Riots in Britain: The Fruit of Forty Years of Capitalist Crisis -statement by the ICT [Archive]

HEAD ICE

9th August 2011, 20:25

Riots in Britain - The Fruit of Forty Years of Capitalist Crisis

http://www.leftcom.org/files/images/2011-08-08-london-riots.preview.jpg (http://www.leftcom.org/images/2011-08-08-london-riots?size=_original)
As world stock markets tumbled and financial panic threatened the eurozone the British ruling class were congratulating themselves that London is well prepared for next year’s Olympics. Then, with all the unpredictability of a natural disaster Tottenham, Enfield, Brixton, Walthamstow, Croydon, Clapham burned. Since then riots have spread to other cities including Bristol and Birmingham. Now Prime Minister Cameron has been obliged to foresake his Italian villa and return to a city pitted by burnt-out and looted areas with all the visitor attraction of a war zone.

The immediate spark for the riot was the shooting by the Metropolitan police of 29 year old Mark Duggan who was dragged from a minicab and during the struggle with the police was killed, apparently by two shots fired at close range to his head. The police in a statement said that their officers were defending themselves from being shot at by Mark Duggan. This doesn’t tally with reports that the bullet which Duggan was supposed to have fired was a standard police issue. In other words, the usual long, drawn-out obfuscations to protect the police are already under way.

Following Mark Duggan’s death his family organised a protest outside the local police station where they asked to speak to a senior officer regarding the investigation into the shooting. It is reported that their intention was to hold an hour’s silent vigil after which they would then disperse. Far from explaining what had happened, senior officers refused to see them and instead chose to ‘disperse the crowd’, including truncheoning a 16 year old young woman. Protest turned to anger and when two empty police cars were stoned the police launched an outright attack on the gathering.

For now the details of what triggered the riots are not the main issue. The truth is they are an indication of the incipient social collapse that typifies capitalism in its supposedly advanced democratic metropoles today.

Big Society or Little Chance of a Civilised Life?

While it is easy for Labour politicians and their left-wing hangers-on to blame the current round of austerity cuts for the situation everyone (apart from maybe millionaires like Cameron and his crew) knows that anger and frustration have been running high for years as more and more youngsters are excluded from the world of wages and work. Undoubtedly the Con-Dem austerity cuts have only served to intensify and deepen the social chasm which divides the ‘haves’ and ‘have nots’. But that chasm cannot be bridged by a few new pool tables in government funded youth clubs. Nor would Labour offer any more serious solution. Labour’s role in propagating the low-pay, flexible economy which has no place for traditional skill training shouldn’t be forgotten, much less the cuts to services which were also carried out under the 1997-2010 Labour government and accepted by the trade unions. Even so, the situation goes back much further than the last Labour government.

Inevitably the present upheaval is being seen as a re-run of the riots of the 1980’s which focused around issues of race discrimination and associated unemployment, social deprivation and police harassment. All these factors remain (e.g. the metropolitan police, under the cover of tackling gun crime, still systematically harass black youths) but the present turmoil is happening after a period of forty years of capitalist crisis in a social environment which is crumbling. Whole generations of the working class have known nothing outside of low wage and precarious employment. A growing part of the permanently unemployed (the so-called under class) are surviving in an increasingly harsh and violent world however they can. Gun crime and knife crime are only one part of this. Life at the bottom of capitalist society is a mirror image of life at the top: everyone out for himself in a ruthless competition to survive and get their hands on money and material wealth, the only symbols of success in this capitalist world.

After the upheavals on the streets in the 1980s the state promoted ‘multi-culturalism’. State money was diverted to Black and Asian areas to finance sticking plaster solutions such as youth centres, language classes and even (in the case of muslim areas) waving visa restrictions for religious teachers to come from the home country to ‘educate’ young people in mosques here. The idea was to keep the ghettoes separate but quiet. Iraq, Afghanistan and the deepening crisis have put paid to all that. As the capitalist crisis deepens the only response it has left to the growing level of social exclusion is to increase the level of repression by the capitalist state.

Meanwhile anyone who protests — be it against a wrongful arrest, against increases in university fees, against austerity measures and pension cuts or simply against the existence of a parasitic monarchy — are liable to be arrested, beaten up or find themselves the subject of a police raid in the small hours. (Recently the Metropolitan police announced that anyone suspected of being an anarchist should be reported to the police, while on the run up to the royal wedding anti-royals were hunted out and arrested.) Increasingly this is the only response that the bourgeoisie can make, even within their nominal form of democracy.

A Communist Perspective

While the right wing press have been busy condemning the riots as simply ‘yobbery’ Labour and the left of capital are more careful about pinning the blame on the youth. Labour MP David Lammy was one of the first to comment. He condemned the violence as being an act that only targeted their own community, followed with the usual appeal for calm. The response of the British SWP has as usual revealed its role on the coat tails of Labour.
For instance, while recognising the social and economic causes of the riots their solution is to call for some form of police accountability. As if reforming the police was a matter for a revolutionary organisation supposedly working for the overthrow of capitalism. The police are an integral part of the capitalist state machine whose core purpose is to defend capitalist legality, which in turn exists to defend the right of capitalists to make profits by extorting surplus value from workers.

It is not for communists to condemn the riots. They are a sign of capitalism’s crisis and decay. Neither do we romanticise the riotous act as an effective form of struggle against capitalist exploitation. In the present case the target of the crowd’s anger often appears to be in the main branches of national chain stores where the participants simply break into the stores and take what they can carry. Far from being a liberating form of activity this sort of ‘expropriation’ is simply a reflection of capitalist ideology which sees the strongest taking and keeping whatever possession it has acquired. So long as capitalism continues on its downward spiral of crisis with the rich getting richer and the poorest more and more excluded there will be more and more explosions like these. The race is on for the revival of a really liberating movement of the working class to present an alternative to capitalist barbarism. That movement will be a collective one where workers understand why they are battling against the forces of repression: for no less than the overthrow of the old world order and a completely new world where distribution is based, not on profits for the few, but on direct production to fulfil the needs of everyone. Instead of capitalist parliaments acting as a smokescreen for the real power of money and profit a revolutionary workers’ movement will form councils of recallable delegates who are accountable to those who elect them and whose sole purpose is to introduce a communist mode of production to ensure that all workers’ interests are addressed. In short, unless and until the working class begins to see there is an alternative to capitalism and begins to struggle politically there will be more outbursts from those who have no stake in this society, who have no serious job prospects, who are not enthralled by East Enders and who have no religion to chain them to this world.

http://www.leftcom.org/en/articles/2011-08-09/riots-in-britain-the-fruit-of-forty-years-of-capitalist-crisis

RedTrackWorker

10th August 2011, 21:39

Fighting the police and taking from national chain stores reflects capitalist ideology?

Further, this statement offers no way forward. Instead of putting forward a perspective that can organize and politicize the riots, it calls for socialist ideology and soviets. Good things, but how can these rioters best learn through their own experience of the necessity for these things outside of reading leaflets?

I don't know enough about London to say what could be done--I don't even know basic things like are there campuses that are mostly working class and are they in session? If so, walkouts should be organized. Are there key workplaces composed of workers who would be sympathetic to this and rioters and sympathizers could converge there to try to bring them out? Are there key workplaces--like a big McDonald's--that represent particularly henious exploiters of youth that they could organize protests at and galvanize the workforce there? Obviously angry protests at financial centers and political centers can organize and focus discontent. Further, some of the rioters could be organized to protest at major union halls, and especially with ones that are union members (assuming some are) or in alliance with some--sit in in the union halls demanding action like the Tunisian workers did. (As well I think it should be said that anyone in the union movement has the responsibility to campaign energetically for solidarity to the basic cause of the youth rioting, and if possible, campaign for a general strike against police brutality and the austerity attacks--see for example (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/police06.html) or Lessons From Cincinnati: Rebellion Against Police Terror (http://www.marxists.org/history/etol/newspape/socialistvoice/CincinnatiPR63.html)).

You mention soviets--can the high schools in the neighborhood be turned into mass meetings where councils of action are formed to debate policy and make decisions? If not, what could?

The other thing I don't see here is a basis recognition that this is a class-rebellion we should champion, as Sy Landy said in a debate with the SL on urban rebellions here: "It was a demonstration on the basis of class solidarity and class explosion". They are not a sign of capitalism's decay...they are a sign of protest against capitalism's decay!

HEAD ICE

11th August 2011, 01:44

I agree with what you are saying RTW. The article is lacking of suggestions of ways to politicize the riots towards a proletarian direction. However, the article was written less than 24 hours after the riots began and is focused on explaining the situation. Don't want to give out too much information but an updated version of the article is being discussed on the email list.

PhoenixAsh

11th August 2011, 01:53

Thanks for posting this. I am looking foreward to the updated version. As has been said,,this one is lacking

Die Neue Zeit

11th August 2011, 02:03

It is not for communists to condemn the riots. They are a sign of capitalism’s crisis and decay. Neither do we romanticise the riotous act as an effective form of struggle against capitalist exploitation.

It's good that this left-com article doesn't seem to subscribe to, ahem, decadence fetishes. "Crisis and decay" is open-ended enough.

Instead of capitalist parliaments acting as a smokescreen for the real power of money and profit a revolutionary workers’ movement will form councils of recallable delegates who are accountable to those who elect them and whose sole purpose is to introduce a communist mode of production to ensure that all workers’ interests are addressed.

Why the councilism at the end? I know the organization isn't much into mass party-movements whereby real parties are real movements and vice versa, but at least there could be more general wording. "Form institutions of recallable officials/office-holders" gets past both councilism and the representation vs. delegation debate.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 02:03

Far from being a liberating form of activity this sort of ‘expropriation’ is simply a reflection of capitalist ideology which sees the strongest taking and keeping whatever possession it has acquired.

This kind of sanctimonious, self-righteous snobbery is enough to make you puke and reject, out of hand, whatever accurate, and radical assessments are contained in the rest of the analysis.

Some Left-coms seem to excel at this-- making the one gratuitous, intellectually snobbish statement which they think demonstrates their grasp of "dialectics"-- that makes most humans beings want to turn around and tell them to shove their clever insights up their own asses.

Breaking a window and taking commodities is not a capitalist ideology. Dispossessing labor, expropriating the surplus labor-time of others, expelling wage-labor, increasing unemployment, transferring wealth up the social ladder by driving down the ability of the working class to reproduce itself as other than impoverished--- those are the fucking capitalist ideologies at work. So far, I haven't seen any of the rioters making anyone else break the window, steal the commodities, for a fucking wage packet.

HEAD ICE

11th August 2011, 02:22

This kind of sanctimonious, self-righteous snobbery is enough to make you puke and reject, out of hand, whatever accurate, and radical assessments are contained in the rest of the analysis.

Some Left-coms seem to excel at this-- making the one gratuitous, intellectually snobbish statement which they think demonstrates their grasp of "dialectics"-- that makes most humans beings want to turn around and tell them to shove their clever insights up their own asses.

Breaking a window and taking commodities is not a capitalist ideology. Dispossessing labor, expropriating the surplus labor-time of others, expelling wage-labor, increasing unemployment, transferring wealth up the social ladder by driving down the ability of the working class to reproduce itself as other than impoverished--- those are the fucking capitalist ideologies at work. So far, I haven't seen any of the rioters making anyone else break the window, steal the commodities, for a fucking wage packet.

Did you bother to read what you were responding to, or do you like to read your own writing? You grabbed that sentence out of a paragraph speaking about the obvious fact that this is not an effective way to combat capitalist social relations. Like everything else, it is a reflection of the society it is taking place in. Such a society happens to be capitalism. Competition for material goods doesn't just occur at the top mind you. I have written criticisms of the updated article but this is not one of them. You are trying to read something into it that isn't there.

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 02:41

This kind of sanctimonious, self-righteous snobbery is enough to make you puke and reject, out of hand, whatever accurate, and radical assessments are contained in the rest of the analysis.

Some Left-coms seem to excel at this-- making the one gratuitous, intellectually snobbish statement which they think demonstrates their grasp of "dialectics"-- that makes most humans beings want to turn around and tell them to shove their clever insights up their own asses.

Breaking a window and taking commodities is not a capitalist ideology. Dispossessing labor, expropriating the surplus labor-time of others, expelling wage-labor, increasing unemployment, transferring wealth up the social ladder by driving down the ability of the working class to reproduce itself as other than impoverished--- those are the fucking capitalist ideologies at work. So far, I haven't seen any of the rioters making anyone else break the window, steal the commodities, for a fucking wage packet.
Isn't this basically a tone argument? I mean, I don't disagree with the criticisms of the tone at that particular point in the article, but you're not really engaging with the substance of their comment- that this sort of opportunistic looting is illustrative of a lack of political conciousness- so much as offering an alternative definition of "ideology".

Dogs On Acid

11th August 2011, 02:57

Die Neue Zeit

11th August 2011, 03:08

^^^ Why don't you repost that in the Part 2 thread?

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 04:31

Isn't this basically a tone argument? I mean, I don't disagree with the criticisms of the tone at that particular point in the article, but you're not really engaging with the substance of their comment- that this sort of opportunistic looting is illustrative of a lack of political conciousness- so much as offering an alternative definition of "ideology".

Except that is exactly the point I did engage with-- that that claim is a bullshit academic, pseudo-intellectual trick.

Look the same fucking shit was said in 2005 about New Orleans, in Hurricane Katrina-- that the blacks, the poor people were "looting"-- when they broke into stores and took not just food and water, but food and water and clothes, and I'm sure an IPod or two-- after they took anything they wanted after having been abandoned to die; after having been attacked daily for years in New Orleans by the fucking police [some of whom were just convicted of "civil rights" violations for murdering blacks trying to escape the flood]. They were called looters. The fucking governor couldn't provide a fucking ounce of help could sure back the shooting of "looters."

This is the same shit. Years of malign neglect, exclusion, abuse. Maybe not a hurricane, but nonetheless the treatment inflicted on Baghdad was visited upon the poor of New Orleans-- left to rot in the name of the free market after any social support had been destroyed. And London and Manchester are this year's model of New Orleans, with that glib posh twit Cameron this year's version of
the idiot love child of Reagan and Thatcher-- George W. Bush.

And then our left-coms stick their thumb into their dialectical pie, pull out a plum that reads "looters are just acting out capitalist ideology" and say "what a good boy am I" and anybody with 2 ounces of brains in his or her head should tell the left-coms saying this crap to piss off, and how's your father.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 04:35

Did you bother to read what you were responding to, or do you like to read your own writing? You grabbed that sentence out of a paragraph speaking about the obvious fact that this is not an effective way to combat capitalist social relations. Like everything else, it is a reflection of the society it is taking place in. Such a society happens to be capitalism. Competition for material goods doesn't just occur at the top mind you. I have written criticisms of the updated article but this is not one of them. You are trying to read something into it that isn't there.

Yeah I actually fucking read it. The whole article-- that's why I excised that one incredibly stupid, self-serving, shit-eating, smug, pseudo-intellectual moronic remark and highlighted it, arguing that it makes people dismiss whatever radical analysis these guys may be putting out.

And exactly what competition for material goods? As I pointed out, where are the looters trying to monopolize the means of subsistence, dispossess others of the means of subsistence, so they can employ them as wage-laborers? Where are the looters accumulating value as value for value?

Fucking unbelievable. Have you ever read Marx on what exactly capitalism is?

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 04:53

Except that is exactly the point I did engage with-- that that claim is a bullshit academic, pseudo-intellectual trick.

Look the same fucking shit was said in 2005 about New Orleans, in Hurricane Katrina-- that the blacks, the poor people were "looting"-- when they broke into stores and took not just food and water, but food and water and clothes, and I'm sure an IPod or two-- after they took anything they wanted after having been abandoned to die; after having been attacked daily for years in New Orleans by the fucking police [some of whom were just convicted of "civil rights" violations for murdering blacks trying to escape the flood]. They were called looters. The fucking governor couldn't provide a fucking ounce of help could sure back the shooting of "looters."

This is the same shit. Years of malign neglect, exclusion, abuse. Maybe not a hurricane, but nonetheless the treatment inflicted on Baghdad was visited upon the poor of New Orleans-- left to rot in the name of the free market after any social support had been destroyed. And London and Manchester are this year's model of New Orleans, with that glib posh twit Cameron this year's version of
the idiot love child of Reagan and Thatcher-- George W. Bush.

And then our left-coms stick their thumb into their dialectical pie, pull out a plum that reads "looters are just acting out capitalist ideology" and say "what a good boy am I" and anybody with 2 ounces of brains in his or her head should tell the left-coms saying this crap to piss off, and how's your father.
I don't disagree that that part of the article is lazy and, as you say, not a little sanctimonious, but I don't know if making a point badly invalidates the point itself. What they seem to be suggesting, to me, is that the looting is a product of the get-what-you-grab, winner-takes-all mentality which currently enjoys a more or less hegemonic status in the Anglo-American world, and as such cannot be seen as representing a rejection of capitalist ideology but an extra-legal manifestation of it; taking the game off the pitch, you might say. I don't think that this is inaccurate, however questionable the tone in which it is offered, and I don't think that you've actually contested that claim in itself, so much as you have- quite accurately- observed that it's not something that we are in any position to be critical of. I honestly think that, on this point, you and the writers are arguing just a little bit past each other.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 04:58

I don't disagree that that part of the article is lazy and, as you say, not a little sanctimonious, but I don't know if making a point badly invalidates the point itself. What they seem to be suggesting, to me, is that the looting is a product of the get-what-you-grab, winner-takes-all mentality which currently enjoys a more or less hegemonic status in the Anglo-American world, and as such cannot be seen as representing a rejection of capitalist ideology but an extra-legal manifestation of it; taking the game off the pitch, you might say. I don't think that this is inaccurate, however questionable the tone in which it is offered, and I don't think that you've actually contested that claim in itself, so much as you have- quite accurately- observed that it's not something that we are in any position to be critical of. I honestly think that, on this point, you and the writers are arguing just a little bit past each other.

As I said, I think the point itself is complete utter irresponsible horseshit, I don't care how elegantly one wants to make it. It's crap designed to "distance" the "enlightened" elite erudite left-coms from the "misguided" "unconscious" rabble in the street.

It reeks, let me rephrase that, it stinks of elitism. It ain't tone I care about, it's content. The content is self-serving and completely inaccurate.

o well this is ok I guess

11th August 2011, 04:58

Fucking unbelievable. Have you ever read Marx on what exactly capitalism is? I think you ought to calm down a bit before continuing.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 05:00

I think you ought to calm down a bit before continuing.

Thanks for your input. I'll keep it in mind.

o well this is ok I guess

11th August 2011, 05:01

Thanks for your input. I'll keep it in mind. Just saiyan.
I'm sure we've all said things we'd rather not have said in the heat of the moment.

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 05:15

As I said, I think the point itself is complete utter irresponsible horseshit, I don't care how elegantly one wants to make it. It's crap designed to "distance" the "enlightened" elite erudite left-coms from the "misguided" "unconscious" rabble in the street.

It reeks, let me rephrase that, it stinks of elitism. It ain't tone I care about, it's content. The content is self-serving and completely inaccurate.
Well, setting aside your allegations regarding their motivations aside, where do you think they are going wrong in their analysis? Katrina analogies only stretch so far, and I can't say that I find them convincing when we're talking about looting a Currys or a Foot Locker.

HEAD ICE

11th August 2011, 05:16

Yeah I actually fucking read it. The whole article-- that's why I excised that one incredibly stupid, self-serving, shit-eating, smug, pseudo-intellectual moronic remark and highlighted it, arguing that it makes people dismiss whatever radical analysis these guys may be putting out.

And exactly what competition for material goods? As I pointed out, where are the looters trying to monopolize the means of subsistence, dispossess others of the means of subsistence, so they can employ them as wage-laborers? Where are the looters accumulating value as value for value?

Fucking unbelievable. Have you ever read Marx on what exactly capitalism is?

it appears to me you have erected a strawman that you struggling to demolish, yet you are have committed yourself so much into it that you aren't interested in pulling back. take a breather my friend. smoke something, drink something, have goldner read you a bedtime story. when you are calmed down, please return and post your disagreements about that line. i can not properly respond to what you are saying, because you are a little incoherent right now and i am not sure exactly what you are arguing (you have made at least two different arguments by now).

are you upset that the article doesn't praise rioting and looting? that wasn't the point of the article, nor is it the point of revolutionaries. "praising" or "condemning" the riots is meaningless. that is what that paragraph is saying. nowhere is there a condemnation of the riots, nor even any 'elitism'. yet there is no point in romanticizing it either. tbh this is probably the least objectionable part of the whole thing. the most serious flaw of it is what RTW said in that there is no discussion on how to direct the riots and the rage in a political direction, yet that wasn't the purpose of it either (it being a statement written less than 24 hours after the riots began). as for 'capitalist ideology'... i vaguely remember something in a book called "The Communist Manifesto" written by a guy called Karl Marx that said that the ruling ideas of society are the ideas of the ruling class. maybe you have heard of that book?

hopefully I have answered appropriately, though like i said i am a little unsure to what exactly i was responding to.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 05:31

it appears to me you have erected a strawman that you struggling to demolish, yet you are have committed yourself so much into it that you aren't interested in pulling back. take a breather my friend. smoke something, drink something, have goldner read you a bedtime story. when you are calmed down, please return and post your disagreements about that line. i can not properly respond to what you are saying, because you are a little incoherent right now and i am not sure exactly what you are arguing (you have made at least two different arguments by now).

Thank you for your patronizing input. I've posted my disagreements and quite coherently. The actions of the youth in smashing the stores and taking the commodities are not the expression of "capitalist ideology." Characterizing those actions as the expression of "capitalist ideology" as if the youths represent capitalism on a rampage, or capitalist violence and brutality, is self-serving elitist crap, and it's ignorant of exactly what capitalist ideology is.

The fact that you can't deal with it is no reason for me to withdraw the statements.

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 05:41

HEAD ICE

11th August 2011, 05:45

Thank you for your patronizing input. I've posted my disagreements and quite coherently. The actions of the youth in smashing the stores and taking the commodities are not the expression of "capitalist ideology." Characterizing those actions as the expression of "capitalist ideology" as if the youths represent capitalism on a rampage, or capitalist violence and brutality, is self-serving elitist crap, and it's ignorant of exactly what capitalist ideology is.

Come on my man. Don't start saying that I am "patronizing" when your idea of an argument is saying "fuck" a lot. If you have a disagreement with the words 'capitalist ideology', where I can see someone having one (in form, not content), you did not present it in the most coherent way. You read it and immediately began raging, while other people who have read the same line came to a different conclusion that you did. It is not calling the rioters little capitalists as you (the only one who has) concocted in your mind. It is an argument why communists should not romanticise looting as an effective method of struggling against capitalism. You, however, read it as "looters are capitalists." Something I thought was impossible given the context.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 05:45

Well, setting aside your allegations regarding their motivations aside, where do you think they are going wrong in their analysis? Katrina analogies only stretch so far, and I can't say that I find them convincing when we're talking about looting a Currys or a Foot Locker.

Apparently you didn't read what I said. It is not an expression of capitalist ideology. They are not accumulating sneakers as value, are they?

What's the difference between poor kids smashing a window and grabbing trainers, and a poor kid with a piece robbing the cash from the same store? Would you say the person robbing the cash is expressing a capitalist ideology?

Now organized, professional crime is one thing-- that is an excrescence of capitalism.

But the kids robbing stores to get enough money to live, or do what they want is not professional,organized crime. We may not condone it, we may think it's a dead end, but it's not an expression of capitalist ideology.

Spontaneous looting by poor kids, initiated by anger over police attacks, is not an expression of capitalist ideology-- the bourgeoisie know that much, which is why the are always more threatened by such spontaneous acts than by the organized, institutionalized, theft that really is an expression of capitalist ideology a la Madoff, Enron, Andy Fastow, Conrad Black etc. And respond in just the measure that they feel that threat.

Cops didn't shoot Madoff, did they? Conrad Black isn't exactly in maximum security lockdown, being rubber hosed by the prison guards is he?

No, property is NOT theft, even capitalist property, and not all theft is capitalism.

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 05:51

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 06:02

Come on my man. Don't start saying that I am "patronizing" when your idea of an argument is saying "fuck" a lot. If you have a disagreement with the words 'capitalist ideology', where I can see someone having one (in form, not content), you did not present it in the most coherent way. You read it and immediately began raging, while other people who have read the same line came to a different conclusion that you did. It is not calling the rioters little capitalists as you (the only one who has) concocted in your mind. It is an argument why communists should not romanticise looting as an effective method of struggling against capitalism. You, however, read it as "looters are capitalists." Something I thought was impossible given the context.

No, you're a patronizing snot with your smoke this, drink this, have a bedtime story. Fuck is perfectly OK to say and write. As in fuck you and your patronizing bullshit about smoke this, drink that, and have a bedtime story. Are we clear?

I didn't rage a bit at the getgo. I pointed out what an ignorant remark that is, and how it is used by "professional Marxists" as a demonstration of their "deeper understanding" of the social forces at work, when in fact such statements represent an impoverished comprehension of how struggles develop.

You demonstrate that poverty of that "deeper understanding" with your ridiculous citing of the Communist Manifesto and the remark that the ruling ideas of any society are the ideas of the ruling class relations. As if Marx ever meant that every action, any idea, every idea, any expression of anger, or resistance, j had to be the idea of the ruling class's ideology. If that were the case, I'd like to know how are noble left-coms own characterization of the actions of the looters is not itself an expression of capitalist ideology?

I'm not romanticizing looting. But the line used stated that the looters were expressing capitalist ideology. That's what I called horseshit. What? I'm the only one who felt that way? So what? What does that mean? EDIT: Actually I'm not the only one who felt that way. I just reread RTW's post, he notice it too. And made a point of it in the first line of his post.

I freely admit I was and am expressing my personal contempt for those individuals and groups that would use such a characterization in these circumstances. I believe using such a characterization is a measure of 1) fundamental ignorance as to what capitalism and "capitalist ideology" really are 2) fundamental fear that somehow the "pristine" nature of "authentic" class struggle will be irretrievably smeared if "real Marxists' don't separate themselves from such "primitive" expressions of anger and violence.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 06:04

...So you think that they're using the term "capitalist ideology" incorrectly? :confused: That's honestly all I'm getting here.

(Also, is there some fad around here that I'm missing out on where we claim that the only possible source of disagreement with our posts could be a failure to read what has been written? Everyone seems to be at it...)

Read it again, because you're not getting it. Not even a little bit.

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 06:09

Read it again, because you're not getting it. Not even a little bit.
Evidently not, no. http://www.v-strom.co.uk/phpBB3/images/smilies/smiley_shrug.gif

o well this is ok I guess

11th August 2011, 06:14

Well, I suppose I may as well try to contribute. I don't really have any confidence in what I'm saying, so forgive me if I say anything reflecting my poor amount of study.

Let us consider these bits.

Life at the bottom of capitalist society is a mirror image of life at the top: everyone out for himself in a ruthless competition to survive and get their hands on money and material wealth, the only symbols of success in this capitalist world.
Far from being a liberating form of activity this sort of ‘expropriation’ is simply a reflection of capitalist ideology which sees the strongest taking and keeping whatever possession it has acquired.It looks as though the writer means to say that the looting itself is not the expression of "capitalist ideology", but the choice of goods. What is expropriated, rather than expropriation. I'm sure many looted items they need (food and all that sort), but I'm sure there was plenty of things taken that weren't really needed. I'm sure we'd all find it strange if, in the event of a socialist revolution, we would start to distribute 50 inch tv's and designer clothing. I mean, there's no good reason to want a 50 inch tv in lieu of smaller, more manageable ones.
I think the author means to say is that the choice of goods by rioters reflects consumer society, which seems to be mostly an aspect of capitalism, and can be observed in all levels of the societal hierarchy. He probably said "capitalist ideology" over "consumer society" because he sees consumer society as an integral part of capitalism.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 06:35

o well this is ok I guess

11th August 2011, 06:49

I think you're wrong-- it's not the "choice" of goods, it's the action itself. The article states:

Emphasis added, obviously. But clearly it's the activity, the expropriation.. the taking of "whatever"-- or anyting. Recall this bit of the first quote.

Life at the bottom of capitalist society is a mirror image of life at the top: everyone out for himself in a ruthless competition to survive and get their hands on money and material wealth, the only symbols of success in this capitalist world. We can hardly say the writer means food and blankets and such when he says "material wealth", nor can they be said to be symbols of capitalist consumer society. However, we can reasonably say it so of 50 inch tv's.

