, I agree that there are prospects other than entering into wage labour, and that has to be taken into account. But still, in our hypothetical situation, I think it would be reasonable to assume that this farmer wouldn't be able to hire rural wage labour. Would that mean that one necessary condition of capital's functioning is not fulfilled?


The simple dispossession does not transform labor into wage-labor; it is the necessary but not sufficient part of the process. The other part is the actual exchange of wage-labor for the means of subsistence, i.e. actually entering the labor force.

So, this could also be taken to mean that the unemployed are only working class in potential (since there is no actual exchange of wage labour for the means of subsistence), a specific social group, though clearly related in their social conditions to those of the working class? It seems to me that there are possible and profound political implications of this point (though, I cannot go there right now, but it could be discussed later on).


Is a farmer whose loans and mortgages eat up all of his income, who in essence is selling his labor to service the banks a "proletarian"? I don't think so.
Yes, she's selling her labour, her past labour, objectified labour, and not the labour power. Also, concrete conditions at the site of work are quite different for that person (effective control over capital no matter how small and a direct relation to the process of exchange).

Though, I'd like to point out how it is necessary to think this through the political lens, meaning that I think that these people share some of the conditions of existence characteristic to the working class, they are subjected to the same social and economic processes which dominate them, and here there might be a potential for their active, participatory support for a workers' revolution.

In other words, I don't think that these people should be considered class enemies of the most important kind.

[A Marxist Historian]

I think the movement of people from the countryside to the cities of China to take up employment in numbers that equate to almost half the population of the United States in a matter of a few years is pretty significant.

Of course I don't think capitalism has any "progressive" content left.

The questions here were originally of the petty-bourgeoisie, it's character, it's future, it's role vis-a-vis the proletariat, the hostility workers feel toward it, whether or not it can be "won" to a "class conscious" movement, etc.

From a purely logical POV, a strong argument against the erroneous concept that China has become capitalist.

Either China is not capitalist, or the idea that capitalism doesn't have any progressive content is wrong, given the remarkable advance in the Chinese productive forces, in combo with the equally remarkable rise in the standard of living of the Chinese working people as opposed to India, Brazil etc., to say nothing of the rest of the world where lower class living standards are dropping like a rock and everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

BTW, the industrial progress in certain Third World countries lately is simply a result of massive deindustrialization in the imperialist centers and transfer of some production to the neo-colonies. China is a whole different story bigtime.

-M.H.

[Thirsty Crow]

From a purely logical POV, a strong argument against the erroneous concept that China has become capitalist.

Yeah, it would be gret if we started explaining the UK riots by digressing to discuss how China is not capitalist (socialism in one country much?) and relating it to the riots.

Split this digression already.

[A Marxist Historian]

I came across this letter by Engels to August Bebel about a riot that broke out in London in 1886. An interesting read. Perhaps not all riots constitute insurrections or uprisings...



http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1886/letters/86_02_15.htm

I must say my first thought in reading this is that maybe Kautsky went bad earlier than generally thought, and Engels was being a bit overly credulous here.

Though the riot in question was clearly neither an insurrection nor an uprising, any more than what was going on last week in England was. Though few folk on this thread at any rate are doing so. Other threads, another story...

-M.H.-

[A Marxist Historian]

Yeah, it would be gret if we started explaining the UK riots by digressing to discuss how China is not capitalist (socialism in one country much?) and relating it to the riots.

Split this digression already.

Perhaps my diverting the discussion yet further will get the mods off their butts. Clearly this discussion has gone far afield from the original subject.

-M.H.-

[Pioneers_Violin]

Does the recent UK disturbance represent an upturn in class consciousness or is it just random looting?

I feel that it's an upturn in class consciousness.

And now after the dust has settled, the government is mercilessly punishing the looters.

Max Keiser brought up a good question...

If the government is going after the "regular" looters in the street, why aren't they going after the "polite" looters in the banking system?

After all, who has done the greater harm? A relatively small group of street looters rioting for a few days or the bloodsucking banksters robbing the entire nation blind for years?

The argument could be made that these small-time looters are merely imitating the actions of "respectable businessmen" everywhere and practicing Capitalism in its purest form.

[Thirsty Crow]

The argument could be made that these small-time looters are merely imitating the actions of "respectable businessmen" everywhere and practicing Capitalism in its purest form.
You could do that, and in fact there are leftist superstars who have done so, so you'd have a strong precedent and a rich source for quotes which would make your "argument" look really smart.
Of course, then you'd have to give up on that silly notion of an upturn in class consciousness altogether. Maybe the very notion of class consciousness would come into question as well.

[S.Artesian]

The bolded part is crucial to this whole debate, I think.
Yes, I agree that there are prospects other than entering into wage labour, and that has to be taken into account. But still, in our hypothetical situation, I think it would be reasonable to assume that this farmer wouldn't be able to hire rural wage labour. Would that mean that one necessary condition of capital's functioning is not fulfilled?

We are talking about commerical farming, not subsistence farming, boutique farming, recreational farming. I know of no commercial farming in the US that does not employ some additional labor, whether it be family, non-compensated, family compensated, waged-labor etc.




So, this could also be taken to mean that the unemployed are only working class in potential (since there is no actual exchange of wage labour for the means of subsistence), a specific social group, though clearly related in their social conditions to those of the working class? It seems to me that there are possible and profound political implications of this point (though, I cannot go there right now, but it could be discussed later on).

I would phrase the argument and the reasoning differently:

Just as unemployment does not change a worker's "status" as a member of the working class, neither does bankruptcy, dispossession, etc. change a shopkeepers status as a petit-bourgeois.





Yes, she's selling her labour, her past labour, objectified labour, and not the labour power. .

Bullseye! That's the point.


Though, I'd like to point out how it is necessary to think this through the political lens, meaning that I think that these people share some of the conditions of existence characteristic to the working class, they are subjected to the same social and economic processes which dominate them, and here there might be a potential for their active, participatory support for a workers' revolution.

In other words, I don't think that these people should be considered class enemies of the most important kind.

Everybody is subject to the same social and economic processes which dominates the working class. It just works to the advantage, and the continued reproduction, and accumulation of wealth of some, and continued exploitation, impoverishment of others.

