Point-of-production arguments and riots

[Die Neue Zeit]

In recent months I have observed very flexible shifts between point-of-production arguments and excessive support for riots (and even looting). Through the former (the idea that workers can simply withdraw labour), the working class will supposedly learn the skills of ruling and of ruling the economy through workplace-based, ad hoc organs of agitated action leading up to revolution. On the other hand, though, the argument for near-uncritical support for riots (and even looting) boils down to increasing precarity, organizational difficulties arising from workers moving from job to job, and so on, despite the fact that most riots are initiated not by precarious workers, but by lumpenized elements of society.

Why this Bakuninite flexibility? Where exactly is the point-of-production argument for the decreasing impact of withdrawing labour arising from workers moving from job to job? Where is it in the most politicized of riots? If anything else, it is distribution and consumption that are emphasized over production.

[RED DAVE]

In recent months I have observed very flexible shifts between point-of-production arguments and excessive support for riots. Through the former (the idea that workers can simply withdraw labour), the working class will supposedly learn the skills of ruling and of ruling the economy through workplace-based, ad hoc organs of agitated action leading up to revolution. On the other hand, though, the argument for near-uncritical support for riots (even looting) boils down to increasing precarity, organizational difficulties arising from workers moving from job to job, and so on, despite the fact that most riots are initiated not by precarious workers, but by lumpenized elements of society.

Why this Bakuninite flexibility? Where exactly is the point-of-production argument for the decreasing impact of withdrawing labour arising from workers moving from job to job? Where is it in the most politicized of riots?I will send an autographed copy of Volume CXLVI of the Collected Works of Karl Kautsky to anyone who can translate the above into English.

RED DAVE

[Die Neue Zeit]

I was quite clear in what I wrote above. Your argument for workplace-based action is based on point-of-production analysis. Many of those who give excessive support to riots also stress workplace-based action.

[RED DAVE]

I was quite clear in what I wrote above. Your argument for workplace-based action is based on point-of-production analysis. Many of those who give excessive support to riots also stress workplace-based action.That is not an acceptable translation. Plz try again. Otherwise I will have to use the Kautsky volume to line the cat box.

RED DAVE

[black magick hustla]

a huge layer of the "precarianized" section of the young proletariat is "lumpenized". all sorts of fuckers are involved in really sketchy ordeals, or if not, in a semi permanent state of partial unemployment. this is the 21th century young proletariat in the west, sorry if they are not the working class heros of your moribund social democracy. anyone who is part of this generation and has friends outside university and/or professional circles is well aware of this. you are completely out of touch.

[La Comédie Noire]

You act as though transitory employment works against us, on the contrary we don't have good jobs or benefits to think of, we don't even have a labor party to betray us. There is little, and soon to be nothing, that will endear us to this economic and political system. The narrow economic demands that are the object of unionized labor, are giving way to more desperate and at the same time fuller demands. We don't simply want to make a living, but we want to live in a wider sense. Something that is becoming impossible to achieve under narrow bourgeois limits.

[Die Neue Zeit]

You act as though transitory employment works against us, on the contrary we don't have good jobs or benefits to think of, we don't even have a labor party to betray us. There is little, and soon to be nothing, that will endear us to this economic and political system. The narrow economic demands that are the object of unionized labor, are giving way to more desperate and at the same time fuller demands. We don't simply want to make a living, but we want to live in a wider sense. Something that is becoming impossible to achieve under narrow bourgeois limits.

Transitory employment can work against the worker because of increased time spent looking for work, and also increased political apathy or worse (anti-politics).

As for your last comment, it may or may not be the case, but the fuller demands cannot be achieved by ad hoc organs of agitated action upon agitated action (protests, riot committees, strike committees, or typical interpretations of soviets). What set Marx's IWMA work apart from point-of-production arguments and riot fetishes is that the decreasing endearment forces institution-based mass political action well beyond even the scope of today's "political parties."


a huge layer of the "precarianized" section of the young proletariat is "lumpenized". all sorts of fuckers are involved in really sketchy ordeals, or if not, in a semi permanent state of partial unemployment. this is the 21th century young proletariat in the west, sorry if they are not the working class heros of your moribund social democracy. anyone who is part of this generation and has friends outside university and/or professional circles is well aware of this. you are completely out of touch.

"Precarianized" /= lumpenized, which is the point I'm trying to get across. Weren't you of the school of thought that says workplace-based action is good because workers can withdraw their labour power at the point of production? And now the switch to riots?

[citizen of industry]

"Precarianized" /= lumpenized, which is the point I'm trying to get across. Weren't you of the school of thought that says workplace-based action is good because workers can withdraw their labour power at the point of production? And now the switch to riots?

Why choose one tactic over the other? Why not both? Where I am over 40% of the workforce is on some sort of temporary contract with reduced benefits. Some of them are only 1 month long. And this percentage is going up. You should look at the freeters union, basically a general union of people who don't care about a "career" or particular line of work, because they have no illusions about being wage-slaves. The standard of living is dropping post recession and the economy is precarious.

You would think with nothing to lose people would be more inclined to organize and strike, but as you mention becoming apolitical seems to be more the norm, and not valuing their jobs people are more likely to just quit and move on. If the economic situation became much worse, I could see riots developing and I wouldn't consider them a bad thing. I'd probably join in and do some looting to boot. And hopefully people would develop a bit of class-consciousness in the process.

On the other hand, there are still millions of unionized workers in traditional industries. They could accomplish a lot by withdrawing their labour power at the point of production, and they can accomplish a lot by tying in economic struggles with political struggles.