I'd attribute his saying of of "whatever" mostly to his poor abilities of communication. It would be absurd for us to think he mean that the taking of fundamental needs to be an expression of capitalism. We need to always remember intent, else we should find ourselves deeply troubled when hearing jokes.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 06:51

And, in conclusion, let me put a bow on this package. It's one thing for ICT to issue a statement, and then go down into those neighborhoods and stay with those kids, and try and sort it out with those kids and "wean" them for their expression of "capitalist ideology." Takes a bit of planning and organization and plain old spine. Believe me, once you do this, once you go down there, you better not run away, no matter what. You have to be the "last man standing." If you run before the last kid has left and is safe from the cops, you'll never be able to go back down there and talk with those kids.

This happened to SDS in Detroit back in the 60s. A group from the Univ of Michigan SDS moved into Detroit in the summer of '69 . They decided to do some work in a park where the cops were rousting the kids every night at 9PM. Kids had started to fight back, and the cops came on strong with teargas and batons and snatching kids and smacking them.

Well the sds people went down there and when the shit started they bugged out. That was it for that sds and those kids-- the kids wouldn't even talk to them again-- told them to get the fuck out and never come back.

So if ICT wants to make its statement, let it make its statement in the neighborhoods where the action is underway. That's one thing, and that's all well and good. And let's all wish the ICT success.

But if they're not going to be in those neighborhoods-- if they're just going to make the statement and claim the looters are acting out "capitalist ideology," then ICT is just acting like any other group making a [I]moral criticism as opposed to taking a materialist action.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 06:57

Recall this bit of the first quote.

We can hardly say the writer means food and blankets and such when he says "material wealth", nor can they be said to be symbols of capitalist consumer society. However, we can reasonably say it so of 50 inch tv's.

I'd attribute his saying of of "whatever" mostly to his poor abilities of communication. It would be absurd for us to think he mean that the taking of fundamental needs to be an expression of capitalism. We need to always remember intent, else we should find ourselves deeply troubled when hearing jokes.

Excuse me, life at the "bottom" is not simply a reflection of "life at the top." That's more misinformation, and intellectual posing, a rendering of Hobbes' Leviathan and the "war of all against all" as opposed to what really goes on.

Why do they take 50 inch TVs? Why climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there.

Tim Finnegan

11th August 2011, 07:01

But if they're not going to be in those neighborhoods-- if they're just going to make the statement and claim the looters are acting out "capitalist ideology," then ICT is just acting like any other group making a moral criticism as opposed to taking a materialist action.
See, I'm not getting that. To me, what they're just suggesting as more of a "reap what you sow" thing, that the looting is a manifestation of the bandit-like style of commerce as practised by the elite, and fairly widely legitimised by the ideological norms of contemporary capitalism, manifesting in a more immediate, less readily tolerated fashion. The way they made it left a lot to be desired, yes, was rather too sanctimonious for its own good, but I don't think that it can be reduced to that. I've seen quite the same point made elsewhere, by leftists and non-leftists, of various class backgrounds, so I don't think that, whether or not you agree with it, you can dismiss this is mere leftcom preening.

Excuse me, life at the "bottom" is not simply a reflection of "life at the top." That's more misinformation, and intellectual posing, a rendering of Hobbes' Leviathan and the "war of all against all" as opposed to what really goes on.
Then why don't you tell us what, in your understanding, really goes on? You've spent a lot of time in this thread insisting that the writers of the article are wrong about X, Y and Z, but very little going so far as to actually correct them.

o well this is ok I guess

11th August 2011, 07:08

Excuse me, life at the "bottom" is not simply a reflection of "life at the top." That's more misinformation, and intellectual posing, a rendering of Hobbes' Leviathan and the "war of all against all" as opposed to what really goes on.

Why do they take 50 inch TVs? Why climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there. I'm not saying life at the bottom is like life at the top. I am simply trying to make some clarification on an honestly very muddy article.

And then there will be 60 inch tv's, then their 3d iterations, then so on and so forth. Says law, "Supply creates its own demand", I suppose.
But of course, when given thought, there is no reason to buy a 50 inch tv and no reason to climb mount Everest (to my knowledge. And if there is, the comparison between it and 50 inch becomes irrelevant).

La Peur Rouge

11th August 2011, 07:11

The way I originally interpreted that sentence it came out as sounding like what the writer was saying is that "taking and keeping whatever possession it has acquired" reflects the way that capitalists "takes and keeps" the things that the working class creates, not that the actual rioters themselves were a reflection of that.

It read like more of an attack on the way capitalism operates rather than an attack on the rioters. Now I'm not sure how to read it.

Martin Blank

11th August 2011, 07:21

Why do they take 50 inch TVs? Why climb Mt. Everest? Because it's there.

I think there's a more important point here that pertains to "bourgeois ideology", and it is precisely on this issue. I have noted that there seems to be a view prevalent even among self-described leftists that is willing to more or less look the other way when workers are seizing the most basic essentials of survival, such as food, but see the acquiring of anything beyond that as an expression of bourgeois ideology.

A person with such a view seems to be saying that it's OK if a poor working-class person grabs only the items that are seen by capitalist society as acceptable for the working poor to have, but taking anything beyond that is crossing some imaginary line. It is as if they are saying, "It's OK if you stuff a loaf of bread or a can of pork-and-beans in your pockets; that's stuff you're allowed to have. But taking a pair of nice shoes or a new television, items reserved for the privileged and wealthy in society, is out of the question. Put those back and stick to the second-hand clothes and crappy foodstuffs capitalism allows you to have. Know your place!"

When you say something like:

In the present case the target of the crowd’s anger often appears to be in the main branches of national chain stores where the participants simply break into the stores and take what they can carry. Far from being a liberating form of activity this sort of ‘expropriation’ is simply a reflection of capitalist ideology which sees the strongest taking and keeping whatever possession it has acquired.

It is you who is reflecting capitalist ideology, because you are the one reinforcing the level of alienation between the worker and the product of their labor. (Obviously, I'm speaking here on a class scale, not an individual scale.) You end up being the one saying, "These you're allowed to have, and these you're not -- and if you try to take any of those things you cannot otherwise have, well, you're just being backward and selfish, reactionary and thuggish."

We should not concern ourselves if these commodities are being taken. Most of the stores and shops being broken into and emptied (and, in some cases, set on fire) have enough insurance to cover any possible losses. The same can be said, I'm sure, about many of the civilian vehicles that were trashed and torched. In some senses, the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie may be privately cheering about the destruction, since it has cleared out competitors and some overproduced commodities.

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 07:42

See, I'm not getting that. To me, what they're just suggesting as more of a "reap what you sow" thing, that the looting is a manifestation of the bandit-like style of commerce as practised by the elite, and fairly widely legitimised by the ideological norms of contemporary capitalism, manifesting in a more immediate, less readily tolerated fashion. The way they made it left a lot to be desired, yes, was rather too sanctimonious for its own good, but I don't think that it can be reduced to that. I've seen quite the same point made elsewhere, by leftists and non-leftists, of various class backgrounds, so I don't think that, whether or not you agree with it, you can dismiss this is mere leftcom preening.

Yes, that's what they're saying and that's just horseshit. It isn't reap what you sow. The Sex Pistols to the contrary notwithstanding, the fascist regime has not made these kids a moron, a potential H bomb, mindlessly acting out the "dog eat dog" nature of capitalism-- first because capitalism isn't dog eat dog, and secondly the actions themselves were triggered as a response to murder by the police; to years of police roustings; to the imposition of greater poverty; to the tremendous inequality.

The "reap what you sow" argument is just a fancy way of labeling these kids as lumpen-- but because others have already done that the leftcom way of doing that, of maintaining "ideological purity" is to spin it as kids are expressing "capitalist ideology."

Then why don't you tell us what, in your understanding, really goes on? You've spent a lot of time in this thread insisting that the writers of the article are wrong about X, Y and Z, but very little going so far as to actually correct them.

Actually, I have told you what goes on, you just won't or don't comprehend it. I told you that before Duggan was killled there were thousands of roustings of kids by the police. Did you hear what Darcus Howe said in the interview when he asked his grandson how many times the police had rousted him, and the grandson said " I can't even count how many times."?

The looting takes place as an expression of anger and disgust at every representative of authority-- and nothing speaks of authority like the authority of having to pay money for a commodity.

I 'll tell you that life at the bottom is marked by intensifying pressure against wages, benefits, and jobs to drive the price of labor below its cost of reproduction-- the way that's done in capitalism is marginalizing more and more workers into lower wage jobs, into service industries, into tiered wage structures, into casual employment, where benefits and wages for new employees are less than for the established workers, and then reducing the availability of even those jobs so more and more pressure is placed on the ability of labor to sustain itself; its done by denying young people access to education so the possibility of obtaining a wage capable of supporting oneself and a family is minimized.

I'll tell you here that if you check those cops involved in these so-called "tactical units" almost anywhere in the world, you'll find that every time they roust a kid, they take his or her money off him, they bust his or her mobile phone, they taunt them about their clothes and "where did they get the money to pay for that?"

So now these kids fight back-- and in the only way they know how by pissing on every symbol, every manifestation of the capitalism that says to them "You're not worth the cost of living." Life at the bottom is to live your life in fear, and the response to fear is anger. You don't get over your fear without acting on your anger. That's what these kids are doing. Doesn't make them heroes, but it sure makes them human beings, and not simply the products of "capitalist ideology."

RedTrackWorker

11th August 2011, 07:44

robbo203

11th August 2011, 08:00

Apparently you didn't read what I said. It is not an expression of capitalist ideology. They are not accumulating sneakers as value, are they?

What's the difference between poor kids smashing a window and grabbing trainers, and a poor kid with a piece robbing the cash from the same store? Would you say the person robbing the cash is expressing a capitalist ideology?

Now organized, professional crime is one thing-- that is an excrescence of capitalism.

But the kids robbing stores to get enough money to live, or do what they want is not professional,organized crime. We may not condone it, we may think it's a dead end, but it's not an expression of capitalist ideology.

Spontaneous looting by poor kids, initiated by anger over police attacks, is not an expression of capitalist ideology-- the bourgeoisie know that much, which is why the are always more threatened by such spontaneous acts than by the organized, institutionalized, theft that really is an expression of capitalist ideology a la Madoff, Enron, Andy Fastow, Conrad Black etc. And respond in just the measure that they feel that threat.

Cops didn't shoot Madoff, did they? Conrad Black isn't exactly in maximum security lockdown, being rubber hosed by the prison guards is he?

No, property is NOT theft, even capitalist property, and not all theft is capitalism.

To be fair I dont think saying someone is motivated by capitalist ideology means that that person's actions or behaviour correspond to that of a capitalist in accumulating value and so forth. Nationalism,for example. is an aspect of capitalist ideology. Clearly, workers and not just capitalists evince nationalistic sentiments in their droves at the present time. That doesnt mean they are capitalists but it does indicate that they ideologically support capitalism

The question of looting is perhaps a little less obvious and straightforward. There is a sense in which capitalist ideology enters the picture or forms part of the background. This stems from the close relationship in capitalism between personal identity and consumption. Respect and social esteem is attached to conspicuous consumption. This is the sublimal message that is daily pumped out through the media and its celebrity cult and it would be quite extraordinary if young people did not respond to it in some fashion.

It is not unreasonable to argue that part of complex of motivations that drive them to loot is the sense of frustration arising from the fact that in this society you count for nothing unless you ve got the dosh . Young looters having been pissed on from a great height for so long , having been dismissed as yobs and no-hopers are responding accordingly.

I dont have any qualms about the looting of big stores although I do most certainly have qualms when fellow workers are attacked. That indicates to me precisely the absence of any kind of revolutionary outlook. But as it has been said many times before the real question is how do you engage with them and trying to encourage them to redirect their anger and frustration at the the real target and the cause of thier misery - capitalism

bcbm

11th August 2011, 08:44

I dont have any qualms about the looting of big stores although I do most certainly have qualms when fellow workers are attacked. That indicates to me precisely the absence of any kind of revolutionary outlook. But as it has been said many times before the real question is how do you engage with them and trying to encourage them to redirect their anger and frustration at the the real target and the cause of thier misery - capitalism

Because, comrades, let us be clear about this, it is not true that we can only prepare ourselves psychologically; go through spiritual exercises, then present ourselves in real situations with our flags. That is impossible. The proletariat, or whatever you want to call them, the excluded who are rioting, will push us away as peculiar and suspect external visitors. Suspicious. What on earth can we have in common with those acting anonymously against the absolute uselessness of their own lives and not because of need and scarcity? With those who react even though they have colour TV at home, video, telephone and many other consumer objects; who are able to eat, yet still react? What can we say to them? Perhaps what the anarchist organisations of synthesis said in the last century? Malatesta’s insurrectionalist discourse? This is what is obsolete. That kind of insurrectional argument is obsolete. We must therefore find a different way very quickly.

And a different way has first of all to be found within ourselves, through an effort to overcome the old habits inside us and our incapacity to understand the new. Be certain that Power understands this perfectly and is educating the new generations to accept submission through a series of subliminal messages. But this submission is an illusion.

When riots break out we should not be there as visitors to a spectacular event, and because in any case, we are anarchists and the event fills us with satisfaction. We must be there as the realisers of a project that has been examined and gone into in detail be forehand.

What can this project be? That of organising with the excluded, no longer on an ideological basis, no longer through reasoning exclusively based on the old concepts of the class struggle, but on the basis of something immediate and capable of connecting with reality, with different realities. There must be areas in your own situations where tensions are being generated. Contact with these situations, if it continues on an ideological basis, will end up having you pushed out. Contact must be on a different basis, organised but different. This cannot be done by any large organisation with its traditionally illuministic or romantic claim to serve as a point of reference and synthesis in a host of different situations; it can only be done by an organisation that is agile, flexible and able to adapt. An informal organisation of anarchist comrades — a specific organisation composed of comrades having an anarchist class consciousness but who recognise the limits of the old models and propose different, more flexible models instead. They must touch reality, develop a dear analysis and make it known, perhaps using the instruments of the future, not just the instruments of the past. Let us remember that the difference between the instruments of the future and of the past does not lie in putting a few extra photographs in our papers. It is not simply a matter of giving a different, more humorous or less pedantic edge to our writing, but of truly understanding what the instruments of the future are, of studying and going into them, because it is this that will make it possible to construct the insurrectional instruments of the future to put alongside the knife that our predecessors carried between their teeth. In this way the air-bridge we mentioned earlier can be built.

Informal organisation, therefore, that establishes a simple discourse presented without grand objectives, and without claiming, as many do, that every intervention must lead to social revolution, otherwise what sort of anarchists would we be? Be sure comrades, that social revolution is not just around the corner, that the road has many corners, and is very long. Agile interventions, therefore, even with limited objectives, capable of striking in anticipation the same objectives that are established by the excluded. An organisation which is capable of being “inside” the reality of the subversive riot at the moment it happens to transform it into an objectively insurrectional reality by indicating objectives, means and constructive conclusions. This is the insurrectional task. Other roads are impassable today.

Certainly, it is still possible to go along the road of the organisation of synthesis, of propaganda, anarchist educationism and debate — as we are doing just now of course — because, as we said, this is a question of a project in tendency, of attempting to understand something about a capitalist project which is in development. But, as anarchist revolutionaries, we are obliged to bear in mind this line of development and to prepare ourselves from this moment on to transform irrational situations of riot into an insurrectional and revolutionary reality.

even if you're not an anarchist i think bonanno offers some points worth considering

Devrim

11th August 2011, 09:43

I don't even know basic things like are there campuses that are mostly working class and are they in session?

It is August. Universities are on holiday.

Further, some of the rioters could be organized to protest at major union halls, and especially with ones that are union members (assuming some are) or in alliance with some--sit in in the union halls demanding action like the Tunisian workers did.

I am not quite sure what a union hall is. I think it is a US thing. The only union hall in the British Isles is a small fishing village in County Cork.

-can the high schools in the neighborhood be turned into mass meetings where councils of action are formed to debate policy and make decisions?

High schools, like universities, are closed in August.

I don't know enough about London to say what could be done

It is quite clear.

More to the point though, I think that you need to get a bit of a base in reality. In 1985 when, as everybody seems to agree, the riots were more political, and there was a much higher level of class struggle (the year long miners' strike had just finished), nobody formed 'councils of action'.

Further, some of the rioters could be organized to...

By whom exactly? Do you really think that this is going to happen, or is it just that in proposing it, you have something to criticise other left groups for not proposing it.

I lived in Brixton during the 1985 riots, and the only leftist I saw during the events trying to 'organise' rioters was a lone Trotskyist standing outside Lambeth town hall forlornly trying to sell his newspaper. I saw other communists and anarchists involved in the events, but nobody trying to 'organise' the rioters.

I think that events like this are expressions of class anger, but I also think that they are directionless outbursts which can't really be channelled. Perhaps if there was a class party, which had widespread recognition within the working class, it would be possible to do something. At the moment that isn't the case though.

Devrim

Martin Blank

11th August 2011, 09:49

I am not quite sure what a union hall is. I think it is a US thing. The only union hall in the British Isles is a small fishing village in County Cork.

FYI, a union hall is basically the same as union offices or headquarters. Most local unions have a building that is partly administrative offices and partly an auditorium-like area for membership meetings.

So, basically, RTW is suggesting sit-ins at local and national union offices.

Devrim

11th August 2011, 09:57

FYI, a union hall is basically the same as union offices or headquarters. Most local unions have a building that is partly administrative offices and partly an auditorium-like area for membership meetings.

Yes, UK unions don't tend to have places like this which are partly a 'public' space to be used by the membership. UK unions tend to have meetings on site. Union offices tend to be very remote things from the membership. Local union offices tend to be a small room in the workplace. Of course they have national headquarters, but these are things quite remote from the membership.

Devrim

RedTrackWorker

11th August 2011, 11:52

By whom exactly? Do you really think that this is going to happen, or is it just that in proposing it, you have something to criticise other left groups for not proposing it.
[snip]
I think that events like this are expressions of class anger, but I also think that they are directionless outbursts which can't really be channelled. Perhaps if there was a class party, which had widespread recognition within the working class, it would be possible to do something. At the moment that isn't the case though.

Devrim, you can imply that I'm just saying all this stuff to criticize other groups--I have no idea why you think that--but even if I am, the question for the movement is whether the ideas I'm putting forward are right or wrong, helpful or unhelpful for the movement.

I proposed those ideas because I want to see the best possible struggle take place in Britain right now--and anywhere these kinds of class actions break out. Given the speed of events I don't think it's terribly likely someone who could will take them up and implement them (which would not mean selling newspapers) but besides the likelihood that this won't be the last riot so working these ideas out further now can help prepare for that, I feel a duty, when possible, to make real the proposition that "Theoretical criticism and practical overthrow are here inseparable activities, not in any abstract sense but as a concrete and real alteration of the concrete and real world of bourgeois society" (as Korsch put it). The youth of Britain are trying to change their society now and contributing to the class struggle--to call it a "directionless outburst" seems to me to be insulting to the intelligence and creativity of these youth. Sure there are big limitations to all riots and these in particular are less overtly political so far, but is that because these youth are just "bursting out" and can't do otherwise? I don't think so.

Devrim

11th August 2011, 12:07

but even if I am, the question for the movement is whether the ideas I'm putting forward are for the movement.

I don't think that the question is whether they are ' right or wrong, helpful or unhelpful' but whether they have any relationship to reality whatsoever.

The youth of Britain are trying to change their society now and contributing to the class struggle--to call it a "directionless outburst" seems to me to be insulting to the intelligence and creativity of these youth. Sure there are big limitations to all riots and these in particular are less overtly political so far, but is that because these youth are just "bursting out" and can't do otherwise? I don't think so.

Back in the 80s when I could be described as 'youth', and I lived in the UK, I took part in similar events where I lived. They seemed a bit of a 'directionless outburst' to me then. Was I insulting my own intelligence?

Devrim

S.Artesian

11th August 2011, 13:08

Because, comrades, let us be clear about this, it is not true that we can only prepare ourselves psychologically; go through spiritual exercises, then present ourselves in real situations with our flags. That is impossible. The proletariat, or whatever you want to call them, the excluded who are rioting, will push us away as peculiar and suspect external visitors. Suspicious. What on earth can we have in common with those acting anonymously against the absolute uselessness of their own lives and not because of need and scarcity? With those who react even though they have colour TV at home, video, telephone and many other consumer objects; who are able to eat, yet still react? What can we say to them? Perhaps what the anarchist organisations of synthesis said in the last century? Malatesta’s insurrectionalist discourse? This is what is obsolete. That kind of insurrectional argument is obsolete. We must therefore find a different way very quickly.

That piece from Bonanno is simply brilliant.... and I say that as convinced non-anarchist Marxist, [I've been called a "left Leninist" by some, a "left Trotskyist" by others, neither of which I am].

I'll stick with that piece by Bonanno and what I know, and what I know is Connolly was right when he said

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

Die Neue Zeit

11th August 2011, 13:44

Then why don't you tell us what, in your understanding, really goes on? You've spent a lot of time in this thread insisting that the writers of the article are wrong about X, Y and Z, but very little going so far as to actually correct them.

And in other threads as well, don't forget!

I think there's a more important point here that pertains to "bourgeois ideology", and it is precisely on this issue. I have noted that there seems to be a view prevalent even among self-described leftists that is willing to more or less look the other way when workers are seizing the most basic essentials of survival, such as food, but see the acquiring of anything beyond that as an expression of bourgeois ideology.

A person with such a view seems to be saying that it's OK if a poor working-class person grabs only the items that are seen by capitalist society as acceptable for the working poor to have, but taking anything beyond that is crossing some imaginary line. It is as if they are saying, "It's OK if you stuff a loaf of bread or a can of pork-and-beans in your pockets; that's stuff you're allowed to have. But taking a pair of nice shoes or a new television, items reserved for the privileged and wealthy in society, is out of the question. Put those back and stick to the second-hand clothes and crappy foodstuffs capitalism allows you to have. Know your place!"

When you say something like:

It is you who is reflecting capitalist ideology, because you are the one reinforcing the level of alienation between the worker and the product of their labor. (Obviously, I'm speaking here on a class scale, not an individual scale.) You end up being the one saying, "These you're allowed to have, and these you're not -- and if you try to take any of those things you cannot otherwise have, well, you're just being backward and selfish, reactionary and thuggish."

Why is that in turn really reflecting bourgeois ideology?

First off, these "expropriations," as noted by Peter Manson, have almost no political content.

Second, the dividing line depends on the country. In Japan's more homogenous but lower-crime environment, law enforcement against looting is thrown out the door when it comes to looting for essential goods after some catastrophe (unlike in the "law and order" US). Also, I hope you're not being literal when you're saying a loaf of bread and a can of pork and beans.

Third, "to each according to his needs" is a stance that spans across epochs, from primitive human societies to isolated agricultural communities to convents to Louis Blanc's petit-bourgeois class collaborationism.

Fourth, the left's criticism, if aimed at the looting of actual luxury goods, is quite valid. As Robbo said above, it's critical of Shop-Till-You-Drop-By-Other-Means. It's critical also of resale of these goods on the black market, especially when gangs are involved in the looting.

Fifth, and also noted by Peter Manson, fellow workers were attacked.

robbo203

11th August 2011, 20:16

Well, I suppose I may as well try to contribute. I don't really have any confidence in what I'm saying, so forgive me if I say anything reflecting my poor amount of study.

Let us consider these bits.
It looks as though the writer means to say that the looting itself is not the expression of "capitalist ideology", but the choice of goods. What is expropriated, rather than expropriation. I'm sure many looted items they need (food and all that sort), but I'm sure there was plenty of things taken that weren't really needed. I'm sure we'd all find it strange if, in the event of a socialist revolution, we would start to distribute 50 inch tv's and designer clothing. I mean, there's no good reason to want a 50 inch tv in lieu of smaller, more manageable ones.
I think the author means to say is that the choice of goods by rioters reflects consumer society, which seems to be mostly an aspect of capitalism, and can be observed in all levels of the societal hierarchy. He probably said "capitalist ideology" over "consumer society" because he sees consumer society as an integral part of capitalism.

This is actually a very interesting - and perceptive - point. Perhaps one of these days, something will be written up on the anthropology of looting. The selection of loot presumably says something about the motives for looting. What does grabbing a 50 inch plasma TV say about the person grabbing it?

To be honest, I can sort of see both sides of the argument here. I dont think anyone would be so daft as to suggest that this is some kind of proto socialist revolution in the making or even that it has anything really much to do with "class consciousness" . Who could possibly square that with the totally unacceptable attacks on fellow workers and the destruction of their pitiful possessions. If the looters focussed their activities on Belgravia or Mayfair rather than Tottenham I would be slightly more convinced - and sympathetic - but they havent, have they? "Shitting on your own doorstep" is the expression that springs to mind.

All the same, there is unquestionably something positive to come out of all this - the breakdown in the respect for capitalist authority and in the taken for granted social consensus that goods shouod be made available on the basis of payment. I mean that is something positive that we can take from all this isnt it? Something that we can perhaps build on.

Talking of which I dont find the peice by alfredo bonanno posted by bcbm to be particularly useful, frankly. It is a suggestive but it doesnt really say much in the end apart from vaguely asserting the need to "establish a simple discourse ...without grand objectives, and without claiming, as many do, that every intervention must lead to social revolution". So we keep mum about the need for a communist alternative and then what? Introduce the idea gradually? OK fine but I think that is probably what most of us do anyway. In a more immediate sense it might be worth pointing out to these young folk that it really does their cause no good at all by making life a misery for their fellow workers. It is only providing the excuse for political reaction on a potentially massive scale and if they want to loot, try Mayfair or Belgravia but not somewhere like Tottenham

Finally on the question of capitalist ideology and its role in the events of recent days,can i recommend this peice by the anarchist Donnacha DeLong:

http://donnachadelong.info/2011/08/10/riot-criminality-is-a-product-of-consumerism-and-social-breakdown/

It focusses on the link between consumerism and social breakdown, something which I touched on too in my previous post. So we confront a kind of paradox here - looting as an expression of capitalist ideology and yet also a breakdown in the consensus on capitalist property rights.

Any comments?

Martin Blank

12th August 2011, 00:22

Why is that in turn really reflecting bourgeois ideology?

What I was talking about was the double-standard when it comes to so-called "looting" -- that it's considered more or less acceptable if the poor are taking food or some other commodity of survival, but that it's considered unacceptable if they are taking commodities of luxury (i.e., commodities reserved for the privileged and wealthy). It reflects the bourgeois perspective that the working poor, by dint of their being poor, should only have access to a limited amount of commodities, with the rest reserved for more well-to-do elements. For the working class to demand access to commodities of luxury is seen as "uppity" by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie; to simply take them is seen as more than merely "criminal", it is an affront to the social fabric of capitalist society. After all, what's next? Seizing the factories, shops and stores? If that riff-raff can take expensive shoes and televisions without guilt or shame, what's to stop them from going after the machines that make them?

First off, these "expropriations," as noted by Peter Manson, have almost no political content.

I read Manson's letter in the current Weekly Worker. I also read their article on the rebellion. Any respect I once had for them is gone. Anyway....

If by "political content" it is meant conscious political content, as we would see in a revolution, then Manson is right. But given the unequivocal way he puts it in the article, he is simply wrong. The rebellion was rife with unconscious political content, which is why the capitalist state was so intent on suppressing it. If it had no political content whatsoever to it, then the ruling classes would not have felt the necessity to intervene with such a heavy hand. The rebellions disrupted capitalism's order; it directly attacked capital and, in many cases, destroyed it; it challenged the monopoly on coercion and violence traditionally reserved for the armed bodies of the state; it made a mockery of the pretense of democracy; it has polarized the body politic. What are these but expressions of political content? They may not be the ones we see as a part of a conscious proletarian revolution, but it is either blind ignorance or sheer contempt for the working class to suggest this was apolitical.

Second, the dividing line depends on the country. In Japan's more homogenous but lower-crime environment, law enforcement against looting is thrown out the door when it comes to looting for essential goods after some catastrophe (unlike in the "law and order" US). Also, I hope you're not being literal when you're saying a loaf of bread and a can of pork and beans.

Not literal, but you get the point. We're talking about what are considered commodities of survival by the ruling classes. In many countries, the "looting" of these kinds of commodities is tolerated by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie, because they realize that, under the specific conditions of a rebellion, that kind of seizure may be essential to the production and reproduction of labor-power after the turmoil ends. Even in the U.S. this has been the case. In both Los Angeles in 1992 and Cincinnati in 2001 (the two rebellions I've witnessed first-hand), the capitalist state did not really concern itself with those taking food and water. It was when the rebels began seizing commodities outside of this survival sphere that the state was mobilized in force to "restore order".