I don't know that anyone has stated that the petit-bourgeoisie are "class enemises of the worst kind." I don't think that is the issue, frankly.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I must say my first thought in reading this is that maybe Kautsky went bad earlier than generally thought, and Engels was being a bit overly credulous here.

Why do you think he "went bad" here? :confused:

[A Marxist Historian]

Why do you think he "went bad" here? :confused:

Because dismissing all the angry unemployed following Hyndman a a bunch of spivs and racketeers seems rather excessive.

Of course none of us wuz dere, still...

-jh-

[Nehru]

I feel that it's an upturn in class consciousness.

or


The argument could be made that these small-time looters are merely imitating the actions of "respectable businessmen" everywhere and practicing Capitalism in its purest form.Only one of them could be true, and it's wishful thinking to believe it's the first one.

[Thirsty Crow]

or
Only one of them could be true, and it's wishful thinking to believe it's the first one.
Okay, and can you prove your point? Can you provide any kind of evidence which would point in this direction, or is it that a simple assertion is all you can do here?

I mean, the argument is so utterly bankrupt. The looters are practicing capitalism in its purest form - hiring their wage slaves, at a meager wage rate, and exploiting them to produce new value, and how exactly? Or is it that you consider the "purest form of capitalism" as theft? Yeah, talk about mindless moralism.

Also, the looters are imitating the actions of respectable businessmen by engaging in acts of violence against the cops and forceful acts of theft, exposing themselves to the hard arm of the law? Here's a very romantic notion of businessmen for you, kinda like pirates, but on a larger scale.

So, can you come up with anything (just like you didn't do with regard to the thread dealing with Harvey's bullshit)?

[Nehru]

Okay, and can you prove your point?

The riots point to anger, that's all. It doesn't at all point to an 'upturn' in class consciousness, as you seem to suggest. Workers were fighting each other and not the capitalists - hardly evidence for your view.

Plus you're reading too much into Harvey. He probably didn't mean it literally - the idea is often used rather loosely. Capitalists loot, and so did the rioters - that sort of thing. But you're taking it too literally and wondering how rioters could be capitalists when they're not extracting surplus value from workers (lol). What happens at the bottom is but a reflection of what happens at the top; no one said it was identical.

[CHE with an AK]

http://s3.amazonaws.com/twitpic/photos/large/368804949.gif?AWSAccessKeyId=AKIAJF3XCCKACR3QDMOA&Expires=1313795848&Signature=sEXV2aBgIBQXsS6sh6e64VMbZcE%3D

[Thirsty Crow]

The riots point to anger, that's all. It doesn't at all point to an 'upturn' in class consciousness, as you seem to suggest. Workers were fighting each other and not the capitalists - hardly evidence for your view.

Plus you're reading too much into Harvey. He probably didn't mean it literally - the idea is often used rather loosely. Capitalists loot, and so did the rioters - that sort of thing. But you're taking it too literally and wondering how rioters could be capitalists when they're not extracting surplus value from workers (lol). What happens at the bottom is but a reflection of what happens at the top; no one said it was identical.
As far as Harvey is concrned, I don't care how did he mean that piece to come off, I'm interested in what's written down, and I refered to that, where it is quite clear that he thinks there is a relationship of equivalence, whereby the "looters" reflect the actions of "big looters". Go back to that thread and show me how I went wrong.
But to reiterate my point: it is completely wrong to base your analysis on the moralist notion of capitalists as "big time looters". That's the mistake which enables another mistake - the establishment of equivalence between extra-legal ways of turning up a profit and the riots.

But you changed your mind, didn't you?
For you, it wasn't a matter of anger, but rather of two possible options: an upturn in class cosnciousness or that "the argument could be made that these small-time looters are merely imitating the actions of "respectable businessmen" everywhere and practicing Capitalism in its purest form", whereby you clearly state:

Only one of them could be true, and it's wishful thinking to believe it's the first one

So, what made you change you mind?

[Nehru]

As far as Harvey is concrned, I don't care how did he mean that piece to come off, I'm interested in what's written down, and I refered to that, where it is quite clear that he thinks there is a relationship of equivalence, whereby the "looters" reflect the actions of "big looters". Go back to that thread and show me how I went wrong.

You went wrong because you took it literally. There is sarcasm as in: why blame looters when bankers are doing the same? It's about questioning people's double standards when they attack looters and not the bankers. It is not meant to be an in-depth analysis.


But to reiterate my point: it is completely wrong to base your analysis on the moralist notion of capitalists as "big time looters".

Again, it's only meant loosely rather than literally.


But you changed your mind, didn't you?

About what?:confused:

[Thirsty Crow]

You went wrong because you took it literally. There is sarcasm as in: why blame looters when bankers are doing the same? It's about questioning people's double standards when they attack looters and not the bankers. It is not meant to be an in-depth analysis.All the while arguing that the mindless looters cannot perceive the reality of the situation. This little bit that you neglect to examine changes the significance of the whole of the writing.
The whole argument Harvey is making is based on this notion of mindless violence mechanically counterposed to organized struggle, and when he perceived that the riots were not organized in any way and that they didn't represent a coherent set of political demands, he concluded that, in a loose manner, that they immitate what everybody else does (meaning, speculators and investors and all of the capitalist class).


Again, it's only meant loosely rather than literally.It is totally irrelevant whether this is meant "loosely" rather than literally. It has no place whatsoever in any kind of an analysis of the riots from the revolutionay viewpoint.


About what?:confused:
Did you actually read what you responded to?

Earlier on, you put forward to possible options:

1) upturn in class consciousness

2) imitation of "respectable businessmen" and practicing capitalism in its purest form

Whereby you initially chose the second option as more valid, but all of a sudden you're arguing that the riots "point to anger": and nowhere does anger figure within the two options you highlighted, so I'm asking: how come you changed your mind

[Nehru]

All the while arguing that the mindless looters cannot perceive the reality of the situation. This little bit that you neglect to examine changes the significance of the whole of the writing.
The whole argument Harvey is making is based on this notion of mindless violence mechanically counterposed to organized struggle, and when he perceived that the riots were not organized in any way and that they didn't represent a coherent set of political demands, he concluded that, in a loose manner, that they immitate what everybody else does (meaning, speculators and investors and all of the capitalist class).

And you have a problem with this argument because ...?


Did you actually read what you responded to?