I guess my point is I wouldn't go about saying "what we need is rioting and looting!" I'd prefer to see organized workers taking direct action. But the fact is riots happen from time to time and I don't see them as a bad thing, because people are rejecting the law, the corporation, the government by rioting.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I still think that's not a good idea. A freeters union should become political by building a mass party-movement (in your geographic case, flooding and taking over the Japanese Communist Party), and regarding the rejection of bourgeois law, things like mass civil disobedience are more constructive in the immediate sense than riots.

If anything else, other than the problem of individual financial and political commitment, on a collective basis freeters and similar precarious workers are better positioned to organize a mass party-movement today than typical, parochial tred-iunion bureaucracies (as long as they don't get mired in single-issue campaigns). They can learn the imperative of combining job rotations with bureaucracy-as-process (not just procedures). Without the latter, they cannot grasp the ropes of public administration after taking power.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

:lol:

I can imagine it now... Rioting breaks out in Toronto... DNZ sits at his desk, pounding out a mass-email peppered with his homespun lingo that focuses on telling rioters that their actions "are not productive."

[RED DAVE]

I still think that's not a good idea. A freeters union should become political by building a mass party-movement (in your geographic case, flooding and taking over the Japanese Communist Party), and regarding the rejection of law, things like mass civil disobedience are more constructive in the immediate sense than riots.Welcome to Fantasy Politics.

Are you considering that a union of the unemployed can become your "mass party-movement"? And take over a Communist party? Where is the leadership to organize all this going to come from?


If anything else, other than the problem of individual financial and political commitment, on a collective basis freeters and similar precarious workers are better positioned to organize a mass party-movement todayOn what basis? What would be some of the programmatic elements and what is the source of the power of this "mass party-movement"? At rootl, working class power is developed through strikes.


than typical, parochial tred-iunion bureaucraciesFabulous that you make no distinction between a union and its bureaucracy. And it's hot surprising that you run down unions since you've never been involved with one.


(as long as they don't get mired in single-issue campaigns).Where is the leaderhip that will prevent this?


They can learn the imperative of combining job rotations with bureaucracy-as-process (not just procedures).Gobbledy-gook.


Without the latter, they cannot grasp the ropes of public administration after taking power.So the essence of learning how to achieve power under socialism is to "learn the imperative of combining job rotations with bureaucracy-as-process." Wow!

RED DAVE

[citizen of industry]

Welcome to Fantasy Politics.

Are you considering that a union of the unemployed can become your "mass party-movement"? And take over a Communist party? Where is the leadership to organize all this going to come from?

On what basis? What would be some of the programmatic elements and what is the source of the power of this "mass party-movement"? At rootl, working class power is developed through strikes.

RED DAVE

Fantasy politics about taking over the communist party aside, the Freeters union is an interesting development. For one, they aren't unemployed. They are temporary workers, partime workers and workers in the service industry, which is soon to become the majority of the workforce. The not-revolutionary communist party and the pro-government, pro-business Rengo union federation have made no efforts to organize in this area, nor have the other federations made any considerable effort.

On top of that, the freeters themselves are quite anti-capital, if not Marxist. There is a large similarity to IWW, which ironically DNZ hates. I don't think one-big union is capable of replacing a mass party. But I think the approach to unionism itself is the correct approach. An organized transient workforce is bound to be more political, since they aren't tied to any one industry or company. And if we can't organize what is about to be the majority of the workforce, we'll be in a pickle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

Fantasy politics about taking over the communist party aside, the Freeters union is an interesting development. For one, they aren't unemployed. They are temporary workers, partime workers and workers in the service industry, which is soon to become the majority of the workforce. The not-revolutionary communist party and the pro-government, pro-business Rengo union federation have made no efforts to organize in this area, nor have the other federations made any considerable effort.

OK, comrade, so the Rengo honchos haven't organized there, but how exactly has the JCP (leaving aside its blatant programmatic reformism) not organized? There has been an upswell of connections among Japanese precarious workers' awareness, Japanese communist literature, and political support for the party (up to and including outright membership).


On top of that, the freeters themselves are quite anti-capital, if not Marxist. There is a large similarity to IWW, which ironically DNZ hates.

But again, comrade, these connections illustrate political awareness, like the KKE and PAME in Greece, and exactly unlike the anti-party and (mostly) anti-political IWW both historically and presently.


I don't think one-big union is capable of replacing a mass party. But I think the approach to unionism itself is the correct approach. An organized transient workforce is bound to be more political, since they aren't tied to any one industry or company. And if we can't organize what is about to be the majority of the workforce, we'll be in a pickle.

Comrade, I don't know what to make of your assessment. It's obviously not the traditional syndicalist illusion of One Big Union replacing the mass party without itself becoming explicitly political. This illusion is precisely the basis for the IWW's model.

Maybe the Japanese freeters are trying to form a Sociopolitical Syndicate (http://www.revleft.com/vb/sociopolitical-syndicalism-additional-t143119/index.html) or Radical Political Unionism (http://mdx.academia.edu/MartinUpchurch/Papers/578552/Neoliberal_Globalization_and_Trade_Unionism_Toward _Radical_Political_Unionism)?

[black magick hustla]

:lol:

I can imagine it now... Rioting breaks out in Toronto... DNZ sits at his desk, pounding out a mass-email peppered with his homespun lingo that focuses on telling rioters that their actions "are not productive."

you shouldve seen his posts on the vancouver riots when they were happening. you could watch the smoke coming out of his ears from your screen

[citizen of industry]

OK, comrade, so the Rengo honchos haven't organized there, but how exactly has the JCP (leaving aside its blatant programmatic reformism) not organized? There has been an upswell of connections among Japanese precarious workers' awareness, Japanese communist literature, and political support for the party (up to and including outright membership).

