Fast-Food Workers' Fight for 15 Is My Fight Too

[blake 3:17]

Letasha Irby
Production worker, Lear Corporation

Fast-Food Workers' Fight for 15 Is My Fight Too
Posted: 11/10/2015 12:01 pm EST Updated: 11/10/2015 12:59 pm EST

Most people wouldn't expect an auto worker to have much in common with McDonald's cooks and cashiers striking for $15 an hour and union rights. But here's the truth: Even though I help make vehicles sold by Hyundai, I am one of the 64 million American workers who are paid less than $15 an hour.

That's why, on Tuesday, I'll be standing proudly alongside fast-food workers walking off the job in Alabama, because their fight for higher pay and a voice on the job is my fight too.

For the past decade, I've worked at a plant in Selma, Alabama, owned by Lear Corp., a major supplier to Hyundai. As a mother of two, I am grateful for my job. But the fact is, my co-workers and I are grossly underpaid and work in conditions that we believe are unsafe. Like many in the fast-food industry, I struggle to makes ends meet on just $12 an hour. Meanwhile, the company I work for made $839 million in profit just last year.

My co-workers in Selma and I have voiced our concerns. Earlier this year, we protested with Lear workers from plants across the country at a shareholder's meeting at the company's headquarters in Southfield, Michigan. Though we've made some progress, many of our concerns have not been addressed.

And I know I'm not alone. I've met with other auto parts workers across the country who face the exact same low wages and unsafe conditions that are the new normal in the auto industry.

Last year, I met auto parts workers from a plant in Lorain, Ohio, where they make welded metal seat frames. People there talked to me about the horrible working conditions they face, too. Pay is dismal: Wages top out at $12 per hour and some workers are making hourly wages as low as $9. Not surprisingly, many don't stick around for long. Though the plant employs just over 400 workers, a former manager said that 1,500 workers passed through Camaco in the past two years.

The auto workers I met from Lorain will be protesting in their community on Tuesday as well, standing alongside other local workers to demand good jobs that will lift the economy and allow us to support ourselves and our families.

I always believed that manufacturing jobs were a ticket to the middle class, but it's clear to me that they are now adding to the country's low-wage crisis. For the first time in decades, manufacturing jobs now pay wages that rank in the bottom half of all jobs in the economy. A recent report said that more than 600,000 manufacturing workers are paid just $9.60 an hour or less, and 1.5 million manufacturing workers -- one out of every four -- make $11.91 an hour or less.

I'm inspired by signs that things can change. Earlier this fall, workers at an auto parts plant in Piedmont, Alabama, voted by a 2-1 margin to join the United Auto Workers, showing that it's possible to win fair pay and a voice on the job when you refuse to accept the status quo.

Companies, whether they make auto parts or cheeseburgers, have an obligation to treat their employees with respect. It's wrong that top level executives at corporations are lining their pockets while so many of us -- who do the hard work -- are paid so little that we can't afford basic needs.

For three years now, fast-food workers have led a nationwide movement that proves that if we speak up, we will be heard and taken seriously. On Tuesday, I'll be joining fast-food workers and other underpaid workers all across the country to demand higher wages and a voice on the job. We have a common fight, and when we stick together, we can win.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/letasha-irby/fight-for-15-auto-workers_b_8523110.html?utm_hp_ref=business&ir=Business

[Wyboth]

Idealism. Even if the workers achieve a $15 minimum wage instead of a $7.25 one, that will do nothing about surplus value, alienation, or all of the other problems with capitalism. Don't fight for 15, fight for communism.

[Aslan]

What does this accomplish in the long run? It just means more conformism in the proletarian class! This means nothing to me but a good thing in a bad society.

To make it simple capitalism as a system is like a rusted bicycle. No matter how nice you paint it and how comfortable you make the seat. You will always have the risk of the whole thing collapsing and the gears of the machine being revealed.

[Alan OldStudent]

Comrade Blake,

I can't understand the logic of people like RedEagle and Wyboth. They counterpoise the fight for reforms against revolution.

Karl Marx certainly supported the fight for unions, which are an instrument to improve the conditions of exploitation. If fighting for reform was good enough for Marx, why isn't it good enough for the likes of RedEagle and Wyboth? Perhaps they think Marx was no more than a middle class dilettante?

Who can say with a straight face that had revolutionaries not engaged in the fight for such reforms as an end to child labor, for universal education, women's suffrage, health and safety regulations in the workplace, or an end to racial and sexual discrimination in hiring, we would be closer to socialism?

I have little patience for that kind of "revolutionary" posturing. And that's exactly what it is: meaningless revolutionary posturing.

Such impossibilist arguments are no more than an excuse to abstain from the actual, existing struggles of working people. That kind of ultra-purism is both irritatingly smug and elitist.

To paraphrase an old saying from the 60s: "Bullshit talks, action walks"!

***AOS***

[Rafiq]

What does this accomplish in the long run? It just means more conformism in the proletarian class! This means nothing to me but a good thing in a bad society.


Not only is this cynical, it is wrong. History shows that when such structural weaknesses are exposed, workers will inevitably demand more. That is why we have the stereotype of the 'greedy union' today (or at least we did decades ago, when workers were incessantly fighting for more and more).

People will not be satisfied with a 15 dollar wage, but it will actually give them the necessary breathing room to be more predisposed to the pursuit of higher goals, which is precisely why this following comment is even more ridiculous:


Idealism. Even if the workers achieve a $15 minimum wage instead of a $7.25 one, that will do nothing about surplus value, alienation, or all of the other problems with capitalism. Don't fight for 15, fight for communism.

And none of these problems are ones that can be addressed through a practical program. You talk about fighting for Communism, but what exactly does that mean? On a practiacl level, it means contentness with the fact that the world will never adjust to the whims of imagination.

Communism is wrought from the active process to supersede the present condition. Through struggles like the minimum wage struggle, the platform and basis for class-based politics is built.

[The Feral Underclass]

Comrade Blake,

I can't understand the logic of people like RedEagle and Wyboth. They counterpoise the fight for reforms against revolution.

Karl Marx certainly supported the fight for unions, which are an instrument to improve the conditions of exploitation. If fighting for reform was good enough for Marx, why isn't it good enough for the likes of RedEagle and Wyboth? Perhaps they think Marx was no more than a middle class dilettante?

The logic is fairly straight forward: Reformism hinders revolution. The argument that the working class will see through the limitations of reform and that this realisation will lead to a broader class struggle has never been proven to be true. There is not one example in history where a reform has lead to the emergence of a counter-power or increased militancy within the class.

The problem is not the principle of reformism per se. Marx and Lenin both heavily criticised reformism. Indeed, the former rarely even spoke of it. The problem comes with understand how we get from a-to-b. You argue that the ends justify the means i.e. reformism is objectionable because it reinforces exploitation, but it can be used to achieve a desired result. The argument against reformism (at least from me) is that in actual fact, all it does is reinforce the former without achieving the latter.

It is even more of a problem in modern Western society, where the working class is no longer composed of homogenous-like industrial workers. The society of Marx and Lenin, where everyone worked in factories or heavy industry, no longer exists. Neither do the crushing conditions of 19th century and early 20th century life for working class people in the West. Increasing the minimum wage to $15 an hour is not a pressing issue, especially when compared to stopping children from dying in mines or workers literally being worked to death (which is an occurrence still prevalent in the economic south).

Lenin said that "...the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle." History says he is wrong.


Who can say with a straight face that had revolutionaries not engaged in the fight for such reforms as an end to child labor, for universal education, women's suffrage, health and safety regulations in the workplace, or an end to racial and sexual discrimination in hiring, we would be closer to socialism?

The way you have presented your argument exposes a very privileged, western-centric world view. It also exposes the myopia of the traditional left and the delusional state they find themselves in.

It is a fantasy if you think that America has universal education, health and safety regulations in the workplace and an end to racial and sexual discrimination in hiring. When you consider that America makes up for only 4% of the world's population it is even more of a fantasy to say that these alleged events have brought you closer to socialism. You can see that none of the things you have discussed actually exist in most of the world. So while you might be contented with your accomplishments in the good old U S of A, the majority of the planet still lives in abject poverty, disenfranchised and excluded from most, if not all, of the things you are privileged enough to enjoy.

So my questions to you is, how does your $15 an hour move one step closer to socialism? How does achieving a $15 per hour wage serve your overall strategy for achieving socialism?