Earlier on, you put forward to possible options:

1) upturn in class consciousness

2) imitation of "respectable businessmen" and practicing capitalism in its purest form

Whereby you initially chose the second option as more valid, but all of a sudden you're arguing that the riots "point to anger": and nowhere does anger figure within the two options you highlighted, so I'm asking: how come you changed your mind

Riots point to frustration, yes. But it wasn't directed at the capitalists, it was just mindless anger directed against fellow workers.

[S.Artesian]

Riots point to frustration, yes. But it wasn't directed at the capitalists, it was just mindless anger directed against fellow workers.

Right, sure, which is why the government is handing down such stiff sentences against workers, so that workers will know better than to direct mindless anger against fellow workers.

What a bunch of bullshit. The anger was directed initially and for the most part against the cops, and what the cops protect.

[Nehru]

Right, sure, which is why the government is handing down such stiff sentences against workers, so that workers will know better than to direct mindless anger against fellow workers.

What a bunch of bullshit. The anger was directed initially and for the most part against the cops, and what the cops protect.

So, in your view, these were class-conscious rioters?

[S.Artesian]

So, in your view, these were class-conscious rioters?

In my opinion these were kids who were conscious of being fucked over by police, rousted by the cops at every opportunity, and who very facing the "No Future" exactly as the Sex Pistols described it in "God Save the Queen." So they fought back.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

A statement from the British Prison officers trade union on the riots that struck England a couple of weeks age. This came via the National Shops Stewards Network.

Link Here:
http://www.shopstewards.net/news.145.htm


POA statement: The reality of prison life after the riots

25 August Glyn Travis and Joe Simpson, assistant secretaries of the Prison Officers Association (POA) set out some of the key issues faced by staff working in prisons following the recent riots.

Special magistrates courts stayed opened night and day as the police arrested hundreds of suspects. Magistrates remanded around 75% more people into custody than they normally would and handed down custodial sentences, sending the prison population to a record high.

No one questioned whether the sentencing was just and fair, if it would be effective, or if prisons would simply become warehouses. Has this country witnessed a new policy on criminality, as the coalition government and the majority of MPs appeared to accept summary justice?

In all our time working in prisons, we have very rarely known people to be sent to prison without some form of pre-sentence or psychiatric report, as is happening now. It seems that this decision was made to enhance the coalition government’s image of being ‘tough on law and order’. No thought can have gone into the impact on the offender or front line services.

Every day prison staff have to manage, support and care for the people society no longer trusts. They have to ensure they do not self-harm or take their own life, protect them from other prisoners and more importantly, prepare them to lead law-abiding lives upon release. They have to ensure their human and statutory rights are adhered to.

The long-term impact of the summary justice that was handed down following the riots will have to be assessed as it is clear that a divide has arisen between magistrates and Crown Court judges, due to the interference of politicians in the judiciary.

Every prison will feel the effects of the aftermath of the riots for months to come. Staff must deal with prisoners’ families and other organisations as they aim to achieve the Prison Service vision of keeping those in custody safe, whilst preparing them to lead law-abiding lives in the future.

All of this has to be managed against the backdrop of more serious staff assaults and at a time when the budget to run prisons is being slashed and prisons are being handed over to private companies to run for profit.

[A Marxist Historian]

A statement from the British Prison officers trade union on the riots that struck England a couple of weeks age. This came via the National Shops Stewards Network.

Link Here:
http://www.shopstewards.net/news.145.htm


POA statement: The reality of prison life after the riots

25 August Glyn Travis and Joe Simpson, assistant secretaries of the Prison Officers Association (POA) set out some of the key issues faced by staff working in prisons following the recent riots.

Special magistrates courts stayed opened night and day as the police arrested hundreds of suspects. Magistrates remanded around 75% more people into custody than they normally would and handed down custodial sentences, sending the prison population to a record high.

No one questioned whether the sentencing was just and fair, if it would be effective, or if prisons would simply become warehouses. Has this country witnessed a new policy on criminality, as the coalition government and the majority of MPs appeared to accept summary justice?

In all our time working in prisons, we have very rarely known people to be sent to prison without some form of pre-sentence or psychiatric report, as is happening now. It seems that this decision was made to enhance the coalition government’s image of being ‘tough on law and order’. No thought can have gone into the impact on the offender or front line services.

Every day prison staff have to manage, support and care for the people society no longer trusts. They have to ensure they do not self-harm or take their own life, protect them from other prisoners and more importantly, prepare them to lead law-abiding lives upon release. They have to ensure their human and statutory rights are adhered to.

The long-term impact of the summary justice that was handed down following the riots will have to be assessed as it is clear that a divide has arisen between magistrates and Crown Court judges, due to the interference of politicians in the judiciary.

Every prison will feel the effects of the aftermath of the riots for months to come. Staff must deal with prisoners’ families and other organisations as they aim to achieve the Prison Service vision of keeping those in custody safe, whilst preparing them to lead law-abiding lives in the future.

All of this has to be managed against the backdrop of more serious staff assaults and at a time when the budget to run prisons is being slashed and prisons are being handed over to private companies to run for profit.

As thousands of people are being thrown in jail without trial, and the country turns into a nightmare police state, the prison screws complain about their own little asses being overworked.

Yecch.

If any of 'em were serious about any concern for the prisoners, all they have to do is unlock the doors and let them out.

And then they would be fired, and have to get honest work. But at least their consciences would be clear.

-M.H.-

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Oh you do talk shit Marxist historian. You have no concept of what takes place in Britain whether it be Politics or Socially or real life. That is evident in your polemic in relation to Liverpool, the Miners' Strike and other social economic events in Britain. Take it from one who was imprisoned for political activity that the Militant Tendency led, and whose partner was also jailed, for the same activity, days after I was released from prison from prison. Like most political minnows on the Left you beat your chest about the State and talk excrement about it. I know what the State can do and I can tell you that the Prison Officers statement is an accurate statement of Trade Union principles within the prison system. You do not know what you are talking about, so get your head out of cloud nine of pure anarchism and put your feet on the ground of reality.