Third, "to each according to his needs" is a stance that spans across epochs, from primitive human societies to isolated agricultural communities to convents to Louis Blanc's petit-bourgeois class collaborationism.

It makes no sense to apply this to any mode of production other than communism, and then only in combination with, "From each according to his ability". Why? Because "needs" change across epochs. What we "need" today was not what our ancestors needed a millennium ago, or what our successors will need a millennium from now. Moreover, "need" is an abstraction -- a concept that is refracted through the lens of different classes. What I think I "need" is not the same as what the bourgeoisie thinks I "need". To apply that phrase in the capitalist mode of production is to make a profoundly reactionary error, since "need" will be defined by the ruling classes.

In a sense, this is the crux of the issue here, in regards to the question of "looting". The bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie have a set definition of what workers "need" in this society, and it most directly takes the form of wages -- "the cost required for the maintenance of the laborer as a laborer, and for his education and training as a laborer" (Wage-Labor and Capital). As I said above, for workers to demand anything above that defined "need" is seen by the ruling classes as arrogance, selfishness and being "uppity"; for workers to simply take what they want or need is seen as an attack on the very foundation of capitalist society -- as "criminal", as "anarchy", as "communism".

(Incidentally, it should be pointed out that, looking at Marx's writings, it's clear that he sees "want" and "need" as essentially the same, and that it was the bourgeoisie that separated them, defining "need" in terms of basic survival and "want" in terms of luxury [as the bourgeoisie sees it, that is]. Thus, to speak of "to each according to their needs" in a Marxian sense is to actually say "to each according to their needs and wants".)

Fourth, the left's criticism, if aimed at the looting of actual luxury goods, is quite valid. As Robbo said above, it's critical of Shop-Till-You-Drop-By-Other-Means. It's critical also of resale of these goods on the black market, especially when gangs are involved in the looting.

It's only valid from the perspective of the petty bourgeois shopkeeper who finds his or herself being dispossessed. Let's take each of these points:

1. "Shop-Till-You-Drop-By-Other-Means" -- This is really nothing but empricist nonsense. The role of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" or any other campaign to consume is not the acquiring of commodities by the consumer (that is the by-product), but the accumulation of profit (and, thus, capital) by the seller. To say that the seizing of commodities of luxury is a form of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" is to forget one essential point: no profit is made by the capitalist or shopkeeper; no capital is accumulated as a result. Robbo's view on this is that of the petty-bourgeois consumerist, not a Marxian communist. (This is also apparent in his obscene amalgamation of petty bourgeois and proletarian as being "the working class".) His point of departure is the market, not the mode of production, and it shows through in much of his analysis.

2. "Resale of these goods on the black market, especially when gangs are involved" -- This one is more straightforward and more revealing of Robbo's class consciousness. Unlike the first point, which is mired in consumerist rhetoric, this is a direct reference to the accumulation of surplus value. More to the point, this is an expression of contempt by one set of petty bourgeois (the legal shopkeeper) against another (the illegal black-marketeer and gang). One could simply call it petty jealousy, but it is more appropriate to describe the quoted passage as sniveling. The petty-bourgeois shopkeeper is whining because, in the midst of a social upheaval, elements from the underground economy expropriated his or her stock of commodities, which they can then sell for a much higher rate of surplus value (100 percent, to be exact) at prices that undercut the petty-bourgeois shopkeeper. Robbo can complain about lumpenbourgeois elements, but workers have no side in this conflict between exploiting elements.

Fifth, and also noted by Peter Manson, fellow workers were attacked.

I know that. And that is unfortunate, especially since some of them were just innocent by-standers. But such is the nature of unconscious social upheavals like this rebellion, especially when those who are politically conscious cower in their beds like frightened children dreading the appearance of the big, Black boogeyman.

(I hate to be the one to drag race into this discussion, but it is pretty clear that this rebellion is being painted as a "race riot", and that the British "left" is being influenced by that bourgeois media propaganda.)

At the same time, though, we should understand that these kinds of things happen in any social upheaval. During the Russian Revolution, for example, workers who opposed the soviets were often treated very harshly, especially during the seizure of power. Any person who thinks that all workers are going to join together and march arm-in-arm harmoniously into the communist future needs to have their head examined. There will be workers who oppose the revolution, perhaps even with arms in hand. And the revolutionary workers will have to deal with these counterrevolutionary brothers and sisters appropriately.

This broader view, however, doesn't excuse attacks on innocent by-standers, but it does give it some social context. More to the point, though, those who did attack innocent workers should not be handed over to the capitalist state, but dealt with by the community. Making a moral argument that, because a few workers were attacked, the rebellion was apolitical and should have been suppressed is simply reactionary and, given the composition of the rebels, more than a little racist.

Die Neue Zeit

12th August 2011, 03:08

What I was talking about was the double-standard when it comes to so-called "looting" -- that it's considered more or less acceptable if the poor are taking food or some other commodity of survival, but that it's considered unacceptable if they are taking commodities of luxury (i.e., commodities reserved for the privileged and wealthy). It reflects the bourgeois perspective that the working poor, by dint of their being poor, should only have access to a limited amount of commodities, with the rest reserved for more well-to-do elements. For the working class to demand access to commodities of luxury is seen as "uppity" by the bourgeoisie and petty bourgeoisie; to simply take them is seen as more than merely "criminal", it is an affront to the social fabric of capitalist society. After all, what's next? Seizing the factories, shops and stores? If that riff-raff can take expensive shoes and televisions without guilt or shame, what's to stop them from going after the machines that make them?

Comrade, if I had to give advice on looting, I'd say loot for the survival commodities and also other everyday items. The luxury items (the ones I wrote my programmatic commentary "Real Austerity" on)? Pillage and burn.

That would demonstrate in my eyes a rejection of the Shop-Till-You-Drop mentality.

I read Manson's letter in the current Weekly Worker. I also read their article on the rebellion. Any respect I once had for them is gone. Anyway....

You should post comments in both threads I made, then.

If by "political content" it is meant conscious political content, as we would see in a revolution, then Manson is right. But given the unequivocal way he puts it in the article, he is simply wrong. The rebellion was rife with unconscious political content, which is why the capitalist state was so intent on suppressing it.

I think you're stretching the definition of "political" here. By definition "political" implies awareness.

If it had no political content whatsoever to it, then the ruling classes would not have felt the necessity to intervene with such a heavy hand.

Explain a certain Canadian riot that occurred very recently, then, one which was not sparked by a political issue.

it challenged the monopoly on coercion and violence traditionally reserved for the armed bodies of the state; it made a mockery of the pretense of democracy

Not every such challenge or mockery is political.

It has polarized the body politic.

It polarized the body politic of other classes, perhaps, but not that of the working class.

Not literal, but you get the point. We're talking about what are considered commodities of survival by the ruling classes.

I know the class perspective and the reproduction of labour power (the bottom line in all of this), and I made my pillage-and-burn suggestion above.

Even in the U.S. this has been the case. In both Los Angeles in 1992 and Cincinnati in 2001 (the two rebellions I've witnessed first-hand), the capitalist state did not really concern itself with those taking food and water. It was when the rebels began seizing commodities outside of this survival sphere that the state was mobilized in force to "restore order".

I'm less rosy about US reaction to riots because of what happened after Hurricane Katrina. "Law and order" was enforced even in response to the looting of survival items.

(Incidentally, it should be pointed out that, looking at Marx's writings, it's clear that he sees "want" and "need" as essentially the same, and that it was the bourgeoisie that separated them, defining "need" in terms of basic survival and "want" in terms of luxury [as the bourgeoisie sees it, that is]. Thus, to speak of "to each according to their needs" in a Marxian sense is to actually say "to each according to their needs and wants".)

I like incidental stuff. Some posters here have problems with "off-topic" incidental stuff, but I don't.

Anyway, I chatted with you about needs, wants, and related socialist axioms. I'll have to read further, but for now I'm sure "To Each His Want According To His Work" would have been a better axiom to use, having implicitly taken into consideration needs.

1. "Shop-Till-You-Drop-By-Other-Means" -- This is really nothing but empricist nonsense. The role of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" or any other campaign to consume is not the acquiring of commodities by the consumer (that is the by-product), but the accumulation of profit (and, thus, capital) by the seller. To say that the seizing of commodities of luxury is a form of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" is to forget one essential point: no profit is made by the capitalist or shopkeeper; no capital is accumulated as a result. Robbo's view on this is that of the petty-bourgeois consumerist, not a Marxian communist. (This is also apparent in his obscene amalgamation of petty bourgeois and proletarian as being "the working class".) His point of departure is the market, not the mode of production, and it shows through in much of his analysis.

Again, I suggested pillage-and-burn above. No profit would be made, no capital is accumulated, and it breaks consumption fetishism (not commodity fetishism or place-the-blame-on-consumers "consumerism").

[You know already that I don't agree with Robbo with most things, particularly on the question of gift economics.]

Unlike the first point, which is mired in consumerist rhetoric, this is a direct reference to the accumulation of surplus value. More to the point, this is an expression of contempt by one set of petty bourgeois (the legal shopkeeper) against another (the illegal black-marketeer and gang). One could simply call it petty jealousy, but it is more appropriate to describe the quoted passage as sniveling.

That's more insight for me to learn everyday!

And the revolutionary workers will have to deal with these counterrevolutionary brothers and sisters appropriately.

That's Class Politics 101.

This broader view, however, doesn't excuse attacks on innocent by-standers, but it does give it some social context. More to the point, though, those who did attack innocent workers should not be handed over to the capitalist state, but dealt with by the community. Making a moral argument that, because a few workers were attacked, the rebellion was apolitical and should have been suppressed is simply reactionary and, given the composition of the rebels, more than a little racist.

I'm pretty sure I never made that argument that "workers were attacked => apolitical, needs suppression."

robbo203

13th August 2011, 03:21

1. "Shop-Till-You-Drop-By-Other-Means" -- This is really nothing but empricist nonsense. The role of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" or any other campaign to consume is not the acquiring of commodities by the consumer (that is the by-product), but the accumulation of profit (and, thus, capital) by the seller. To say that the seizing of commodities of luxury is a form of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" is to forget one essential point: no profit is made by the capitalist or shopkeeper; no capital is accumulated as a result. Robbo's view on this is that of the petty-bourgeois consumerist, not a Marxian communist. (This is also apparent in his obscene amalgamation of petty bourgeois and proletarian as being "the working class".) His point of departure is the market, not the mode of production, and it shows through in much of his analysis.

2. "Resale of these goods on the black market, especially when gangs are involved" -- This one is more straightforward and more revealing of Robbo's class consciousness. Unlike the first point, which is mired in consumerist rhetoric, this is a direct reference to the accumulation of surplus value. More to the point, this is an expression of contempt by one set of petty bourgeois (the legal shopkeeper) against another (the illegal black-marketeer and gang). One could simply call it petty jealousy, but it is more appropriate to describe the quoted passage as sniveling. The petty-bourgeois shopkeeper is whining because, in the midst of a social upheaval, elements from the underground economy expropriated his or her stock of commodities, which they can then sell for a much higher rate of surplus value (100 percent, to be exact) at prices that undercut the petty-bourgeois shopkeeper. Robbo can complain about lumpenbourgeois elements, but workers have no side in this conflict between exploiting elements..

Excuse me but before you start getting on your high horse again, re-read what I said. Stop putting words in my mouth

My position is not black or white . There are both positive and negative things to be said about the riots in the UK and I have made that perfectly plain. I have no qulams at all about the looting of big stores but I draw the line when it comes to rioters attacking fellow workers and destroying what little they have. I heard on the news today that there has been yet another fatality connected with the riots - a 68 year old man was killed by some scumbag for trying to put out a fire. Is this acceptable? The fuck it is. It is as anti working class an act as its possible to be. And for criticising some of the actions of the some rioters, some of us on this list have come in for a fair bit l of flak . Is that fair? Well, sorry, I am not going to suspend my critical faculties for the sake of not offending the sensiblities of those who seem to be in complete denial about the negative aspects of the riots or who want to maintain (rather pathetically) that riots by their very nature are unpredictable, unpretty and not liable to conform to any preconceived plan and that thereforew we should refrain from judging too harshly . Well to hell with that. There are aspects of these riot that need to be harshly judged and condemend in the strongest terms without pussyfooting or skirting around the issue at all

At the same there are, as I say , positive things to be said about the riots. On the face of it, the sanctity and the taken-for-granted nature of capitalist property relations has been questioned. Whether that will lead on to anything I dont know. Not that I am drawing a comparsion here, but the British capitalists themselves have not been above using a bit of extra-legal force in looting their way around the world and building up the biggest empire ever known, A cynic might point out that the present looters are just follwing a fine old British tradition and the Brits have ever reason to feel proud of this display of the bulldog spirit. And yes there is also the fact that it is unquestionably empowering to cock a snook at the authorities - and christ knows - they need a sense of empowerment in a society in which the odds are stacked against them and when complete tossers like Max Hastings are to be found railing l against the "feral" offspring of the lumpenproletariat. Read this disgusting peice from his column in the Daily Mail - http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-2024284/UK-riots-2011-Liberal-dogma-spawned-generation-brutalised-youths.html. How the hell does he expect them to mend their way on his terms (which apparently entails watching royal weddings, taking notice of Test matches and being proud to be a Londoner) when according to hm "They are essentially wild beasts" who "respond only to instinctive animal impulses — to eat and drink, have sex, seize or destroy the accessible property of others."?. The man is not living on the same planet as the rest of us.

And yet such sentiments manifestly strike a chord with hundred of thousands, if not millions, of people in Britain today. This is the point we need to take on board. Whatever the postive benefits of the riots on the thinking of a few thousand young rioters( and only a complete fantasist would imagine for one moment that this is some kind of proto-socialist revolution in the making) the pale into insignifcance compared to the impact of the riots on the working class as a whole which has been overwhelmingly regressive and negative. It might even have set back social progress for a generation. It has reinforced reactionary and racist ideas in a way that the BNP or EDL could only have dreamed. To anyone who doubts this I urge them to visit the comments sections of news websites like Yahoo News or Aol. What they will discover is a solid wall of the most relentlessly depressing right wing shite you could imagine. I lost count of the number times commentators said Enoch Powell was right.

I emphasise again - it is not the riots per se but the conduct of the riots - the gratutous violence against fellow workers, the destruction of working class possessions, the despoilation of working class districts ( as opposed to those sanctuaries of affluence like Belgravia or Mayfair which were left alone) that has alienated vast swathes of the British working class. To suppose that we can sit idly by and pretend it didnt happen and say nothing in condemnation for fearing of alienating the young rioters is bordering on the insane. No wonder the combined forces of the Britsih Left wouldnt even manage to fill a second Division Football club stadium. We are regarded by fellow workers as a joke and not without some reason.

Ive wandered so let me deal directly with Miles various poiunt

1) "Resale of these goods on the black market, especially when gangs are involved" -- This one is more straightforward and more revealing of Robbo's class consciousness. I did say anything at all about the black market . You are confusing me with someone else

2) The role of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" or any other campaign to consume is not the acquiring of commodities by the consumer (that is the by-product), but the accumulation of profit (and, thus, capital) by the seller. To say that the seizing of commodities of luxury is a form of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" is to forget one essential point: no profit is made by the capitalist or shopkeeper; no capital is accumulated as a result. Robbo's view on this is that of the petty-bourgeois consumerist, not a Marxian communist. (This is also apparent in his obscene amalgamation of petty bourgeois and proletarian as being "the working class".) His point of departure is the market, not the mode of production, and it shows through in much of his analysis.

There are two separate points here that need disentangling. The FIRST concerns the claim that I exhibit a view of the "petty-bourgeois consumerist, not a Marxian communist".My thought crime, it would appear, is that I have dared to express the heretical idea that, in a capitalist society, one's sense of identity is closely bound up with consumption of goods. Status is tied to wealth. Those at the top of the pile tend to be looked up to. those at the bottom ridiculed and sneered at by the likes of Mr Hastings and many others. Is this true or false, Miles?. A simple answer will suffice Assuming that you agree that it is true then what follows? What follows is that those with little or nothing feel a sense of inadeqaucy insofar as they have bought into the values that underlie this capitalist status system. Futher I would argue that it is highly probable that those engaged in the riots would experience a high degree of inadequacy in this regard, by virtue of being for the most part on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder, and that this would most likely have formed part of the motivational compelx that drove them to loot. I know you sneer at emprical evidence, (preferring no doubt to stick to unchallengeable dogmas) but actually there's a fair bit of evidence to back up what I am sayiung. For example, there was massive European-wide survey involving 19,000 participants in 24 countries (the findings of which were published in The Economic Journal) which feautured in a BBC news report (29 May 2010) , headlined "Comparing income with peers causes unhappiness" which revealed that status obsession seemnd to be highest among low income groups

You also come out with a rather dumb remnark in my opinion The role of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" or any other campaign to consume is not the acquiring of commodities by the consumer (that is the by-product), but the accumulation of profit (and, thus, capital) by the seller. To say that the seizing of commodities of luxury is a form of "Shop-Till-You-Drop" is to forget one essential point: no profit is made by the capitalist or shopkeeper; no capital is accumulated as a result. Of course, the purpose of advertising campaigns is ultimnately the accummulation of proft - did I ever suggest anything to the contrary? - but a firm is not going to make a profit unless it can persuade consumers to buy the commodities it sells on the market in the first place. Equally dumb is your point that the seizing of commodities by looters does not afford the capitalist or shopkeer a profit. Again, of course it doesnt and when did I ever say it does? I was talking about the role of capitalist ideology in consumers and in particular the close assocation between personal identity and consumption. The claim that this particular focus is one provided by bourgois consumerist and not a marxian communsit is just siully. It is precisely one of the criticisms that marxian communists make of capitalism. Read Marx on the way money distorts social relationships

The SECOND point you make is abpout my " obscene amalgamation of petty bourgeois and proletarian as being "the working class" . Why "obscene" BTW. This a bit of stupid comments isnt it? Do you always approach any rival theory that challenges yours in this over-the top blunderbus fashion. ?My argument is that the small self employed shopkeeper is essentially a member of the working class albeit if you like, a particular subset of that class. I dont particularlry object to the term "petty bourgois" any more than I object tothe term "middle class" providing it is understoond that this is a sociological construction ; it is not particualy relevant when discussing the basic economic relations of capitalism.,
In my view capitalism consist basically two economic classes - a capitalist class that possesses sufficient capital to live upon without the need to work and a working class that does not. The small time shopkeer clearly falls into the latter categority. Two objections will be made against this.
The first is that the shopkeeper is not a wage worker and has no employer who employs him or her. This is true but then many workers are not strictly employed by an employer. My profesion for example is a gardener. I do jobs for various people on a self employed basis. I charge a fee based on an hourly rate. Its a precarious living and at 11 euros per hour, not a very remunerative one. At the moment Im scrapping by on about 3-4 days a week. The crisis in Spain has been severe and shows little sign of ending. You can hardly say I am not a worker. I have no savings to speak of whatsoever and of my two bank accounts one is permamantly in overdraft. My situation is essentially the same as millions of other self employed people. We are members of the working class.
In basic economic terms the small shopkeepoer too is a member of the working class and does not posses enough capital to live upon without the economic compulsion to work. In fact, he or she is little more than a glorified salesperson multifariously employed by the companies whose wares he or she stocls. Many shopkeepers live in a prcarious and impoverished state. Their particular occupation and the isolation it imposes on them may incline them to a petty bourgeois outlook but that does not alter their basic economic situation

You talk about the shopkeeper selling goods at a particular rate of surplus value which is much lower than that of the illegal black marketeer. Surplus value is the difference in the value of the commodities workers produce and the wages they receives from their enployers to whom this surplus value goes. In a previous post you said "It is the accumulated unpaid labor-time. A self-employed business owner, like the independent master plumber or electrician, is able to set a price that far exceeds what he or she needs to produce and reproduce his or herself from day to day and generation to generation". http://www.revleft.com/vb/riots-tottenham-police-t159251/index41.html This is unacceptable for several reasons reaons

Firstly, these self employed business owners cannot just set a price willy nilly; they cannot buck the market or else they will go out of business. Seondly you are assuming what what a person needs to produce and reproduce his or herself from day to day and generation to generation is fixed, It is not. It includes also a moral and historical component as Marx pointed out. Thirdly there is nothing on this basis that would distinguish a self employed business person from, say, a well paid employee who would also , according to you, get an income that far exceeds what he or she needs to produce and reproduce his or herself from day to day
In factyouve rather shot yourself in the foot here becuase all I need to do to refute your argument is to point the case of a small shopkeeper who earns very little and who employs no one else but himself. Becuase there is no one else employed apart from the shopkeeper that means there is no accummulated unpaid labour time we are assuming there are no employees - only the shopkeeper. That being so, there cannot be any surplus value to appropriate because there are no employees to produce it in the first place.. If unpaid labour time exists in this case it can only be becuase the small shopkee[er is being exploited by the companies whose wares he sells. He cannot be doing the exploiting becuase he has no one to exploit!
Aha, you might say, but this overlooks that exploitation is a class wide phenonmeneon, It is not a case of an individual capitalist exploiting an individual workers . Profits are in a sense pooled and redistributed in a way to ensure an equal rate of profts acorss industry in the manner explained by marx. Could it be in this sense by taking a cut from the overall surplus value, the small shopkeeper parts company with the working class?. But this argument wont wash either. Many workers do not themselves produce surplus value but are in fact paid out of of surplus value. These are what marx called unproductive workers. They are essential to capitalism but they are unproductive in the sense that they dont produce commodities and therefore dont produce surplus value. But they are still clearly part of the working class
In that same post you claimed

The position on the so-called "unproductive laborer" is often predicated on impressionism and idealism, not materialist reality. Many of those positions Marx once considered as part of "unproductive labor" (e.g., clerks) have evolved since that time into positions relatively more integral to the production and distribution process. They no longer merely aid the realization of surplus value in the market, but also aid the realization of the production of commodities. As such, it would be inaccurate to describe them any longer as being "unproductive". It would be more accurate to say they are the adjunct of productive labor, and thus a part of the "productive labor" with a specialized role.
This is completely wromng. There are more unproductive workers now than there were ever before but it seems you do not really understand what is meant by the term unproductive labour. A civil servant is an unproductive worker for example. So too is someone working on cash till at a supermarket. So are numerous other kinds of workers They are not producing commdities
According to Fred Moseley in his The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar United States Economy (Macmillan 1991) in the post war era there has been a significantly higher rate of growth in unproductive labour compared to productive labour in the US economy - in fact the ratio doubled in the post war years up to the 1970s and continued to grow (but at a slower rate) since then. Two thirds of the the growth in unproductive labour was accounted for by the growth in commercial labour which increased by 134 % in the period 1950-80 compared with a figure of 44% for productive labour. (ibid p.127). Commercial labour - such as workers in the retail industry - does not produce surplus value but aids the "realisation" of it. Financial labour, another category of unproductive labour incorporating workers in the insurance, banking and the real estate industries, grew even more rapidly though the total numbers of workers involved was smaller. Supervisory labour - a third kind of unproductive labour identified by Moseley - grew less rapidly than the other two. The total extent of unproductive labour in the economy as a whole is difficult to guage since conventional economic data is not really amenable to this kind of analysis. The added complication is that some jobs entail both productive and unproductive aspects. However, a reasonable estimate can be obtained by trawling through the occupational lists. One such estimate provided by the journal Revolutionary Perspectives for the ratio of total population (including unproductive labour) to productive labour in the Britain is roughly 5 to 1("The UK and Capitalism's New Economy - Part four: The Illusion of a Productive Economy"). In other words for every one person producing value, five others do not.

Martin Blank

13th August 2011, 03:50

Excuse me, but before you start getting on your high horse again, re-read what I said.... A simple answer will suffice.... You sneer at empirical evidence ... with a rather dumb remark, in my opinion.... Equally dumb is your point ... just silly.... This [is] a bit of [a] stupid comment, isn't it? Do you always approach any rival theory that challenges yours in this over-the-top blunderbuss fashion?... This is unacceptable for several reasons.... In fact, you've rather shot yourself in the foot here.... This is completely wrong.

Y'know, Robbo, I would answer your comments (they are rather easy to deal with), especially since it's obvious you worked on them for a while, but since you wanted to make this more about me as a person than about what I wrote (the opposite of what I did with your views, as presented by DNZ), I think I'll just say, "Thanks, boss, for the lecture", and get back to work.

S.Artesian

13th August 2011, 06:59

S.Artesian

13th August 2011, 07:15

My argument is that the small self employed shopkeeper is essentially a member of the working class albeit if you like, a particular subset of that class.

I disagree with that. First off, a small self-employed shopkeeper is not a member of the working class. He or she is not selling his or her labor-power for a wage. Secondly, in most cases, a small self-employed shopkeeper has family member working in the shop with him/her. In many cases, there is an entire family, and even extended family network backing up the shopkeeper. Thirdly, the small self-employed shopkeeper can advance his or her economic status by employing the labor of others. The second a worker does that, the worker is no longer a worker but... a petit bourgeois.

Martin Blank

13th August 2011, 08:29

Me? Yeah, I'm making it about you and your self-aggrandizing view of everything you say as "authentically proletarian" and anything anybody else says that disagrees with what you say as authentically anti-proletarian.

:lol::lol::lol:

Oh, don't you just hate it when a prole gets uppity with you. You just lose your shit all over the place.

robbo203

13th August 2011, 09:27

Y'know, Robbo, I would answer your comments (they are rather easy to deal with), especially since it's obvious you worked on them for a while, but since you wanted to make this more about me as a person than about what I wrote (the opposite of what I did with your views, as presented by DNZ), I think I'll just say, "Thanks, boss, for the lecture", and get back to work.

No, it not about you as a person, Its about your ideas and if, as you say, my comments are "rather easy to deal with" then deal with them. If what I said is incorrect and this can be demonstrated, I would qute happily change my mind. Ive done it before. You would be doing me a favour.

For the present, I dont think what I have said is incorrect. I also think much of what you to say is based on a misunderstanding of where I am coming from. This is particularly the case with your comments on the role of capitalist ideology and consumerism where you completely missed the point I was making.

My main purpose for this intervention was to inject a bit of balance into this whole discussion of the "England riots". Some people here got so carried with it all that they have failed to see the negative side of these events - where it is taken on a viciously anti working class character and has unquestionably helped fuel a right wing backlash on a huge scale.

Please do not misunderstand me. As I said there are positive things to come out of the riots as I have made abundantly clear but there are also massively negative aspects which are frankly indefensible and have played into the hands of the capitalist media and the political establishment. We cannot just sit back, fold our arms and say to ourselves "oh well that is the nature of riots. It goes with the territory".

This is to condone what is unequivocally anti working class about the riots and this I am afraid is what some people on this list are doing. Criticising the specific conduct of the riots is not aligning yourself with the powers-that-be and more than once we have seen on this list the clear suggestion that it is.

Hopefully that particular suggestion is now dead and buried

RedTrackWorker

13th August 2011, 09:49

Some people here got so carried with it all that they have failed to see the negative side of these events - where it is taken on a viciously anti working class character and has unquestionably helped fuel a right wing backlash on a huge scale.

On the negative attacks in the riots, my basic response is that the way to deal with them is, as I said in my first response but didn't relate to this point, to work to make the riots more organized and directly and consciously political. A stronger movement then provides the basis for self-organizing to overcome the backward actions in the movement.

The "backlash" point is different and I think has to be handled differently than I see you doing it robbo. Any class struggle will form a right wing backlash--I hate saying things like "any" but I think it's true. The Egyptian revolution is causing a pretty big right wing backlash. The failures of a decisive leadership to pose a clear alternative is making that backlash worse, but it would be there however strong the leadership and the revolution. So if one's too broad with fears of a "backlash" one can justify holding back almost any struggle, but if one wants to minimize a backlash and avoid its worst effects, again, the answer is to struggle to build a revolutionary leadership that can help various struggles, including the British riots, turn more organized and conscious of the working class's historic tasks.

robbo203

13th August 2011, 11:11

I disagree with that. First off, a small self-employed shopkeeper is not a member of the working class. He or she is not selling his or her labor-power for a wage. Secondly, in most cases, a small self-employed shopkeeper has family member working in the shop with him/her. In many cases, there is an entire family, and even extended family network backing up the shopkeeper. Thirdly, the small self-employed shopkeeper can advance his or her economic status by employing the labor of others. The second a worker does that, the worker is no longer a worker but... a petit bourgeois.