I have little patience for that kind of "revolutionary" posturing. And that's exactly what it is: meaningless revolutionary posturing.

Such impossibilist arguments are no more than an excuse to abstain from the actual, existing struggles of working people. That kind of ultra-purism is both irritatingly smug and elitist.

To paraphrase an old saying from the 60s: "Bullshit talks, action walks"!

Yes, well, we don't live in the 60s any more.

You see it as posturing, but in reality it is a rejection of a useless tactic that serves only the interests of the ruling classes and is counter-intuitive to developing strategies that produce communism. It has nothing to do with purism, but about recognising incompetency.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Lenin said that "...the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle." History says he is wrong.

Really? What specific history is this?

It should be brought to people's attention that the quote TFU is citing here comes from a piece Lenin wrote against reformism but for the struggle for reforms. Lenin recognized the difference, even if TFU doesn't. The section of the article the quote is from deserves to be reproduced in full:


And conversely, workers who have assimilated Marx’s theory, i.e., realised the inevitability of wage-slavery so long as capitalist rule remains, will not be fooled by any bourgeois reforms. Understanding that where capitalism continued to exist reforms cannot be either enduring or far-reaching, the workers fight for better conditions and use them to intensify the fight against wage-slavery. The reformists try to divide and deceive the workers, to divert them from the class struggle by petty concessions. But the workers, having seen through the falsity of reformism, utilise reforms to develop and broaden their class struggle.

https://www.marxists.org/archive/lenin/works/1913/sep/12b.htm

[The Feral Underclass]

Oh dear, I've dared to criticise Lenin.


Really? What specific history is this?

The history of reality.


It should be brought to people's attention that the quote TFU is citing here comes from a piece Lenin wrote against reformism but for the struggle for reforms. Lenin recognized the difference, even if TFU doesn't.

You seem to have had a very selective reading of my post. I don't really understand what has lead you to conclude I don't understand this difference.

[Shinyos]

I don't really see how reforms are against revolutions, especially seeing how reforms themselves are from the grassroots of the proletariat struggling with current conditions. Could someone explain this for me?

[Spectre of Spartacism]

The history of reality.

Could you please be more specific? Certainly history has shown that the fight for reforms doesn't automatically produced revolutionary consciousness. Guess who shared that view and wrote a polemical tract emphasizing it over 100 years ago? Lenin.

The idea that you can forgo a struggle for reforms or even worse, oppose workers' struggling for reforms in the hopes that it will advance revolutionary politics, only makes sense from an accelerationist perspective. It is a perspective that aligns with capital in pushing for the greatest possible misery for workers, the difference being that you hope that it will lead workers to desperately turn to revolution at some point in the indeterminate future. It's something like the sadist's version of social democracy.

On a practical level, this position belongs in a museum beside Fourier's ideas, as neither will have practical significance for the workers' movement at any point in the future. While only the vanguard workers will understand the need for socialism in the present context, a far greater number know that it is definitely in their interest to be paid a higher wage (and all things being equal, to be exploited less) at their job.


You seem to have had a very selective reading of my post. I don't really understand what has lead you to conclude I don't understand this difference is.What leads me to that conclusion is that Alan said earlier in this thread that he didn't understand why people were trying to "counterpoise the fight for reforms against revolution." The fight for reforms, not reformism. You responded to this by saying, "The logic is fairly straight forward: Reformism hinders revolution."

Note the elision from "fight for reforms" into "Reformism."

That is why I have concluded you don't understand the difference between reformism and reforms.

[The Feral Underclass]

I don't really see how reforms are against revolutions, especially seeing how reforms themselves are from the grassroots of the proletariat struggling with current conditions. Could someone explain this for me?

The question that should be asked is: what is your overall objective for seeking a reform and how does it help you achieve it?

[Comrade Jacob]

Raising the wages will not change anything. Cutting wages will do more, it would spark antagonisms between workers and bosses.

[The Feral Underclass]

Could you please be more specific?

No.


Certainly history has shown that the fight for reforms doesn't automatically produced revolutionary consciousness. Guess who shared that view and wrote a polemical tract emphasizing it over 100 years ago? Lenin.

It will never produce revolutionary consciousness. Ever. If it were going to, it would have done so by now.


The idea that you can forgo a struggle for reforms or even worse, oppose workers' struggling for reforms in the hopes that it will advance revolutionary politics, only makes sense from an accelerationist perspective. It is a perspective that aligns with capital in pushing for the greatest possible misery for workers, the difference being that you hope that it will lead workers to desperately turn to revolution.

You would have to define for me what you consider to be a "reform." If you are talking about measures that challenge the logic of capitalism i.e. wage-labour then I'm on board, but arguing for struggles that lead to a strengthening of wage-labour in the hope that it will achieve some mythical result should be completely rejected.


On practical level, this position belongs in a museum beside Fourier's ideas, as neither will have practical significance for the workers' movement at any point in the future. While only the vanguard workers will understand the need for socialism in the present context, a far greater number know that it is definitely in their interest to be paid a higher wage (and all things being equal, exploited less) at their job.

It is not in the interest of a worker to be paid more for their exploitation. That is not in their interest! Any one who asserts that to be true is a reactionary. This is why I think your distinction, actually, is not as genuine as you initially claimed. You are against reformism i.e. reforms for themselves, but are for the struggle for reforms, yet here you are telling me that the actual reform is in the interest of the worker.

This is the whole point of my argument. The fight for reforms isn't the problem per se, the problem is the argument (which you seem to have failed to make) that the struggle for reform will somehow lead to militancy, as Lenin put it. This is demonstrably untrue. It. Doesn't. Work.


What leads me to that conclusion is that Alan said earlier in this thread that he didn't understand why people were trying to "counterpoise the fight for reforms against revolution." The fight for reforms, not reformism. You responded to this by saying, "The logic is fairly straight forward: Reformism hinders revolution."

Note the elision from "fight for reforms" into "Reformism."

That is why I have concluded you don't understand the difference between reformism and reforms.

I will be more careful in future.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

No.

I hope you realize that your previous answer is a non-answer, doesn't serve as a foundation for discussion, and reveals that your previous intervention in this thread was the functional equivalent of preaching.


It will never produce revolutionary consciousness. Ever. If it were going to, it would have done so by now.How do you know that struggling for reforms has never been a necessary component in anybody's arrival at revolutionary consciousness? I know it was instrumental in mine. Isn't this the part of the discussion where we are supposed to emphasize how oppressively substitutionist it would be if we weren't sensitive to the multiplicity and uniqueness of every individual's lived experience?


You would have to define for me what you consider to be a "reform." If you are talking about measures that challenge the logic of capitalism i.e. wage-labour then I'm on board, but arguing for struggles that lead to a strengthening of wage-labour in the hope that it will achieve some mythical result should be completely rejected.A reform is an improvement to workers' lives that workers extract from capitalists and their politicians within the framework of capitalism.

Let's take the fight for $15. Does earning a higher wage and reducing the level of exploitation of fastfood workers challenge the logic of capitalism? If you understand the logic of capitalism to be the maximization of accumulation of capital, it clearly does. Does this mean that every worker will understand that this is the logic of capitalism, and won't interpret higher wages as evidence that capitalism is just a vehicle to translate hard work into a better life?

No. But the funny thing about the logic of capitalism is that it never gives up trying to take back advances that workers have made. If you're in the struggle for the long haul, the inevitable attempts at take-backs provide revolutionaries another opportunity to demonstrate the reality that capitalism must be overthrown. That is how it will be demonstrated: in practice, not through being preached at.

However workers interpret the larger significance of it, one thing you can count on is that workers are not dullards who can't recognize their immediate interests. They will fight for those interests, even if you choose to abstain because you think there's a mystical logic built into that resistance that must somehow automatically bolster capitalism in the long term. What you consider to be the inherent logic of reforms is actually the propaganda spewed by the bourgeoisie and its media representatives, percisely to try to deflect the anti-capitalist logic of the reforms. Theirs is propaganda that revolutionaries have a duty to counter from inside the class struggle, not from the outside.