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

To Marxist historian: had to go and do something so let me continue with my contribution . After my jailing for the political offence, which was during the early 90s recession and I was unemployed after being made redundant from my factory job, and I could not get a job. So I turned to academia and gained my first degree and my teaching degree which allowed me to teach with a Further Education College. So for nearly 12 years, from the end of the 90s to last year, I taught offenders in the Prison system in England social science, literacy and numeracy. So I know at first-hand how the prison system and the State works and your comment that “ thousands of people are being thrown in jail without trial, and the country turns into a nightmare police state” is both infantile and wrong. Yes, the justice is capitalist justice as we live in the Capitalist system, but show the evidence that thousands are thrown in jail without trail. You cannot, because it is not true. You live in such a cuckoo land you bear no relation to your handle. You are neither Marxist nor an Historian.

For nearly 12 years I have discussed with offenders and prison officers on all subjects under the sun and I can tell you the pressures of capitalism are on both groups of people. The difference being is that prison officers do have an understanding of the society they live in as workers, collectively; whereas offenders only think of themselves, egocentrically. During my time of employment I completed my Masters in which criminology was part of it, along with political science, sociology and psychology, so I have the academic knowledge as well as the political perception to my interpretations.

In England it is illegal for prison officers to take industrial action, that is strike, in support of any claim against them, but they just did that nearly three years ago by going on strike which brought the criminal justice system to halt just for 24 hours and the capitalist Government of the time, New Labour, backed down in putting forward their policy. The prison officers union have a difficult task of defending their members against the present cost cutting government and carrying out their job as workers. Something of a concept your puerile mind cannot comprehend because it is stuck to high in the clouds of pure ether of ordure.
Technically it could be suggested that I was part of the State because I taught in a prison the strictures of the ideology of the capitalist society. Should I be shunned by socialists for doing my job as a Trade Union member? Of course not! Also, if I remember correctly, Marxist Historian you work in academia, what is it a University or a Further Education College or a High School. That means you work for the capitalist State by inculcating your students with the ethos of capitalism. As Karl Marx said “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it….”, (The German Ideology, 1846). In other words the education system within a capitalist system is there to dominate the working class, and middle class, with the ideology, philosophy and belief system of capitalism. But are you, and I, but workers selling our labour power for the capitalists that possess us; and the same can be said for prison officers and other workers that are part of the State system.

[electro_fan]

an excellent post jimmy haddow, although the one thing i'd say to that is that not all offenders only think of themselves, it really depends on the crime they've been convicted of, and also they can learn this kind of tradition of solidarity within the prison itself. i know people and family members who've been in prison for political reasons and they did make friends with some wonderful people who'd simply made mistakes in life and ended up being locked up, for that reason i wouldn't generalise about all offenders but otherwise a really really good post

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

Editorial of the Socialist, issue 683

The riots and the aftermath

David Cameron and his government have resorted to the traditional Tory stance of the mailed fist in the aftermath of the riots.

Yet even the Thatcher government - following similar upheavals in Liverpool in 1981 - initially dispatched Tory minister Michael Heseltine on a damage limitation exercise to the city. He promised jobs and improved services, although the inhabitants of Liverpool 8 - the scene of the riots - and the poor and working class in the rest of the city saw no improvements, only further deterioration. The only gainers were the dogs, through the planting of hundreds and thousands of trees!

The Scarman inquiry followed similar events in Brixton and blamed the social conditions and racism for the riots. It suggested measures to ameliorate the situation. Reflecting the completely changed situation - the economic and social situation is now much worse - Cameron today has moved in the opposite direction.

Fresh from another holiday - he has had more holidays than Thomas Cook - a raft of repressive measures has been suggested. Cameron's immediate reaction was to sanction the use of rubber and plastic bullets, as well as water cannon, in future confrontations. Hugh Orde, a past police chief in Northern Ireland, dismissed this out of hand; it did not solve but enormously aggravated the situation there.

Curfews have been proposed, Twitter and social networks have been threatened with censorship. Yet even the Home Secretary, Theresa May, seems to realise that such steps are difficult, if not impossible, to implement in a modern 'democratic' society. Parents have been encouraged, Stasi-like, to inform on their children.

Semi-dictatorial measures
But let no one, particularly the labour movement, be under any illusion - if it can get away with it, this government will try to use the riots to add to the panoply of anti-democratic, semi-dictatorial measures already in place. Many of them were sanctioned by Tony Blair's Labour government when it was in power.

The vicious anti-trade union laws - the most undemocratic in the advanced industrial countries - which were left virtually untouched by both Tory and Labour governments conclusively demonstrate this. There is now an attempt to infringe the right to demonstrate, as shown by Camden council demanding payment from the National Shop Stewards Network for marching to the TUC on Sunday 11 September.

Accompanying these attacks, in London and elsewhere, are councils preventing posters and leaflets being distributed for meetings, some in opposition to the cuts. This has been done on spurious 'environmental' grounds! Even those who advertise on the occasional tree for the return of their lost pets are threatened with prosecution!

This is effectively political censorship by those in power in the councils - Tory, Labour and their Liberal sidekicks. It will not succeed. A 'free speech' defiance movement by the labour movement here - as in the US in the earlier part of the 20th century and the civil rights movement in the 1960s, as well as in South Africa under the apartheid regime - will be necessary unless the 'authorities' relent.

There has been much outrage following the riots, correctly so, at the damage and loss of life, particularly of the tragic deaths including the three young men in Birmingham and an older man in Ealing. There is public hostility to the nihilistic violence directed not just against big shops but also at small shopkeepers and entirely innocent people who were burnt out of their homes.

Cameron and his government are seizing on this to shift the political pendulum to the right. And he has met with a certain success because of the sense of insecurity - particularly by those in the areas which interfaced and experienced riots, as well as with the wider public, the working class included. There was fear and distaste at the scenes of what appeared to be mindless violence, particularly when it was inflicted on those in the same communities as the rioters.

However, the attempts of Cameron to blame the riots on 'sheer criminality' will not wash. No mention now of the 'criminality' of education minister, Michael Gove - among many Tory and Labour MPs who 'stole' £7,000 from the taxpayer for office furniture. With other MPs, he was forced to pay this back. Also Cameron was forced to hand back 'expenses' - but there was no prison sentence for either of them.