Well, ike I said in my peice above,where does that leave millions and millions of people like myself who are technically self employed. Am I not a member of the working class? In material terms, my position is probably well below the average income of workers. It certainly feels like i am worker....

I think it all depends on your primary definition of working class. I define working class as that section of the population that possesses little or no capital to live upon and is therefore obliged to work, to earn a living somehow. The particular form in which one earns a living is secondary. Mainly, I agree, this takes the form of selling one's labour power to an employer for a wage or salary but it is not limited to that. It can take other forms - like self employment, for instance

In the case of the small shopkeeper, what we have is an individual who is in effect a glorified salesperson on commission who is essentially multifariously employed by the different companies whose products he or she sells. I agree - you can call that person "petit bourgeois" for certain purposes just as you can talk about there being a "middle class". These purposes are do with sociological analysis and relate to the immediate circumstances and occupation of the individual in question. But saying someone is middle class for some purposes doesnt alter the fact that he or she is a worker for other purposes. In terms of the analysis of capitalism as a class society and the distribution of capital - the possession or lack of possession of which defines your class position - most small shopkeepers, just as most middle class people, are effectively working class.

Sure there is a grey area in between where differences in quantity transform into differences in quality. Actually I would maintain that a highly paid worker, formally employed by an employer, is probably a good deal closer to this transitional zone than a poor struggling shopkeeper trying to make ends meet. In fact, in the case of many CEOS some of whom enjoy an income of many millions of dollars and a substantial portfolo of share options, I would say they are well past that transition zone and into the lower ranks of the capitalist class. And yet they are formally employed which, according to you, makes them working class. This is precisely why I do not attach overriding importance to the fact of selling your labour power to an employer for a wage. The statistical association is a strong one admittedly but it is not ultimately decisive in the determination of class position. That, in the end, has to do with the amount of capital in one's possession and control.

There are a number of other points you make - like this one: Secondly, in most cases, a small self-employed shopkeeper has family member working in the shop with him/her. OK for the sake of argument let us grant that this is the case - what about the minority of cases where a small self-employed shopkeeper has no one working for him or her. Miles made the point that the shopkeeper lives off surplus value. He correctly defined surplus value as unpaid labour time. But who is offering this labour time that is "unpaid" here? If there is only the shopkeeper and no one else it makes absolutely no sense to talk of the shopkeeper being some kind of exploitative agent: there is no one in this case to exploit

The irony is that Miles chastised me for not focussing on the mode of production like a good Marxian communist would but rather on the sphere of distribution. Yet Miles himself seems to think that shopkeepers can increase their surplus value by just putting up their prices (they are in any case not able to to just put up prices willy nilly; economic competition forbids that). It is thus Miles who seems to think that surplus value arises at the point of distribution - a very unmarxist position to take!

The point that I am making here with this example of the shopkeeper who employs nobody is that it refutes in principle the argument about the small shopkeerer being some kind of exploitative agent. Exploitation occurs in the sphere of production not in the sphere of distribution which was precisely Marx's point in his criticism of Proudhon - or the modern day proponets of "fair exchange"

I agree that "the small self-employed shopkeeper can advance his or her economic status by employing the labor of others". This is so in precisely the same way as a formally employed worker can advance his or her status by building up a share portfolio which involves investing money in companies that employ the labour of others too. At some point this may reach a scale where the worker in question begins in fact to look more and more like a minor capitalist. And so it is also with the small shopkeeper who expands his or her operation by directly employing others.

For the great majority of smalll shopkeepers this is not the case at all. Most struggle against the big supermarkets to make any kind of living. I would say their position is analgous to the unproductive worker which I touched on in my earlier post. They dont actually produce commodities or surplus value but they are essential to the realisation of the latter. Miles questions the existence of Marx's category of unproductive labour but I think his argument is quite incorrect. I dont think he really understands what is meant by unproductive workers and this shows in his comments.

The unproductive worker is paid out of surplus value but is no different from any other worker in being exploited. This is a paradox that can be explained by the fact that exploitation is a class-wide process; it is not a case of individual capitalists exploiting individual workers. The unproductive worker is essential to capitalism which turns on the extraction of surplus value from the working class as a whole.

The small shopkeer likewise is paid out of surplus value in the sense that he or she helps to realise it though sale on the market and takes a cut from the proceeds. But this does not mean that the small shopkeeper is not indirectly exploited, in effect, by the companies whose wares he or she sells - any more than the unproductive worker is not exploitated since he oe she does not produce surplus value. These are both essentially exploited hum,an components of an overall system of capitalist exploitation.

Failing to recognise this fact implies that working class as the agent for revolutionary change is very much smaller than we might have imagined and therefore that the prospects of revolutionary change is very much less likely than we might have hoped for. It is in saying in effect that only a minority us have a real interest in revolutionary change since only a minority of us are actually workers whereas in reality perhaps 95% of us are workers, including small shopkeeprs and unprpductive workers

In short it is a part of capital's strategy of divide and rule . This is most apparent in the extreme case where some people think of the working class as being only manual workers, a small and indeed shrinking fraction of the working class. What hope do we have of revolutionary change if we have to depend on just this small fraction of the working class?

That is why we have every reason to acknowlege and recognise that the great majority of small shopkeeprs despite being peitit bourgeois are really just workers like the rest of us. They simply do not possess sufficient capital to be anything else

S.Artesian

13th August 2011, 17:33

:lol::lol::lol:

Oh, don't you just hate it when a prole gets uppity with you. You just lose your shit all over the place.

Bugs you, obviously, when somebody doesn't fall for your faux proletarian routine, doesn't it?

Upsets you, clearly, when somebody doesn't tremble with fear and dread in the presence of the your schtick as the great wizard of the proletarian Oz.

I'm paying no attention to that man behind the curtain, believe me.

scarletghoul

13th August 2011, 17:57

thank god theres a separate thread to filter out all the trot bullshit so it doesnt clogg up proper discussion of the class war in britain

HEAD ICE

13th August 2011, 20:32

I hope people read and comment on the article on Cincinnati which is the only article I've found that actually talks about how to take the riots forward--I posted it in the politics forum (http://www.revleft.com/vb/lessons-past-riots-t159448/index.html). I haven't had the chance to follow the ins-and-outs of the British riots closely so I can't say much more about specific tactics and such so hopefully those who do will comment on that article in that thread.

I tend to agree with S. Artesian's main argument here. As he said, it was actually the first point I made. I hope Stagger Lee (and others) comment on my last point as well, which was "I don't see [snip] a basis recognition that this is a class-rebellion we should champion". The article says the riots are "an indication of incipient social collapse", "it is not for communists to condemn the riots", "neither do we romanticise", "they are a sign of capitalism's crisis" and finally calls it an "outburst." Some of this could be assumed to mean that the ICT supports this riot/rebellion as a form of class activity--but it is not clear to me, especially because of that "capitalist ideology" comment. "Outburst" is about the most positive word they give to the riots, which has all sorts of negative connotations to this reader.

Let's look at the section in contention again:

"Simply a reflection of capitalist ideology"? I'll repeat: Fighting the police and taking from national chain stores reflects capitalist ideology?

And again, does the ICT solidarize with this as an act of our class (in the main)?

The Spartacist League is very anti-riot and mocked Sy Landy (founder of my political tendency) at a debate, saying sarcastically that they (the rioters) were just burning down their own drug stores and Sy doesn't care if they had drug stores or not.

Sy responded (http://lrp-cofi.org/pamphlets/debate2003_iii.html) in the third person at a debate with them:

Of course that has to be developed to take into account the limitations of riots and that there are negative acts within them, etc. But I do not get the sense that the ICT "enthuses" with the rioters, please correct me if I'm wrong. As I ended my first post: The riots are not a sign of capitalism's decay...they are a sign of protest against capitalism's decay!

I will like to take this post as a starting point to address some other things being said here, some things being misinterpreted because of the language (your case) though I will ignore deliberate distortions (S. Artesian, Miles).

Many people are amusingly taking a borderline councilist attitude towards the riots. People are saying that the riots are "training" on the part of the class to gain "confidence" in the face of the capitalist state. This is really a fluffy way to say nothing. Workers can expell their bosses from their workplace and run it themselves, but that doesn't challenge capitalism not a single step. Nor can that even be said to train workers in confidence against the capitalist state if revolutionaries put forward worker run capitalism as an alternative, which is no alternative.

The now infamous bogey "capitalist ideology" statement is in a section of the article called "Communist Perspective." It does not say the looters are "wrong." It does not say the looters are "anti-social" (like the ICC statement does). It does not say that the looting isn't an expression against capitalist decay. It does not even say "looting" can't be a revolutionary act - certainly in a revolutionary situation where the class is organized and acts for itself workers will and and should be encouraged to return the product of their labors from the capitalists who expropriated them. What the article is saying is that in an absence of political direction, looting does not form an effective means of struggle against capitalism, and yes, is firmly in the realm of capitalist ideology.

That section is asking, what position should revolutionaries take? What it says is, taking from chain stores does not challenge capitalism nor can it even be considered "training" (whatever that means) or a "confidence" gainer for a struggle against capitalism that does take a political form. Looting and rioting by itself will not change the class consciousness of the majority who undertake it. Some will of course. But in itself, looting commodities is not a challenge against commodities. This is why we argue communists should not romanticize such acts as being able to imdue communist or even a vague "anti-capitalist" consciousness.

The ICT completely believes that the riots are an expression against the decay of capitalism. That is what the whole entire article is arguing! As for "enthuses" with the rioters, I don't know what that means. We certainly see the fighting of the police, the riots in general, and yes the "looting" as an explosion of against the continuing disarray of capitalism. However we do not take the LRP position that this is an organized, conscious protest against capitalism in favor of socialism and the power of the working class.

The ICT not only believes that this is a an expression against the decay of capitalism, but we also connect it with the greater mood that is present across the world against capitalism's increasing brutality.

As for how we transform the riots towards a direction that really strikes at the heart of capitalism itself, I can't answer. I am ignorant of the "ins-and-outs", but keeping that in mind I would say I agree with the assesment by Devrim.

Alf

13th August 2011, 23:48

I was going to post this here but Leo has already started another thread for the ICC's statement:
http://www.revleft.com/vb/riots-britain-and-t159610/index.html

I also intended to express my solidarity with the ICT's statement. It is basically along the same lines as ours, although we do obviously have some differences. I should say however that Stagger has misrepresented us when he writes that the ICT statement "does not say the looters are "anti-social" (like the ICC statement does)

We use the term "anti-social" very clearly to oppose actions such as mugging of individuals, burning out of buildings with residents still in them, attacks on fire and ambulance workers.

We do also make it plain that we think the looting was essentially an obstacle to people getting together to work out what they were actually fighting for, agreeing with the practical critique made by the Hackney woman on youtube: Hence the justified frustration of the Hackney woman who has been watched by thousands on Youtube, denouncing the looting because it was preventing people from actually getting together and working out what the struggle was about. “You lot piss me off...we are not all gathering together and fighting for a cause. We’re running down Footlocker...” http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G18EmYGGpYI

Our article says that anger at the police and the wealthy was certainly expressed by the rioters, but the real effect of the looting was to pull people away from dealing with the actual issues posed by the general conditions and the immediate events that led to the riots. The rush to loot also provided the opportunity for some of the most 'damaged' elements to come into their own and carry out acts of intimidation and even murder.

The rather somber balance sheet of the riots is generating a serious debate among anarchists and left communists, and, I would argue, the beginnings of a break from the 'traditional' notion (going via the Situationists as far back as Bakunin) that looting is somehow an attack on the form of the commodity, or at least a learning step towards class consciousness. (I would add that I would not use the term looting to describe actions like the opening of supermarkets to supply food to stricken populations after Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans or after the Chile earthquake. Still less does it apply to organised appropriation and redistribution during mass strikes and revolutions).

A process of maturation is going on. I would say, for example, that the statement of the Solidarity Federation represents a real step forward compared to many previous statements from anarchists about riots and looting. http://libcom.org/news/north-london-solfeds-response-london-riots-09082011.

Solfed comrades in South London (Deptford) also took the initiative of calling a meeting where local residents could come together and discuss their concerns about what was going on. It was neither a 'vigilante' meeting nor a meeting to continue the rioting. It seems that around a 100 people attended:

"On the night of 9th August, Deptford residents held a street meeting to congregate in a peaceful fashion in order to meet each other and reclaim our streets from the fear and misinformation being spread about the riots. It was called by local Solfed members that day after discussions with neighbours over concerns of residential fires. The previous night had seen several shops and bookies smashed in and looted on the high street.
At 6pm a group of 30 residents met and decided to reconvene at 8.30pm with an aim to prevent and put out any potential fires and discuss the events of the last few days. This was not a reactionary vigilantism but a considered act of solidarity and grass roots initiative.

In the night, 100 people came out to support each other and talk. A banner was made to show others what we were about and speeches were given. Many people spoke of the problems that young people and the whole working class is facing and the need to act collectively to make changes. Out of the discussion came a decision to hold an emergency demonstration the next day against the cuts and to highlight some of the causes behind the riots".

This is exactly what revolutionaries need to do in such circumstances.

RedTrackWorker

14th August 2011, 02:32

The ICT completely believes that the riots are an expression against the decay of capitalism. That is what the whole entire article is arguing! As for "enthuses" with the rioters, I don't know what that means. We certainly see the fighting of the police, the riots in general, and yes the "looting" as an explosion of against the continuing disarray of capitalism. However we do not take the LRP position that this is an organized, conscious protest against capitalism in favor of socialism and the power of the working class.
[snip]
As for how we transform the riots towards a direction that really strikes at the heart of capitalism itself, I can't answer. I am ignorant of the "ins-and-outs", but keeping that in mind I would say I agree with the assesment by Devrim.

Where have the LRP or I argued the riots are a conscious and organized protest in favor socialism?

On taking the protests, forward--for me that gets at the whole question of if you see the riots as an act of our class (however unconscious and limited). If you think it's out of touch with reality for a revolutionary leadership to work to make the riots conscious and organized (which is what I understand Devrim to be saying), then I really don't know what to say.

S.Artesian

14th August 2011, 02:37

robbo203

14th August 2011, 09:58

So let me direct this to Alf and Stagger Lee.... what did ICT actually do during the days and nights of these incidents?

Did it distribute its leaflets in Toxteth, Tottenham, Birmingham, etcl in the neighborhoods where and when the looting/battles with police took place?

Leafletting is good but is it enough? I quite like the approach adoped by Solfed and the manner in which Solfed comrades in South London (Deptford) engaged with local residents as described by Alf. I particularly like this section from the Solfed statement which really says it all:

The Solidarity Federation is based in resistance through workplace struggle. We are not involved in the looting and unlike the knee-jerk right or even the sympathetic-but-condemnatory commentators from the left, we will not condemn or condone those we don't know for taking back some of the wealth they have been denied all their lives.
But as revolutionaries, we cannot condone attacks on working people, on the innocent. Burning out shops with homes above them, people's transport to work, muggings and the like are an attack on our own and should be resisted as strongly as any other measure from government "austerity" politics, to price-gouging landlords, to bosses intent on stealing our labour. Tonight and for as long as it takes, people should band together to defend themselves when such violence threatens homes and communities.

We believe that the legitimate anger of the rioters can be far more powerful if it is directed in a collective, democratic way and seeks not to victimise other workers, but to create a world free of the exploitation and inequality inherent to capitalism. http://libcom.org/news/north-london-...riots-09082011 (http://libcom.org/news/north-london-solfeds-response-london-riots-09082011).

Point being that it is not just a relatively small number of rioters who should be engaged with constructively (though not uncritically) but the vast majority of our class not involved in the rioting, some of whom have most regretably become the victims of the rioting.

We should not allow ourselves to lose sight of the wood for the trees. We should always keep in mind above all what is in the interests of the working class as a whole

Alf

14th August 2011, 11:20

I can't answer for the ICT. The ICC in Britain took a while to produce this statement because we wanted to get it right and discussed it in some detail before publishing it. We aim to distribute it in some of the areas affected. But distributing leaflets which require thought and reflection, and which are not proposing any immediate action would in my opinion have been a waste of time in the middle of the riot. Trying to leaflet people while they are looting from shops would be a farce. If revolutionaries are to engage with the people who took part in the riots, there is much more chance of doing so after the event than during it. That's in the nature of riots in my opinion. They don't usually provide a space for discussion or real collective self-organisation.

In any case, our message isn't only directed towards those doing the rioting. Agree with robbo on this: "it is not just a relatively small number of rioters who should be engaged with constructively (though not uncritically) but the vast majority of our class not involved in the rioting, some of whom have most regretably become the victims of the rioting"..

black magick hustla

14th August 2011, 12:00

Many people are amusingly taking a borderline councilist attitude towards the riots. People are saying that the riots are "training" on the part of the class to gain "confidence" in the face of the capitalist state. This is really a fluffy way to say nothing. Workers can expell their bosses from their workplace and run it themselves, but that doesn't challenge capitalism not a single step. Nor can that even be said to train workers in confidence against the capitalist state if revolutionaries put forward worker run capitalism as an alternative, which is no alternative.
not everything that can be pinpointed as "class struggle" will get us anywhere near a revolution. i assume your comment was aimed at me. the point i was trying to make is that class struggle exists regardless, even if it exists in somewhat "useless" and "basic" forms that won't challenge capitalism. the riots are not the expression of some party-line, so to argue that they happen to have anti-social elements and are not a solution is tautological. you might as well argue against ultra-violet radiation from the sun, because its problematic to our skin. if there is going to be some class party, it is going to emerge contingent to situations like this, no matter how many leftists will get pissed off. yes, we all rather have real communization, with collective expropiation of the shops and a full frontal attitude against the law of value, but we don't have that. however, it is situations like this were a class party will emerge, or it will not emerge at all.

Coach Trotsky

14th August 2011, 13:28

not everything that can be pinpointed as "class struggle" will get us anywhere near a revolution. i assume your comment was aimed at me. the point i was trying to make is that class struggle exists regardless, even if it exists in somewhat "useless" and "basic" forms that won't challenge capitalism. the riots are not the expression of some party-line, so to argue that they happen to have anti-social elements and are not a solution is tautological. you might as well argue against ultra-violet radiation from the sun, because its problematic to our skin. if there is going to be some class party, it is going to emerge contingent to situations like this, no matter how many leftists will get pissed off. yes, we all rather have real communization, with collective expropiation of the shops and a full frontal attitude against the law of value, but we don't have that. however, it is situations like this were a class party will emerge, or it will not emerge at all.

KABOOM! The bolded in the quote is sooooo true. On the Left, so many think the next conscious organized fighting emergence of our class will happen in the old bureaucratized organizations (unions, electorial political parties, mainstream civil right groups). It's not going to happen like that. It will start OUTSIDE of politics as usual, and will be characterized by MASS COMBATIVITY against this system (such as in rebellions, militant and often illegal strikes, militant community collective self-defense). It will NOT be legal. It will NOT be peaceful. It will NOT 'be nice'. Anytime our class still has even a toe remaining inside this system when it thinks or acts, it is trapped and misdirected and pacified and suppressed by 'friends' and foes alike. Have-somes will not help us so long as they think they have any chance of living "a-okay" under this system, of 'reforming' this system by any other easier safer legal means, and they fear our foes more then the fear the unleashed collective wrath of those at the bottom of society against ANYONE who stands in any way in defense of the system that causes and continues and worsens our conditions. Have-nots are trapped slaves so long as we play any of the system's as-usual games by as-usual means with as-usual organizations and as-usual leaderships...so long as we strive only for reform change within this system instead of actually fighting to destroy and replace this whole system, we are fucked, and at most we'll be used as pawns of some faction or another of the ruling elites and their functionaries.

Jimmie Higgins

14th August 2011, 14:43

While the right wing press have been busy condemning the riots as simply ‘yobbery’ Labour and the left of capital are more careful about pinning the blame on the youth. Labour MP David Lammy was one of the first to comment. He condemned the violence as being an act that only targeted their own community, followed with the usual appeal for calm. The response of the British SWP has as usual revealed its role on the coat tails of Labour.
For instance, while recognising the social and economic causes of the riots their solution is to call for some form of police accountability. As if reforming the police was a matter for a revolutionary organisation supposedly working for the overthrow of capitalism. The police are an integral part of the capitalist state machine whose core purpose is to defend capitalist legality, which in turn exists to defend the right of capitalists to make profits by extorting surplus value from workers.

Sigh, really, they couldn't find a single real reason to criticize the SWP's response. Really, so they had to misrepresent their political views?

I thought the SWP's newspaper coverage was disappointingly slight, but really, Labor is calling for movements that can stop police from patrolling poor neighborhoods?

This is what lies behind the eruption of rage this week. We need to turn that anger into the sort of organised resistance that can overturn the system once and for all.

The last thing we need is a state with more ways of attacking ordinary people. The police are the enemy of everyone who want to see a more just, fair society.

It is the actions of the police that marginalise and criminalise so many.
It is the endless stop and search that thousands of mostly young, mostly black people face across Britain, the wholesale harassment of communities.
We should drive the police out of our estates and off our streets.

These aren't the deepest radical analysis of the police, but it more or less gets to the heart of the matter. It also doesn't make any concrete calls for particular strategies and it's vague, but "tailing Labor" and all that is really just sloppy sectarian bull.

Riots are an expression of anger, as Martin Luther King said, they are “the language of the unheard”. But to stop the Tories more is needed.

We need more protests like the huge demonstration on 26 March and the strike by 750,000 workers on 30 June. Such struggles can unite desperate young people and workers who face job cuts, attacks on pensions, huge wage reductions and worse conditions.

We call for the TUC, trade unions, and campaign groups to hurl themselves into the fight against the cuts, poverty and racism. We call for building events such as the demonstration against the English Defence League in east London on 3 September, the protest at the Tory conference in Manchester on 2 October, and the coordinated strike by more than a million workers planned for November.

A real solution to the despair that creates riots will need a different sort of society, where the needs of the vast majority, rather than a tiny elite, come first.
Say what you will of the SWP's strategy and tactics or how effective they are, but to claim that they see "police reform" as the answer... well those critics are either liars or disconnected from reality.

Devrim

15th August 2011, 11:08

A Marxist Historian

15th August 2011, 18:43

...
Let's look at the section in contention again:

"Simply a reflection of capitalist ideology"? I'll repeat: Fighting the police and taking from national chain stores reflects capitalist ideology?

And again, does the ICT solidarize with this as an act of our class (in the main)?

The Spartacist League is very anti-riot and mocked Sy Landy (founder of my political tendency) at a debate, saying sarcastically that they (the rioters) were just burning down their own drug stores and Sy doesn't care if they had drug stores or not.

Sy responded (http://lrp-cofi.org/pamphlets/debate2003_iii.html) in the third person at a debate with them:

Of course that has to be developed to take into account the limitations of riots and that there are negative acts within them, etc. But I do not get the sense that the ICT "enthuses" with the rioters, please correct me if I'm wrong. As I ended my first post: The riots are not a sign of capitalism's decay...they are a sign of protest against capitalism's decay!

I think the discussion on this thread in general is much better than what you see on other threads, where half the posters want to solidarize with the right wing backlash against the riots.

I thought the ICT statement wasn't too bad actually, though I also have a problem with the idea that the looting "reflects capitalist ideology." I do *not* think, as RTW seems to, that it represents a rebellion vs. capitalism as such, over which one should "enthuse"(!) A truly LRP statement I must say. And nor is it "consumerism."

I think it reflects mostly desperation, or to be precise, taking the opportunity to grab stuff with resale value so as to be able to pay the rent next month.

Now, since RTW is bringing in the SL, as the self-appointed advocate for Spartacism here I'll comment that it is an obvious fact, even more obvious in England than in American ghetto rebellions, that this is not having any positive effects for the working class, but simply resulting in destruction, and now right wing backlash.

They are indeed a sign of protest against capitalist decay. But, as Stagger Lee and others have pointed out, they are very far from being an effective protest against capitalist decay.

So, what to do? The prime task of revolutionaries right now is to defend the rioters, and everybody in fact, from state repression. The Tories arre obviously using this to destroy all civil liberties in American fashion. And try to puncture all the right wing hysteria. Like for example the story of how a looter allegedly killed three people by running them over with his car. Three? Was this guy a NASCAR driver? Sounds like a right wing urban legend to me.

The long term task is to find a way to rechannel the anger of the youth in more productive ways, into organized, disciplined struggle against capitalism in conjunction with the labor movement. Likely at the moment more easily said than done.

-M.H.-

Jimmie Higgins

16th August 2011, 10:07

I'll comment that it is an obvious fact, even more obvious in England than in American ghetto rebellions, that this is not having any positive effects for the working class, but simply resulting in destruction, and now right wing backlash.I don't think you are arguing this, but just a point of clarification from my perspective on the way you phrased the above: the riots are not the source of attacks and backlash, they are an excuse for a crackdown they needed anyway. Of course the British ruling class is scared of a lack of submission to their status quo ("law and order") that these riots represent, but because of the need to push austerity, an attempt to crack down by the UK rulers (as well as the ruling classes in the US and pretty much everywhere else that austerity is being forced down on us) is inevitable. If it wasn't this it would have been the next student protest or whatnot or maybe some bullshit counter-terrorism excuse like the US is so good at.

So, what to do? The prime task of revolutionaries right now is to defend the rioters, and everybody in fact, from state repression. The Tories arre obviously using this to destroy all civil liberties in American fashion. And try to puncture all the right wing hysteria. Like for example the story of how a looter allegedly killed three people by running them over with his car. Three? Was this guy a NASCAR driver? Sounds like a right wing urban legend to me.100% yes.

Lurch

16th August 2011, 18:25

A Marxist Historian

16th August 2011, 20:14

I don't think you are arguing this, but just a point of clarification from my perspective on the way you phrased the above: the riots are not the source of attacks and backlash, they are an excuse for a crackdown they needed anyway. Of course the British ruling class is scared of a lack of submission to their status quo ("law and order") that these riots represent, but because of the need to push austerity, an attempt to crack down by the UK rulers (as well as the ruling classes in the US and pretty much everywhere else that austerity is being forced down on us) is inevitable. If it wasn't this it would have been the next student protest or whatnot or maybe some bullshit counter-terrorism excuse like the US is so good at.

100% yes.

All true. But it's also true that because of the chaotic, leaderless, programless nature of the riots, you have things happening that the right wing can take advantage of to get people on their side.

Hell, even here on Revleft.

-M.H.-

S.Artesian

16th August 2011, 21:03

Unfortunately, the murder of three young Asians, run over by a car while 'defending' their petrol station during the GB events is no urban myth or right-wing fabrication. It happened. One of 6 deaths. Anyone care to 'defend' this action? The 'law' has already made arrests and will undoubtedly make further capital out of the deaths.

All of which only highlights the fundamental validity of the original ICT post (despite the vacillations of the guy who posted it, who now seems to want to retreat from its content).

Despite all the frothing of S Artesian, despite his claims that the riots break or challenge the cycle of capitalist accumulation or commodity relations, the truth is they don't. In general, they fall right in with bourgeois ideology of grab what you cvan and fuck everybody else. I don't 'condemn' the rioters for that: neitherdo I think we should make more of it than it was.

The real question, as posed by Alf, is how do these events further the unification, in its struggle, of the working class?; how do they help draw behind the struggle of the workers other, non-exploiting, strata (peasants, small shop-keepers, etc). Answer: they don't.

It's true, as the poster above says, that the ruling class will seize on any excuse to ramp up repression and exploitation. It's also true that we shouldn't become involved in some moralistic condemnation of, or instinctive support for, riots. They are what they are: fundamentally, at this immediate moment, a revolt which speaks of the absence of the working class.

Where have I claimed any such thing? What I have said is that the riots do NOT represent actions taken in accordance with capitalist ideology. I do not believe that the rioters are simply doing what hedge-funder traders, bankers, certified financial analysts, chief financial officers, free market advocates do.

I say I not only do not condemn the rioters, I defend the rioters against the state, against the police, against bourgeois justice. I say immediate freedom for all those arrested in these riots, including those who drove the car, just as I argued for freedom for Hasan Akbar, the US soldier accused of shooting and fragging the tactical operations center of his unit in Kuwait in 2003.

I say the riots were provoked by countless numbers of police assaults on young people in poor neighborhoods combined, or actually, part of the execution of the bourgeoisie's austerity plan... or do you think it is only a coincidence that these riots took place when they did, and after the specific incident that occurred?