It is not in the interest of a worker to be paid more for their exploitation. That is not in their interest! Any one who asserts that to be true is a reactionary. This is why I think your distinction, actually, is not as genuine as you initially claimed. You are against reformism i.e. reforms for themselves, but are for the struggle for reforms, yet here you are telling me that the actual reform is in the interest of the worker.It very much is in the interest of workers to reduce the level of exploitation. If you deny this, I wonder how you can claim that it is in workers' interests to reduce exploitation to zero. Good luck getting workers to fight for the second as you tell them it's not in their interest to fight for the first. As I said, the stuff of museum exhibits.


This is the whole point of my argument. The fight for reforms isn't the problem per se, the problem is the argument (which you seem to have failed to make) that the struggle for reform will somehow lead to militancy, as Lenin put it, is demonstrably untrue. It. Doesn't. Work.And yet when asked why, you've just said, "History shows it. All of it." Not a convincing argument.

[Wyboth]

History shows that when such structural weaknesses are exposed, workers will inevitably demand more.

This seems backwards to me - could you direct me to a real-life example of your statement? I would imagine that worse material conditions beget a greater revolutionary movement, but real life could prove me wrong.

To be more clear, I am not against the fight for 15 movement. I am against the assumption many in that movement seem to have that raising the minimum wage will fix all of the problems with capitalism. I think this is a good opportunity to raise class-consciousness among workers, and to show many that revolution is the only solution to capitalism.

[Shinyos]

The question that should be asked is: what is your overall objective for seeking a reform and how does it help you achieve it?

I guess it is emphasized that a reform is pointless in the long run in terms of a revolutionary standpoint, but what is more likely to happen sometime in the future? In the current state of politics, the revolutionary left is an extremely small and irrelevant sect that doesn't have a foot to stand on. If a working class revolution were to happen, it would first be necessary to build class consciousness, and as of right now, the working class cannot manage to have such a standpoint at this point in time for various reasons.

[Lord Testicles]

To be more clear, I am not against the fight for 15 movement. I am against the assumption many in that movement seem to have that raising the minimum wage will fix all of the problems with capitalism.

I don't think anyone thinks that raising the minimum wage will fix all the problems in capitalism. I think people think it will make it easier to pay the rent not abolish the need to pay the rent.

[The Feral Underclass]

I hope you realize that your previous answer is a non-answer, doesn't serve as a foundation for discussion, and reveals that your previous intervention in this thread was the functional equivalent of preaching.

The history of class struggle then. I'm not going to dally about with you. Either you understand full well what I'm getting at or you're an idiot.


How do you know that struggling for reforms has never been a necessary component in anybody's arrival at revolutionary consciousness? I know it was instrumental in mine. Isn't this the part of the discussion where we are supposed to emphasize how oppressively substitutionist it would be if we weren't sensitive to the multiplicity and uniqueness of every individual's lived experience?

You sound like a hippy.

If fighting for reforms has allowed you to arrive at your politics then I'm very happy for you, but that doesn't mean because you've experienced something positive from struggling for reforms you can extrapolate this into a revolutionary strategy.

When I talk about revolutionary consciousness, I'm not talking about these individual little moments where people suddenly want to read books by Trotsky, I'm talking about the level of movement whereby the class turns into a counter-power. Struggling for reforms is never going to achieve that. Why? Because it doesn't provide the ideological foundations or practical mechanisms to make that leap. All it does is provide capital and the state an opportunity to assimilate dissent and provide solutions that reinforce the legitimacy of its existence.


A reform is an improvement to workers' lives workers pressure the capitalists and their politicians into yielding within the framework of capitalism.

Communists aren't radical social workers.


Let's take the fight for $15. Does earning a higher wage and reducing the level of exploitation of fastfood workers challenge the logic of capitalism? If you understand the logic of capitalism to be the maximization of accumulation of capital, it clearly does. Does this mean that every worker will understand that this is the logic of capitalism, and won't interpret higher wages as evidence that capitalism is just a vehicle to translate hard work into a better life?

No. But the funny thing about the logic of capitalism is that it never gives up trying to take back advances that workers have made. If you're in the struggle for the long haul, the inevitable attempts at take-backs provide revolutionaries another opportunity to demonstrate the reality that capitalism must be overthrown.

I see, so the trick here is that you want to win the reform so that capitalism can take the reform back and then all of sudden the working class are going to say, "hang on a minute, that was our reform." If that were true, why hasn't it happened? There have been lots of reforms that have been taken away that the working class have had a collective sigh about and then gone on with their lives. And capitalism is far cleverer than that now. The Tories are trying to decimate unions at the minute. No one gives a fuck. The Tories are privatising the NHS; the only people who are visibly upset about this i.e. on the streets are people who are always on the streets anway. Sooner or later as the NHS is taken away bit-by-bit, generations will forget what a free health service is. Capitalism plays the long-game. And that's not to mention that the Tories' strategy to underfund the NHS so it has no option but to fail. This has not been challenged, not even a little bit. So what should we do? Build a campaign to "Save the NHS." That already exists and no one gives a fuck. If they do, they're certainly not on the streets being militant about it...Maybe they'll vote for Corbyn.

The issue of the minimum wage is exactly the same. In the UK the minimum wage is being increased from £6.53 to £7.20. The response to that has been to remove provisions for overtime, out-of-hours bonuses and other additional fees and bonuses from wages. This is what has happened in the place I work (and I've heard it happening in other places in other sectors). This means the minimum wage will increase, but our incomes won't. Increased minimum wages also increase prices of goods and services. So even if you get extra income, this is taken away by an increase in the price of things you have to pay for. So capitalism aren't even taken that reform away, they're not giving it to us in the first place and of course people know that, but has it lead to militancy? No...So...


However workers interpret the larger significance of it, one thing you can count on is that workers are not dullards who can't recognize their immediate interests. They will fight for those interests, even if you choose to abstain because you think there's a mystical logic built into that resistance that must somehow automatically bolster capitalism in the long term.

You are living in fantasy land. It's like this make-believe Trotskyist paradise, where all you have to do is believe these things will happen. If they will fight for those interests, why are they not fighting?


It very much is in the interest of workers to reduce the level of exploitation. If you deny this, I wonder how you can claim that it is in workers' interests to reduce exploitation to zero. Good luck getting workers to fight for the second as you tell them it's not in their interest to fight for the first. As I said, the stuff of museum exhibits.

And you can wonder away until your heart's content. I'm not going to be bullied into agreeing with your point-of-view just because you bring my motives into question.

I have no interest in telling workers anything. If workers want to fight for a higher minimum wage and a free state-funded health service, then that's fine. Why wouldn't they do that? These are, after all, the limitations of people's ambitions. They're limited and they are predictable precisely because there's no alternative presented to them by real communists. While the conditions for militancy exist, there exists only capitalism's formal, predicable opposition, bumbling away at the same old tired shit.

In any case, they're not fighting? Even in the face of austerity measures.


And yet when asked why, you've just said, "History shows it. All of it." Not a convincing argument.

Then don't be convinced...

[Spectre of Spartacism]

If fighting for reforms has allowed you to arrive at your politics then I'm very happy for you, but that doesn't mean because you've experienced something positive from struggling for reforms you can extrapolate this into a revolutionary strategy.

Well, no, you are completely misunderstanding me. I was responding to your categorical claim that reforms "will never produce revolutionary consciousness. Ever." So my point was not that the struggle for reforms are all that are needed to produce a revolution. Or even that the struggle for reforms alone will produce many revolutionaries. It was to point out that your sweeping statement is disproven by a sample of one: me.

The problem with the way you are approaching this discussion is that, through your own humorous muddling of categories, you are perceiving anybody who supports struggles for reforms as implying that the struggle for reforms are all that is needed, that it will grow over naturally and inexorably into a revolution. As you may know, Trotskyists take a lot of shit for pushing transitional demands, which are not "reforms" to capitalism, as they cannot be extracted but through a revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state. Trotskyists understand that reforms are not enough. The question you pose is whether they are anything worth supporting at all. You seem to think they aren't, because you attribute to them a logic all their own in the same manner as social democrats do...except leading to the reverse conclusion. Same flawed methodology, though.

Reforms, taken alone, don't have a logic that will inexorably push workers to fight for socialism. Echoing what I said earlier, this is a basic element of Leninism. Revolutionaries don't fight for them because they think it will lead to revolution. They fight for them because they understand that contained with those struggles are an anti-capitalist logic that the vanguard workers will recognize, and that by intervening in the struggle for reforms, a nucleus of revolutionary workers can be organized that can one day, when a revolutionary situation arises through capitalism's own inevitable crises, lead the push for revolution on the basis of transitional measures. Rather than reforms having an inherently revolutionary or inherently reactionary logic, the truth is that their logic is determined by the balance of forces in the class struggle, and the ability of contending forces in that struggle to bring their ideas to bear successfully through the actual movement by which workers can possibly learn from their own experiences.