'Not political'
Nor will the refrain, 'this has nothing to do with the cuts, it is not political', stand up to serious examination. While there are a number of social causes - family background, influence of peers with the young, etc - nobody is born a criminal. Economic and social conditions ultimately are the cause of most criminality. Mere repression, including the warehousing in prisons of mostly poor people, as in the US where 2.3 million are incarcerated at the present time, will not solve this age-old problem.

Yet Cameron wishes to repeat this here by stuffing the prisons to bursting point. In the long term, this will provoke 'riots' in prisons to match those that will surely be repeated again and again in Britain and elsewhere so long as this grossly unequal, brutal, class-riven capitalist society continues.

And most of the factors which led to the riots - which were predictable and were predicted by the Socialist - are rooted in the worsening economic and social situation, and the sense of powerlessness this engenders.

Tory ministers in the immediate aftermath of the riots launched a barrage to prevent anybody drawing this conclusion. In vain! The Guardian, for instance, under the heading 'Cuts and Riots: They're Linked', published the results of long-term study of the origins of riots. This concluded: "We analysed unrest in 28 European countries from 1919 to 2009 and eleven Latin American countries since 1937. What we found is a clear and positive statistical association between expenditure cuts and the level of unrest."

The same journal followed this up in a report of court proceedings against rioters: "Young, poor and unemployed: the true face of England's rioters". The Socialist Party's demand for investment in a massive programme of socially useful job creation must be raised at every opportunity.

Youth centres closed
How can Cameron pretend that the cuts were not one of the causes, if not the major cause, of the riots when in Tottenham of the 13 youth centres eight were closed down on the eve of the riots? They must be re-opened immediately. Youth workers in his own constituency went on strike for one day in protest at the savage cuts in youth services. Therefore the attempted pre-emptive strike of Cameron and his government to seek one explanation - criminality or 120,000 alleged 'dysfunctional' families being responsible - will not succeed.

The most striking aspect of what the capitalist press themselves have dubbed 'Black August' is the way the riots were played out against the backdrop - almost like a split level TV screen - of the deepening crisis of capitalism.

This has prompted even firm pillars of the right, such as Charles Moore of the Telegraph and Peter Oborne, to question capitalism itself. Moore mused: "maybe the left were right", while Oborne attacked the "feral rich".

The riots of the 1980s were a prelude to the organised, determined working class resistance in Liverpool between 1983 and 1987 and the heroic miners' strike of 1984-85. The labour movement has been weakened since then with the shift towards at the right top of the Labour Party which subsequently destroyed it as a mass working class force. Many trade unions underwent a similar process at the top but still remain viable organisations of the working class which will shift towards the left in the next period.

Workers and socialists must prepare for this period by energetically combating Cameron's attempt to capitalise on the riots to introduce further draconian anti-working class measures. History is littered with examples of where measures are taken, allegedly against 'lawbreakers' and even 'rioters', and then legislation is introduced which is used against workers in struggle. The banning of all activity for one month in five London boroughs because of the threat of the far-right English Defence League (EDL) in Tower Hamlets is an example of this.

Why should legitimate, democratic and socialist forces be prevented from demonstrating - including against cuts and other measures of the government - because a handful of the far-right attempts to whip up race hatred in the hope of inter-communal violence, which will divert attention from the real culprits, capitalism and those who defend it?

Fighting division
The marvellous intervention of the father of one of the boys killed in Birmingham which resulted in a 'multicultural' mobilisation of defiance against all those who wish to split the working class is an example of what is possible. Unfortunately, the labour movement did not act under its own banner in this situation. But this showed the potential for fighting against all attempts to divide the working class.

The labour movement must also come to the defence of those unjustly imprisoned, whose sentences do not fit the alleged crime. We must oppose the brutal attempt to withdraw benefits and evict from their homes those convicted and their families. This will only lead to a further cycle of crime and violence. But at the same time we must fight for a new society, democratic socialism, which will eliminate the conditions which led to the upheavals in August.

[A Marxist Historian]

To Marxist historian: had to go and do something so let me continue with my contribution . After my jailing for the political offence, which was during the early 90s recession and I was unemployed after being made redundant from my factory job, and I could not get a job. So I turned to academia and gained my first degree and my teaching degree which allowed me to teach with a Further Education College. So for nearly 12 years, from the end of the 90s to last year, I taught offenders in the Prison system in England social science, literacy and numeracy. So I know at first-hand how the prison system and the State works and your comment that “ thousands of people are being thrown in jail without trial, and the country turns into a nightmare police state” is both infantile and wrong. Yes, the justice is capitalist justice as we live in the Capitalist system, but show the evidence that thousands are thrown in jail without trail. You cannot, because it is not true. You live in such a cuckoo land you bear no relation to your handle. You are neither Marxist nor an Historian.

For nearly 12 years I have discussed with offenders and prison officers on all subjects under the sun and I can tell you the pressures of capitalism are on both groups of people. The difference being is that prison officers do have an understanding of the society they live in as workers, collectively; whereas offenders only think of themselves, egocentrically. During my time of employment I completed my Masters in which criminology was part of it, along with political science, sociology and psychology, so I have the academic knowledge as well as the political perception to my interpretations.

In England it is illegal for prison officers to take industrial action, that is strike, in support of any claim against them, but they just did that nearly three years ago by going on strike which brought the criminal justice system to halt just for 24 hours and the capitalist Government of the time, New Labour, backed down in putting forward their policy. The prison officers union have a difficult task of defending their members against the present cost cutting government and carrying out their job as workers. Something of a concept your puerile mind cannot comprehend because it is stuck to high in the clouds of pure ether of ordure.
Technically it could be suggested that I was part of the State because I taught in a prison the strictures of the ideology of the capitalist society. Should I be shunned by socialists for doing my job as a Trade Union member? Of course not! Also, if I remember correctly, Marxist Historian you work in academia, what is it a University or a Further Education College or a High School. That means you work for the capitalist State by inculcating your students with the ethos of capitalism. As Karl Marx said “The ideas of the ruling class are in every epoch the ruling ideas: i.e. the class which is the ruling material force of society is at the same time its ruling intellectual force. The class which has the means of material production at its disposal, consequently also controls the means of mental production, so that the ideas of those who lack the means of mental production are on the whole subject to it….”, (The German Ideology, 1846). In other words the education system within a capitalist system is there to dominate the working class, and middle class, with the ideology, philosophy and belief system of capitalism. But are you, and I, but workers selling our labour power for the capitalists that possess us; and the same can be said for prison officers and other workers that are part of the State system.