A class that has and continues to distribute lies, distortions, in order to further slavery, impoverishment, wars against other countries has no business applying "justice" to these rioters.

The ICT claims the riots express capitalist ideology. No more and no less than you do in claiming that the riots express capitalist ideology.

Lurch

16th August 2011, 22:39

Martin Blank

17th August 2011, 00:29

Against my better judgment, I'm returning to this point, mainly to debunk robbo's anti-Marxist views on class. I really should be working on other things, but, as I said, this is pretty easy to deal with. I'm not going to address every sentence of this wall of text, but rather concentrate on the salient points. Now then:...

And for criticising some of the actions of the some rioters, some of us on this list have come in for a fair bit l of flak. Is that fair?

I don't think anyone here is completely uncritical of what occurred during the London Rebellion. I think the problem here is that your criticism, and that of many others, has effectively boiled down to defense of the petty bourgeoisie against poor working-class youth. To that extent, I do think the criticism is more than fair; it is essential.

Status is tied to wealth. Those at the top of the pile tend to be looked up to; those at the bottom ridiculed and sneered at by the likes of Mr Hastings and many others. Is this true or false, Miles? A simple answer will suffice.

Actually, no, a simple answer does not suffice. That's the problem here: you're looking for simple answers in a complex system of political economy.

Is it true that "status is tied to wealth" -- that "those at the top of the pile tend to be looked up to; those at the bottom ridiculed and sneered at by the likes of Mr Hastings and many others"? Yes, but it is besides the point. Consumerism a by-product of capitalism, not the other way around. To put it another way, consumerism is one form that the capitalist mode of production creates and uses as a means of maximizing profits. It is a bourgeois ideology, not a bourgeois economic model.

Of course, the purpose of advertising campaigns is ultimately the accumulation of profit - did I ever suggest anything to the contrary? - but a firm is not going to make a profit unless it can persuade consumers to buy the commodities it sells on the market in the first place.

The question is which is primary, the "shop-till-you-drop" marketing campaign, or the accumulation of profit that the campaign is designed to bring in?

Equally dumb is your point that the seizing of commodities by looters does not afford the capitalist or shopkeeper a profit. Again, of course it doesn't and when did I ever say it does?

When you called it "shop-till-you-drop by other means".

The SECOND point you make is about my "obscene amalgamation of petty bourgeois and proletarian as being 'the working class'." Why "obscene" BTW?

I was offended by the very idea that two classes occupying different relationships to each other and to the mode of production could be amalgamated for no reason other than income. (More on this below.)

I don't particularly object to the term "petty bourgeois" any more than I object to the term "middle class" providing it is understood that this is a sociological construction ; it is not particularly relevant when discussing the basic economic relations of capitalism.

So, classes are "not particularly relevant when discussing the basic economic relations of capitalism"?

I have to admit, I am completely floored by this statement. It has to be one of the most anti-Marxist comments I've heard from a so-called Marxist. It completely flies in the face of the entire body of Marx's work. In fact, I'd go so far to say it's a slap in the face to Marx and his legacy.

In my view capitalism consist basically two economic classes - a capitalist class that possesses sufficient capital to live upon without the need to work and a working class that does not. The small time shopkeeper clearly falls into the latter category. Two objections will be made against this.

The first is that the shopkeeper is not a wage worker and has no employer who employs him or her. This is true but then many workers are not strictly employed by an employer. My profession for example is a gardener. I do jobs for various people on a self employed basis. I charge a fee based on an hourly rate. Its a precarious living and at 11 euros per hour, not a very remunerative one. At the moment I'm scrapping by on about 3-4 days a week. The crisis in Spain has been severe and shows little sign of ending. You can hardly say I am not a worker. I have no savings to speak of whatsoever and of my two bank accounts one is permanently in overdraft. My situation is essentially the same as millions of other self employed people. We are members of the working class.

In basic economic terms the small shopkeeper too is a member of the working class and does not posses enough capital to live upon without the economic compulsion to work. In fact, he or she is little more than a glorified salesperson multifariously employed by the companies whose wares he or she stocks. Many shopkeepers live in a precarious and impoverished state. Their particular occupation and the isolation it imposes on them may incline them to a petty bourgeois outlook but that does not alter their basic economic situation

Class is not based on income. Classes are defined by their relationship to the mode of production, and delineated by their relations with other classes. It is wholly irrelevant if a petty bourgeois lives on an income lower than that of a worker. What matters is that the proletarian, unlike the petty bourgeois, owns no capital; he or she only owns their ability to work (their labor-power), and that is all the proletarian can sell. The petty bourgeois, on the other hand, has a small amount of capital (hence the term "petty bourgeois", as opposed to the greater bourgeois), and can develop that into a large amount. That is a fundamental difference between proletarian and petty bourgeois.

The self-employed are both unproductive laborers and petty bourgeois at the same time. Marx addressed this issue directly:

Some of the labor which produces commodities in capitalist production is performed in a manner which belongs to earlier modes of production M], where the relation of capital and wage labor does not yet exist in practice, and therefore the category of productive and unproductive labour, which corresponds to the capitalist standpoint, is entirely inapplicable. But in accordance with the ruling mode of production even those relations which have not yet been subsumed under it in fact are subsumed under it notionally. The self-employed labourer, for example, is his own wage labourer, and his own means of production confront him in his own mind as capital. As his own capitalist, he employs himself as a wage labourer. Anomalies of this type then offer a favourable field for outpourings of drivel about productive and unproductive labour.

Indeed they do, Karl. Indeed they do.

You talk about the shopkeeper selling goods at a particular rate of surplus value which is much lower than that of the illegal black marketeer. Surplus value is the difference in the value of the commodities workers produce and the wages they receives from their employers to whom this surplus value goes. In a previous post you said "It is the accumulated unpaid labor-time. A self-employed business owner, like the independent master plumber or electrician, is able to set a price that far exceeds what he or she needs to produce and reproduce his or herself from day to day and generation to generation". http://www.revleft.com/vb/riots-tottenham-police-t159251/index41.html This is unacceptable for several reasons reasons.

Firstly, these self employed business owners cannot just set a price willy-nilly; they cannot buck the market or else they will go out of business. Secondly you are assuming that what a person needs to produce and reproduce his or herself from day to day and generation to generation is fixed, It is not. It includes also a moral and historical component as Marx pointed out. Thirdly there is nothing on this basis that would distinguish a self employed business person from, say, a well paid employee who would also, according to you, get an income that far exceeds what he or she needs to produce and reproduce his or herself from day to day.

You can see my comments on the self-employed above. But when it comes to the relations between the bourgeois owner of a production facility and the petty-bourgeois owner of the small shop or store, the latter's share of surplus value is already calculated into the price.

There are four letters you should become familiar with: MSRP. (I don't know how this would translate into Spanish, but I'm pretty damn sure that there is an equivalent term.) MSRP stands for "Manufacturer's Suggested Retail Price". The MSRP is a means of guaranteeing the ability of both the large and small capitalist (the bourgeois and petty bourgeois) to extract surplus value and valorize each of their capital. The petty bourgeois does not need to set prices willy-nilly; they can simply sell the commodities at the MSRP and accumulate their share of the surplus value. And considering that this set price is a built-in component of and integral to the entire production process, there are no concerns that it would destabilize the capitalist economy.

This is completely wrong. There are more unproductive workers now than there were ever before but it seems you do not really understand what is meant by the term unproductive labor. A civil servant is an unproductive worker for example. So too is someone working on cash till at a supermarket. So are numerous other kinds of workers. They are not producing commodities.

According to Fred Moseley in his The Falling Rate of Profit in the Postwar United States Economy (Macmillan 1991) in the post war era there has been a significantly higher rate of growth in unproductive labor compared to productive labor in the US economy - in fact the ratio doubled in the post war years up to the 1970s and continued to grow (but at a slower rate) since then. Two thirds of the the growth in unproductive labor was accounted for by the growth in commercial labor which increased by 134 % in the period 1950-80 compared with a figure of 44% for productive labor. (ibid p.127). Commercial labor - such as workers in the retail industry - does not produce surplus value but aids the "realization" of it. Financial labor, another category of unproductive labor incorporating workers in the insurance, banking and the real estate industries, grew even more rapidly though the total numbers of workers involved was smaller. Supervisory labor - a third kind of unproductive labor identified by Moseley - grew less rapidly than the other two. The total extent of unproductive labor in the economy as a whole is difficult to gauge since conventional economic data is not really amenable to this kind of analysis. The added complication is that some jobs entail both productive and unproductive aspects. However, a reasonable estimate can be obtained by trawling through the occupational lists. One such estimate provided by the journal Revolutionary Perspectives for the ratio of total population (including unproductive labor) to productive labor in the Britain is roughly 5 to 1 ("The UK and Capitalism's New Economy - Part four: The Illusion of a Productive Economy"). In other words for every one person producing value, five others do not.

Let's see if I can be direct and to-the-point here:... You're wrong. Moseley is wrong. Revolutionary Perspectives is wrong.

Let's start with Marx's definition of productive labor:

That worker is productive who performs productive labor, and that labor is productive which directly creates surplus value, i.e. valorizes capital.

This is a rather straightforward definition of productive labor: any worker who creates surplus value, and thus capital, for their employer is productive. Further into the manuscript, Marx expands on this point:

Milton, for example, who did Paradise Lost, was an unproductive worker. In contrast to this, the writer who delivers hackwork for his publisher is a productive worker. Milton produced Paradise Lost in the way that a silkworm produces silk, as the expression of his own nature. Later on he sold the product for £5 and to that extent became a dealer in a commodity. But the Leipzig literary proletarian who produces books, e.g. compendia on political economy, at the instructions of his publisher is roughly speaking a productive worker, in so far as his production is subsumed under capital and only takes place for the purpose of the latter’s valorization. A singer who sings like a bird is an unproductive worker. If she sells her singing for money, she is to that extent a wage laborer or a commodity dealer. But the same singer, when engaged by an entrepreneur who has her sing in order to make money, is a productive worker, for she directly produces capital. A schoolmaster who educates others is not a productive worker. But a schoolmaster who is engaged as a wage laborer in an institution along with others, in order through his labor to valorize the money of the entrepreneur of the knowledge-mongering institution, is a productive worker. Yet most of these kinds of work, from the formal point of view, are hardly subsumed formally under capital. They belong rather among the transitional forms....

The same kind of labor (e.g. gardening, tailoring, etc.) can be performed by the same working man in the service of an industrial capitalist, or of the immediate consumer. In both cases the worker is a wage laborer or a day laborer, but in the first case he is a productive worker, in the second an unproductive one, because in the first case he produces capital, in the second case he does not; because in the first case his labor forms a moment in capital’s process of self-valorization, in the second case it does not. (All underlining mine.)

What Marx is saying here is rather simple: Any worker whose labor produces surplus value (profit), and thus capital, is a productive worker. The cashier at the local supermarket is a productive worker because s/he creates capital for his/her employer, the owners of the store. The office worker whose job is to compile and update spreadsheets of customers, inventory, accounts receivable/payable, etc., is a productive worker because his or her work helps create capital for their employer. The same is true for the fast-food restaurant employee, the retail associate at the local clothing store, and so on.

So, who are the unproductive laborers, in Marx's view? For starters, the self-employed (the genuinely self-employed, that is, not the so-called "self-employed" who are generating capital for their "contracted" employer). He also names craftsmen (gardeners, tailors, etc.), civil and private servants, independent professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers and technicians), the police and military, managers, etc. When it came to the professionals and craftsmen, Marx did account for some of them to become productive laborers, provided the body of their work was performed exclusively for an employer for the purposes of creating and valorizing capital. Civil servants he saw as unproductive, but still a part of the working class. Marx saw the private soldier as a "worker in uniform", but considered their labor to be unproductive (the corps of officers and NCOs were seen as the military's management, and thus petty bourgeois). As for the rest, though, Marx saw them as a part of the petty bourgeoisie -- the "overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen". For the record, a "shopman" is the same as a small business owner or shopkeeper.

Os Cangaceiros

17th August 2011, 02:34

S.Artesian

17th August 2011, 02:58

S Artesian wrote:

"Where have I claimed any such thing? What I have said is that the riots do NOT represent actions taken in accordance with capitalist ideology. I do not believe that the rioters are simply doing what hedge-funder traders, bankers, certified financial analysts, chief financial officers, free market advocates do."

Capitalist ideology embraces grab what you can. Is, in the words of gangsta-rappa 50 cent, "get rich or die trying." Is everyman for himself. Is, as the ICT said, reflected in the riots as the mirror image of mainstream bourgeois ideology - the ghost in the machine returned to haunt it. Taunt it. Flaunt it. But not fundamnetally, change it.

I'm not a member of the ICT, nor do I put the 'petty looters', 'rioters' or whatever label bourgeois repression sticks on them, on the same level as the terror of the bourgois state itself.

I know, as well as you do, the emiseration, alienation, desperation, economic deprivation that has fuelled these revolts, and will, as night follows day, fuel many others.

That doesn't mean their entirely understandable revolt is 'our' way forward. Every truly working class action goes against bourgeois ideology, but not every revolt by the dispossessed is a working class action.

Nice way not to answer the simple question about the assertion your raised.

Here's the assertion:

Despite all the frothing of S Artesian, despite his claims that the riots break or challenge the cycle of capitalist accumulation or commodity relations, the truth is they don't.

Now where have I said riots break or challenge the cycle of capitalist accumulation or commodity relations? Where did I say that. If I did, it should be a snap for you to reproduce where I said it.

What I said was that the rioters were not merely expressing capitalist ideology. Quite a different thing. More than a mere technicality.

If I didn't say what you claim I said, then cut the shuck and jive and withdraw the assertion. Or just remain a liar. You make the call.

Savage

17th August 2011, 08:13

Shop-keepers are non-exploitative? Even if they employ people?

It's like redcat in reverse

S.Artesian

17th August 2011, 16:45

No doubt about it, Marx is right and Moseley is so dead-cinch-lock wrong that it's painful to read him.

But here's the rub:

Yet most of these kinds of work, from the formal point of view, are hardly subsumed formally under capital. They belong rather among the transitional forms....

It is the appearance of this lack of subsumption that is so vexing for some.

If we break through the appearance by returning to what the commodity truly is, which is a useful object that is a value, that is to say a product of human labor that is the product of a specific social organization of that labor, then we can see that in the case of the school teachers employed by the charter school, or the doctors employed by the insurance company, or the health care workers distributing lunches, the useful object is the labor itself and thus we have, almost, an "unmediated" expression of the commodity organization of labor power under capitalism.

A Marxist Historian

18th August 2011, 01:11

Doesn't that happen during p. much all civil unrest? It happened in LA '92, it happened in Egypt during the unrest there, it happens every time people with property get threatened by those who wish to take it. I don't really see why it would be a matter that would call for either defense or shame...

Shop-keepers are non-exploitative? Even if they employ people?

By Marxist definition, any employer is an exploiter, no matter how nice a fella he may be.

As to deaths during civil unrest of the innocent, well, the imperial term is "collateral damage."

The problem with the phrase, and really the only problem, is that in Iraq when people are killed accidentally by the US military, that is collateral to imperialism.

So if six innocent people died in the course of last week, that is too bad, but is insignificant compared to the day in, day out death toll of British capitalism in its degeneration.

How many people died last week in England because of the killer cuts the youth were rebelling against? I don't know, but I'm sure that death toll was at least one order of magnitude higher, if not more.

-M.H.-

Nehru

18th August 2011, 10:08

Breaking a window and taking commodities is not a capitalist ideology.

Then what is it?:confused:

Arlekino

18th August 2011, 13:19

S.Artesian

18th August 2011, 13:57

Then what is it?:confused:
Anger.

Nehru

18th August 2011, 15:11

Anger.

Against whom?

S.Artesian

18th August 2011, 17:09

Dialogue from the movie The Wild One starring Marlon Brando as Johnny.

"Hey Johnny, what are you rebelling against?"

Johnny: "What d'ya got?"

Lurch

18th August 2011, 18:05

Lurch

18th August 2011, 18:39

Lurch wrote:

"Unfortunately, the murder of three young Asians, run over by a car while ‘defending’ their petrol station during the GB events is no urban myth or right-wing fabrication. It happened. One of 6 deaths. Anyone care to to ‘defend’ this action? ..."

Explosive Situation responded:

“Doesn't that happen during p. much all civil unrest? It happened in LA '92, it happened in Egypt during the unrest there, it happens every time people with property get threatened by those who wish to take it. I don't really see why it would be a matter that would call for either defense or shame...”

Maybe, but context, content? That affects our attitude. I wrote this as a point of information for a previous poster who seemed to believe that the murders were possibly a fabrication. It’s still not clear what happened, but it appears to have been a race crime: three members of one ethnic minority were murdered by a number of men from a different ethnic minority whose car mounted the pavement and hit them. I’m not sure there was any attempt to take anything other than lives, but maybe it was an accident or something else. We’ll see. In any event, I don’t see it as anything to defend. And yes, I think it’s a ‘shame’. I have yet to see anything in it that suggests a battle of class against class.

As for shop-keepers: maybe not my best choice of words but I’m trying to get to an attitude of the proletariat to other strata who are not the bourgeoisie: a rather large section of the world population if you consider the lower ranks of peasants, the billions of dispossessed who are neither workers nor exploiters, etc. Convert them at the point of a gun? Or show them, concretely, why their interests lie with the proletariat? As yet, I’m not convinced that burning down their homes or means of subsistence is the best way. But if you know better...

Azula

18th August 2011, 18:53

Sadly, these riots have not even failed.

They cannot fail because they did not have any objectives. They were born out of poverty and desperation. Those who were most affected by them were women and minorities, in a negative sense.

They strengthened the solidarity with the state (people protesting against the rioters). They gave the state an excuse to increase the oppression of the working masses.

A clear sign is the lack of leadership which could have crystallised in the formation of a Vanguard Party. A Vanguard Party is essential in order to agitate, guide and lead the masses towards the Revolution.

S.Artesian

18th August 2011, 21:27

Lurch wrote:

“Despite all the frothing of S Artesian, despite his claims that the riots break or challenge the cycle of capitalist accumulation or commodity relations, the truth is they don't.”

S Artesian wrote:

“Where have I claimed any such thing? What I have said is that the riots do NOT represent actions taken in accordance with capitalist ideology.”

I’m happy to correct my misrepresentation of your position. You have not used the words “the riots break or challenge the cycle of capitalist commodity relations.”

Thank you very much.

I’ll also note, while correctly calling me out on my error, you haven’t replied to what I said: “Capitalist ideology embraces grab what you can. Is, in the words of gangsta-rappa 50 cent, "get rich or die trying." Is everyman for himself.” First off, I don't think capitalist ideology has importance here. Of all things capitalist ideology is, the most important thing it is is the fact that it is self-contradictory. So part of it is, at times, "smash and grab," while part of it is "abstinence," "save and invest." Some of it is "invisible hand, free market, entrepreneur" while at the same time being iron fist, state contracts, and bureaucratically conservative to the nth degree. Some of it is separating other people from their money, while at the same time proclaiming the inviolability of private property.

If you want to judge events by the apparent manifestations of bourgeois ideology, then go right ahead. But the nature of such ideology is that it is immaterial, it is designed to obscure, not clarify, class relations. As such applying the label of "capitalist ideology" to a struggle that clearly has its origins in the oppression, the impoverishment, the brutality imposed on poor and working class people is, like capitalist ideology itself, obfuscating.

This ideology, IMO, was very much present in these riots – along with other elements, of course - and tends in the opposite direction of proletarian solidarity, in fact hindered it quite concretely, specifically in the growing campaign against the police shooting of Mark Duggan. The atmosphere of solidarity within and between working class members of different ethnic origins – and far outside the community in which it occurred - against police repression in general and this state crime in particular has now been utterly drowned by the current river of repression which is today far more widely tolerated or even demanded than it was two weeks ago.
Same old, same old. "current river of repression." That's always the complaint. Look the "capitalist ideology" content of these actions has absolutely nothing to do with the "river of repression." The fact that young people fought the police has everything to do with the river of repression. WTF? Why do we have to hear the same old song everytime some group has the temerity to fight violence with violence?

This could have been the most class-conscious rebellion ever, with gangsters excluded by the kids, and you know what? The repression would have been the same if not worse.... and the cops would have been sending the gangsters in to fuck with the kids.

How do I know? Because we have that experience. In the US, in Detroit in 1967, we had a class conscious rebellion. Was the repression any less severe?

It’s my subjective judgement, but I believe the random, and not so random murders and the burning of buildings with proletarians inside have completely overshadowed any genuine moments of anti-state protest contained within the riots and have turned large numbers of the population against the rioters rather than engendered sympathy for or understanding of their ‘cause’. That’s no reason to join this chorus, of course, but it’s made it much harder, in the immediate, to engender any solidarity for it. It was not that way with the recent student protests: it was not that way with the miners’ strike.
Wait. What miner's strike? You mean the NUM strike in the Thatcher era? Yeah? And how was that handled by the bourgeoisie? Sympathetically, without repression? Are you kidding or what?

I disagree with you when you write that:

“Spontaneous looting by poor kids, initiated by anger over police attacks, is not an expression of capitalist ideology-- the bourgeoisie know that much, which is why the are always more threatened by such spontaneous acts than by the organized, institutionalized, theft that really is an expression of capitalist ideology a la Madoff, Enron, Andy Fastow, Conrad Black etc. And respond in just the measure that they feel that threat."

I don’t think these riots (or riots in general) are any great threat to the bourgeoise. On the contrary, they’ve consciously used the decomposition of their own society against the population in general (including the working class) and the rioters in particular.
Do they threaten the overthrow of capitalism? Of course not. But do they represent the threat of the bourgeoisie not being able to control what happens on the streets? Absolutely. Do they represent the threat of the bourgeoisie not being able to protect that holy of holies, private property? Absolutely.

I don’t think that the bourgeoisie’s response has been in “just the measure that they feel that threat” – it’s been way out of proportion to it precisely because that’s what they can get away with at the present time: they’ve used the riots as an excuse to put in place measures that they’ve long designed and which are aimed at the far more significant class confrontations they anticipate in the future.
So your argument is that the bourgeoisie don't feel threatened, they're just taking advantage of this to increase repression? And why would they do that? For grins and giggles? Just because they feel like it? You don't think they're doing what they're doing because of what they did in the latest budget? And they know this is just the beginning, that there's 2,3 many Greeces in their future?

Patrick Mercer, Tory MP and former officer in the British army, was asked whether they should have sent in the army to support the police? His response was "Oh heavens, no, it's not the revolution or anything, just youths rioting..." I agree, it's youth rioting, it's not a revolution. But they're not rioting like mods and rockers rioted at Brighton. They're rioting because they've been fucked over by the bourgeoisie's armed guards, the police.

The discussion will continue (though not with me until next week). Denouncing the hypocrisy of the bourgeoisie “
A class that has and continues to distribute lies, distortions, in order to further slavery, impoverishment, wars against other countries has no business applying "justice" to these rioters.” is IMO the priority at present.

While maintaining my disagreements with you, again my apologies for attributing to you words or positions that you did not utter and don’t defend.Thank you again.

robbo203

18th August 2011, 23:33

I don't think anyone here is completely uncritical of what occurred during the London Rebellion. I think the problem here is that your criticism, and that of many others, has effectively boiled down to defense of the petty bourgeoisie against poor working-class youth. To that extent, I do think the criticism is more than fair; it is essential.

I think I made it quite clear at the outset that I have mixed feeling on the riots, that these have had both positive and negative aspects. As far as the latter is concerned I am critical of the anti-working class stance of some of the rioters in attacking fellow workers, destroying their limited possessions and despoiling working class districts. It is disingenuous to suggest that my criticisms "effectively boiled down to defense of the petty bourgeoisie against poor working-class youth". It is not the so called petty bourgeosie that I am primarily concerned with here but rather with what even you would recognise as members of the working class, some of whom have been the victiims of these events. I dont thinlk we should be mealy mouthed about this and it is not good enough to say you are not "completely uncritical". Call a spade a spade. Such action is anti-working class and moreover has had the effect of boosting reactionary opinion as well as the power of the state to stifle protest and dissent. You surely do not approve of that, do you?.

Is it true that "status is tied to wealth" -- that "those at the top of the pile tend to be looked up to; those at the bottom ridiculed and sneered at by the likes of Mr Hastings and many others"? Yes, but it is besides the point. Consumerism a by-product of capitalism, not the other way around. To put it another way, consumerism is one form that the capitalist mode of production creates and uses as a means of maximizing profits. It is a bourgeois ideology, not a bourgeois economic model.

No it is not besides the point. It is the point. The fact that consumerism may be a by-product of capitalism is neither here nor there. It feeds back into the system and bolsters it. It is an aspect of the ideology that sustains capitalism.You yourself acknowlege this when you agree that it used to maximise profits. In that connection, I am puzzled by your remark that it "is a bourgeois ideology, not a bourgeois economic model". Did I say anything to contradict that? What I am saying is that it is bourgeois ideology put to the service of a bourgeois economic model - capitalism
Now, dont get me wrong.. I am not saying that that the riots were nothing more than a manifestation of this "bourgeois ideology". That would be absurd and I have never claimed that. The riots were a much more complex and mixed phenomenon. All I ever asserted is that a "consumerism" or a consumerist values were an element in the riots. This can hardly be denied unless you want to stick your head in the sand ostrich like and ignore it. Listen to some of the televised interviews of looters - as I have - and hear for yourself...
There is where the argument about status ties in. In capitalist society, status is closely linked with economic performace, with the accumulation of wealth. Do you wish to argue against this claim as well? We are all of us immersed in a society that is sustained and upheld by set of values that expresses itself in the way in which we regard each other in terms of status. It would be absolutely astounding, on the face of it, to suggest that the rioters were completely immune to the background effects of such a value system. - -particularly as there was little to suggest that rioters themselves were by and large motivated by what might called an anti capitalist sentiment. More accurately, what the bulk of them would seem to have been motivated by is the effects of the capitalist system and the (quite justified) resentment this incurs rather than capitalism as such.. This was no proto socialist revolution in the making. Lets not kid ourselves here!
I think your treatment of the way in which consumersist ideology interweaves with, and impacts upon, the expression of rioting is naive, simplistic, one-dimensional and utterly reductionist. You seem to have a romantic attachment to the idea that the riots were some kind of ant-capitalist protest, pure and simple. There is of course an element of that and I do not wish to deny that but there was alsovery clearly an element that was fully consistent with capitalist values in the form of consumerist ideology which you yourself have agreed serves to bolster capitalism and its needs for profit maximisation. The very fact that aspects of the riot took on a distinctly anti working class character in the form of attacks on fellow workers would seem to vindicate this point

I was offended by the very idea that two classes occupying different relationships to each other and to the mode of production could be amalgamated for no reason other than income. (More on this below.)
So, classes are "not particularly relevant when discussing the basic economic relations of capitalism"?
I have to admit, I am completely floored by this statement. It has to be one of the most anti-Marxist comments I've heard from a so-called Marxist. It completely flies in the face of the entire body of Marx's work. In fact, I'd go so far to say it's a slap in the face to Marx and his legacy.
Class is not based on income. Classes are defined by their relationship to the mode of production, and delineated by their relations with other classes. It is wholly irrelevant if a petty bourgeois lives on an income lower than that of a worker. What matters is that the proletarian, unlike the petty bourgeois, owns no capital; he or she only owns their ability to work (their labor-power), and that is all the proletarian can sell. The petty bourgeois, on the other hand, has a small amount of capital (hence the term "petty bourgeois", as opposed to the greater bourgeois), and can develop that into a large amount. That is a fundamental difference between proletarian and petty bourgeois.

