Workers' Party PAC: "Party of the 'precariat'"

[Die Neue Zeit]

Awhile back I wrote of an explicitly political formation to emerge from Occupy. Is this another one?

http://workerspartypac.blogspot.com/2011_11_01_archive.html

http://workerspartypac.blogspot.com/p/long-term-program-provisional.html (Long-Term Program)


Just as the steam engine created an industrial working class that replaced the existing manufacturing class, electronic production is creating a new class of workers. This new class consists of employed and unemployed sectors. The part-time, contingency, below minimum wage workers within the employed sector are already over a third of the work force. This employed sector of the class is constantly drawn into the growing unemployed sector that ranges from the structurally unemployed to the absolutely destitute, homeless workers.

The new class cannot solve its economic problems without the public ownership of the socially necessary means of production and the distribution of the social product according to need.

[Martin Blank]

First of all, this has nothing to do with us. Second of all, we wouldn't have anything to do with this, because for all the rhetoric about "communism" and such, they are still playing pin the tail on the (Democratic Party) donkey -- aka, "fusion" politics, like that of the so-called Working Families Parties. Just another reformist obstacle.

[Die Neue Zeit]

If they're indeed playing "fusion politics," then my apologies. The "precariat" rhetoric being formally politicized does sound interesting, though.

[blake 3:17]

...

[blake 3:17]

Felix Guattari gave an interesting description of the worker under semio-capitalism that is quite similar to your discussion of the precariat. I thought it was perfectly legitimate from a Marxist perspective as it simply described new modes of production.

The stuff I could find quickly online is full of complicated jargon that just isn't necessary.

I'll find a proper source soon.

Edited to add: I'll have to find it in the library. The version I have is much clumsier and inelegant. Most people don't mention them together, but I think Guattari and Kim Moody complement each other in describing new(ish) forms of worker exploitation and alienation.

[Aspiring Humanist]

Wait a minute.

The part-time, contingency, below minimum wage workers within the employed sector are already over a third of the work force
Is this true? Can I get a source on this?

[Binh]

Of interest re: the precariat:
http://occupytheory.org/TIDAL_occupytheory.pdf

[blake 3:17]

There's a bunch of good stuff in the link above.

I love
throw cops at the cops

During the G20's occupation of Toronto, it was amazing to hear people, threatened with mass and arbitrary arrest over loud speaker by police, yelling back that they were going to have the police arrested, they were calling 911 on the cops, and were going to call the police on them. I remember one woman shouting that she was going to arrest them.

Brilliant.

[Renegade Saint]

Do we really need another party?

[A Marxist Historian]

There's a bunch of good stuff in the link above.

I love

During the G20's occupation of Toronto, it was amazing to hear people, threatened with mass and arbitrary arrest over loud speaker by police, yelling back that they were going to have the police arrested, they were calling 911 on the cops, and were going to call the police on them. I remember one woman shouting that she was going to arrest them.

Brilliant.

I hope you were being ironical there. That's about the dumbest and most naive tactic I ever heard of.

Somehow I don't think it had the pigs trembling in their boots. In fact, I'm sure it just about made their day, and afterwards they were laughing it up about it over their donuts all night long, while cleaning the blood off their nightsticks.

-M.H.-

[blake 3:17]

I hope you were being ironical there. That's about the dumbest and most naive tactic I ever heard of.

It wasn't a tactic. It wasn't part of a protest. It was people being bullied by police for walking down a busy residential and commercial street on a Saturday evening.