If you are not aware that thousands of people have been thrown for looting into jail in the last few weeks, without trial, or at most with a perfunctory farce of a trial, then you are a fool. And doubly so since you live in the country where it is happening. Your country is being turned by the Tories into a police state as you watch, and you deny it, as you and your tendency have their noses up the arses of allegedly "working class" pigs and screws.

And, by the way, programs to help prisoners learn to read and write are a good thing, I've had opportunities to do so myself and occasionally considered taking them up. That is not at all the same thing as being a prison guard.

Laws preventing the police from forming unions and striking would be a good thing in the abstract, except that they would be used as a precedent for laws against more legitimate forms of unionism.

In the USA, police unions are a threat to the citizenry. They are simply organized forms of defense and lobbying for police brutality and oppression of the prisoners, the poor, and minority communities.

And then there are the prison guards unions, which are even worse. In America, with its vastly higher prison population than anywhere else in the world, with over two million prisoners behind bars, the prison guards unions are the primary lobby for turning America into a vast prison state, the "prison-industrial complex" as some call it. In my native California, the huge sums sucked down by the immense California prison system are the immediate cause for the destruction of the California educational system, the huge budget crises, and the gutting in fact of all social services.

And that our current governor Jerry Brown is directly in hock to the prison guards' union is not the least reason why things are so bad.

Your tendency is pushing England in the same direction.

-M.H.-

[Jimmy Haddow (SPS)]

To Marxist Historian: This is the actual quote you gave from your post, dated 29 August “As thousands of people are being thrown in jail without trial, and the country turns into a nightmare police state, the prison screws complain about their own little asses being overworked.” And this is your quote taken from the 31 August in reply to my contribution “If you are not aware that thousands of people have been thrown for looting into jail in the last few weeks, without trial, or at most with a perfunctory farce of a trial, then you are a fool. And doubly so since you live in the country where it is happening. Your country is being turned by the Tories into a police state as you watch, and you deny it, as you and your tendency have their noses up the arses of allegedly "working class" pigs and screws.” Just as an aside I have been accused by a minority of offenders of being a “civilian screw” because I taught in the prison system.

In your 31 August post you made a comment about the American prison system. I do not know much about the criminal penal system in America as I have not read much about it and have only spoken to two American offenders here, but they like the Eastern European, specifically Russians, offenders I have spoken to consider that the British penal system is a kindergarten compared to their ones; and they laughed in British offenders faces when they whinged about the British jails. I know doubt believe that the American penal system is harsher but is that because the class tribulations are far sharper than in Britain, but no different in its class content.


As you say people have been put in prison because they were looting, so far around 1500, with the same amount still awaiting trial. But they have been found guilty in the capitalist court, by capitalist law, for those offences of looting and arson, etc. In fact the Courts have been working through the day and through the night in the initial period because they had so many defendants to process, that is a fact of life after the Riots in early August, I know all that and that does not make me a fool. There is no process of innocent until you are found guilty in the capitalist courts, the Cameron government wants to make an example, first by retaliatory measures against the Rioters and then the proposals to use water cannon, rubber bullets in future confrontations. But let no-one, particularly the labour and trade union movement, along with the anti-cuts movement, be under any misapprehension that if Cameron, et al, get away with it, this Government will try to use the riots to add to the panoply of anti-democratic, semi dictatorial measures already in place. Many of them were indorsed by Tony Blair’s Labour Government when he came to power in 1997. The brutal anti-trade union laws, which are the most undemocratic in the advanced industrial countries, was also kept in place by the Blair government, is now being used to attempt to infringe the right to demonstrate as shown by Camden Council demanding payment from the National Shop Stewards Network for marching to the TUC on Sunday 11 September; and will be used against Anti-Cuts demonstrations in the future.

Your first statement makes the assertion they were thrown in jail without a trial, I consider you a unenlightened for making that statement, because the people who were jailed did have a trial, with others on remand in the prison awaiting trial, and I do consider that the sentencing against the majority are harsh and unfair; but they are taking place because they, the capitalist Government and Judiciary, want to ideologically crush the idea that people can fight back. I do not support rioting as a method of fighting the ConDem government and Capitalism, I believe in the mass participation of the Trade Union movement and the mass of the people in non-violent civil disobedience as a means of struggle.

I deem that the setting up of a democratically run enquiry into the Riots, and the shooting of the individual that began the Riots, involving elected representatives of trade unions ,community organisations and small businesses that could set the boundaries on how the offences are dealt with, including with the right to review sentences already imposed; along with police accountability through democratic control by elected committees involving the local people and local small business associations and the local Trade unions. Additionally, the Youth Services that have been closed down because of the Cuts instituted by the Condem government in London and elsewhere in England should be reopened and expanded; along with the nationalisation of the Banks and use the money to create jobs, government investment in house renovation and building to provide cheap social housing; no cuts in benefits and so on. This must be combined with a defence campaign against the heavy handed policing in the areas affected by the riots.

You certainly changed slightly you language in your second contribution, as quoted, when you called the trials a farce, yes you are technically correct, but that is taking place because the political backlash from the ConDem government and yet there is disquiet amongst a certain section of the ruling elite that they are going too far which could come back and bite them on the bum. As said above there is reasons why this is taking place and the ConDem government is quite weak and the way of weak government’s is to come out with bellicose language and actions.

As I said before you are ignorant of Britain especially when you say that Britain is being turned into a police state. With all due honest it has been an elected dictatorship for many years. Ever since the Thatcher epoch the ‘police state’ as you call it has been ratchet up year on year. I post an article from the Socialist Party’s political journal from March 2008, and a couple of other articles, to make my point. From before the Great Miners’ Strike in 1984 to 85 the State machinery was being beefed up by the Thatcher cabal on behalf of their economic masters - the Capitalists, as a means to challenge any action by the Trade Union movement against the beginning of the savage slashing of the social wage of the working class, the Social Services of the post war ‘Golden Age’ epoch of 1945 to 1975. Riots, although a frenzied and amorphous, expression of protest have not changed the world; however some Socialist organisations and individuals, in Britain, have written and spoken about looting as being a political act by the poor. With all due honesty this makes a charade of Socialist ideas that a mass working class struggle has the ability to replace the Capitalist system with one which the resources of society are democratically owned and controlled by the working class with a plan to meet the needs of all.