JCP Membership picked up a tad post-2008, but it doesn't mean much with a party that only emphasizes electoral politics (and explicitly rejects revolutionary politics - 'democratic revolution') and garners around 1% of the vote. By communist literature I'm assuming you are reffering to kanikosen, which sold a lot in 2008/9, but not much lately. Then there's the union federation affiliated with JCP, Zenroren, which is not militant and doesn't organize in the sectors we are discussing.

There has been a huge upswell among worker's organizations after Fukushima, among which JCP is conspicuously absent and advocates a slow reduction of nuclear power rather than its immediate abolishment (There are other threads on this - please let's not hijack this one on a debate over nuclear power).


Comrade, I don't know what to make of your assessment. It's obviously not the traditional syndicalist illusion of One Big Union replacing the mass party without itself becoming explicitly political. This illusion is precisely the basis for the IWW's model.


My assessment is based on the opinion that large, militant labour movements produce large, militant socialist parties. That the present condition of the left in the US, for example, is a result of the lack of a strong labor movement. Given that the majority of workers in developed countries today are part-time, temporary, service, transitory, etc; I find that IWW's approach to union organizing (politics aside) is the correct approach (service/temp/etc.) and uses the correct tactics (direct action - read How to Fire Your Boss - A Workers Guide to Direct Action)

And this is based on several years experience attempting to organize a service industry within the traditional union framework (a failure, as over 60% usually are). If what everyone here says about your lack of activism is true, I'd suggest you try to organize a workplace, just for the educational experience. And since you identify yourself as a Marxist, I'd predict you would be a very good union organizer.

[RED DAVE]

My assessment is based on the opinion that large, militant labour movements produce large, militant socialist parties. That the present condition of the left in the US, for example, is a result of the lack of a strong labor movement.Absolutely. This is the point that DNZ, with all his weird shit about parties, movements, unions, bureacracies, etc., can never grasp.


Given that the majority of workers in developed countries today are part-time, temporary, service, transitory, etc; I find that IWW's approach to union organizing (politics aside) is the correct approach (service/temp/etc.) and uses the correct tactics (direct action - read How to Fire Your Boss - A Workers Guide to Direct Action)Here we have to begin what should be a really good discussion about real organizing in the real working class.


And this is based on several years experience attempting to organize a service industry within the traditional union framework (a failure, as over 60% usually are).Are you trying to tell me that you actually have real organizing experience in the real working class? I'm not sure you're suited for the kind of discussions DNZ prefers. I myself am doing a bit of organizing myself, and so I'm probably not eligible to join DNZ's club either.


If what everyone here says about your lack of activism is true, I'd suggest you try to organize a workplace, just for the educational experience. And since you identify yourself as a Marxist, I'd predict you would be a very good union organizer.I think this would make a great reality show: "The Real Organizers of Toronto" (or wherever DNZ lives) or a sit-com: "Two and a Half Organizers."

RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

I will send an autographed copy of Volume CXLVI of the Collected Works of Karl Kautsky to anyone who can translate the above into English.

RED DAVE


All this is is the usual "Against Spontaneity" argument dressed up in the usual DNZ abstraction.

No need to send the Kautsky. Don't want it, won't read it.

[RED DAVE]

All this is is the usual "Against Spontaneity" argument dressed up in the usual DNZ abstraction.

No need to send the Kautsky. Don't want it, won't read it.I will be sending you the Kautsky. It makes a great lining for a cat box or the bottom of a birdcage. i wouldn't suggest it for toilet paper as it is too rough for most people's asses.

RED DAVE

[Jose Gracchus]

^ I laughed.

No intellectually credible communist program for Japan demands the immediate cessation of nuclear fission on the islands, either as a demand to be hurled to the generous masters of the bourgeois state or as to be implemented immediately upon the raising of the working class to the position of the political ruling class. For the simple reason this would lead to the fall of the bourgeois or workers' government that implemented it for material reasons. There is no immediate substitute for that volume of electrical supply.

Otherwise, I'm in complete agreement.

[ProletarianResurrection]

In recent months I have observed very flexible shifts between point-of-production arguments and excessive support for riots (and even looting). Through the former (the idea that workers can simply withdraw labour), the working class will supposedly learn the skills of ruling and of ruling the economy through workplace-based, ad hoc organs of agitated action leading up to revolution. On the other hand, though, the argument for near-uncritical support for riots (and even looting) boils down to increasing precarity, organizational difficulties arising from workers moving from job to job, and so on, despite the fact that most riots are initiated not by precarious workers, but by lumpenized elements of society.

Why this Bakuninite flexibility? Where exactly is the point-of-production argument for the decreasing impact of withdrawing labour arising from workers moving from job to job? Where is it in the most politicized of riots? If anything else, it is distribution and consumption that are emphasized over production.

I dont understand the "and even looting" as is somehow especially bad and evil.

But yes in the post-fordist world of increasing "flexibility" in the work place, outside of those who fetishize the labour aristocracy and its not essentially anti-capitalist economic struggles carried out through the tried old Trade Union framework, riots and armed struggle will be where its "at". How do you define political? The recent riots in England were certainly a sending a shot across the bough of the ship of state warning it to be beware of going to far or more of the same would follow.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

You act as though transitory employment works against us, on the contrary we don't have good jobs or benefits to think of, we don't even have a labor party to betray us. There is little, and soon to be nothing, that will endear us to this economic and political system. The narrow economic demands that are the object of unionized labor, are giving way to more desperate and at the same time fuller demands. We don't simply want to make a living, but we want to live in a wider sense. Something that is becoming impossible to achieve under narrow bourgeois limits.