I have no interest in telling workers anything.Then what role do you hope to play in the class struggle, and how do you think you can best realize that role? I stand by my earlier assessment that you sound like an accelerationist who abstains from struggle until workers are in such dire straits that, you hope, they will purify their struggle of any illusions in capitalism. At that point, presumably, it will be pure enough for you to step into, unwilling as you are to get your hands dirty. I don't think it's a coincidence that your intervention here has come across as preaching, even as you disclaim any desire to "tell workers" things. When you choose to abstain from the class struggle because it's not pure enough for you, there's nothing left for you but a lot of empty rhetoric.

[Rafiq]

Lenin

The reason what you say is silly is that it's all over the place and it lacks specific historical context.

IN the specific trajectory paths for reforms, history shows that the more successful the workers were in realizing them, the more militant they became. This is even true for the situation following the second world war: This had to literally be fought by the state actively suppressing them, Thatcher, Reagan, etc.

Lenin is not proposing any magical remedies which will "do this" or "do that". The class struggle is still an active struggle. The difference is that reforms both give breathing space and allow workers to realize their own power.

[Counterculturalist]

Raising the wages will not change anything. Cutting wages will do more, it would spark antagonisms between workers and bosses.

You're playing a dangerous and irresponsible game here. People can handle a lot of oppression before they revolt. Coldheartedly wishing misery on people isn't the way to go.

I don't believe that the current system can be reformed away - far from it. We need revolution. But let's not do our enemies' work for them. To actually recommend cutting wages in the hopes that it "sparks antagonisms" is to weaken the working class, not empower it.

Lower wages means more hours worked, and less time for physical or mental improvement. People who spend all their time struggling to meet basic needs don't have time to engage in revolutionary struggle.

[blake 3:17]

Anybody who doesn't care about wages can PM me and they can start depositing funds in my bank account as they please. It's obvious they don't need them :grin:

The Fight for a $15 Minimum Wage Just Exploded

by Kenrya Rankin Naasel Print | 0 Comments
Tue, Nov 10, 2015 3:44 PM EST

Yesterday, exactly one year away from Election Day 2016, the Fight for $15 campaign held what it’s calling the largest action of its kind in U.S. history. Backed by the Service Employees International Union, the campaign—which calls for a $15 hourly minimum wage and low-wage workers' right to unionize without retaliation—held rallies, marches, walkouts and strikes in a reported 270 cities around the country.

Fight for $15 began three years ago when about 200 people working in fast food staged a walkout. It has since attracted many other kinds of low-wage workers including those in child care, home care and in adjunct professorships. The organizers estimate that there are 64 million Americans who make less than $15 an hour—a group that could prove to be a substantial voting bloc in the upcoming election.

A study from the National Employment Law Project (NELP) found that 42 percent of U.S. workers are paid less than $15 an hour, and that women and people of color are overrepresented in that group. In fact, it includes more than half of all black workers and nearly 60 percent of Latino employees. And fully 96 percent of fast-food workers make less than $15 per hour. Meanwhile, data shows that for just about everywhere in the nation, unmarried workers need to make at least that much to cover basic living expenses. And that doesn’t even include providing for a family. Another NELP poll revealed that 76 percent of low-paid workers said they would pledge to vote for candidates who support $15 and a union.

“Workers need a raise now,” Kansas City, Missouri-based McDonald’s worker Latifah Trezvant said in a statement provided to Colorlines. She makes just $8.65 an hour. “McDonald’s and other large corporations need to step up and pay more. Politicians need to use their power. We can’t wait. We’ve got one message for anyone running for office in 2016, whether it’s for dogcatcher or president: Come get our vote. Stand up for $15 an hour and the right to a union, and we’ll stand behind you.”

Some politicians have already responded with pending legislation in several cities and states. Notably, New York already set the minimum wage to $15 for fast food workers statewide. And its governor, Andrew Cuomo, announced yesterday that he will set the minimum wage at $15 for all state-level public employees—making him the first in his position to do so.

At a New York City Fight for $15 rally, Cuomo said, “We made a decision a long time ago that if you work full time, you should have a decent lifestyle for you and your family.” He went on to say "[I]t is simple math. If you earn the minimum wage, it’s about $18,000 a year in New York, and if you add up the numbers you can’t pay for housing and food and clothing on $18,000 a year, period. ... If you get paid the minimum wage, you are still in poverty in this state.”

Among the presidential candidates, the three people seeking the Democratic nomination have expressed support for an increased minimum wage. In July, Senator Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) introduced legislation that seeks to incrementally move the federal minimum from $7.25 to $15 by 2020. Martin O'Malley also supports a federal increase to $15. Hillary Clinton supports a $12 federal wage and, per her economic plan, “believes that we should go further than the federal minimum through state and local efforts, and workers organizing and bargaining for higher wages, such as the Fight for $15 and recent efforts in Los Angeles and New York to raise their minimum wage to $15.”

Meanwhile, at last night’s GOP debate, The Washington Post reports that three of the candidates said that they oppose an increase.

“There is nothing that we do now to win. We don’t win anymore. … Taxes too high. Wages too high,” said billionaire Donald Trump. Claiming that a large boost in the minimum wage would hurt America’s ability to compete with overseas manufacturers, he added, “I hate to say it, but we have to leave it the way it is.”

Sen. Marco Rubio (Fla.) expressed a man-versus-machine view: “If you raise the minimum wage, you’re going to make people more expensive than a machine,” he said.

“Every time we raise the minimum wage, the number of jobless people increases,” said retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson. [This phenomenon is false, according to The New Republic's Jamil Smith.] Carson also said the effect was particularly noticeable among African-Americans.
At a September debate, former Pennsylvania senator Rick Santorum expressed support for increasing the federal minimum wage by 50 cents over three years. The current federal minimum wage, $7.25, has not increased since 2009.

https://www.colorlines.com/articles/fight-15-minimum-wage-just-exploded

[The Feral Underclass]

Well, no, you are completely misunderstanding me. I was responding to your categorical claim that reforms "will never produce revolutionary consciousness. Ever." So my point was not that the struggle for reforms are all that are needed to produce a revolution. Or even that the struggle for reforms alone will produce many revolutionaries. It was to point out that your sweeping statement is disproven by a sample of one: me.

I didn't misunderstand you, we were just talking about different things. That's why I said: "When I talk about revolutionary consciousness, I'm not talking about these individual little moments where people suddenly want to read books by Trotsky, I'm talking about the level of movement whereby the class turns into a counter-power."


The problem with the way you are approaching this discussion is that, through your own humorous muddling of categories, you are perceiving anybody who supports struggles for reforms as implying that the struggle for reforms are all that is needed, that it will grow over naturally and inexorably into a revolution. As you may know, Trotskyists take a lot of shit for pushing transitional demands, which are not "reforms" to capitalism, as they cannot be extracted but through a revolutionary overthrow of the bourgeois state. Trotskyists understand that reforms are not enough. The question you pose is whether they are anything worth supporting at all. You seem to think they aren't, because you attribute to them a logic all their own in the same manner as social democrats do...except leading to the reverse conclusion. Same flawed methodology, though.

Accusing people of arguing that the "struggle for reforms" is all that is needed, or that proponents believe that it will lead to revolution is a popular banality on RevLeft. It's a refuge to fall back on; an attempt to shut down debate by reducing the argument.

It's interesting how you've interacted with this conversation. I wasn't under the impression I was talking to a Trotskyist, so I'm confused as to why you have felt the need to butt into this debate and tell me what Trotskyists do and do not understand. I am not particularly interested in your point of view; just so we're clear about that.

The "problem" as you see it, does not exist. It is not my view that Alan or Blake or even you think that the struggle for reforms will lead to revolution. I have not made that argument. My issue comes when people like Alan and Blake make the argument that struggling for reforms is useful or necessary, either because they achieve better conditions for the working class, or because they achieve an increased militancy within the working class. Two very popular opinions amongst revolutionaries including Trotskyists. There are of course other reasons for being involved in "struggle for reforms," but as yet, I've not been provided with an explanation for how any of these make strategic sense. Of course, you've told me how it's a good tactic for recruiting, but what should one expect from a Trot?