Let me try to make sense of all the above. It is clear to me that you have grossly misunderstood my position
Your assertion that "Class is not based on income" is true up to a point but only tells half the story. When I said "I don't particularly object to the term "petty bourgeois" any more than I object to the term "middle class" providing it is understood that this is a sociological construction ; it is not particularly relevant when discussing the basic economic relations of capitalism" - this meant something quite other than what you seem to think it did.. I am actually asserting the primacy of class in Marxian economic terms as indicator of one's relation to the means of production.. I am saying other forms of classifying people may be interesting for other purposes (eg identifying so called "middle class" comsumption habits for the purposes of market research) but are not relevant to an understanding of the dymanics of capitalism.
Now we come to the question of the so called petty bourgeoisie and the proletariat - do they really have a fundamentally different relationship to the means of production. I would say, by and large, no. There are differences obviously but they are not fundamental
Look at the facts. First consider the position of what you call the proletariat. Do they own no means of production - no capital - whatosever, as you claim? Absolutely none whatsoever? I dont think so. In fact, most proletarians have some form of savings. Some even have shares. Many contribute to pension funds which are invested in industry. According to this site:
It has been estimated that pension fund holdings account for about one-third of the world’s total share capital – and significantly more in some countries such as the United Kingdom and the United States. (http://www.workerscapital.org/faq/)
Does that mean that all these millions upon millions of workers investing in industry through pension fuinds and other forms of institutional equity have become capitalists? Of course not. This is where your assertion that class is not based on income only tells half the story. It neglects to talk about unearned income from the ownership of capital. In that respect the more unearnedd income you have at your disposal the greater the probability of falling within the ranks of capitalist class. This is where changes in quantity signify changes in quality. Its a spectrum along which our class postion can be plotted and where one class essentially shades into the other at some point. . Most worlkers are clearly workers; most capitalists are clearly capitalists but there is grey area in between. My definition of a capitalist is someone who clearly owns sufficient capital to exempt him or her from the need to earn a living. It is a generalisation. People who dont possess sufficient capital to exempt them from the need to earn a living are working class. This in my book includes what you call the petty bourgeoisie some of whose income can be considerably less than some workers as you seem to agree.
You talk about the petit bourgeoisie owning a small amount of capital of production. Not that different from many workers then! . Actually even this may be somewhat misleading since many of them simply borrow capital from the financial insititutions when they set up their little corner shop and often have to pay it back at extortionate rates. Such individuals are at the mercy of financial capital in other words. What they are in effect is lottle more gloriifed salespeople multifariously ermployed by the companies whose products they display on their shelves. Their payment takes the form of a cut from the proceeds of the sale. Neverthless even where they do "own" their own establishments they do not own sufficient capital to exempt them from the need to earn a living. They are obliged to work. That makes them working class in my book.
If it were the case that workers were simply those who sold their labour power to a capitalist in retrun for a wage then it would seem to follow that for the duration that one was unemployed. one would not be a member of the working class . You might be called a potential member of the working class but you could not actually be called a member of the workling class by this defintion. Admittedly there is a strong historically contingent association between wage work and the working class inasmuch as the overwhelming bulk of the working class are and have been wage workers but that does not preclude other cateories of worker who similarly lack sufficient capital to live upon and must also be considered part of the working class - loke the unemployed
Marx himself was clear that the unemployed were part of the working class . Thus in Capital vol 1 chapter 25, he says:

"Taking them as a whole, the general movements of wages are exclusively regulated by the expansion and contraction of the industrial reserve army, and these again correspond to the periodic changes of the industrial cycle. They are, therefore, not determined by the variations of the absolute number of the working population, but by the varying proportions in which the working-class is divided into active and reserve army, by the increase or diminution in the relative amount of the surplus-population, by the extent to which it is now absorbed, now set free."
But note that the unemployed are not actually employed - obviously. They are not actually selling their labour power for a wage, are they? They, in other words, only potential members of the working class according to your definition of working class. This idea of potentiality for wage employment as an additional indicator of class staus is important because it applies also to the petty bourgeosie. You say The petty bourgeois, on the other hand, has a small amount of capital (hence the term "petty bourgeois", as opposed to the greater bourgeois), and can develop that into a large amount. That is a fundamental difference between proletarian and petty bourgeois.. The marxist position on the other hand, instead of seeing the petty bourgeosie as being a step on the road to become big capitalists as you seem to do, takes the opposite view. In the Communist Manifesto we see Marx and Engels foreseeing the effective disappearance of the petit bourgeoise altogether
"Society as a whole is more and more splitting up... into two great classes facing each other -- bourgeoisie and proletariat".
If the mere potential to become wage workers signifies one's working class status as in the case of the unempoyed then so too does it in the case of the self-employed petit bourgeoise. According to Marx they have a far greater potential become wage workers than capitalists and since this potential exists in the case of the unemployed which are clearly part of the working class then this must clearly suggest that the petit bourgeoise are likewise working class.
Om amy case, merely working for a wage or salary cannot possibly be the primary indicator of working class status (even though clearly the great bulk of the working class do actually earn a wage or salary). If being paid a wage or salary meant you were a member of the working class that would many CEOs would be members oif the working class. The average income of a CEO in top 500 US corpoatrions is about 19 million dollars per year

Let's see if I can be direct and to-the-point here:... You're wrong. Moseley is wrong. Revolutionary Perspectives is wrong.
Let's start with Marx's definition of productive labor:
This is a rather straightforward definition of productive labor: any worker who creates surplus value, and thus capital, for their employer is productive. Further into the manuscript, Marx expands on this point:
What Marx is saying here is rather simple: Any worker whose labor produces surplus value (profit), and thus capital, is a productive worker. The cashier at the local supermarket is a productive worker because s/he creates capital for his/her employer, the owners of the store. The office worker whose job is to compile and update spreadsheets of customers, inventory, accounts receivable/payable, etc., is a productive worker because his or her work helps create capital for their employer. The same is true for the fast-food restaurant employee, the retail associate at the local clothing store, and so on.
So, who are the unproductive laborers, in Marx's view? For starters, the self-employed (the genuinely self-employed, that is, not the so-called "self-employed" who are generating capital for their "contracted" employer). He also names craftsmen (gardeners, tailors, etc.), civil and private servants, independent professionals (doctors, lawyers, engineers and technicians), the police and military, managers, etc. When it came to the professionals and craftsmen, Marx did account for some of them to become productive laborers, provided the body of their work was performed exclusively for an employer for the purposes of creating and valorizing capital. Civil servants he saw as unproductive, but still a part of the working class. Marx saw the private soldier as a "worker in uniform", but considered their labor to be unproductive (the corps of officers and NCOs were seen as the military's management, and thus petty bourgeois). As for the rest, though, Marx saw them as a part of the petty bourgeoisie -- the "overlookers, bailiffs and shopmen". For the record, a "shopman" is the same as a small business owner or shopkeeper.
.[/QUOTE]
We can agree on one thing - that a productive worker is any worker whose labour produces surplus value. In other words whose labour produces a commodity. Labour that does not produce commodites - goods or services sold on a market with a view to profi - t is unproducive labour.

Unfortunately as is clear from the above, your intertpretation of what all this means leaves a lot to be desired. For instance. you assert that the "cashier at the local supermarket is a productive worker because s/he creates capital for his/her employer, the owners of the store". Not so. What commpoditiy oes the cashier produce? None at all, The cashier is simply enabling rthe realisation of the value already embodied in the commodity to be realised through market sale. What happens is that the manufacturing capitalists sell their products below their value and thus surrender a portion of that surplus value, extracted from the producing workers, to the buyer or in this case the supermaket. So that the work that the cashier does is wholly unproductive. It does not create surplus value but it enables the supermarket to take its share of the surplus value created atthe point of production

There is an interesting website called Kapitalism 101 which you should perhaps have a look at. Here's something from it that I have copied and pasted:

What about financial services? banks? etc. These branches of industry don’t even create use values. Instead they merely transfer money from one place to another. That’s how they make a profit.
Banks for instance. Banks loan money to capitalists. Capitalists exploit their workers. They use some of this surplus product to pay back their loans/interest to banks. So banks are just siphoning off the value created elsewhere in the economy. Similarly, banks loan to workers. Workers create value at work and get paid for a portion of that value. They then have to hand over a portion of that value to landlords, banks and mortgage companies- all institutions that merely siphon off value created elsewhere.
So we can say that nobody who works in the financial service sector creates commodities. Nobody creates surplus value. Surplus value is merely being taken from elsewhere. The fact that these companies bring in such huge profits is a testament to how powerful and crucial the institutions of finance are in a capitalist economy. (topic for another time)
http://kapitalism101.wordpress.com/who-is-exploited/

Another quite useful link is Mick Brook's article on productive and unproductive labour which refers to Fred Moseley's thesis which you confidently dismiss as being "wrong" without really being aware of what is actually meant by unproductive labour in the first place. You quote the quotes but you evidently dont quite grasp what is being said. Here's the link anyway http://www.marxist.com/unproductive-labour1981.htm

The question of unproductive labour relates to the question of class in an interesting way. You make the point that the self-employed are both unproductive laborers and petty bourgeois at the same time. Certaionly there is a similarity between the position of the small shopkeer and the unproductive worker. Both are effectively paid out of surplus of value rather than produce surplus value. But that does not mean the unproductive worker is not a member of the working class any more than the small shopkeeper.

While I would argue that the logic of Marx's postion tends to supports this conclusion for the reasons given, at the end of the day, notwithstanding whatever venerable quotes from Marx youcan haul out and dust off which might say thecontrary, I take my own psition on the matter. In the end, it really doesnt matter to me should Marx consider the petty bourgeoisie to be a class separate from the working class. He would be wrong in that case, in my view, and it would not be the first time he would be wrong.

To me class in a capitalist society fundamentally turns on the question of wherther you possess sufficient capital to live upon the proceeds of exploitation or not; everything else is secondary by comparison

Martin Blank

19th August 2011, 00:51

So, my better judgment has now been affirmed. This was never about varying interpretations of Marx; it was about robbo all this time. Case in point:

In the end, it really doesnt matter to me should Marx consider the petty bourgeoisie to be a class separate from the working class. He would be wrong in that case, in my view, and it would not be the first time he would be wrong.

To me class in a capitalist society fundamentally turns on the question of whether you possess sufficient capital to live upon the proceeds of exploitation or not; everything else is secondary by comparison

I will leave robbo to joust at his windmills now. I'm sure he can find someone to act as his Sancho Panza.

A Marxist Historian

19th August 2011, 05:10

Then what is it?:confused:

I'm not totally sure what it is actually, you really have to have been there to be sure and I'm not. But I do know what it is not.

It is not an ideology, whatever it is.

-M.H.-

S.Artesian

19th August 2011, 05:27

In the end, it really doesnt matter to me should Marx consider the petty bourgeoisie to be a class separate from the working class. He would be wrong in that case, in my view, and it would not be the first time he would be wrong.

To me class in a capitalist society fundamentally turns on the question of wherther you possess sufficient capital to live upon the proceeds of exploitation or not; everything else is secondary by comparison

This is so fundamentally incorrect that it is mind boggling. Somehow relations to the means of production doesn't matter. A petit-bourgeois who makes his/her money exploiting a smaller group of workers is, according to this, a worker himself/herself.

A shopkeeper is attached to property, a commercial property as a source of income. A worker is attached to his labor power. The worker creates surplus value. The petit-bourgeois does not. You can quote Moseley all you want about productive and unproductive workers, that still doesn't make a petit-bourgeois a worker, a source of surplus value.

Capitalist society fundamentally turns on the accumulation of value, on the valorization of the production process. That's what it turns on. Whether or not the petit bourgeois possesses sufficient capital to live upon the proceeds of exploitation--- which means I guess the petit-bourgeois has enough capital to command wage-labor to valorize that capital-- is completely immaterial. Society as such doesn't "turn" on the question of the petit-bourgeoisie. It turns on the contradiction in the accumulation of value, in the conflict between means and relations of production which originates in and exclusively in the organization of labor as wage-labor, and the organization of the means of production as private property requiring that wage labor in order to propagate as capital.

robbo203

19th August 2011, 07:26

This is so fundamentally incorrect that it is mind boggling. Somehow relations to the means of production doesn't matter. A petit-bourgeois who makes his/her money exploiting a smaller group of workers is, according to this, a worker himself/herself.

A shopkeeper is attached to property, a commercial property as a source of income. A worker is attached to his labor power. The worker creates surplus value. The petit-bourgeois does not. You can quote Moseley all you want about productive and unproductive workers, that still doesn't make a petit-bourgeois a worker, a source of surplus value.

Capitalist society fundamentally turns on the accumulation of value, on the valorization of the production process. That's what it turns on. Whether or not the petit bourgeois possesses sufficient capital to live upon the proceeds of exploitation--- which means I guess the petit-bourgeois has enough capital to command wage-labor to valorize that capital-- is completely immaterial. Society as such doesn't "turn" on the question of the petit-bourgeoisie. It turns on the contradiction in the accumulation of value, in the conflict between means and relations of production which originates in and exclusively in the organization of labor as wage-labor, and the organization of the means of production as private property requiring that wage labor in order to propagate as capital.

No I dont think it is incorrect at all. You and Miles have entirely missed the point. Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital. If you possess a lot of capital you are a capitalist, if you possess little or none you are a worker and you are obliged to earn a living. Thats the key thing and that what signfies a relationship difference. Quantitative differences transform into qualitative - or relational - differences

There is a spectrum along which class position (and hence one's differential relation to the means of production) can be plotted. Most capitalists are clearly capitalists. Most workers are clearly workers. But there is a grey area in between in which working class gradually shades into capitalist class.

You and Miles present a view of capitalism which is, frankly, unreal. You ignore my point about the unemployed which technically, according to your definition could not be part of the working class. You suggest that workers own no capital but that is complete nonsense . Most workers own some capital, however paltry. You say A shopkeeper is attached to property, a commercial property as a source of income. A worker is attached to his labor power. But what of the small shopkeeper who employs no one and iis likewise totally dependent on the exertion of his own labour? How can he not be considered a member of the working class.?

You say:

The worker creates surplus value. The petit-bourgeois does not. You can quote Moseley all you want about productive and unproductive workers, that still doesn't make a petit-bourgeois a worker, a source of surplus value

But many workjers do not create surplus value either - do not produce commodities - and therefore cannot be a source of surplus value. They are paid out of surplus value and it aid its realisation for the most part - like the small shopkeer

I think the main difference between my position and that of you and Miles is that I want to maximise the size of the class that has a vested interesting in overthrowing capuitalism and establishing common ownership. You guys seem intent on whittling it down according to your very narrow defintion of what that class consists in to only individuals who earn a wage , own no capital and create surplus value. Probably a minority of the population.

S.Artesian

19th August 2011, 17:25

No I dont think it is incorrect at all. You and Miles have entirely missed the point. Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital. If you possess a lot of capital you are a capitalist, if you possess little or none you are a worker and you are obliged to earn a living. Thats the key thing and that what signfies a relationship difference. Quantitative differences transform into qualitative - or relational - differences

I'm aware that you don't think your statements are incorrect, comrade. This statement, however: "Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital" is both a tautology and meaningless, when the means of production themselves are constituted as capital. So... we have the "relations to capital do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital."

Got it. Sure. What does that mean?

Better yet is to define what it means to "possess capital"? It means to be able to purchase the materials of production and purchase wage-labor.

If you possess capital, property that can command the labor of others, you're a capitalist. If you possess property that commands the labor of just a few others, you're a smaller capitalist, a petit-bourgeoisie.

If you're a consultant, independent, using only "your own labor" under contract what in essence are you doing? How are you obtaining your revenue? Your are obtaining your revenue by making a claim against the value generated by the workers of, and expropriated by the company that has your contract. You're a petit-bourgeois.

If you're a shopkeeper, taking articles on consignment or on contract, and selling them, what in essence are you doing? Attempting to realize a portion of the value extracted from the labor of others. You are a petit-bourgeois.

You and Miles present a view of capitalism which is, frankly, unreal. You ignore my point about the unemployed which technically, according to your definition could not be part of the working class.

For the nth time, no that's not what has been stated. Capital generates and aggrandizes surplus value in its real domination of labor by reducing the necessary labor time, affording more surplus labor time. This is accomplished by expelling labor from the production process, proportionately and absolutely. Just as the surplus value depends on the expulsion of labor, reducing the total necessary labor time, so capital's reproduction depends on changing the proportion between employed and unemployed sections of the working class.

You suggest that workers own no capital but that is complete nonsense . Most workers own some capital, however paltry. You say A shopkeeper is attached to property, a commercial property as a source of income. A worker is attached to his labor power. But what of the small shopkeeper who employs no one and iis likewise totally dependent on the exertion of his own labour? How can he not be considered a member of the working class.?

Already answered that. Some workers own some capital. I do not know that most workers in the real world own some capital. Maybe a significant section of workers own some capital in the sense of investments in pension plans, 401ks and the like in the US. I don't know that either. Nevertheless that doesn't count as capital as the workers don't use that to employ the labor of others. Are they claiming a portion of the labor of others? Absolutely. They're claiming a portion of the surplus value generated by those others who are in fact themselves, the social class of workers. That's what you miss completely in your analysis.

You say:

The worker creates surplus value. The petit-bourgeois does not. You can quote Moseley all you want about productive and unproductive workers, that still doesn't make a petit-bourgeois a worker, a source of surplus value

But many workjers do not create surplus value either - do not produce commodities - and therefore cannot be a source of surplus value. They are paid out of surplus value and it aid its realisation for the most part - like the small shopkeer

Some workers do not create surplus value, the social class of workers creates all surplus value. No part of the petit-bourgeois creates surplus value. Again it's the social class relation that remains invisible to you.

I think the main difference between my position and that of you and Miles is that I want to maximise the size of the class that has a vested interesting in overthrowing capuitalism and establishing common ownership. You guys seem intent on whittling it down according to your very narrow defintion of what that class consists in to only individuals who earn a wage , own no capital and create surplus value. Probably a minority of the population.

Minority, majority isn't the issue... unless of course you're a follower of DNZ and his crackpot Ceaserism and "democratic dictatorship," which I know you are not.

What counts is the material structure of capitalism, and the conflict embedded at the core of its expanded reproduction. What counts is the social relation of production, the social formation of the class that has the organization, and the need to overthrow capitalism. The petit-bourgeois has no such conflict with expanded reproduction. It does not have that social relation or that social formation, and it certainly does not have the need to overthrow capitalism.

robbo203

20th August 2011, 08:49

I'm aware that you don't think your statements are incorrect, comrade. This statement, however: "Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital" is both a tautology and meaningless, when the means of production themselves are constituted as capital. So... we have the "relations to capital do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital."

Got it. Sure. What does that mean?

Better yet is to define what it means to "possess capital"? It means to be able to purchase the materials of production and purchase wage-labor.

If you possess capital, property that can command the labor of others, you're a capitalist. If you possess property that commands the labor of just a few others, you're a smaller capitalist, a petit-bourgeoisie.

If you're a consultant, independent, using only "your own labor" under contract what in essence are you doing? How are you obtaining your revenue? Your are obtaining your revenue by making a claim against the value generated by the workers of, and expropriated by the company that has your contract. You're a petit-bourgeois.

If you're a shopkeeper, taking articles on consignment or on contract, and selling them, what in essence are you doing? Attempting to realize a portion of the value extracted from the labor of others. You are a petit-bourgeois.

Already answered that. Some workers own some capital. I do not know that most workers in the real world own some capital. Maybe a significant section of workers own some capital in the sense of investments in pension plans, 401ks and the like in the US. I don't know that either. Nevertheless that doesn't count as capital as the workers don't use that to employ the labor of others. Are they claiming a portion of the labor of others? Absolutely. They're claiming a portion of the surplus value generated by those others who are in fact themselves, the social class of workers. That's what you miss completely in your analysis.

Some workers do not create surplus value, the social class of workers creates all surplus value. No part of the petit-bourgeois creates surplus value. Again it's the social class relation that remains invisible to you.

.

I am not quite sure that I understand the drift of what it is you are objecting to about my analysis. To preface my comments in response, let me just take up a point you made in an earlier post. In response to my remark that class in capitalist society turns on the question of whether or not you possess sufficient capital to live upon without the need to work, you said

This is so fundamentally incorrect that it is mind boggling. Somehow relations to the means of production doesn't matter.

Well, no, its not a question of being fundamentally correct or incorrect. I can classify people in as many different ways as I choose - and quite legitmately. I can classfy them according to educational background, accent, occupational type and even hair colour if I so want. None of these classificatory schemas would be correct or incorrect. What you really mean to say is whether one schema is appropriate or not and that depends on the purpose for which you devise. In this respect we are talking about explicating the the real underlying class dynamics of capitalism.

What you might want to say is that the class criterion I am advancing above is fundamentally inccorect insofar as it purports to claim to be how, say, Marx saw things. This is possible but it cannot be "fundamentally incorrect" in itself. Whether it conforms to Marx's view on the matter is another question. And ,to be honest, for me that is not a particularly important question. If I have departed from the Marxian class schema - though this is by no means clear - then so be it. There are a number of other things that Marx said that I dont agree with anyway. Im no slavish follower of Marx...

Now you say:

This statement, however: "Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital" is both a tautology and meaningless, when the means of production themselves are constituted as capital

I dont quite follow this. Maybe Im a bit thick or maybe I just not able to explain myself well enough but what I am trying to say here is that the mere possession of capital itself is a necessary but not sufficient grounds for calling someone a capitalist. It depends rather on how much capital one possesses. My point is that if you dont possess enough capital to live upon without the need to work then you are not a capitalist. You belong to the class that needs to work - in whatever form this need expresses itself - in order to obtain a living. In short you are a member of the "working" class, the class that works for a living

I agree with you when you say that to "possess capital" means "to be able to purchase the materials of production and purchase wage-labor". But this ability depends on, or correlates with, how much capital you have to do this in the first place. Having a little bit of capital will enable you to purchase some materials and some wage labour but it may not be enough to exempt you from the need to work yourself

Most people possess some capital, however paltry. This foes not make most people capitalists. Thatcher's mantra about a "property owning democracy", John Majors idea of a "classless society" and similar claims by the Right that we are "all capitalists now" are simply not credible for this reason. However, people on the Left are playing into the hands of those who make such claims by insisting on some kind of absolutist distinction - that workers are those who possess absolutely no capital or means of production - and not seeing that what crucally matters is how much capital you possess and not whether or not you possess capital as such.

Maybe it was the case in Marx's time that, generally speaking, the working class did not own capital. But it is certainly not the case today and we have got to move with the times and update our analysis of capitalist society accordingly. We cannot just resort to dusting off and displaying on our mantelpeice some old quote from Marx. This is simply not tenable or credible.

Now you agree that some workers own capital though you question the extent of worker-owned capital. At least in the industrialised countries I would say a majority own some form of financial asset like a savings account, pension plan, endowment policy or even the odd bond or share certificate It might not amount to much but that is the point, isnt it? They dont own enough to live off such capital. That is why they have to work to earn a living. This includes the self employed

You then say something which I find a little strange - perhaps you could elaborate on this?:

Nevertheless that doesn't count as capital as the workers don't use that to employ the labor of others. Are they claiming a portion of the labor of others? Absolutely. They're claiming a portion of the surplus value generated by those others who are in fact themselves, the social class of workers. That's what you miss completely in your analysis

So the workers are claiming a portion of the labour of others but nevertheless dont employ others. I dont get this. Some capitalists have a share portfolio with investment spread across several companies/industries. They might not be the "employers" that you would approach for a job or negotiate wages over - that would technically be the management headed by the CEO - but you woludnt want to say that the investments that these anonymous capitalists make in a company (probably via an investment broker/xounsltant) is not "capital", would you? So likewise when pension funds which represent a form of worker owned capital are invested in industry this does not mean it ceases to be "capital "becuase the workers who contributed to these funds are not directly involved in the employment of other workers

You say:

they're claiming a portion of the surplus value generated by those others who are in fact themselves. But all this amounts to saying that I as a worker benefit from the exploitation of my fellow workers via my capital contribution, albeit to a very small extent. In the gransd scheme of things this is not particularly socially significant but you cannot nevertheless make an absolutist claim on the basis of this - that it "doesn't count as capital as the workers don't use that to employ the labor of others" They do though not directly and not in a big way

It is this absolutist conception of what constitutes a capitalist that I am questioi8ning . You say If you possess capital, property that can command the labor of others, you're a capitalist. But you admit that workers can and do own capital. Does that mean that those workers that own capital are capitalists too? Something just doesnt add up here.

You need some other criterion by which to differentiate workers and capitalists than the mere possesion of capital and that has to be logically how much capital you possess , the determining consideration here being whether or not you can live off it without the need to work. This way of classifying people into classes in a capitalist society is far more appropriate in my view than merely saying you work for a wage and that makes you a worker. CEOs also work for a wage but they are clearly not members of the working class/

One final thing you say

Some workers do not create surplus value, the social class of workers creates all surplus value. No part of the petit-bourgeois creates surplus value.

This is kind of assuming what you need to prove, isnt it? - that the self employed are not part of the working class. If some workers do not create surplus value and all the self employed do not create surplus value how does that preclude the latter from being members of the working class? Self edvidntly you cannot say that the mere fact that you do not produce surplus value means you are not a member of the working class since youve just admitted that some workers - unproductive workers - dont produce surplus vlaue.

So what is this other thing that disallows you from including the self empoyed in the working class. The fact that they "own" capital (or rather borrow capital in many cases). But then you have also admitted that many workers own capital. So that too cannot be the reason

Minority, majority isn't the issue... unless of course you're a follower of DNZ and his crackpot Ceaserism and "democratic dictatorship," which I know you are not.

What counts is the material structure of capitalism, and the conflict embedded at the core of its expanded reproduction. What counts is the social relation of production, the social formation of the class that has the organization, and the need to overthrow capitalism. The petit-bourgeois has no such conflict with expanded reproduction. It does not have that social relation or that social formation, and it certainly does not have the need to overthrow capitalism.

I havent really been following the debate on Ceaserism and, to be honest, I have no idea what its about. But as far as the numbers game is concered I think it absolutely does matter that we see the working class as the great majority and that this great majority should become convinced and conscious of the communist alternative to capitalism before we can have such alternative. Really the Communist Manifesto says it all

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority (Chapter 1. "Bourgeois and Proletarians" Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848)

If the working class consists of only those people in society who, literally speaking, have no capital and are therefore compelled to sell their labour ower to the capitalist for a wage and in the process of being employed produce a value that exceeds the value of this wage, then you are clearly not talking about the immense majority anymore. You are talking about a rather small minority.

There is absolutely no way in which you can bring about communism through a small minority. The conflict embedded in the material structure of capitalism does not simply affect those who are productive wage workers without capital but affects also all those who lack sufficient capital to live upon and who are therefore obliged to work - the working class.

You might say that some workers are more predisposed than others to communist ideas because of their material circumstances. The self employed for might for example be more predisposed to entertaining thoughts of embourgeosification, of becoming capitalists as opposed to ordinary workers who can only dream of winning the lottery. But that is a different kind of argument and has to do with the role of false consciousness and the manner in which workers , not just the self employed, can act and think in ways that contradict their own objective interests.

But I very much question the claim that the objective interests of the self employed is what binds them to capitalism. They are more often than not grossly exploited by the big financial capitalists, have to endure financial hardships that do not affect some employed workers to the same extent and exist on a level of income that is often low and erratic.

Trust me on that score because I am speaking from experience, being a self employed gardener myself. It is no bed of roses. Self employment for people like me is more often than not a last resort in the absence of any real opportunity to find even semi reasonable paid employment that will keep the wolf from the door. You might want to say this has contributed to me becoming a communist ;)

brigadista

20th August 2011, 09:17

Please watch this video his upset and his got a right to be angry. His talking about Totenhma and youth problems as well touching jobs problems.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8HFUSPzpi9A&feature=player_embedded

He is also surrounded by mainly yuppies because he is in Clapham one of the most gentrified areas in London where working class people were driven out by sale of social housing and gentrification of the area - those gentry were the ones with the brooms and interesting that area got hit.

S.Artesian

20th August 2011, 16:17

I am not quite sure that I understand the drift of what it is you are objecting to about my analysis. To preface my comments in response, let me just take up a point you made in an earlier post. In response to my remark that class in capitalist society turns on the question of whether or not you possess sufficient capital to live upon without the need to work, you said

This is so fundamentally incorrect that it is mind boggling. Somehow relations to the means of production doesn't matter.

Well, no, its not a question of being fundamentally correct or incorrect. I can classify people in as many different ways as I choose - and quite legitmately. I can classfy them according to educational background, accent, occupational type and even hair colour if I so want. None of these classificatory schemas would be correct or incorrect. What you really mean to say is whether one schema is appropriate or not and that depends on the purpose for which you devise.

Sure you can classify people in any way you choose, and the way you choose is incorrect. You state that your definition, or the criterion you pose for determining class is correct in counter-position to Marx's, which you state is "wrong." You don't say Marx's analysis is "inappropriate"-- you say it's flat out wrong.

And you provide this "correct" explanation:

To me class in a capitalist society fundamentally turns on the question of wherther you possess sufficient capital to live upon the proceeds of exploitation or not; everything else is secondary by comparison So we've established that we can say "right or wrong" regarding this issue.