I think the problem with transitory employment, under-employment and structural 'economic activity' is that it makes it very difficult to materially analyse current socio-economic structures, and politico-economic developments, using existing Marxist theory, which has, since its inception, used simplified models of society (two classes, working class must sell its labour for x hours per week, labour theory of value, simple simple simple etc.) to come up with:

a) conclusions on existing Capitalist society, and thus from these conclusions b), the ways in which to bring about revolutionary change.

I know i'm (aside from Red Dave) probably the most critical person of DNZ on here, but his theoretical points about the expansion of the precariat do provide a very relevant topic of conversation. Whereas back in the earlier days of Capitalism, where the living standards of a tiny minority were propped up by the mass of the working class selling its labour and receiving so little remuneration as to lead to grotesque living standards, currently (in the developed world) a large percentage of what is technically (by their relationship to the means of production) the working class have seen their living standards rise (particularly since 1945 in Europe, for example), or in the event of their living standards flat-lining or worse (As has been the case since around the 1970s) have seen the rise of a consumer economy, where even the poorer members of society can now access goods previously termed 'luxuries' (mainly white goods and electronic goods). Thus, it is increasingly silly for many people to refer to themselves as 'oppressed workers', as even though it is technically true (they sell their labour for less than the value of their labour, in order to survive), it is difficult to connect the lives of many members of the working class in the developed world with Marxist theory that arose in the time of the workhouse, poor relief, 20 hour working days and 3 generations to a room.

What is needed is to break Marxist orthodoxy, and update Marxism so that it becomes relevant to the current day, where living standards have gone beyond what Marx could have imagined, as Capitalism becomes increasingly savage and imperial. Capitalism, in short, has become a globally interwoven problem (a point of the Third Worldists that could actually be expanded upon, with less ridiculous and apocryphal hyperbole!) and its very difficult to connect the struggles of people like me, with Marxist rhetoric about exploitation, when there are people who are technically of the same class as me in other countries and continents who have vastly inferior living standards.

[ProletarianResurrection]

a huge layer of the "precarianized" section of the young proletariat is "lumpenized". all sorts of fuckers are involved in really sketchy ordeals, or if not, in a semi permanent state of partial unemployment. this is the 21th century young proletariat in the west, sorry if they are not the working class heros of your moribund social democracy. anyone who is part of this generation and has friends outside university and/or professional circles is well aware of this. you are completely out of touch.

Lumpenization must be resisted though however what you say is definitely true, the boundaires between the lumpen and the proletariat proper are becoming in places less clear; occasional begging, spending periods of time in prostitution or using that as a necessary suppliment at times, shop lifting while not exactly life enhancing dont necessarily make someone a lumpen though. The fact is though that Left Communism is geared to the old world of clear communities and steady jobs, is focused on workplace struggle that doesnt cross lines into armed struggle such as sabotage and acts of terror against employers and has little interest in the question of counter power, building structures and creating resources within proletarian that will eventually replace the state. Trailling after teacher or nurses strikes isnt going to get anywhere.

[ProletarianResurrection]

What is needed desperately is centralization, and also militarization. The question of the creation of a new society and the end of the tryanny of value is essentially a military one and only accidently political or economic.

[Die Neue Zeit]

I know i'm (aside from Red Dave) probably the most critical person of DNZ on here, but his theoretical points about the expansion of the precariat do provide a very relevant topic of conversation.

On the contrary, others (non-posters) have made the theoretical points before me, and unlike them and a number of left-coms I try not to emphasize this new social strata. Various sociologists have gone so far as to deem it the new "revolutionary subject" in place of the "industrial proletariat":

http://www.revleft.com/vb/all-things-precariat-t148669/index.html


I think the problem with transitory employment, under-employment and structural 'economic activity' is that it makes it very difficult to materially analyse current socio-economic structures, and politico-economic developments, using existing Marxist theory, which has, since its inception, used simplified models of society (two classes, working class must sell its labour for x hours per week, labour theory of value, simple simple simple etc.) to come up with:

a) conclusions on existing Capitalist society, and thus from these conclusions b), the ways in which to bring about revolutionary change.

Some sociologists have gone so far as to redefine "class" based on labour security. In my earlier work, I have a class model that isn't simplified and is inspired somewhat by class models implied in Marx's Capital.


Thus, it is increasingly silly for many people to refer to themselves as 'oppressed workers', as even though it is technically true (they sell their labour for less than the value of their labour, in order to survive), it is difficult to connect the lives of many members of the working class in the developed world with Marxist theory that arose in the time of the workhouse, poor relief, 20 hour working days and 3 generations to a room.

What is needed is to break Marxist orthodoxy, and update Marxism so that it becomes relevant to the current day, where living standards have gone beyond what Marx could have imagined, as Capitalism becomes increasingly savage and imperial. Capitalism, in short, has become a globally interwoven problem (a point of the Third Worldists that could actually be expanded upon, with less ridiculous and apocryphal hyperbole!) and its very difficult to connect the struggles of people like me, with Marxist rhetoric about exploitation, when there are people who are technically of the same class as me in other countries and continents who have vastly inferior living standards.

True, yet not quite. Analysis can certainly "break orthodoxy," but it's also necessary to "break the orthodoxy" of not posing immediate and further-out policy solutions, the very criticism hurled against Academic Marxism by the chatterers (mislabelled "commentariat").