Reforms, taken alone, don't have a logic that will inexorably push workers to fight for socialism. Echoing what I said earlier, this is a basic element of Leninism. Revolutionaries don't fight for them because they think it will lead to revolution. They fight for them because they understand that contained with those struggles are an anti-capitalist logic that the vanguard workers will recognize, and that by intervening in the struggle for reforms, a nucleus of revolutionary workers can be organized that can one day, when a revolutionary situation arises through capitalism's own inevitable crises, lead the push for revolution on the basis of transitional measures. Rather than reforms having an inherently revolutionary or inherently reactionary logic, the truth is that their logic is determined by the balance of forces in the class struggle, and the ability of contending forces in that struggle to bring their ideas to bear successfully through the actual movement by which workers can possibly learn from their own experiences.

Yes, Trotskyists are opportunists and substitutionists. This isn't particularly new. I have no particular issue with organisations using the "struggle for reforms" as a recruiting tactic, if they want to waste their time, but of course this is premised on the notion that the organisational politics and form of these organisations are not without problems to begin with, which of course they desperately are not.

In any case, despite the fact Trotskyist "vanguard workers" see the struggle for reform as a recruiting exercise, the structural issues with the reforms and the struggle for them remains. They still pacify dissent, they still legitimise state and capital, which are still allowed an opportunity to provide concessions and win an ideological argument for social/liberal democracy and so on and so on. Assuming that "the revolutionary situation [that] arises through capitalism's own inevitable crises" is not already happening and is actually some event in the future, how does all this better prepare your vanguard party when this historical crisis finally reaches its apex, if ever it does?

If you wish to respond to moments of militancy, prepare for class conflict and escalate it when it arrives, which I would argue are important, then you cannot rely on struggles for reforms as an exercise in party building, any more than you can rely on struggles for reform to build revolutionary consciousness throughout the working class. They are both strategically useless. I highlighted to you examples of how workers have responded to the attacks on their conditions. I gave the trade union laws, minimum wage and the decimation of the NHS as three examples. While you are busy recruiting from within the Save the NHS campaigns, the Living Wage campaign and the Pro-Union campaigns, the working class remain indifferent, isolated, disenfranchised and undermined. And when there are bursts of insurrection, they are rejected and ridiculed, often by the very people using their reformist struggles as recruiting exercises.

If you want to argue that the "struggle for reforms" is exclusively a tactic to organise vanguard workers, then fine. But that doesn't adequately address all the issues with the struggle for reforms bring to shot-term, medium-term and long-term strategic objectives...Assuming you have some.


Then what role do you hope to play in the class struggle, and how do you think you can best realize that role? I stand by my earlier assessment that you sound like an accelerationist who abstains from struggle until workers are in such dire straits that, you hope, they will purify their struggle of any illusions in capitalism.

I am not an accelerationist any more than you are. I just don't buy into the hackneyed view that building a vanguard party is the primary concern of revolutionaries, nor, more importantly, do I think there is any use to the struggle for reforms.


At that point, presumably, it will be pure enough for you to step into, unwilling as you are to get your hands dirty. I don't think it's a coincidence that your intervention here has come across as preaching, even as you disclaim any desire to "tell workers" things. When you choose to abstain from the class struggle because it's not pure enough for you, there's nothing left for you but a lot of empty rhetoric.

Building your vanguard party and fighting for concessions from capital is not class struggle.

[Ele'ill]

After a lot of discussion our local is taking a position against the 15now

[Spectre of Spartacism]

I didn't misunderstand you, we were just talking about different things. That's why I said: "When I talk about revolutionary consciousness, I'm not talking about these individual little moments where people suddenly want to read books by Trotsky, I'm talking about the level of movement whereby the class turns into a counter-power."

Accusing people of arguing that the "struggle for reforms" is all that is needed, or that proponents believe that it will lead to revolution is a popular banality on RevLeft. It's a refuge to fall back on; an attempt to shut down debate by reducing the argument.

It's interesting how you've interacted with this conversation. I wasn't under the impression I was talking to a Trotskyist, so I'm confused as to why you have felt the need to butt into this debate and tell me what Trotskyists do and do not understand. I am not particularly interested in your point of view; just so we're clear about that.

Funny that you're perplexed why I would bring my Trotskyist politics into the conversation, since we're having an exchange of political views where my Trotskyism would obviously be a relevant topic. Judging from your initial (and snide) response to my first post in this thread that "Oh, no! Somebody criticized Lenin," I think you're playing a little coy when you feign not knowing that I was a Trotskyist.


The "problem" as you see it, does not exist. It is not my view that Alan or Blake or even you think that the struggle for reforms will lead to revolution. I have not made that argument. My issue comes when people like Alan and Blake make the argument that struggling for reforms is useful or necessary, either because they achieve better conditions for the working class, or because they achieve an increased militancy within the working class. Two very popular opinions amongst revolutionaries including Trotskyists. There are of course other reasons for being involved in "struggle for reforms," but as yet, I've not been provided with an explanation for how any of these make strategic sense. Of course, you've told me how it's a good tactic for recruiting, but what should one expect from a Trot?Now this is fascinating. You claim that you aren't attributing to anybody that the struggle for reforms will lead to revolution, yet a couple of responses ago you said that reforms "will never produce revolutionary consciousness. Ever." As if you were arguing against people who were making the claim that the link between reforms and revolutionary consciousness was so unproblematic that, taken on their own, reforms would lead to a revolutionary force.

If I misinterpreted you, and what you're really meaning to argue is that the fight for reforms has no place in a revolutionary project, then I will refer you to my earlier response. The vast majority of people won't move against exploitation as a system without first drawing lessons about how their interests in fighting exploitation in more circumscribed and concrete instances is actually part of that larger system. There is an indissoluble link between the two, because both entail resistance to capitalist exploitation. Now everybody will see the link, since we live in a bourgeois culture, under a bourgeois state, in a bourgeois media climate, that does everything in its power to obscure that link and persuade workers that it isn't there. This is why it is incumbent upon revolutionaries to enter that battle of ideas, as participants in the class struggle that capital will be waging with or without us, to do everything we can to lay bare that there is that link, that the struggle for higher wages is part of a much larger war that they have a long-term interest in waging. What you're proposing is the equivalent of expecting somebody to master calculus without first understanding arithmetic.

You are free, of course, to pretend that workers will learn about the systemic view simply from hearing people preach at them from the sidelines, refusing to help resist exploitation until that struggle looks exactly like the transcendent plan they've drawn up in their heads. But as I said earlier, that plan belongs nexts to Fourier's in a museum somewhere. Real revolutions are based off a real assessment of how people have developed politically throughout centuries and millennia of recorded history. Trotsky put the idea nicely in the quote I have as a signature.


Yes, Trotskyists are opportunists and substitutionists. This isn't particularly new. I have no particular issue with organisations using the "struggle for reforms" as a recruiting tactic, if they want to waste their time, but of course this is premised on the notion that the organisational politics and form of these organisations are not without problems to begin with, which of course they desperately are not.These accusations are rich, coming as they do from the person who two responses ago was dictating to everybody what their experiences were, declaring that nobody had ever become a revolutionary by struggling for reforms. Coming as they do from the person who refuses to fight alongside workers to improve their daily lives because they haven't achieved the level of enlightenment contained within his majesty's Divine Revolutionary Plan, the plan whose acceptance is necessary to deserve your royal presence.


In any case, despite the fact Trotskyist "vanguard workers" see the struggle for reform as a recruiting exercise, the structural issues with the reforms and the struggle for them remains. They still pacify dissent, they still legitimise state and capital, which are still allowed an opportunity to provide concessions and win an ideological argument for social/liberal democracy and so on and so on. Assuming that "the revolutionary situation [that] arises through capitalism's own inevitable crises" is not already happening and is actually some event in the future, how does all this better prepare your vanguard party when this historical crisis finally reaches its apex, if ever it does?Struggle for reforms does help win (or "recruit") the vanguard to revolutionary politics, but that's not all the struggle is. It is about making beginning inroads in resisting a system we have the goal of overthrowing, placing stricter objective limits on the bourgeoisie's ability to exploit so that future demands by workers will be fought on a terrain where they have less room for maneuver (just as the tsar did after a century of his reforms). You like to make sweeping historical claims about what reforms "do" or "don't ever do." But the reality is that these claims have about as much basis in history as the claims I had to deal with in a separate thread, where people were trying to claim that radicalizing workers have stopped gravitating toward political parties. You have the moral you've plucked from thin air, then impose that on history. If you examine history, you'd see that revolutions, the toppling of monarchs and governments, are often preceded by reforms that are fought for and won by the masses.