"Living on the proceeds of exploitation or not" leaves open the question of the ways in which exploitation is transmitted, mediated, and circulated in the society. A farmer who borrows from the bank to finance his/her plantings, to finance his or her own labor, even when and if no other labor is employed, is "living upon the proceeds of exploitation." That's what the domination of labor by capital means. The "individual" labor disappears, is subsumed in the social mode of production.

Said farmer, or shopkeeper, as a social entity, as a class lives upon the proceeds of exploitation. That's called commerce.

A particular individual may or may not operate as a craftsman, on personal retainer, etc. -- any one of a myriad of ways-- but it doesn't matter. What matters is the social reproduction of the class as a social formation.

What you might want to say is that the class criterion I am advancing above is fundamentally inccorect insofar as it purports to claim to be how, say, Marx saw things. This is possible but it cannot be "fundamentally incorrect" in itself.

Again, fundamentally incorrect. That's not what I might say. It is precisely not a question of conforming to Marx's analysis, but whether your analysis conforms to the material reality of how capitalism is organized, maintained, and reproduced.

Marx's analysis matters not because it's Marx's, but because it apprehends that material reality.

This statement, however: "Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital" is both a tautology and meaningless, when the means of production themselves are constituted as capital

I dont quite follow this. Maybe Im a bit thick or maybe I just not able to explain myself well enough but what I am trying to say here is that the mere possession of capital itself is a necessary but not sufficient grounds for calling someone a capitalist. It depends rather on how much capital one possesses. My point is that if you dont possess enough capital to live upon without the need to work then you are not a capitalist. You belong to the class that needs to work - in whatever form this need expresses itself - in order to obtain a living. In short you are a member of the "working" class, the class that works for a living"Work" is precisely not the issue. Quantity of capital is not the issue. The issue is social labor, participation in the class that produces value, or the class that extracts value and that extracting class' administrators, agents, salesmen/women, who realize the extracted value.

Bond traders work, hedge fund managers work, everybody works. If mere quantity of capital is the issue, then the distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie is no longer based in a specific organization of labor as wage-labor, but how much one has been able to accumulate. This fits in so neatly with the bourgeoisie's notions of "entrepreneurship" that in fact accumulation is a product of "hard work" "abstinence" "saving" "risk-taking" blah blah blah.

Following your quantitative distinction, we abandon the specific historic configuration of capital which is based on the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor.

I agree with you when you say that to "possess capital" means "to be able to purchase the materials of production and purchase wage-labor". But this ability depends on, or correlates with, how much capital you have to do this in the first place. Having a little bit of capital will enable you to purchase some materials and some wage labour but it may not be enough to exempt you from the need to work yourself
Possessing capital means to purchase materials of production and wage labor, but the quantity determines what? Whether you have to work yourself? Wait a minute, every factory manager works; every senior manager works. They don't "posses" capital as such, but they sure do live off the proceeds of the exploitation of labor, just as the farmer taking the loan, the shopkeeper working on consignment is living off the exploitation of the labor of others objectified in the commodities they produce or sell which exist as, and only as, capital.

Most people possess some capital, however paltry. This foes not make most people capitalists. Thatcher's mantra about a "property owning democracy", John Majors idea of a "classless society" and similar claims by the Right that we are "all capitalists now" are simply not credible for this reason. However, people on the Left are playing into the hands of those who make such claims by insisting on some kind of absolutist distinction - that workers are those who possess absolutely no capital or means of production - and not seeing that what crucally matters is how much capital you possess and not whether or not you possess capital as such.
And I think you're the one playing directly into these "invisible hands" by making it an issue of quantity, rather than social reproduction, the social organization of labor, the specific function in the accumulation of capital.

Maybe it was the case in Marx's time that, generally speaking, the working class did not own capital. But it is certainly not the case today and we have got to move with the times and update our analysis of capitalist society accordingly. We cannot just resort to dusting off and displaying on our mantelpeice some old quote from Marx. This is simply not tenable or credible.
What capital do the majority of workers own? If we're talking about quantities, then it's important to define these quantities, show how much is where, and how it functions as capital.

Now you agree that some workers own capital though you question the extent of worker-owned capital. At least in the industrialised countries I would say a majority own some form of financial asset like a savings account, pension plan, endowment policy or even the odd bond or share certificate It might not amount to much but that is the point, isnt it? They dont own enough to live off such capital. That is why they have to work to earn a living. This includes the self employed
Savings accounts, pension plans, and even financial instruments owned as part of an individual savings plan do not count as capital. Neither do houses, cars, bicycles, antique collections, stamp collections, rare coins etc etc.

We do NOT define the bourgeoisie by their bigger savings accounts, by their bigger personal consumption, but we identify that bigger savings, that greater consumption as derivative from the social relations of labor, from the exploitation of labor, of the labor of others.

Workers saving money for retirement are not deriving that future basis for consumption by exploiting the labor of others, but just as in the case of increased wages [which these things really are, which is why the bourgeoisie factor in the cost as part of the total wage-bill] through struggle with the bourgeoisie over division of the surplus value extracted from the class as a whole.

You then say something which I find a little strange - perhaps you could elaborate on this?:
See above. I hope that makes it more clear.

One final thing you say

Some workers do not create surplus value, the social class of workers creates all surplus value. No part of the petit-bourgeois creates surplus value.

This is kind of assuming what you need to prove, isnt it? - that the self employed are not part of the working class. If some workers do not create surplus value and all the self employed do not create surplus value how does that preclude the latter from being members of the working class? Self edvidntly you cannot say that the mere fact that you do not produce surplus value means you are not a member of the working class since youve just admitted that some workers - unproductive workers - dont produce surplus vlaue.
Because, again, production of surplus value is not an "individual" process, but a class relation.

Any number of conditions can arise where the bourgeoisie can't extract surplus value on an individual basis-- extraordinary wage increases, bankruptcy and shutdown, employment as civil servants may not yield a surplus value, may not valorize capital in certain areas. Doesn't matter, it's the social relation between labor and capital that determines all these things.

And it is the social relation of the petit-bourgeois as a class to capital, that distinguishes them from workers.

I havent really been following the debate on Ceaserism and, to be honest, I have no idea what its about.
You're better off for not following that debate, believe me.

But as far as the numbers game is concered I think it absolutely does matter that we see the working class as the great majority and that this great majority should become convinced and conscious of the communist alternative to capitalism before we can have such alternative. Really the Communist Manifesto says it all

All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority (Chapter 1. "Bourgeois and Proletarians" Manifesto of the Communist Party 1848)I think it's a hoot that at the start of this discussion you state Marx's analysis of class is wrong, and here you come back to quoting Marx, forgetting that Marx's analysis of majority and minority depends on his determination of class, and on the historical conditions surrounding the writing of the manifesto itself.

This isn't 1848. It's still capitalism, but it's not 1848 capitalism, requiring massive inputs of labor, depending on the formal subsumption of labor rather than the real subsumption of labor in the process of the increasing organic, and technical, composition of capital.

There is absolutely no way in which you can bring about communism through a small minority. The conflict embedded in the material structure of capitalism does not simply affect those who are productive wage workers without capital but affects also all those who lack sufficient capital to live upon and who are therefore obliged to work - the working class.
No one has stated that the conflict embedded in the social organization of capital simply "affects those and only those who are productive wage workers ..." What is stated that only those workers express, live, manifest the condition of labor that propels, compels them to confront capital, to abolish capital.

No, you cannot bring about communism through a small minority, but communism is the product of the revolution, not the producer. The producer is capitalism itself. In this regard the "quantitative" minority is the qualitative majority, in that its interests in abolishing the conditions of exploitation are the interests of the "immense majority."

But I very much question the claim that the objective interests of the self employed is what binds them to capitalism. They are more often than not grossly exploited by the big financial capitalists, have to endure financial hardships that do not affect some employed workers to the same extent and exist on a level of income that is often low and erratic.

And that drives them to embrace corporatism, fascism, etc. etc., to embrace exactly what you argue is their biggest threat. That's what property does to the petit-bourgeois, condemns them to self-destruction all dressed up as "empowerment."

Trust me on that score because I am speaking from experience, being a self employed gardener myself. It is no bed of roses. Self employment for people like me is more often than not a last resort in the absence of any real opportunity to find even semi reasonable paid employment that will keep the wolf from the door. You might want to say this has contributed to me becoming a communist ;)

I understand that, which is why in this and other threads I've argued against the ridiculous statement to tell people to "go find a real job."

robbo203

21st August 2011, 09:08

Sure you can classify people in any way you choose, and the way you choose is incorrect. You state that your definition, or the criterion you pose for determining class is correct in counter-position to Marx's, which you state is "wrong." You don't say Marx's analysis is "inappropriate"-- you say it's flat out wrong.

And you provide this "correct" explanation:

So we've established that we can say "right or wrong" regarding this issue.

No you misunderstand me or I have not made myself clear - the strict definition of working class which you attrribute to Marx is not "wrong" in the sense that there does not exist a group/category/class of individuals who conform to the specifications given. Its just that it is not a very useful classicatory schema. When I talk about something be "wrong" I am referring to the empicial facts that inform such a schema. For example, the notion that workers "own no capital". Some obviously do even if others dont. Therefore if we were to literally apply Engels famous definition of working class as "that 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" (Friedrich Engels: Note to the 1888 English Edition of: Karl Marx & Friedrich Engels: 'Manifesto of the Communist Party') what we would end up is rather small working class. Many workers have financial assets (more anon) which are invested in industry. So what would be "wrong" in this case is to claim both that workers are the majority in society and that the workers own no capital. Buit that does not mean that there does not exist a class of people who literally own no capital

"Living on the proceeds of exploitation or not" leaves open the question of the ways in which exploitation is transmitted, mediated, and circulated in the society. A farmer who borrows from the bank to finance his/her plantings, to finance his or her own labor, even when and if no other labor is employed, is "living upon the proceeds of exploitation." That's what the domination of labor by capital means. The "individual" labor disappears, is subsumed in the social mode of production.

Said farmer, or shopkeeper, as a social entity, as a class lives upon the proceeds of exploitation. That's called commerce.

Yes but the problem with your argument as I said is that precisely the same conclusion can be reached in the case of unproductive workers who dont produce surplus value but instead are paid out of surplus value. You have agreed that unproductive workers exists but that they form part of a class totality which class is constituted by the fact that the class as a whole is an exploited entity. But why do you exclude self employed people, like the above, in that case who do not employ others and who are obliged to work becuase they own little or no capital. A large number of these self employed people are in debt to the financial capitalists who realise their share of the total surplus value inter alia via the interest paid on the loans advanced to these people

A particular individual may or may not operate as a craftsman, on personal retainer, etc. -- any one of a myriad of ways-- but it doesn't matter. What matters is the social reproduction of the class as a social formation.

Again, fundamentally incorrect. That's not what I might say. It is precisely not a question of conforming to Marx's analysis, but whether your analysis conforms to the material reality of how capitalism is organized, maintained, and reproduced.

Marx's analysis matters not because it's Marx's, but because it apprehends that material reality.

I am not saying that the wage labour - capital relation is not the economic engine or driving motor of capitalism or that it does not lie at the heart of the capitalist social reproduction process. The question we are considering is how do different groups or categories of indivbiduals fit into this process - how do you classify them in other words. For example you agree that unproductive workers exist. So , clearly, the term working class cannot simply be restricted to those who produce surplus value. Similarly you agree that the unemployed are part of the working class (that was certainly Marx's view!) so again, you cannot restrict the term working class to just those who sell their labour power. Indeed this would call for a somewhat broader definition and refer to those who need to sell their labour power . Which begs the question - why do they need to? And the answer to that, logically speaking, is that they do not possess sufficient or any capital to live upon. Quantity of capital in one's possession does count , fundamentally - despite what you say - otherwise you cannot really make sense of Marx's own class schema

This statement, however: "Relations to the means of production do matter but express themselves differentially through the possession of capital" is both a tautology and meaningless, when the means of production themselves are constituted as capital

With respect I still dont understand why it is a tautlogy and meaningless. Hold on I see what you may be getting at . Perhaps it is the elliptical manner in which I referred to through the possession of capital. If I rephrased that as through the differential or unequal possession of capital would that be any clearer? Point is that the more capital you possess so your class position changes when a certain threshold is reached. Qauntitive differences change to qualitative differences like I said...

"Work" is precisely not the issue. Quantity of capital is not the issue. The issue is social labor, participation in the class that produces value, or the class that extracts value and that extracting class' administrators, agents, salesmen/women, who realize the extracted value.

Bond traders work, hedge fund managers work, everybody works. If mere quantity of capital is the issue, then the distinction between proletariat and bourgeoisie is no longer based in a specific organization of labor as wage-labor, but how much one has been able to accumulate. This fits in so neatly with the bourgeoisie's notions of "entrepreneurship" that in fact accumulation is a product of "hard work" "abstinence" "saving" "risk-taking" blah blah blah.

No no no - this is where you've got me entirely worng. I am not saying that those who work are working class. Capitalists sometiumes work. CEOs who are paid a wage also work despite being mionor capitalists themselves in my book. I am saying that those who have to work, who are obliged by economic circumstances - they fact that they own little or no capital - who are the working class. I think this evident in Engels definition of working class (see above). It is the effective separation of one group of people from the means of prpduction that constitutes them as the working class. I would not basically diagree with that but would expand it a little or restate it more realistically in terms of individuals not owning sufficient capital to live upon and not just "no capital"

Following your quantitative distinction, we abandon the specific historic configuration of capital which is based on the conflict between labor and the conditions of labor.

But the quantitative distinction is embedded in the very defintion of working class that Engels supplies. Workers have "no means of production" according to him . What is this if not "quantitative"?

Possessing capital means to purchase materials of production and wage labor, but the quantity determines what? Whether you have to work yourself? Wait a minute, every factory manager works; every senior manager works. They don't "posses" capital as such, but they sure do live off the proceeds of the exploitation of labor, just as the farmer taking the loan, the shopkeeper working on consignment is living off the exploitation of the labor of others objectified in the commodities they produce or sell which exist as, and only as, capital.

The quantity of capital you possess determines whether or not you are obliged to work which in turn determines whether or not you are a worker or capitalist. Factory managers who do not possess enough capital to live upon are members of the working class. So are policemen, So is the army recruit. 95+ per cent of the poppulation are working class in this sense. Of course, certain categories within the working class may perform a function that predisposes then to act and think in ways that conflict in ways that conflict with the interests of the working class as a whole. But thats a different matter...

What capital do the majority of workers own? If we're talking about quantities, then it's important to define these quantities, show how much is where, and how it functions as capital.

Savings accounts, pension plans, and even financial instruments owned as part of an individual savings plan do not count as capital. Neither do houses, cars, bicycles, antique collections, stamp collections, rare coins etc etc. .

Hmm. Yes and no. Financial assets minus home equity is really what we are getting at here. I think it is right to exclude home equity becuase one's house is not really a liquid asset in that sense. Unless you are building or doing up your house to sell it I suppose - playing the housing market - but then you still have to have somewhere to live at the end of it. Simliarly I think you are right to exclude antique collections or other objects of financial speculation since this does not actually engage with the process of capitalist reproduction

On the other hand I disagree with your statement that individual savings plans do not count as capital. They clearly do. The money you contribute to the plan is clearly invested as capital. Variable endowment policies where the return on investments can fluctuate brings out this relationship rather well shwoing how such returns are linked to the state of industry generally. Similarly pension plans. The pension fiunds that you contribute to are clearly invested in various companies or industry with a view to obtaining a maximum return

On the extent to which workers own capital - or financal assets minus home equity - there are tons of links on the web. Here's one I just fished out at random http://assets.aarp.org/rgcenter/econ/dd100_inequality.pdf
Its clear that financial assets by quintile are very unequally distributed and have recently become even more so but it is also clear that financial assets are held by most people

We do NOT define the bourgeoisie by their bigger savings accounts, by their bigger personal consumption, but we identify that bigger savings, that greater consumption as derivative from the social relations of labor, from the exploitation of labor, of the labor of others.

.

Yes butr in order to exploit the labour of others the bourgeosie need to possess means of production of their own which takes the form of invested capital or savings or whatever you want to call it..

Workers saving money for retirement are not deriving that future basis for consumption by exploiting the labor of others, but just as in the case of increased wages which these things really are, which is why the bourgeoisie factor in the cost as part of the total wage-bill] through struggle with the bourgeoisie over division of the surplus value extracted from the class as a whole.

.

Techinically speaking, if you invest capital in a business you are necessarily implicated in a process of economic exploitation. Pension funds are widely invested through industry. So the recipients of the accrued benefits - the millions of workers who contribute to these funds - are in a sense benefitting from the exploitation of their fellow workers. It is not reasonable to equate these benefits with that of an increase in wages. I dont see a theoretical problem with this since I dont see that in the larger scheme of things this makes them capitalists at all. They benefit from the proceeds of exploitation in this case but are themselves essentially or primarily exploited agents

This could well amount to an appication of Marx's description of the 'independent' petty bourgeois producer who"... is cut up into two persons. As owner of the means of production he is a capitalist; as a labourer he is his own wage- labourer". (Karl Marx: 'Theories of Surplus Value', Part 1; Moscow; undated; p. 395).

In reality, most of us are "cut up into two persons" in this sense except that the wage labour element or the element of economic compulsion to work is clearly the predominant one. Thats is why the vast majorioty of us are working class - we have to work

One final thing you say
Because, again, production of surplus value is not an "individual" process, but a class relation.

Any number of conditions can arise where the bourgeoisie can't extract surplus value on an individual basis-- extraordinary wage increases, bankruptcy and shutdown, employment as civil servants may not yield a surplus value, may not valorize capital in certain areas. Doesn't matter, it's the social relation between labor and capital that determines all these things.

And it is the social relation of the petit-bourgeois as a class to capital, that distinguishes them from workers.

How is the social relation to capital of someone like myself who is a low paid self employed gardener different from that of my fellow workers. I oiwn precious little in the way of capital - two strimmers (one of which I cannot even afford at present to repair!) , three chainsaws and a collection of rakes , shovels and other rusty old tools). I am more or less permanenly in the red in one of my accounts and the other currently has less than 100 euros. I defy anyone to show that I am not a member of the working class. I dont strictly produce surplus value because the beneficiaries of my gardening skills dont utilise and sell at a profit what i produce or offer. I am an unproductive worker in that sense but my position is fundamentally no different from other unproductive workers who are also part of the working class

I think it's a hoot that at the start of this discussion you state Marx's analysis of class is wrong, and here you come back to quoting Marx, forgetting that Marx's analysis of majority and minority depends on his determination of class, and on the historical conditions surrounding the writing of the manifesto itself.

Well, no, there's nothing strange about that at all. Clearly there is a strong overlap between the way Marx sees or defines working class - or as you minterpet his definition - and how I see it so yes of course I can happily quote Marx to that extent...

No one has stated that the conflict embedded in the social organization of capital simply "affects those and only those who are productive wage workers ..." What is stated that only those workers express, live, manifest the condition of labor that propels, compels them to confront capital, to abolish capital.

So unprpoductiuve workers like me who dont produice surplus value also manifest "the condition of labor that propels, compels them to confront capital, to abolish capital" ;)

No, you cannot bring about communism through a small minority, but communism is the product of the revolution, not the producer. The producer is capitalism itself. In this regard the "quantitative" minority is the qualitative majority, in that its interests in abolishing the conditions of exploitation are the interests of the "immense majority."

But Marx was talking about a "proletarian revolutiuon" and that surely requires us to clearly understand what we mean by proletarian. Capitalism is the producer in the sense that it produces the proletariat that will carry out the revolution

I am not quite sure what you mean when you say "In this regard the "quantitative" minority is the qualitative majority, in that its interests in abolishing the conditions of exploitation are the interests of the "immense majority." Are you saying that the working class in Marxian terms is a minority but neverthless a majority of people will benefit from a working class or proletarian revolution?

.

And that drives them to embrace corporatism, fascism, etc. etc., to embrace exactly what you argue is their biggest threat. That's what property does to the petit-bourgeois, condemns them to self-destruction all dressed up as "empowerment."

I understand that, which is why in this and other threads I've argued against the ridiculous statement to tell people to "go find a real job."[/QUOTE]

S.Artesian

21st August 2011, 16:04

Vladimir Innit Lenin

21st August 2011, 18:28

S.Artesian

21st August 2011, 20:42

What percentage of the US population would you estimate to be workers?

I would hazard that it is more than 51%, and the exact nature of that statistic makes me wonder whether someone (not necessarily you, but perhaps the primary source) has picked the most friendly-suiting figure for their argument.

I wonder if you augment the figure to the bottom 60-65% of the population, a lot more capital would be owned.

So whilst you are correct in saying it's a factual point, per se, it may not be one borne out of absolute neutrality. Especially given that you raise the example where you augment to the bottom 80% owning just 7% of financial assets, an inequality which, whilst headline grabbing, isn't exactly outrageous in a Capitalist society. You wouldn't expect the working class in even a left-Social Democracy to own much of the financial assets of the country.

Indeed, if anything, that the bottom 80% own so little of the financial assets of the country points to that the equivalent bottom 80% have their wealth tied up in real assets, as Robbo said.

Having said this, i've not checked the data for this, so if you wish to challenge me with statistics then that'd be welcome and insightful, comrade. Was just a quick thought of mine.:)

I really don't understand what you are getting at. I stated that the report Robbo cited to bolster his case about owning capital is skewed, and hardly tells us anything about what capital the working class owns as capital.

We can certainly do comparisons but there is very little evidence that points to workers in the US owning any significant portion of the capital stock of the country, much less the world. What little they own are basically objects for use and consumption-- homes, cars, refrigerators, and do not count as capital any which way you want to cut it. In addition, what they do own is for the most part encumbered with debt.

You want to increase the range to include the bottom 65%-- we can do that, but again so what. Look, the bottom 51% hold 2.5 of all the assets of the population. The bottom 80%, which means everyone except the top 20%, holds 7% of the financial assets. So what do you think the bottom 65% holds --5% of the total wealth of the country-- so we double the proportion by increasing the sample by 30%... so exactly what are we proving here, other than the fact that as you go up the ladder, smaller segments hold proportionately more wealth? Hardly a revelation. Welcome to the real world.

If you're interested in income inequality in the US, wiki has not a half-bad article at;

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Income_inequality_in_the_United_States

A Marxist Historian

22nd August 2011, 04:23

S.Artesian

22nd August 2011, 04:31

Tim Finnegan

22nd August 2011, 05:33

Regarding what percentage of the US is workers-- look total wage and salary employment is at about 107 million I think. The population of the US is over 300 million-- so no way more than 51% of the US population can be workers. I think the entire labor force is around 153 million... so there's no point even going down that road.
How do you factor retired workers and kids into that? On the one hand, retired workers are still, I was given to understand, members of the working class, so they would constitute a working class beyond the workforce, while on the other, kids are, at least for the most part, set outside of the system of production, and so a sort of classless demographic, so that would increase the relative proportion of workers as part of class society. (I'm assuming that stay-at-home parents aren't a major demographic these days, and least of all among workers.)

S.Artesian

22nd August 2011, 12:08

How do you factor retired workers and kids into that? On the one hand, retired workers are still, I was given to understand, members of the working class, so they would constitute a working class beyond the workforce, while on the other, kids are, at least for the most part, set outside of the system of production, and so a sort of classless demographic, so that would increase the relative proportion of workers as part of class society. (I'm assuming that stay-at-home parents aren't a major demographic these days, and least of all among workers.)

I don't know. I'll have to do a little research.

robbo203

29th August 2011, 21:08

Just a factual point. The bottom 51% of the US by economic ranking own 2.5% of the entire wealth of the country. The overwhelming portion of that 2.5% is in their homes, which they don't really own at all, which aren't really equity at all anymore, but a debt.

So again exactly what capital do workers own?

As for the rest, I can't force you to see the difference between your relation to production and that of a worker; no more than I could force, I guess, a farmer who "owns" his/her own tools, land, etc. and that of the worker. But the difference is real enough. Which is why the proletariat is the proletariat, and the farmer, or the peasant even, is not-- and does not exist in relation to the means of production in an expression of collective, social labor that can abolish capitalism.

In a real sense has nothing to do with "who is better off"-- the workers or the impoverished petit-bourgeoisie. Again class is not determined by the quantitative measure of wealth; the quantitative measure of wealth is determined by the conditions in which classes reproduce themselves.

And regarding your reference to that AARP study of "wealth"-- first off, the study concentrates on households of the post WW2 baby-boomers-- a period from 1945 to 1960 when the US economy was generally expanding. Check the same numbers for those born after 1960 and you will a tremendous difference, which the study itself shows when comparing boomer households to all households.

In the study for all households it shows what? That the bottom 80% have 7% of the financial assets of the country? Something like that. And you seriously contend that that shows most workers have capital?

First, the distinction is made by household holdings, not by class, not be employment so we have no idea what makes up that bottom 80%. Secondly, using this study you prove nothing but the circularity of your argument-- the bottom 80% own 7%, and how do we know these are the bottom 80%? Because we're classifying them by financial assets. Brilliant. Thirdly, what portion of the bottom 80% own the majority of the 7%? Does the top 10% of that 80% own the 90% of the 7%? That might be helpful to know, you think? Let's say they do, so that means the bottom 72% own .7%, or .007 of the financial assets of the US. That hardly sounds like owning capital to me, but then my hearing's been damaged by years of exposure to loud noises.

Sorry Ive been away from the computer for a while so have not been able to respond to your points....

I would certainly not wish to deny the distribution of financial assets is massively skewed and in recent decades has become even more unequally distributed. All I am asserting is that one does not need to take an absolutist position on this and the fact that most people own some capital - albeit very little - does not mean they are no longer members of the working class.

That most members of the working class do own some capital in the form of savings or investments would seem incontrovertible . Here for example is a random link I came across:

Seventy-seven percent of American workers have less than $100,000 in savings and investments. Only 11% have more than $250,000 in savings and investments.
Even more troubling is that 27% of those surveyed had less than $1,000 in savings and investments.

http://allfinancialmatters.com/2010/03/29/77-of-american-workers-have-less-than-100000-in-savings-investments/

If 27% owned less than $1,000 in savings and investments that would mean 73% owned more by my calculations.

The basic thrust of my argument is that you cannot limit your definition of "working class" to only those who directly sell their labour power to an employer for a wage the value of which is less than than the value of what they produce - surplus value

This would leave out of the picture the majority of the working population who do not actually produce surplus value - unproductive workers - as well as the unemployed, the retired, students etc (as Tim pointed out)

S.Artesian

29th August 2011, 21:59

Sorry Ive been away from the computer for a while so have not been able to respond to your points....

I would certainly not wish to deny the distribution of financial assets is massively skewed and in recent decades has become even more unequally distributed. All I am asserting is that one does not need to take an absolutist position on this and the fact that most people own some capital - albeit very little - does not mean they are no longer members of the working class.

That most members of the working class do own some capital in the form of savings or investments would seem incontrovertible . Here for example is a random link I came across:

Seventy-seven percent of American workers have less than $100,000 in savings and investments. Only 11% have more than $250,000 in savings and investments.
Even more troubling is that 27% of those surveyed had less than $1,000 in savings and investments.

http://allfinancialmatters.com/2010/03/29/77-of-american-workers-have-less-than-100000-in-savings-investments/

If 27% owned less than $1,000 in savings and investments that would mean 73% owned more by my calculations.

The basic thrust of my argument is that you cannot limit your definition of "working class" to only those who directly sell their labour power to an employer for a wage the value of which is less than than the value of what they produce - surplus value

This would leave out of the picture the majority of the working population who do not actually produce surplus value - unproductive workers - as well as the unemployed, the retired, students etc (as Tim pointed out)

If 27% owned less than $1000, and 77% own less than 100,000, then that means 50% own between $1000 and $99,000. Again that tells us nothing about the distribution within the "gross" bracket. 27% own less than $1000. What percentage own less than $ 10,000? $20,000? $50,000? If 65% own less than $25,000, then given the average size of the American worker's family, and debt obligations, that $25,000 is, literally, devalued to zero.

We simply have to be a bit more discriminating, and critical, in our use of statistics. EDIT: Look at the entire chart: 66% have less than $50,000. That means only 11% own between 50,000 and $100,000.

And how is worker being defined? Somebody drawing a wage or a salary? That's quite a stretch. By that measure, I was a worker when I was chief of operations on the railroad. And maybe I was, because I can tell you there wasn't a locomotive driver or conductor, with rr years of service matching mine, that did not or could not make more money than I did, and work less hours at the same time.