Going back to your criticisms of me, I'll only rebutt that it is ironic that the left has dumped the one Orthodox baby and bath water most capable of organizing the working class, to its long-term detriment and to the detriment of the working class.

[Nothing Human Is Alien]

using existing Marxist theory, which has, since its inception, used simplified models of society (two classes, working class must sell its labour for x hours per week, labour theory of value, simple simple simple etc.)


What is needed is to break Marxist orthodoxy, and update Marxism so that it becomes relevant to the current day, where living standards have gone beyond what Marx could have imagined, as Capitalism becomes increasingly savage and imperial.

I don't think you've read (or understood) the majority of what Marx actually wrote. If you did, you wouldn't make statements like this.

Crisis, falling rate of profit, overproduction, army of the unemployed, etc., are all there.

Of course things are not exactly the same in every single way as they were more than a century ago(!), but the basis of society remains: capitalism, based on the exploitation of labor for profit. "Modern analyses" that claim to "move beyond" this ironically end up rooted firmly within it.

[RED DAVE]

Lumpenization must be resisted though however what you say is definitely trueAnd how would you suggest that workers do this?


the boundaires between the lumpen and the proletariat proper are becoming in places less clear;You are asserting this without any proof. This could well be the case, but some kind of evidence is required.


occasional begging, spending periods of time in prostitution or using that as a necessary suppliment at times, shop lifting while not exactly life enhancing dont necessarily make someone a lumpen though.No they don't, and they never have.


The fact is though that Left CommunismWhat is "Left Communism" or are you just engaged in political cursing?


is geared to [1] the old world of clear communities and steady jobs, is focused on workplace struggleThese are two that [2] doesnt cross lines into armed struggle such as sabotage and acts of terror against employers [3]and has little interest in the question of counter power, building structures and creating resources within proletarian that will eventually replace the state.[/quote]I think I smell the unlovely odor of Maoism. Forgive me if I'm wrong.

[1] It is true that the stability of working class communities and the jobs that sustained them has declined recently under capitalism, especially in the USA. Michael Moore's movies "Roger and Me" and "Capitalism: A Love Story" document this. However, the power of the working class lies in its role of creator of value under capitalism, and this has not changed. No matter how fucked up modern capitalism is, the locus of revolutionary struggle will always be the workplace and the struggle for control of the production of value.

[2] This is, I believe, an expression of Maoism and is, in my opinion, both foolish and dangerous. If the writer is of some other tendency, my apologies. However, to posit "armed struggle such as sabotage and acts of terror against employers" and to ignore the weapon of the strike and the general strike is a view that comes from outside the working class. This notion (a) presupposes the existence of the labor process, otherwise there would be nothing to attack and (b) places the locus of struggle outside that process.

[3] This is either an expression of anarchism or Maoism but, in either case, is at best ridiculous. "[C]ounter power, building structures and creating resources within proletarian that will eventually replace the state" all suppose, again, a struggle outside the struggle in the workplace, which for Marxists must always be crucial.

The structures that will eventually conquer capitalism, including the state, will begin with the struggles in the workplace: unions, strike committees, etc., and revolutionary organizations which will, as the capitalist crisis magnifies, fight harder and harder against the hegemony of the ruling class. There is no "counter power" that can exist under capitalism. We are not dealing with peasant armies fighting outside the cities. And, by the way, the most recent venture in that direction, in Nepal, failed.


Trailling after teacher or nurses strikes isnt going to get anywhere.Which shows how little you know about class struggle.


What is needed desperately is centralization, and also militarization. The question of the creation of a new society and the end of the tryanny of value is essentially a military one and only accidently political or economic.Maoism or some weird variation of it. This is the strategy of a set of politics unable to relate to the working class and looking, rhetoric aside, for a way to avoid class struggle as it actually takes place in the workplace.


RED DAVE

[S.Artesian]

What is needed is to break Marxist orthodoxy, and update Marxism so that it becomes relevant to the current day, where living standards have gone beyond what Marx could have imagined, as Capitalism becomes increasingly savage and imperial. Capitalism, in short, has become a globally interwoven problem (a point of the Third Worldists that could actually be expanded upon, with less ridiculous and apocryphal hyperbole!) and its very difficult to connect the struggles of people like me, with Marxist rhetoric about exploitation, when there are people who are technically of the same class as me in other countries and continents who have vastly inferior living standards.


I think that's a fine sentiment, and I hope S&T or somebody follows up on it. I hope somebody offers an explanation abut what's happened to capitalism say since 1973 without recourse to "orthodox Marxism"-- without reference to the tendency of the rate of profit to decline; a change in the value, and technical, composition of capital; without discussing overproduction and valorization; without discussing relations of land, labor, landed labor; of industrial to rural production.

I hope someone takes a specific specific conflict-- Chile 1973; Portugal 1974; Russia 1991; South Africa 1994; or any other and show us how an updatedrelevant modern Marxist analysis differs from an "orthodox" Marxist analysis that uses all those above "economic" parameters to set the background, and the subsequent course of class struggle.

The best analyses I've read have all been offered by those who consider themselves ordinary, un-updated, Marxists.

[RED DAVE]

Going back to your criticisms of me, I'll only rebutt that it is ironic that the left has dumped the one Orthodox baby and bath water most capable of organizing the working class, to its long-term detriment and to the detriment of the working class.And what would that be, DNZ? The party-movement as conceived of by Kautsky, a bureaucratic toilet that led directly to the betrayal of WWI, refusal to aid the Russian Revolution and refusal to participate in the German Revolution of 1919. That Orthodox baby?