Think of the Russian provisional government, which came to power after the Tsar was overthrown, teetering in a precarious position by virtue of over a century of pressures to reform. The PG passed bourgeois-democratic reforms like the constituent assembly, liberalization of the press. At the time that those reforms were passed, the toiling masses understood them very differently than as sops given up to placate them. They understood them as signs that the ability of the government to stand or fall, rested on their power as workers. The moment workers began to demand changes that the provisional government found unacceptable, the PG was ousted. On your schema, reforms only carry one definite political logic to them, whereas living breathing people you try to substitute for in your pronouncements understood matters differently. There is what the bourgeois state intends reforms to be understood as, and then there's what they are actually understood as. What you're doing is siding with the bourgeois state's understanding as the only possible one, against other possibilities that can and have germinated in the minds of the exploited as they push for reforms.


If you wish to respond to moments of militancy, prepare for class conflict and escalate it when it arrives, which I would argue are important, then you cannot rely on struggles for reforms as an exercise in party building, any more than you can rely on struggles for reform to build revolutionary consciousness throughout the working class. They are both strategically useless. I highlighted to you examples of how workers have responded to the attacks on their conditions. I gave the trade union laws, minimum wage and the decimation of the NHS as three examples. While you are busy recruiting from within the Save the NHS campaigns, the Living Wage campaign and the Pro-Union campaigns, the working class remain indifferent, isolated, disenfranchised and undermined. And when there are bursts of insurrection, they are rejected and ridiculed, often by the very people using their reformist struggles as recruiting exercises.

If you want to argue that the "struggle for reforms" is exclusively a tactic to organise vanguard workers, then fine. But that doesn't adequately address all the issues with the struggle for reforms bring to shot-term, medium-term and long-term strategic objectives...Assuming you have some.

I am not an accelerationist any more than you are. I just don't buy into the hackneyed view that building a vanguard party is the primary concern of revolutionaries, nor, more importantly, do I think there is any use to the struggle for reforms.

Building your vanguard party and fighting for concessions from capital is not class struggle.All this is fine and highly predictable, but avoids the questions I asked of you. What do you consider your role to be in the class struggle, and how do you think revolutionaries can help advance it?

[Guardia Rossa]

I'd rather like some new blood arguing on this matter, so I'll bump this thread.

[The Feral Underclass]

Funny that you're perplexed why I would bring my Trotskyist politics into the conversation, since we're having an exchange of political views where my Trotskyism would obviously be a relevant topic. Judging from your initial (and snide) response to my first post in this thread that "Oh, no! Somebody criticized Lenin," I think you're playing a little coy when you feign not knowing that I was a Trotskyist.

I wasn't saying that I didn't know you are a Trotskyist. I was pointing out that I wasn't talking to you in the first place. You decided to involve yourself in a conversation I was having with someone else and then proceeded to lecture me about what Trotskyists do and don't understand as if this was what was interesting or relevant. Trotskyism may be relevant to you, but as far as I know, Alan isn't a Trotskyist (though he can correct me) and he was the one I was talking to.


Now this is fascinating. You claim that you aren't attributing to anybody that the struggle for reforms will lead to revolution, yet a couple of responses ago you said that reforms "will never produce revolutionary consciousness. Ever." As if you were arguing against people who were making the claim that the link between reforms and revolutionary consciousness was so unproblematic that, taken on their own, reforms would lead to a revolutionary force.

How is it that you can still think this when I have explained what I meant and also reiterated it for you?


If I misinterpreted you, and what you're really meaning to argue is that the fight for reforms has no place in a revolutionary project, then I will refer you to my earlier response. The vast majority of people won't move against exploitation as a system without first drawing lessons about how their interests in fighting exploitation in more circumscribed and concrete instances is actually part of that larger system. There is an indissoluble link between the two, because both entail resistance to capitalist exploitation. Now everybody will see the link, since we live in a bourgeois culture, under a bourgeois state, in a bourgeois media climate, that does everything in its power to obscure that link and persuade workers that it isn't there. This is why it is incumbent upon revolutionaries to enter that battle of ideas, as participants in the class struggle that capital will be waging with or without us, to do everything we can to lay bare that there is that link, that the struggle for higher wages is part of a much larger war that they have a long-term interest in waging. What you're proposing is the equivalent of expecting somebody to master calculus without first understanding arithmetic.

I don't accept the argument that people won't move against capitalism without understanding the link between struggles for reform and the larger system of exploitation. Insurrections emerge all the time in spite of struggles for reforms. Class struggle happens every day in peoples lives. They don't need to fight for a higher wage to know that they're being fucked over -- that reality is in everything they do. They live it every single day. The question then is how do you translate that raw, bitter ennui, that palpable awareness of oppression, the alienation, the hatred for your boss, the anger at your mistreatment into a tangible, coherent movement (as in the act of moving) towards communist measures and ultimately the production of communism. You think the struggle for reforms can play a role there. I cannot see how that is possible. That's not because I think we should stand on the sidelines, it's because the struggle for reforms is counterintuitive to giving that coherency.

So sure, I can agree that it is necessary to do "everything we can" to win the class to communism, not just through ideas, but through practical application of communist measures. Struggling for reforms like higher wages, however, does not serve to achieve that. It may have done in times gone by, but it cannot any longer. Probably the most significant reason (but by no means the only one) is that the mass of the working class aren't involved in these struggles. How do you imagine you are going to win the "battle for ideas" if the class aren't there to be convinced by you? The class isn't interested in your campaigns, even when they're offering concessions or trying to stop previous reforms being taken away. Maybe the situation is different in the US, but it certainly is not here.


You are free, of course, to pretend that workers will learn about the systemic view simply from hearing people preach at them from the sidelines, refusing to help resist exploitation until that struggle looks exactly like the transcendent plan they've drawn up in their heads. But as I said earlier, that plan belongs nexts to Fourier's in a museum somewhere. Real revolutions are based off a real assessment of how people have developed politically throughout centuries and millennia of recorded history. Trotsky put the idea nicely in the quote I have as a signature.

Okay, but I reject the premise that the choices are binary. It is not a choice between the struggle for reform or preaching from the sidelines.


These accusations are rich, coming as they do from the person who two responses ago was dictating to everybody what their experiences were, declaring that nobody had ever become a revolutionary by struggling for reforms. Coming as they do from the person who refuses to fight alongside workers to improve their daily lives because they haven't achieved the level of enlightenment contained within his majesty's Divine Revolutionary Plan, the plan whose acceptance is necessary to deserve your royal presence.

Let's be clear about one thing here: this appraisal of my views is a creation of your own. It bears no relation to me or anything I have said or think.

I have explained twice my meaning on revolutionary consciousness. My suggestion to you would be to either engage with that or refrain from commenting on it entirely. Repeating this fabrication is teetering dangerously on the edge of trolling.

Moreover, my rejection of reforms has nothing whatsoever to do with how "enlightened" someone is -- this is yet another common banality of RevLeft. It is yet another reduction of the argument. Trying to bring my motives into question is a dirty trick, but it is a common one. The spiteful bitterness of Trotsky lives on in his drones.


Struggle for reforms does help win (or "recruit") the vanguard to revolutionary politics, but that's not all the struggle is. It is about making beginning inroads in resisting a system we have the goal of overthrowing, placing stricter objective limits on the bourgeoisie's ability to exploit so that future demands by workers will be fought on a terrain where they have less room for maneuver (just as the tsar did after a century of his reforms). You like to make sweeping historical claims about what reforms "do" or "don't ever do." But the reality is that these claims have about as much basis in history as the claims I had to deal with in a separate thread, where people were trying to claim that radicalizing workers have stopped gravitating toward political parties. You have the moral you've plucked from thin air, then impose that on history. If you examine history, you'd see that revolutions, the toppling of monarchs and governments, are often preceded by reforms that are fought for and won by the masses.