The Cuts are just not against the young, the poor and the working class in general, they are also infecting a significant section of the population who would consider themselves middle class, but are in reality workers because the sell their labour power for the capitalists. That would include the police, prison officers and the armed forces, who at this moment in Britain are going through Cuts which are affecting their pay, pensions and are being made redundant, which in many cases means they will be made homeless. As Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto what “the bourgeoisie therefore produce, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” When we talk about the State we talk about a paradox, an oxymoron, an enigma, because on the one hand the people who labour for it, the State as an organisation, have to follow the social imperatives of the economic and social system we live in, which as we all know is Capitalism.

As Socialists we have to win workers to the idea of the socialist transformation of society, and that includes workers in the State. Now propaganda and ‘theory’ and socialist ideas only reach a relatively small, politicised layer, except in exceptional periods of intensified class struggle, that is during pre-revolutionary and revolutionary period, and we are not in that period today. So the policy of making a political and class appeal to the ranks of the State, that is the police, armed forces and prison officers and supporting their democratic rights, to strike for example, including the right to organise in a trade union is the correct thing to do. Supporting trade union rights, etc, for the police, armed forces and prison officers does not cloud my, or the CWI as you are hostile to it, analysis of the role of the police, armed forces and prison officers as part of the State Apparatus or undermine the recognition of the need to organise against police and military repression. The point is they are workers and if anything socialists need to win them away from their leaders, who are linked to the owners of the social and economic system by a thousand strands, and nearer to the worker’s movement helps create favourable conditions of struggle for the working class in general. Your ultra-left political hostility to workers in the State industries will only drive them fully into the arms of the capitalist ruling elite when at a time socialist will need their help in organising the socialist transformation of society. Be warned ‘comrade’!

On a personal issue, when I was in prison for the political offence, which was during the Anti-poll tax campaign which was defeated not because of the Riot in March 1991 but because of the non-payment civil disobedience of 18 million people over a 3 plus year period, I had a fraternal approach to both prison officers and inmates in the prison I was sent to. Both officers and Inmates considered it absolutely disgusting that anybody should be jailed for a minor transgression as non-payment of the poll tax. Not seeing it was a political decision by the Thatcher and Major government to jail non-payers, which was supported by the way by the Kinnock lead Labour Party, because they deliberately made the Tax unworkable and removed from the statute books.

http://www.socialismtoday.org/116/state.html

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9019

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/11586/31-03-2011/prison-officers-fight-prison-privatisation-interview-with-poa-assistant-secretary-joe-simpson

The above is three articles on the State and the workers in it. Enjoy!!

[A Marxist Historian]

To Marxist Historian: This is the actual quote you gave from your post, dated 29 August “As thousands of people are being thrown in jail without trial, and the country turns into a nightmare police state, the prison screws complain about their own little asses being overworked.” And this is your quote taken from the 31 August in reply to my contribution “If you are not aware that thousands of people have been thrown for looting into jail in the last few weeks, without trial, or at most with a perfunctory farce of a trial, then you are a fool. And doubly so since you live in the country where it is happening. Your country is being turned by the Tories into a police state as you watch, and you deny it, as you and your tendency have their noses up the arses of allegedly "working class" pigs and screws.” Just as an aside I have been accused by a minority of offenders of being a “civilian screw” because I taught in the prison system.

In your 31 August post you made a comment about the American prison system. I do not know much about the criminal penal system in America as I have not read much about it and have only spoken to two American offenders here, but they like the Eastern European, specifically Russians, offenders I have spoken to consider that the British penal system is a kindergarten compared to their ones; and they laughed in British offenders faces when they whinged about the British jails. I know doubt believe that the American penal system is harsher but is that because the class tribulations are far sharper than in Britain, but no different in its class content.


As you say people have been put in prison because they were looting, so far around 1500, with the same amount still awaiting trial. But they have been found guilty in the capitalist court, by capitalist law, for those offences of looting and arson, etc. In fact the Courts have been working through the day and through the night in the initial period because they had so many defendants to process, that is a fact of life after the Riots in early August, I know all that and that does not make me a fool. There is no process of innocent until you are found guilty in the capitalist courts, the Cameron government wants to make an example, first by retaliatory measures against the Rioters and then the proposals to use water cannon, rubber bullets in future confrontations. But let no-one, particularly the labour and trade union movement, along with the anti-cuts movement, be under any misapprehension that if Cameron, et al, get away with it, this Government will try to use the riots to add to the panoply of anti-democratic, semi dictatorial measures already in place. Many of them were indorsed by Tony Blair’s Labour Government when he came to power in 1997. The brutal anti-trade union laws, which are the most undemocratic in the advanced industrial countries, was also kept in place by the Blair government, is now being used to attempt to infringe the right to demonstrate as shown by Camden Council demanding payment from the National Shop Stewards Network for marching to the TUC on Sunday 11 September; and will be used against Anti-Cuts demonstrations in the future.

Your first statement makes the assertion they were thrown in jail without a trial, I consider you a unenlightened for making that statement, because the people who were jailed did have a trial, with others on remand in the prison awaiting trial, and I do consider that the sentencing against the majority are harsh and unfair; but they are taking place because they, the capitalist Government and Judiciary, want to ideologically crush the idea that people can fight back. I do not support rioting as a method of fighting the ConDem government and Capitalism, I believe in the mass participation of the Trade Union movement and the mass of the people in non-violent civil disobedience as a means of struggle.

I deem that the setting up of a democratically run enquiry into the Riots, and the shooting of the individual that began the Riots, involving elected representatives of trade unions ,community organisations and small businesses that could set the boundaries on how the offences are dealt with, including with the right to review sentences already imposed; along with police accountability through democratic control by elected committees involving the local people and local small business associations and the local Trade unions. Additionally, the Youth Services that have been closed down because of the Cuts instituted by the Condem government in London and elsewhere in England should be reopened and expanded; along with the nationalisation of the Banks and use the money to create jobs, government investment in house renovation and building to provide cheap social housing; no cuts in benefits and so on. This must be combined with a defence campaign against the heavy handed policing in the areas affected by the riots.