RED DAVE

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

I don't think you've read (or understood) the majority of what Marx actually wrote. If you did, you wouldn't make statements like this.

Crisis, falling rate of profit, overproduction, army of the unemployed, etc., are all there.

Of course things are not exactly the same in every single way as they were more than a century ago(!), but the basis of society remains: capitalism, based on the exploitation of labor for profit. "Modern analyses" that claim to "move beyond" this ironically end up rooted firmly within it.

I'm not talking about a break with Marxism, or with Marx's analysis of Capitalism. I think it's widely understood, even (as we've seen recently!) amongst the bourgeois commentariat, that Marx's analysis of Capitalism widely holds true.

What i'm talking about, and i've thought this for a while, is that whilst the division of class relations into those that are fundamental to our theoretical understanding of Capitalism (into ruling and working classes, exploiters and exploited) hold true in the most academic sense, it is a division that is, in practice, very difficult to accept as the only prevailing orthodox analysis of socio-economic relations in a world that is increasingly different to that of the period Marx was alive in and analysing.

I mean, I have great difficulty in getting some of my non-leftist friends to take serious my assertion that they are working class (which, in a strictly academic, Marxist sense, they are), simply because they are the stereotype of what the silly Capitalist sociologists call the 'middle class'. Whilst the working class is bound by economic circumstances, it is a class that is increasingly becoming a broad church; indeed, the old stereotype of the working class person as the 'industrial proletarian' is becoming increasingly outdated.

What this means, in practical terms, is that increasingly it is difficult to bind the working class (in the context of the advanced European countries, i'm mainly using my experiences in the UK to base this on) together over even labour disputes and economic struggles, let alone connecting their increasingly divergent interests together and binding them to political struggles.

So what I feel is needed is, rather than what i'm assuming you thought I meant (some radical break from Marxist orthodoxy), is an updating of Marxist orthodoxy to accommodate the severe, sharp changes in our society. Rosa Luxemburg's 1905 work The Mass Strike is an example of something that uses the Marxism of Marx himself and builds upon it; with the rise of the precariat, with the rise of the consumerist society, with the continuing revolution in communications and with the fragmentation of the proletariat socially, culturally and even economically we need a new analysis of our society that uses the Marxism of Marx (I don't want to refer to this either as classical or Orthodox Marxism because I know there's a debate going on on here as to the differences between the two and i'm not totally sound on the subject myself) to analyse society in a new context.

I say all of this because i'm really rather sick of the British Left expecting the sloganeering of 1917 to somehow work in 2011.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

In fact, I should build on that last post. In particular, we need a formulation that answers the questions i've raised, namely:

1. where the working class is becoming increasingly fragmented, what are the right educational, organisational and agitation strategies (strategies, not tactics!) to bring a critical mass of the working class to a sufficient point of class consciousness.

2. what are the roles of the mass and general strikes today, and how have they been affected by the consumerisation of the modern developed world, the ongoing revolution in communications.

3. what is the role of imperialism in Capitalism, and its relationship to the economic prospects of Capitalism? Was Marx's idea about imperialism being the highest stage of Capitalism correct?

There are more questions, but these are the questions that I feel we cannot simply look back to a 19th century sociologist/philosopher/economist to answer, and the questions that are consistently being failed upon by leftists currently. They are so numerous and so important that I feel they must be answered by a theoretical breakthrough.

[S.Artesian]

In fact, I should build on that last post. In particular, we need a formulation that answers the questions i've raised, namely:

1. where the working class is becoming increasingly fragmented, what are the right educational, organisational and agitation strategies (strategies, not tactics!) to bring a critical mass of the working class to a sufficient point of class consciousness.

2. what are the roles of the mass and general strikes today, and how have they been affected by the consumerisation of the modern developed world, the ongoing revolution in communications.

3. what is the role of imperialism in Capitalism, and its relationship to the economic prospects of Capitalism? Was Marx's idea about imperialism being the highest stage of Capitalism correct?

There are more questions, but these are the questions that I feel we cannot simply look back to a 19th century sociologist/philosopher/economist to answer, and the questions that are consistently being failed upon by leftists currently. They are so numerous and so important that I feel they must be answered by a theoretical breakthrough.

Well before you say you can't look back to the 19th century, you might want to check yourself because it was not "Marx's idea" "about imperialism being the highest stage of capitalism."

So before we look for a theoretical breakthrough, lets just get our basic history right.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Yeah I realised that error as soon as I wrote it. In the midst of a quite severe hangover. Apologies.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

And i'm not trying to do a Bob Avakian and proclaim myself the origin of some special new breakthrough, i'm just saying that I think that is what is needed to be done!

[S.Artesian]

^^^ I understand that, but if you think there's another course to be followed, another method/content of critique to be established, then it's necessary to show those of us who consider ourselves Marxist "classicists" where the Marxist method/content goes wrong in analyzing contemporary capitalism and what the "modern" method/content is able to determine in explanations of concrete class conflict.

If we can't do that, then we're just sitting around waiting for the next Marxist messiah to ride in on the back of a donkey.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

Like I said, Marx wasn't wrong, but he was analysing a society where there was a clearer cultural and social divide between the two classes, and thus it was easier to write about how to revolutionise society, since the working class was generally industrialised, unionised and socially and culturally speaking, a more homogenous group.