I'm sure reforms have proceeded the toppling of monarchs and governments and the beginning of revolutions. My objection was with Lenin's assertion that they could be utilised to develop and broaden class struggle. I see no historical example where that has been successful.

Reforms are given to mitigate dissent. They are concessions made to avoid conflict and confrontation. Dissent emerges and reforms are given, and the dissent dissipates. That is the problem. When dissent emerges, the point is to escalate it, not seek concessions for it. This gradualism you champion is reactionary. When dissent emerges on the streets, the task is not to smother it with struggles for reform, it is to push it into open conflict.

The class is already at war, the task is to focus it. This is something you clearly have no understanding of.


Think of the Russian provisional government, which came to power after the Tsar was overthrown, teetering in a precarious position by virtue of over a century of pressures to reform. The PG passed bourgeois-democratic reforms like the constituent assembly, liberalization of the press. At the time that those reforms were passed, the toiling masses understood them very differently than as sops given up to placate them. They understood them as signs that the ability of the government to stand or fall, rested on their power as workers. The moment workers began to demand changes that the provisional government found unacceptable, the PG was ousted. On your schema, reforms only carry one definite political logic to them, whereas living breathing people you try to substitute for in your pronouncements understood matters differently. There is what the bourgeois state intends reforms to be understood as, and then there's what they are actually understood as. What you're doing is siding with the bourgeois state's understanding as the only possible one, against other possibilities that can and have germinated in the minds of the exploited as they push for reforms.

This is just garbled nonsense. Those concessions were given to mitigate dissent. The idea that the Russian workers needed to "understand" the creation of the constituent assembly or freedom of the press in order to know that a better life waited for them and they had the power to make it if they moved forward in their own interests is rubbish. The only thing stopping them was the machinations and manoeuvring of the bourgeois politicians and Bolshevik party. Do you think the workers of Petrograd were not ready for socialism in February 1917? Did they need the provisional government in order to fight for their own interests?

I think the problem here, fundamentally, is that you understand the class in a way that appears utterly detached from them as living people. You talk about us as if we were a character in a novel. The majority of unpoliticised workers know what is wrong with the world; they know what is at stake. It may not be coherent, but that is the task for communists.


All this is fine and highly predictable, but avoids the questions I asked of you. What do you consider your role to be in the class struggle, and how do you think revolutionaries can help advance it?

You're evidently not interested in the answer to this question, otherwise you would have paid attention to my response when you first asked me in a different thread.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

I wasn't saying that I didn't know you are a Trotskyist. I was pointing out that I wasn't talking to you in the first place. You decided to involve yourself in a conversation I was having with someone else and then proceeded to lecture me about what Trotskyists do and don't understand as if this was what was interesting or relevant. Trotskyism may be relevant to you, but as far as I know, Alan isn't a Trotskyist (though he can correct me) and he was the one I was talking to.

Was it a private discussion? If not, I fail to see the relevance of how my involvement was initiated.


I don't accept the argument that people won't move against capitalism without understanding the link between struggles for reform and the larger system of exploitation. Insurrections emerge all the time in spite of struggles for reforms. Class struggle happens every day in peoples lives. They don't need to fight for a higher wage to know that they're being fucked over -- that reality is in everything they do. They live it every single day. The question then is how do you translate that raw, bitter ennui, that palpable awareness of oppression, the alienation, the hatred for your boss, the anger at your mistreatment into a tangible, coherent movement (as in the act of moving) towards communist measures and ultimately the production of communism. You think the struggle for reforms can play a role there. I cannot see how that is possible. That's not because I think we should stand on the sidelines, it's because the struggle for reforms is counterintuitive to giving that coherency.A person understanding she is being exploited by her employer is not class struggle, because just knowing something is not the same as struggling on the basis of that knowledge. If you define communism as an egalitarian and collectively planned economy encompassing the entirety of society (that is, the elimination of economic exploitation), then struggles to chip away at exploitation in its specific social forms, through higher wages, through more workers' benefits, is an inchoate movement in the direction of communism. It's certainly not sufficient to establish communism. A revolutionary party of the working class is necessary for that. But in fighting exploitation, workers are pursuing the very same interests that, if followed to their conclusion, will result in a communist revolution.


So sure, I can agree that it is necessary to do "everything we can" to win the class to communism, not just through ideas, but through practical application of communist measures. Struggling for reforms like higher wages, however, does not serve to achieve that. It may have done in times gone by, but it cannot any longer. Probably the most significant reason (but by no means the only one) is that the mass of the working class aren't involved in these struggles. How do you imagine you are going to win the "battle for ideas" if the class aren't there to be convinced by you? The class isn't interested in your campaigns, even when they're offering concessions or trying to stop previous reforms being taken away. Maybe the situation is different in the US, but it certainly is not here.What, exactly, is a "communist measure"? What does such a thing look like? And if people aren't interested in your communist measures, what can revolutionaries do in the meantime? You say you don't want to stand on the sidelines, but then if you aren't standing on the sidelines, and workers are by and large pursuing reforms and not "communist measures," then where does that leave your plan? Right where I said it does. In a pretty exhibit in a museum somewhere.

You say the working class isn't interested in my campaigns, but you seem to be forgetting that the fight for 15, which has mobilized millions around the country in a fight-back against capital, is one of my campaigns. While you preach at them from the sidelines, with obscure talk of "communist measures," actual revolutionaries will work with the rest of the class so long as that class is struggling against capitalist exploitation. Because it is through that experience, not outside of it, that workers will be won over to revolution.


Let's be clear about one thing here: this appraisal of my views is a creation of your own. It bears no relation to me or anything I have said or think.

I have explained twice my meaning on revolutionary consciousness. My suggestion to you would be to either engage with that or refrain from commenting on it entirely. Repeating this fabrication is teetering dangerously on the edge of trolling.I didn't ask you what you mean by revolutionary consciousness. This righteous indignation excerpted just above this comment was a response to me pointing out that it is hypocritical to rail against the supposed substitution of other people's politics, all while you incessantly make substitutions yourself, as I pointed out in regards to your claims about people's experiences both past and present.


Moreover, my rejection of reforms has nothing whatsoever to do with how "enlightened" someone is -- this is yet another common banality of RevLeft. It is yet another reduction of the argument. Trying to bring my motives into question is a dirty trick, but it is a common one. The spiteful bitterness of Trotsky lives on in his drones.Sure your rejection of reforms has to do with how "enlightened" people are. You won't fight for reforms because they are struggles against exploitation that don't target the root causes of exploitation. So until people become enlightened enough to adopt your "communist measures" (whatever those are), you'll just sit their fight against exploitation out. Not a good way to build solidarity with people that I am guessing you think will launch a revolution with you, not against you.


I'm sure reforms have toppled monarchs and governments and seen in revolutions. My objection was with Lenin's assertion that they could be utilised to develop and broaden class struggle. I see no historical example where that has been successful.No, let's be clear here. I didn't give an example of reforms toppling anything. I gave an example of reforms that were extracted by a confident and increasingly militant working class that soon after went onto carry through social revolutions. By your reasoning, those reforms, which were widely supported by the working class, should have defused their revolutionary movement. Or as you say in the next paragraph, "dissent" should have "dissipated." It didn't. This shows that your political model about reforms and reformism is based on a morality tale, not history.


Reforms are given to mitigate dissent. They are concessions made to avoid conflict and confrontation. Dissent emerges and reforms are given, and the dissent dissipates. That is the problem. When dissent emerges, the point is to escalate it, not seek concessions for it. This gradualism you champion is reactionary. When dissent emerges on the streets, the task is not to smother it with struggles for reform, it is to push it into open conflict.Wrong. The bourgeoisie will relinquish reforms through their state in hopes of mitigating dissent. You are again confusing what the bourgeoisie hopes with what proletarians perceive, as well as confusing it with what objectively happens.


This is just garbled nonsense. Those concessions were given to mitigate dissent. The idea that the Russian workers needed to "understand" the creation of the constituent assembly or freedom of the press in order to know that a better life waited for them and they had the power to make it if they moved forward in their own interests is rubbish. The only thing stopping them was the machinations and manoeuvring of the bourgeois politicians and Bolshevik party. Do you think the workers of Petrograd were not ready for socialism in February 1917? Did they need the provisional government in order to fight for their interests?Yes, the concessions were relinquished by the ruling class in hopes of mitigating dissent. Here we see your strange conflation of ruling class intentions with actual reality on full display. By extracting these concessions from the bourgeois state, which that state hoped would mitigate dissent (or as politicians nowadays would call it, "offer a space for healing divisions"), the working class arrived at very important lessons: that it could, if organized collectively, exert a tremendous amount of power, enough power to extract things not thought possible just a year before; and that exerting that power solely for the purpose of beautifying the capitalist state with bourgeois elections wasn't enough to solve the issues they were confronting.