Here's the critical point in the narrative at the link you provide:

Three in 10 Americans age 25 and over report they have not saved any money for retirement (29 percent of workers and retirees). Of these, 79 percent of workers and 60 percent of retirees say this is because they cannot or could not afford to save.

robbo203

30th August 2011, 07:17

If 27% owned less than $1000, and 77% own less than 100,000, then that means 50% own between $1000 and $99,000. Again that tells us nothing about the distribution within the "gross" bracket. 27% own less than $1000. What percentage own less than $ 10,000? $20,000? $50,000? If 65% own less than $25,000, then given the average size of the American worker's family, and debt obligations, that $25,000 is, literally, devalued to zero.

We simply have to be a bit more discriminating, and critical, in our use of statistics. EDIT: Look at the entire chart: 66% have less than $50,000. That means only 11% own between 50,000 and $100,000.

And how is worker being defined? Somebody drawing a wage or a salary? That's quite a stretch. By that measure, I was a worker when I was chief of operations on the railroad. And maybe I was, because I can tell you there wasn't a locomotive driver or conductor, with rr years of service matching mine, that did not or could not make more money than I did, and work less hours at the same time.

Here's the critical point in the narrative at the link you provide:

Again, its no part of my argument at all to claim that workers own significant amounts of capital. I dont say that and I have never said that. Clearly, the vast bulk of the working class either own pitiful amounts of capital or literally none at all and the figures bear this out. So I am certainly not of the "we-are-all-capitalists-now" school of thought. My argument is directed against a kind of absolutist perspective that holds that workers cannot own any capital whaysoever and if they did , they would no longer be workers. Thats simply not true

Owning some capital in the form of investments and savings - even if it less than $1000 - in no way removes what in my view qualifies you as a member of the working class - that you are economically obliged to work to obtain the means of living . This fundamental criterion enables you to satisfactorily accommodate within the term "working class" what in your schema would be glaring anomalies and would effectively reduce the working class to perhaps 10% pf the population or less. If literally speaking to be a member of the working class you had to be selling your labour power for a wage and produce surplus value for your employer, this would leave our the bulk of the working population who do not produce commodities and therefore cannot literally produce surplus value. It would leave out millions of self employed like myself. It would leave out retirees, It would leave out the unemployed and the incapacitated . And it would leave out students and dependents......

I agree that the core mechanism at the heart of capitalism is the production of surplus value by wage earners. But the definition of working class does not, or ought not to, derive from this insititutional fact. In fact surplus value producing wage earners do what they do because the own little or no capital to live upon and condition affects vastly more people than just them. It explains why they along with others are part of the working class - because to all intents and purposes they are essentially divorced from the means of production and dont possess enough of it in the form of capital to avoid the need to work

S.Artesian

30th August 2011, 12:27

Nehru

30th August 2011, 12:41

Let's not make this more complicated than it is.

Your argument is that workers own capital. Your argument to have an validity must mean workers own economically significant amounts of capital.

All the evidence so far, that you yourself have produced, refutes your claim. Workers do not own capital, do not own economically significant amounts of capital.

Savings from wages are not capital. And most savings by workers are economically insignificant.

What if a person is self-employed, owns a very small amount of capital, and has to do all the work by himself (he employs no one)?

S.Artesian

30th August 2011, 13:43

What if a person is self-employed, owns a very small amount of capital, and has to do all the work by himself (he employs no one)?

What about it? That's a section of the petit-bourgeoisie.

Nehru

30th August 2011, 14:18

What about it? That's a section of the petit-bourgeoisie.

Such people have more in common with workers than they do with the bourgeois, wouldn't you say?

S.Artesian

30th August 2011, 15:46

Such people have more in common with workers than they do with the bourgeois, wouldn't you say?

We've already gone over this with robbo. Read the previous postings, and you can make your own determination.

robbo203

30th August 2011, 18:37

Let's not make this more complicated than it is.

Your argument is that workers own capital. Your argument to have any validity must mean workers own economically significant amounts of capital.

All the evidence so far, that you yourself have produced, refutes your claim. Workers do not own capital, do not own economically significant amounts of capital.

Savings from wages are not capital. And most savings by workers are economically insignificant.

My argument is that most - not all - workers own some capital in the form of investments and savings but that this is not economically significant enough to enable them to avoid having to work. Not by a long way. That is why in my view they can be considered to be members of the working class - they are economically obliged to work. The evidence does not refute my view - it supports it. It shows that most people have some form of investment or savings but that for most people this is relatively insignifcant or paltry. Exactly what I have been saying.

I am a bit puzzled as to what you are so resistant to accepting this simple and incontrovertible point. Its not like I am saying that workers who own a bit of capital are capitalists. Far from it. They are nowhere near being able to live off the interest as might an actual capitalist.

I dont understand your point that for my argument that workers own capital "to have any validity must mean workers own economically significant amounts of capital" But why? Why is it not possible for lots of workers to own small amounts of capital? That just doesnt make sense. Are you saying it is not possible for a worker to own a little bit of capital - or what? Of course, this is part of a larger argument I have been puttiing forward - namely that self employed people like me who own a little bit of capital (in my case a few peices of equipment such strimmers and chainsaws) - are most definitely members of the working class even though we do not sell our labour power to an employer in exchange for a wage. The unemployed do not do so either but Marx clearly saw the unemployed as part of the working class nevertheless

Also, you say savings from wages are not capital . What is money deposited in an interest-bearing account if not capital? What of the millions of dollars worth of contributions by ordinary workers to pension fund schemes and the like - money which is invested widely through industry - if not capital?

S.Artesian

30th August 2011, 20:36

My argument is that most - not all - workers own some capital in the form of investments and savings but that this is not economically significant enough to enable them to avoid having to work. Not by a long way. That is why in my view they can be considered to be members of the working class - they are economically obliged to work. The evidence does not refute my view - it supports it. It shows that most people have some form of investment or savings but that for most people this is relatively insignifcant or paltry. Exactly what I have been saying.

Economically insignificant; which means their class relation is determined by the condition of labor, by their exchange of labor as a class for the means of subsistence.

I'm puzzled as to why you insist on confusing savings with investment. Savings are not "investments" no matter what Merrill Lynch would like us to believe.

Your method of determining class is by ownership of "capital" which is not supported by your data. Workers do not own capital. They hold, directly, almost no securities entitling them to claims on capital.

There is no difference between a worker who has a 401k program and a worker who has none, but is covered by the US Railroad Retirement Board, except that the worker covered by RRB is probably more asssured of being able to draw a pension.

So do these workers "own capital?" Not hardly. They can't cash in their RRB and walk away; they can't make any decisions at all regarding the exchange of their RRB.

And 401ks? Sorry, in truth such plans are company assets, may be declared as such, and may be attached as such by creditors in the event of bankruptcy.

I am not distinguishing petit-bourgeois from worker based on the quantity of the petit-bourgeois' ownership of capital. You're the one making quantitative distinctions. I'm stating that the working class does not own capital, that workers do not utilize their "capital" in reproducing themselves as a class. The petit-bourgeois can do nothing but use their capital to reproduce themselves as a class.

I dont understand your point that for my argument that workers own capital "to have any validity must mean workers own economically significant amounts of capital" But why? Why is it not possible for lots of workers to own small amounts of capital?

Sure it's possible, and sure some individuals might. So what? That is the meaning of "economically insignificant." We are talking about social relations, not the individual condition of individual workers.

Also, you say savings from wages are not capital . What is money deposited in an interest-bearing account if not capital? What of the millions of dollars worth of contributions by ordinary workers to pension fund schemes and the like - money which is invested widely through industry - if not capital?

For the bank, savings deposits are capital, because they engage in the business, in the commerce, of lending and borrowing. For the workers, the savings accounts are consumption funds, that's all-- deferring today's consumption in order to ensure tomorrow's. Marx makes quite an effort, and a good one, to demolish the notion that savings amount to capital, that savings are the way in which accumulation is initiated.

robbo203

31st August 2011, 08:28

Economically insignificant; which means their class relation is determined by the condition of labor, by their exchange of labor as a class for the means of subsistence. .

Which means, according to you, that those who do not exchange their labour are not part of the working class. So , for you, the unemployed are not part of the working class - contrary to Marx's explicit view that they are. Retirees, students, dependents etc etc could not be considered part of the working class from your point of view either because they not exchange their labor for means of subsistence.

I'm puzzled as to why you insist on confusing savings with investment. Savings are not "investments" no matter what Merrill Lynch would like us to believe.

Your method of determining class is by ownership of "capital" which is not supported by your data. Workers do not own capital. They hold, directly, almost no securities entitling them to claims on capital.

There is no difference between a worker who has a 401k program and a worker who has none, but is covered by the US Railroad Retirement Board, except that the worker covered by RRB is probably more asssured of being able to draw a pension.

So do these workers "own capital?" Not hardly. They can't cash in their RRB and walk away; they can't make any decisions at all regarding the exchange of their RRB.

And 401ks? Sorry, in truth such plans are company assets, may be declared as such, and may be attached as such by creditors in the event of bankruptcy.

I am not distinguishing petit-bourgeois from worker based on the quantity of the petit-bourgeois' ownership of capital. You're the one making quantitative distinctions. I'm stating that the working class does not own capital, that workers do not utilize their "capital" in reproducing themselves as a class. The petit-bourgeois can do nothing but use their capital to reproduce themselves as a class.

Sure it's possible, and sure some individuals might. So what? That is the meaning of "economically insignificant." We are talking about social relations, not the individual condition of individual workers.

For the bank, savings deposits are capital, because they engage in the business, in the commerce, of lending and borrowing. For the workers, the savings accounts are consumption funds, that's all-- deferring today's consumption in order to ensure tomorrow's. Marx makes quite an effort, and a good one, to demolish the notion that savings amount to capital, that savings are the way in which accumulation is initiated.

How are savings not investments? I dont get this at all. You say for the bank, saving deposits are capital but for the workers who deposit the money these accounts are just consumption funds not investments as such. Of course, the workers might utilise the resulting proceeds for consumption purposes - as do capitalists to an extent via the dividends they receive from investing in the stock market. However, their purpose in saving with a bank or building society is not simply to find a more reliable store for their hard cash than under their mattress; it is to realise a return . In other words to augment the money advanced. That means their money is transformed into capital

Unless you subscribe to the "mystical theory of credit! - that banks can create credit with a stroke of the pen - banks rely on their depositors absolutely. Of course the banks utilise the money deposited with them as capital but the point is that the depositors take a cut in the form of interest payments on their account from the proceeeds of the banks use of this financial capital.

Your mistake, I believe, is to confuse the conditions under which money is loaned, saved or invested with the nature of capital itself. Im not too familiar with the American set up - whats a 401k BTW? - but in the UK where I used to live before moving to Spain, I worked in the NHS for a number of years and contributed to an opt-in pension fund scheme. Though I am quite a few years off from retirement age, I get what is called a "pre-retirement pension" to supplement my meagre income from being a self employed gardener. To that extent I am living off the proceeeds of past savings and to be quite frank without this additional source of income I would be well and truly stuffed.

Pension funds are quite a significant source of capital in modern capitalism, as I mentioned, and while workers who contribute to these funds have virtually no control of them this does not alter the fact that they are used for the purposes of capital investment some of the proceeds of which go to the workers themselves - like me. It is quite true what you say that pension funds as such may be treated as "company assets, may be declared as such, and may be attached as such by creditors in the event of bankruptcy" but then what is the differences between that and a capitalist that invests via the stock market in a corporation that subsquently goes bankrupt? There is always a risk involved in making investments whether via a pension fund scheme or on the advice of your personal broker/consultants about what stock to invest in. In both cases you dont need to be involved in the day to day management of your investment and in both cases you can lose out heavily as a result of misnvestment

There are one or two other points you make - like:

I am not distinguishing petit-bourgeois from worker based on the quantity of the petit-bourgeois' ownership of capital. You're the one making quantitative distinctions.

Yes but crucial to my whole argument is that quantitative distinctions underly qualitative distinctions. The amount of capital you possess makes a huge difference, qualitatively speaking, to your whole way of life, to your position in society , to the social power and influence you are able to wield and to your overall relationship to means of production. As someone who has a multi-million dollar investment portfolio you would clearly belong to a select class of people that collectively monopolises the means of production.

The petit bourgeosie are nowhere remotely in sight of this. As their name suggests they own - or rent - only a comnparatively tiny amount of capital. They certainly cannot live off the proceeds of this capital. You say:

I'm stating that the working class does not own capital, that workers do not utilize their "capital" in reproducing themselves as a class. The petit-bourgeois can do nothing but use their capital to reproduce themselves as a class.

But the petit bourgeoisie can hardly reproduce themselves without applying their own labour as well ,can they? How does this make then any different from the working class? In some cases, self employed people like myself live or scrape by on an income that is signifcantly below the average. "Quantitity" does matter here absolutely. It is the lack of capital that absolutely determines my need to work and the need for most of my fellow workers to sell their abilities to an employer for a wage. I am simply cannot understand your criticism of the "quantitative approach" to class determination. It is surely completely implied in Engels famous formulation of the working class as

that 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 (Friedrich Engels: Note to the 1888 English Edition of Manifesto of the Communist Party

Having no means of production IS a quantitative statement which underpins a qualitative relation to the means of production. means of production in capitalism take the form of capital so having no capital means in effect being divorced from the means of production...

Lastly you make the intriguing claim that

Marx makes quite an effort, and a good one, to demolish the notion that savings amount to capital, that savings are the way in which accumulation is initiated

Do you have a link to this? i just wonder whether you are confusing here the argument about primitive accumulation vis a vis the conventional account of capital accumulation initially resulting from the thrifty behaviour of the early proto capitalist in kick starting the industrial revolution? I agree the evidence for primitive accumlation is very strong and the idea that the industrial revolution was a by-product of entrepenurial thrift is misleading. However this does not touch on the argument about the relationship between savings and capital.

Marx himself in Capital vol 1 seems to think otheriwse:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! ... Therefore, save, save, i.e. reconvert the greatest possible proportion of surplus value or surplus production into capital. Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production

Marx seems here to be equating savings with capital accumulation

S.Artesian

31st August 2011, 14:41

Which means, according to you, that those who do not exchange their labour are not part of the working class. So , for you, the unemployed are not part of the working class - contrary to Marx's explicit view that they are. Retirees, students, dependents etc etc could not be considered part of the working class from your point of view either because they not exchange their labor for means of subsistence.

The issue about unemployed workers has already been answered and resolved. An unemployed worker is just that, an unemployed worker; part of capital's real domination of labor, where it aggrandizes wage-labor by expelling labor from production. Families of workers are just that, families of workers-- the reproduction of workers as workers.

The defining, determinant characteristic is the relation between labor and capital. This is a relation the petit-bourgeoisie do not have. If they did, they would no longer be petit-bourgeoisie.

How are savings not investments? I dont get this at all. You say for the bank, saving deposits are capital but for the workers who deposit the money these accounts are just consumption funds not investments as such. Of course, the workers might utilise the resulting proceeds for consumption purposes - as do capitalists to an extent via the dividends they receive from investing in the stock market. However, their purpose in saving with a bank or building society is not simply to find a more reliable store for their hard cash than under their mattress; it is to realise a return . In other words to augment the money advanced. That means their money is transformed into capital

As a matter of fact, not. It is not to realize a return. It is exactly to find a reliable store for cash... in order to protect consumption. That is what distinguishes savings from accumulation-- consumption. Accumulation is for the purpose of accumulation.

Unless you subscribe to the "mystical theory of credit! - that banks can create credit with a stroke of the pen - banks rely on their depositors absolutely. Of course the banks utilise the money deposited with them as capital but the point is that the depositors take a cut in the form of interest payments on their account from the proceeeds of the banks use of this financial capital.

You know what they say on Wall St? "Nobody ever got rich saving money." The bourgeoisie sure know the difference. Depositors taking a cut? Check out the divergence between interest paid, and interest charged by banks.

Your mistake, I believe, is to confuse the conditions under which money is loaned, saved or invested with the nature of capital itself. Im not too familiar with the American set up - whats a 401k BTW? - but in the UK where I used to live before moving to Spain, I worked in the NHS for a number of years and contributed to an opt-in pension fund scheme. Though I am quite a few years off from retirement age, I get what is called a "pre-retirement pension" to supplement my meagre income from being a self employed gardener. To that extent I am living off the proceeeds of past savings and to be quite frank without this additional source of income I would be well and truly stuffed.

401K [the symbol refers to the section of the US tax code] is a retirement fund that workers and employers can contribute to, and within which trading can be done, with the contributions and proceeds of the trading in the account protected from taxation, until such time as the employee retires and begins withdrawing money from the account, at which time the money is taxed as regular income.

There is no pre-retirement pension option in these plans, although you can make yourself a loan under specific circumstances. The loan has to be paid back in a specified time period or the loan will be taxed as an income distribution, with penalties.

Pension funds are quite a significant source of capital in modern capitalism, as I mentioned, and while workers who contribute to these funds have virtually no control of them this does not alter the fact that they are used for the purposes of capital investment some of the proceeds of which go to the workers themselves - like me. It is quite true what you say that pension funds as such may be treated as "company assets, may be declared as such, and may be attached as such by creditors in the event of bankruptcy" but then what is the differences between that and a capitalist that invests via the stock market in a corporation that subsquently goes bankrupt?

Yes, pension funds are a significant source of the currency flowing through financial markets. More significant are the gaps in the pension funds between assets and obligations. The shortfall for state and local govt pension funds is estimated at more than $100 billion dollars. The pension fund is no different, to the worker, than a savings account, except for the fact that the worker cannot liquidate the account and demand payment at will as he or she can with a savings account.

The difference between workers pension funds, and stock trading, is again, the relation to the means of production. Stock traders are engaged in a commerce, the commerce makes claims on the surplus value, the purpose of making the claim is to accumulate that value in order to... engage in the commerce of claiming surplus value.

There is always a risk involved in making investments whether via a pension fund scheme or on the advice of your personal broker/consultants about what stock to invest in. In both cases you dont need to be involved in the day to day management of your investment and in both cases you can lose out heavily as a result of misnvestment

Still, you miss the point of the data you yourself have presented-- workers own virtually no financial assets. What "wealth" workers do own is not capital, but exists in their homes, their automobiles, all of which are encumbered with debt; none of which are used as vehicles for making claims on surplus value.

There are one or two other points you make - like:

I am not distinguishing petit-bourgeois from worker based on the quantity of the petit-bourgeois' ownership of capital. You're the one making quantitative distinctions.

Yes but crucial to my whole argument is that quantitative distinctions underly qualitative distinctions. The amount of capital you possess makes a huge difference, qualitatively speaking, to your whole way of life, to your position in society , to the social power and influence you are able to wield and to your overall relationship to means of production. As someone who has a multi-million dollar investment portfolio you would clearly belong to a select class of people that collectively monopolises the means of production.

Yes, the quantity you own makes a big difference-- the difference being the difference between the petit-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie.

The petit bourgeosie are nowhere remotely in sight of this. As their name suggests they own - or rent - only a comnparatively tiny amount of capital. They certainly cannot live off the proceeds of this capital. You say:

This is what I say: the reproduction of the petit-bourgeoisie depends on the preservation of its capital, of its private property in production and circulation-- that's the difference between it and the working class.

But the petit bourgeoisie can hardly reproduce themselves without applying their own labour as well ,can they? How does this make then any different from the working class?

See above. Hell, see the last 10 responses.

In some cases, self employed people like myself live or scrape by on an income that is signifcantly below the average. "Quantitity" does matter here absolutely. It is the lack of capital that absolutely determines my need to work and the need for most of my fellow workers to sell their abilities to an employer for a wage. I am simply cannot understand your criticism of the "quantitative approach" to class determination. It is surely completely implied in Engels famous formulation of the working class as

that 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 (Friedrich Engels: Note to the 1888 English Edition of Manifesto of the Communist Party

But you do have means of production of your own. Even if debt encumbered, what is encumbered is your means of production, what you use to meet that debt obligation. That's much different than workers having to pay off mortgages and credit card debt.

Having no means of production IS a quantitative statement which underpins a qualitative relation to the means of production. means of production in capitalism take the form of capital so having no capital means in effect being divorced from the means of production...

Again, the issue is economically significant. The capital the petit-bourgeoisie owns is absolutely economically significant to the reproduction of the petit-bourgeoisie as a class. Not so with the working class.

Lastly you make the intriguing claim that

Marx makes quite an effort, and a good one, to demolish the notion that savings amount to capital, that savings are the way in which accumulation is initiated

Do you have a link to this? i just wonder whether you are confusing here the argument about primitive accumulation vis a vis the conventional account of capital accumulation initially resulting from the thrifty behaviour of the early proto capitalist in kick starting the industrial revolution? I agree the evidence for primitive accumlation is very strong and the idea that the industrial revolution was a by-product of entrepenurial thrift is misleading. However this does not touch on the argument about the relationship between savings and capital.

Marx himself in Capital vol 1 seems to think otheriwse:

Accumulate, accumulate! That is Moses and the prophets! ... Therefore, save, save, i.e. reconvert the greatest possible proportion of surplus value or surplus production into capital. Accumulation for the sake of accumulation, production for the sake of production

Marx seems here to be equating savings with capital accumulation

[/QUOTE]

No he doesn't. Look what he says-- he tells you what "saving" is-- reconverting surplus value into capital. That is not "saving"-- saving removes surplus value from the capitalization process, and the re-valorization process.

robbo203

1st September 2011, 09:34

The issue about unemployed workers has already been answered and resolved. An unemployed worker is just that, an unemployed worker; part of capital's real domination of labor, where it aggrandizes wage-labor by expelling labor from production. Families of workers are just that, families of workers-- the reproduction of workers as workers.

The defining, determinant characteristic is the relation between labor and capital. This is a relation the petit-bourgeoisie do not have. If they did, they would no longer be petit-bourgeoisie.

Yes but dont you see that this is precisely the point - that becuase you place so much emphasis on the relation between wage labour and capital as the determinant of class in capitalism that you actually preclude those categories you speak of from being members of the working class as you see it. With respect, the issue of the unemployed has not been resolved at all. You have simply sidestepped it by in effect resorting to argument by definition. So you say "An unemployed worker is just that, an unemployed worker". Well ,yes, but this unemployed worker could not be a member of the working class becuase he or she has been expelled from the wage labour-capital relation at the heart of capitalism. He or she is only potentially a member of the working class as I interpret your logic but not an actual member. The same goes for the other categories we talked of - and of course, the petit bourgeosie.

My definition of working class, on the other hand, is much broader and incorporates all those who lack sufficient capital to live upon and are therefore economically obliged to work. I accept obviously that the wage labour-capital relation lies at the heart of capitalism, it is its basic dynamic but I do not accept that the way we classify people in capitalism depends simnply on whether they are the producers of surplus value or the recipients of the same. Vast numbers of wage earners, for example, do not produce commodities and therefore cannot produce surplus value - they are unproductive workers. They are paid out of surplus value. I see clear parallels between the position of the unproductive worker in capitalism and the petit bourgeosie. The small shopkeeper who employs no one but himself aids the realisation of surplus value by selling the commodities produced by capitalist businesses and taking a cut in the process. Agreed, it is not a wage labour relationship that the small shopkeeper is implicated in but in effect there is little to chose between his position and that of a company saleperson who is paid a regular wage. The former is in effect multifariously employed on a commission basis by the various firms whose product he sells

As a matter of fact, not. It is not to realize a return. It is exactly to find a reliable store for cash... in order to protect consumption. That is what distinguishes savings from accumulation-- consumption. Accumulation is for the purpose of accumulation.

You know what they say on Wall St? "Nobody ever got rich saving money." The bourgeoisie sure know the difference. Depositors taking a cut? Check out the divergence between interest paid, and interest charged by banks.

Sorry but I cant agree with your analysis here. Savings do realise a return. In those halycon days when I had a little more money than i have now I had a building society account back in the UK. Every month it attracted interest. augmenting my original deposit. Yes, we are talking peanutrs here but still the principle applies. Capital is a form of wealth under capitalism that instead of being consumed is used to generate more wealth. My little savings account amounted to capital.

Of course, it was also a "reliable store for cash... in order to protect consumption" but that does not preclude it from being called capital, does it? You say savings is different from accumulation becuase it is about consumption . But this is too simplistic; it is not an either-or thing. The big time capitalist who invests in industry does not simply accumulate for the sake of accumulation but utilises some of the profit generated to fund a lavish lifestyle - consumption. That too is part of the motivation of the capitalist. Of course future consumption is contingent upon accumulation but the same argument would apply in the case of my little savings account. So I look around for the building society or bank that might offer me the best deal. Yes, of course, is a divergence between the interest paid by the bank and the interest charged by the same bank. Thats the way they make their money. They use my money and the money of hundreds of thousands of other ordinary custiomers to inter alia provide loan capital for businesses. Indirectly then, if not directly, my money - paltry as it is - is unquestionably being utlised as capital and it is not necesary for it to be considered as capital that I should be directly involved in this process - big time capitalists often just leave it to their broker. From the interest that the bank gets for making such a loan the bank pays me a lower rate of interest for depositing money with it. It has to attract depositors in order to lend money in the first place. As I say, it cannot just conjure money out of thin air. Attracting depositors means payig them an interest, augmenting their original deposit

Yes, pension funds are a significant source of the currency flowing through financial markets. More significant are the gaps in the pension funds between assets and obligations. The shortfall for state and local govt pension funds is estimated at more than $100 billion dollars. The pension fund is no different, to the worker, than a savings account, except for the fact that the worker cannot liquidate the account and demand payment at will as he or she can with a savings account.

Interesting. Although I think the situation might be different in the UK where I believe (though I might be wrong) you can liquidate your account but where pressure is brought to bear on transferring your account when you change jobs

The difference between workers pension funds, and stock trading, is again, the relation to the means of production. Stock traders are engaged in a commerce, the commerce makes claims on the surplus value, the purpose of making the claim is to accumulate that value in order to... engage in the commerce of claiming surplus value.

Neverthless pension funds are invested and indeed there is I believe a statutory obligation on pension fund managers to invest with a view to maximising returns. In that sense workers pension funds likewise make a claim on surplus value and are likewise driven to accumulate

Still, you miss the point of the data you yourself have presented-- workers own virtually no financial assets. What "wealth" workers do own is not capital, but exists in their homes, their automobiles, all of which are encumbered with debt; none of which are used as vehicles for making claims on surplus value.

No the data explictly excludes homes etc and is concerned only with "savings and investment". Here is the relevant text:

Seventy-seven percent of American workers have less than $100,000 in savings and investments. Only 11% have more than $250,000 in savings and investments.
Even more troubling is that 27% of those surveyed had less than $1,000 in savings and investments.

If 27% has less that $1000 in savings and investments that means clearly that 73% has more. Of course most of that 73% will have less than $100,000 as the data shows but still this does not bear out the absolutist claim that workers have no capital whatosoever. Most workers do have a little bit of capital but nowhere near enough to live upon and thats why they are economically obliged to work

Yes, the quantity you own makes a big difference-- the difference being the difference between the petit-bourgeoisie and the bourgeoisie.

And indeed the working class in general

This is what I say: the reproduction of the petit-bourgeoisie depends on the preservation of its capital, of its private property in production and circulation-- that's the difference between it and the working class.

Yes there is a difference - I have never denied there are differences only that these differences amount to a fundamental one in basic class terms ( which depends on how you define class) - but again you overlook the similiarities. It is not just the preservation of its own capital - insofar as it actually owns this small capital and does not just rent it or borrow it - that the petit bourgeoisie depends on on but also the fact that it absolutely depends on the need to work. This is no different from what you call the working class. Both lack sufficient capital to live upon and hence both must work

But you do have means of production of your own. Even if debt encumbered, what is encumbered is your means of production, what you use to meet that debt obligation. That's much different than workers having to pay off mortgages and credit card debt.

So what would you call a small shopkeer who does not own the shop but rents it?

Again, the issue is economically significant. The capital the petit-bourgeoisie owns is absolutely economically significant to the reproduction of the petit-bourgeoisie as a class. Not so with the working class.

Is it though? Is it absolutely economically significant that a member of the petit bourgeosie should own capital. Never mind the example of a small shopkeeper renting a store. What about someone like me who is a self employed gardener. Am I member of the petit bourgeoisie? I dont actually have to possess any tools myself. In fact one of my clients has an excellent array of gadren tools which i often use myself. What about a prostitute to take another example. Is she or he a member of the petit bouregosise - or a worker? And what is her or his relation to the means of production?