The rise of the consumer society, and in particular the rise of neo-liberalism, has led to more heterogeneity in the working class. This presents not just abstract theoretical problems but real practical, organisational ones, in that members of the working class are more fragmented and more difficult to organise into a mass group. I cannot honestly say that my group of friends, technically workers by the Marxian definition, have much in common with the stereotype of the industrial working man, for example, and i'm sure there are many more fragmented socio-cultural groups who would struggle to find common ground to organise, and may even find it difficult to unite for labour disputes (due to fragmentation of the type of work carried out by the working class now) and other economic and political struggles.

[citizen of industry]

^ I laughed.

No intellectually credible communist program for Japan demands the immediate cessation of nuclear fission on the islands, either as a demand to be hurled to the generous masters of the bourgeois state or as to be implemented immediately upon the raising of the working class to the position of the political ruling class. For the simple reason this would lead to the fall of the bourgeois or workers' government that implemented it for material reasons. There is no immediate substitute for that volume of electrical supply.

Otherwise, I'm in complete agreement.

There is plenty of evidence to refute that statement. Nuclear fission is a minority percentage of energy produced on the islands. A good debate on it here that presents both sides very well: http://www.revleft.com/vb/well-informed-people-t160601/index.html?t=160601

[citizen of industry]

Absolutely. This is the point that DNZ, with all his weird shit about parties, movements, unions, bureacracies, etc., can never grasp.

Here we have to begin what should be a really good discussion about real organizing in the real working class.RED DAVE

What do you make of IWW efforts to build downtown worker's unions, such as the montpelier downtown workers union:

http://libcom.org/library/precarious-pissed-lessons-montpelier-downtown-workers-union-2003-2005

http://www.iww.org/en/node/1137

It looks like they are doing this in Madison: http://www.iww.org/en/node/2407

I think this is a much more realistic way to organize the "precariat" than, say, trying to organize a McDonald's union. And I've had it with labor commissions and district courts and civil courts and the labor bereau because they are all pro-corporation. Things like work-to-rule, sick-in, demo etc. are much better IMO.

[S.Artesian]

Like I said, Marx wasn't wrong, but he was analysing a society where there was a clearer cultural and social divide between the two classes, and thus it was easier to write about how to revolutionise society, since the working class was generally industrialised, unionised and socially and culturally speaking, a more homogenous group.

The rise of the consumer society, and in particular the rise of neo-liberalism, has led to more heterogeneity in the working class. This presents not just abstract theoretical problems but real practical, organisational ones, in that members of the working class are more fragmented and more difficult to organise into a mass group. I cannot honestly say that my group of friends, technically workers by the Marxian definition, have much in common with the stereotype of the industrial working man, for example, and i'm sure there are many more fragmented socio-cultural groups who would struggle to find common ground to organise, and may even find it difficult to unite for labour disputes (due to fragmentation of the type of work carried out by the working class now) and other economic and political struggles.

All I'm asking for is a "use case" a demonstration of what you are proposing-- how the 21st updating is an improvement, more nuanced, and leads to a surer path to the abolition of capital than the work and critique provided by that 19th century guy.

[Die Neue Zeit]

What do you make of IWW efforts to build downtown worker's unions, such as the montpelier downtown workers union:

http://libcom.org/library/precarious-pissed-lessons-montpelier-downtown-workers-union-2003-2005

http://www.iww.org/en/node/1137

It looks like they are doing this in Madison: http://www.iww.org/en/node/2407

I think this is a much more realistic way to organize the "precariat" than, say, trying to organize a McDonald's union. And I've had it with labor commissions and district courts and civil courts and the labor bereau because they are all pro-corporation. Things like work-to-rule, sick-in, demo etc. are much better IMO.

Organizing on a purely regional basis has its pros and cons. The biggest con I see, and correct me if I'm wrong, is that it fits right into propertarian/"libertard" opposition to the existing "government-privileged unions" and their alleged "solution":

http://www.reddit.com/r/Libertarian/comments/frd58/the_myth_of_voluntary_unions/ ("getting special privileges from the government that violates the ability to own property and own one's labor")

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2011/02/power_free_association ("unionism of free association")

http://libertarianinvestments.blogspot.com/2011/03/libertarian-position-on-unions.html ("the government uses force against the employers in not allowing them the option to fire the employees")

[Jose Gracchus]

So tactics should be rejected because libertarians craft rhetoric against them? What do you think they'd do against your party-movement except red-bait the shit out of it?

[Die Neue Zeit]

The way I see it, unless there's a desire to remain irrelevant like the IWW or like regional NIMBY groups, organizing on a regional basis must entail extensive politicization. This happened to the General German Workers Association, itself later on establishing completely subordinated unions after the abolition of anti-combination laws:

http://rakovsky.freehomepage.com/custom2_1.html


When Germany's anti-combination laws were repealed in 1869, Lassalle's successors formed professional unions. The branch unions were united in one general union with a highly centralized structure. This union was completely subordinate to the ADAV, a centralized and mass party.

(Think KKE and PAME)

[Jose Gracchus]

Have you done any analysis to isolate variables and substantiate in any seriouos way the organizational forms of KKE-PAME and ADAV and unions, and the organizational lines and ecology of class struggle in both contexts? I doubt it, and suspect this is another quote-mining attempt at drawing spurious conclusions from superficial remarks.

[Vladimir Innit Lenin]

All I'm asking for is a "use case" a demonstration of what you are proposing-- how the 21st updating is an improvement, more nuanced, and leads to a surer path to the abolition of capital than the work and critique provided by that 19th century guy.

I was talking earlier about the London riots. Though I didn't support the acts of looting and the (especially non-London based) rioting in its entirety, it was stunning to watch spontaneous 'organisations' (I guess i'm using that word in the loosest form, but it could be worked upon) come about IRL, the same day as being organised on social-networking websites.