You certainly changed slightly you language in your second contribution, as quoted, when you called the trials a farce, yes you are technically correct, but that is taking place because the political backlash from the ConDem government and yet there is disquiet amongst a certain section of the ruling elite that they are going too far which could come back and bite them on the bum. As said above there is reasons why this is taking place and the ConDem government is quite weak and the way of weak government’s is to come out with bellicose language and actions.

As I said before you are ignorant of Britain especially when you say that Britain is being turned into a police state. With all due honest it has been an elected dictatorship for many years. Ever since the Thatcher epoch the ‘police state’ as you call it has been ratchet up year on year. I post an article from the Socialist Party’s political journal from March 2008, and a couple of other articles, to make my point. From before the Great Miners’ Strike in 1984 to 85 the State machinery was being beefed up by the Thatcher cabal on behalf of their economic masters - the Capitalists, as a means to challenge any action by the Trade Union movement against the beginning of the savage slashing of the social wage of the working class, the Social Services of the post war ‘Golden Age’ epoch of 1945 to 1975. Riots, although a frenzied and amorphous, expression of protest have not changed the world; however some Socialist organisations and individuals, in Britain, have written and spoken about looting as being a political act by the poor. With all due honesty this makes a charade of Socialist ideas that a mass working class struggle has the ability to replace the Capitalist system with one which the resources of society are democratically owned and controlled by the working class with a plan to meet the needs of all.

The Cuts are just not against the young, the poor and the working class in general, they are also infecting a significant section of the population who would consider themselves middle class, but are in reality workers because the sell their labour power for the capitalists. That would include the police, prison officers and the armed forces, who at this moment in Britain are going through Cuts which are affecting their pay, pensions and are being made redundant, which in many cases means they will be made homeless. As Karl Marx said in the Communist Manifesto what “the bourgeoisie therefore produce, above all, are its own grave-diggers.” When we talk about the State we talk about a paradox, an oxymoron, an enigma, because on the one hand the people who labour for it, the State as an organisation, have to follow the social imperatives of the economic and social system we live in, which as we all know is Capitalism.

As Socialists we have to win workers to the idea of the socialist transformation of society, and that includes workers in the State. Now propaganda and ‘theory’ and socialist ideas only reach a relatively small, politicised layer, except in exceptional periods of intensified class struggle, that is during pre-revolutionary and revolutionary period, and we are not in that period today. So the policy of making a political and class appeal to the ranks of the State, that is the police, armed forces and prison officers and supporting their democratic rights, to strike for example, including the right to organise in a trade union is the correct thing to do. Supporting trade union rights, etc, for the police, armed forces and prison officers does not cloud my, or the CWI as you are hostile to it, analysis of the role of the police, armed forces and prison officers as part of the State Apparatus or undermine the recognition of the need to organise against police and military repression. The point is they are workers and if anything socialists need to win them away from their leaders, who are linked to the owners of the social and economic system by a thousand strands, and nearer to the worker’s movement helps create favourable conditions of struggle for the working class in general. Your ultra-left political hostility to workers in the State industries will only drive them fully into the arms of the capitalist ruling elite when at a time socialist will need their help in organising the socialist transformation of society. Be warned ‘comrade’!

On a personal issue, when I was in prison for the political offence, which was during the Anti-poll tax campaign which was defeated not because of the Riot in March 1991 but because of the non-payment civil disobedience of 18 million people over a 3 plus year period, I had a fraternal approach to both prison officers and inmates in the prison I was sent to. Both officers and Inmates considered it absolutely disgusting that anybody should be jailed for a minor transgression as non-payment of the poll tax. Not seeing it was a political decision by the Thatcher and Major government to jail non-payers, which was supported by the way by the Kinnock lead Labour Party, because they deliberately made the Tax unworkable and removed from the statute books.

http://www.socialismtoday.org/116/state.html

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/9019

http://www.socialistparty.org.uk/articles/11586/31-03-2011/prison-officers-fight-prison-privatisation-interview-with-poa-assistant-secretary-joe-simpson

The above is three articles on the State and the workers in it. Enjoy!!

I think most of what you have to say above at such length is an admission that I was basically right, even if I maybe exaggerated a bit or maybe was a little imprecise here and there. Like you yourself said, the difference between British and American prisons is only quantitative, not basic, the capitalist state is the capitalist state and the American model is what the Tories and for that matter New Labour aspire too. Geeze, I thought I was a long poster...

But be that as it may, the main issue is what attitude to take to the prison guards and the cops. You put them in one bag together with soldiers in the army. That is just totally wrong, and against everything the Bolshevik Party was ever all about.

The Bolsheviks won because they won over the rank and file of the army. The Tsarist police? During the February Revolution, with no great Bolshevik involvement, the workers hunted down the police and killed them.

As for the prisons, after the Bolshevik Revolution the prison gates were broken open and *all* prisoners *without exception* were freed, except for the Tsar and his family and a few other reactionaries the Kerensky government had been forced to lock up. Whom the workers immediately took custody of and put under revolutionary guard.

The idea was that even the very worst offenders in the atmosphere of a workers revolution could rehabilitate themselves and should be given a second chance.

And many were, and many weren't, and some ended up right back in the new jails the new regime had to set up.

As for the old prison guards, a few were rehired for their practical skills, as the Bolsheviks had no expertise in setting up prisons. But they were watched like hawks, and most prison guards ended up back in prison, except inside the cells instead of guarding them. A lot were killed during the Revolution.

On your personal experiences, nothing unusual there. After all, we're all members of the human race.

Trying to cultivate one's prison guards a bit while in prison is only common sense, nothing wrong with that at all. They have control over your life while in prison, deliberately alienating them unnecessarily is stupid.

Hell, some Jews survived Auschwitz because of those few SS officers who were slightly human. We've all seen the Steven Spielberg movie about the Holocaust, about Jews whose lives were saved by a greedy ruthless German capitalist for whom brutal mass extermination was just a bridge too far, and got disgusted.

-M.H.-

[parkerdeano]

Regardless of colour. White, black or green. Issues stand in the UK due to a number of reasons. Yes low unemployment, and social issues, as well as what I would call a nanny state which allows too many human rights of criminals. 40 years ago people had respect for one another. I feel that has gone, and to reverse that is a tough one.