This can also be applied to the Arab world revolutions. In a world where dictatorships (including those of capital) can call on increasingly awesome military might to crush opposition, the revolution in communications presents not only organisational advantages, but also advantages in practical agitation. Though it has not yet been the case in the UK, were we to face a standing army that was siding with capital in a domestic situation, it would be vital that our agitation organising went beyond notifying everyone (including the authorities) of upcoming strikes, protests, demos, assemblies etc. Even without an incredibly cruel standing army, giving the ruling class advanced notice of an event means that they can, via modern police methods, via modern communication and transport means, quickly and easily destroy the hub of a protest before it's begun to acquire critical mass of support and bodies.

Though I still believe it would require the mutiny of proletarian members of the standing army in order for a revolution not to descend into bloody warfare, there will be a period before a critical mass of mutinying soldiers has been reached. In this period it is vital that political struggles, when they occur, are effective. What we've seen in Britain in the past year and a half is that, compared to spontaneous direct action, the organised, publicly announced strike actions and demos organised by unions have become increasingly stale and in-effective. Of course, I don't think one can discount the eventual effectiveness of certain strike action (particularly solidarity strikes and the mass strike) in times of more intense revolutionary warfare, but what will get us to a tipping point of support and education? The answer must be organisational techniques that almost fully utilise modern means of communications.

The old party-paper-protest model will be rendered dead, thus. Rather, it is surely the case that, due to modern communicational abilities (as well as the historical [and current] failures of Leninist vanguards!) the spontaneous self-creating movement-model will inevitably outgrow the self-proclaimed, organised, vanguard party.

[Die Neue Zeit]

The answer must be organisational techniques that almost fully utilise modern means of communications.

The old party-paper-protest model will be rendered dead, thus. Rather, it is surely the case that, due to modern communicational abilities (as well as the historical [and current] failures of Leninist vanguards!) the spontaneous self-creating movement-model will inevitably outgrow the self-proclaimed, organised, vanguard party.

I agree on communications, but it isn't the be-all-and-end-all. There are recent articles on government clampdowns against those trying to organize not-so-mainstream political action using social media, up to the point of government-ordered mass communications lockdown. If "the revolution won't be televised," it sure won't be "social media"-ed, either.


Have you done any analysis to isolate variables and substantiate in any serious way the organizational forms of KKE-PAME and ADAV and unions, and the organizational lines and ecology of class struggle in both contexts? I doubt it, and suspect this is another quote-mining attempt at drawing spurious conclusions from superficial remarks.

I forgot to mention one of the pros of organizing regionally, and I guess this can be tied to extensive politicization: union shop organizing has given way to agency shop organizing. Under the former, the union must accommodate the political views of more conservative employees, hence why political prospects are limited. Under the latter, the union-as-agency can collect fees from unionized employees while admitting as members only those sharing similar political views.

[Hit The North]

In fact, I should build on that last post. In particular, we need a formulation that answers the questions i've raised, namely:

1. where the working class is becoming increasingly fragmented, what are the right educational, organisational and agitation strategies (strategies, not tactics!) to bring a critical mass of the working class to a sufficient point of class consciousness.


I think the assumption of greater fragmentation is based on the error of viewing the 19th Century/20th Century class structure as somehow more homogeneous and clear-cut than it actually was. Certainly Marx didn't think so. This is what he wrote in Capital vol 3:


Originally written by Marx (http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1894-c3/ch52.htm)
In England, modern society is indisputably most highly and classically developed in economic structure. Nevertheless, even here the stratification of classes does not appear in its pure form. Middle and intermediate strata even here obliterate lines of demarcation everywhere...

[...]

The same would also be true of the infinite fragmentation of interest and rank into which the division of social labour splits labourers as well as capitalists and landlords-the latter, e.g., into owners of vineyards, farm owners, owners of forests, mine owners and owners of fisheries.
The fact that bourgeois sociology fails to penetrate the surface appearance of the "infinite fragmentation of interest and rank" should not surprise us.

Locating class as existing as a collective relationship to means of production, obviously depends upon rising to a certain level of abstraction. Nevertheless, and perhaps paradoxically, it is only by rising to this level of abstraction that the real determination of social class is understood. It is the difference between essence and appearance. The job of Marxism is to penetrate beneath the appearance of the "infinite fragmentation of interest and rank", not only in our scientific analysis but also in our political agitation. Capitalism has always fragmented the working class and solidarity between workers in different branches of industry and across skills and economic sectors, is always an achievement, swimming against the tide of bourgeois ideology.


2. what are the roles of the mass and general strikes today, and how have they been affected by the consumerisation of the modern developed world, the ongoing revolution in communications.


The best analysis of consumerism draws on Marx's material analysis of the circulation of capital and on his concept of commodity fetishism. In terms of its affect on strikes, I'm not sure what you think the connection is.

As for the ongoing revolution in communications, our analysis must begin with it practical use in the global class struggle, from the EZLN to the Arab Spring and the London riots. Like most social manifestations of capitalism, communications is a double-edged sword when viewed from the point of view of class struggle. It may enable an increase in state surveillance, but it also contains the means for overcoming the surveillance of the state and mobilising against it.


3. what is the role of imperialism in Capitalism, and its relationship to the economic prospects of Capitalism?
I'll let others attempt to answer the question of imperialism. But if imperialism is defined as (i) the international export of capital and commodities and (ii) the increasing dominance of finance capital over industrial capital then I'd suggest we live in a period of ultra-imperialism.