It's not so much of choosing reforms or revolution like bubbling in a circle on a multiple choice test. It's a matter of understanding that revolutions don't happen without a class that has become organized and confident through the process of securing previous reforms from the exploiters' state.


I think the problem here, fundamentally, is that you understand the class in a way that appears utterly detached from them as living people. You talk about us as if we were a character in a novel. The majority of unpoliticised workers know what is wrong with the world; they know what is at stake. It may not be coherent, but that is the task for communists.It is you who erases the histories of living people with sweeping philosophical declarations about "reforms" as an arid, lifeless category that you impose on people's experiences in a way that is factually incorrect. E.g., my own biography about how I radicalized, the role of reforms in the run-up to the October Revolution, etc. Materialists work from the history of human life to developing categories. You've got your methodology completely backward and invent histories on the basis of categories.


You're evidently not interested in the answer to this question, otherwise you would have paid attention to my response when you first asked me in a different thread.I've asked you twice in this thread. If you think I missed a previous answer in a thread from weeks ago, feel free to link it. I am not going on a treasure hunt to find answers that, if you really wanted, you could easily paste into the thread or reproduce extemporaneously.

[The Feral Underclass]

I'm not going to participate in this dick-swinging competition with you anymore. Good luck to you.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

I'm not going to participate in this dick-swinging competition with you anymore. Good luck to you.

My participation in this thread was in keeping with the purpose of the forum. If you don't wish to engage in debate or discussion with me, that's fine. I'll find some way to continue with my life. But I don't appreciate my argued out points being characterized as "dick swinging."

[Alan OldStudent]

The logic is fairly straight forward: Reformism hinders revolution. The argument that the working class will see through the limitations of reform and that this realisation will lead to a broader class struggle has never been proven to be true. .....

Excuse me, comrade. Who was arguing in favor of reformism? Or are you one of those chaps who thinks any struggle for any reforms is reformism?

[The Feral Underclass]

Excuse me, comrade. Who was arguing in favor of reformism? Or are you one of those chaps who thinks any struggle for any reforms is reformism?

I don't mean any disrespect, but could you please refrain from calling me comrade in future.

I addressed the confusion behind the distinction when Spectre of Spartacism brought it up. I don't think struggles for reform are the same as reformism, no. But it is only different when we consider the motives behind why one struggles for reform. This is the issue.

[Comrade #138672]

You're playing a dangerous and irresponsible game here. People can handle a lot of oppression before they revolt. Coldheartedly wishing misery on people isn't the way to go.

I don't believe that the current system can be reformed away - far from it. We need revolution. But let's not do our enemies' work for them. To actually recommend cutting wages in the hopes that it "sparks antagonisms" is to weaken the working class, not empower it.

Lower wages means more hours worked, and less time for physical or mental improvement. People who spend all their time struggling to meet basic needs don't have time to engage in revolutionary struggle.I agree. It really is an awful strategy that should not be advocated.

It also puts too much emphasis on "antagonisms", almost like a fetish. The antagonism between the workers and the bourgeoisie is inherent in capitalism. There is really no need to aggravate the antagonism at the expense of the workers.

Otherwise an even more "radical" strategy would be to give the bosses the right to shoot workers if they are not working hard enough. That should surely "antagonize" the workers, right?

[Alan OldStudent]

I don't mean any disrespect, but could you please refrain from calling me comrade in future.

I addressed the confusion behind the distinction when Spectre of Spartacism brought it up. I don't think struggles for reform are the same as reformism, no. But it is only different when we consider the motives behind why one struggles for reform. This is the issue.

Excuse the lapse in etiquette, Citizen Feral Underclass. Somehow I imagined you were a comrade on the same side of the barricades as I.

I had trouble following the intricacies of the forgoing food fight because there were so many words written with so little focus.

I actually thought you were criticizing my disgust for hyper-revolutionary rhetoric mixed into a soup of abstentionist inaction.
***AOS***

[The Feral Underclass]

People who spend all their time struggling to meet basic needs don't have time to engage in revolutionary struggle.

Creating ways to meet basic needs could be "revolutionary struggle" if it had the right content, form and objectives. The emergence of institutions that are providing basic needs for people (not through the reproducing of capitalist production with an ethical mantra, but by re-expropriation) confronts the logic of capitalism, provides a framework by which people can understand their interests, builds solidarity and escalates conflict. Surely this is a much more competent strategy to pursue than investing time and energy into getting a $5 an hour pay rise, which at the end of it achieves none of the things I listed?

[The Feral Underclass]

Excuse the lapse in etiquette, Citizen Feral Underclass. Somehow I imagined you were a comrade on the same side of the barricades as I.

We may be on the same side of the barricade, but that does not make us comrades.


I had trouble following the intricacies of the forgoing food fight because there were so many words written with so little focus.

I actually thought you were criticizing my disgust for hyper-revolutionary rhetoric mixed into a soup of abstentionist inaction.

No, I was criticising the fact that this is an inaccurate appraisal of why people, or at least why I, oppose the struggle for reforms. This hyper-revolutionary rhetoric and absetentionist inaction is merely a caricature used to try and undermine people who don't support the struggle for reforms. It is a lazy way to dismiss our criticisms. Perhaps you're not intending it to be a caricature or to be dismissive, but I don't think it really holds up when you actually take into consideration the nuances of people's views on the issue. Just accusing people of being abstentionist and "hyper-revolutionary" doesn't address any of the issues being raised.

[Counterculturalist]

Creating ways to meet basic needs could be "revolutionary struggle" if it had the right content, form and objectives. The emergence of institutions that are providing basic needs for people (not through the reproducing of capitalist production with an ethical mantra, but by re-expropriation) confronts the logic of capitalism, provides a framework by which people can understand their interests, builds solidarity and escalates conflict.

I agree with you, actually, although I might worry about such a strategy degenerating into a harmless subculture that exists on the fringes of society, rather than fundamentally changing it, especially if it doesn't attract the support of the working class.


Surely this is a much more competent strategy to pursue than investing time and energy into getting a $5 an hour pay rise, which at the end of it achieves none of the things I listed?

Perhaps. My comments, however, were directed at Comrade Jacob's recommendation of lowering workers' wages in order to increase class antagonism, not at those who oppose reforms.

I find myself on the fence about many things, one of which is participation in such reforms, but actively campaigning alongside rightwing libertarians to remove hard-fought (and still not completely won) gains seems utterly preposterous, especially since, as Comrade #138672 rightly points out, antagonisms between bosses and workers exist by the very nature of that relationship, regardless of anybody's actual wage.

I can understand the logic behind declining to participate in fights for minor reforms, but I can't support straight-up accelerationism. I know too many people for whom even a slight decrease in wages would be catastrophic to support such measures in good conscience.

[Spectre of Spartacism]

Creating ways to meet basic needs could be "revolutionary struggle" if it had the right content, form and objectives. The emergence of institutions that are providing basic needs for people (not through the reproducing of capitalist production with an ethical mantra, but by re-expropriation) confronts the logic of capitalism, provides a framework by which people can understand their interests, builds solidarity and escalates conflict. Surely this is a much more competent strategy to pursue than investing time and energy into getting a $5 an hour pay rise, which at the end of it achieves none of the things I listed?

And yet I am the one accused of sounding like a hippie? Odd. Look, if dropping out (or as you call it "expropriation") doesn't occur at the level of society, through the overthrow of the existing state apparatus, which can only occur on the basis of a revolutionary organization that uses force to subordinate the capitalists, you're not going to get anything but capitalism, even if it is carried on by some militant-sounding folk with long beards and good intentions. Don't blame me. Blame the international division of labor.

[The Feral Underclass]

I agree with you, actually, although I might worry about such a strategy degenerating into a harmless subculture that exists on the fringes of society, rather than fundamentally changing it, especially if it doesn't attract the support of the working class.

What I'm talking about couldn't exist without not only the support of the working class, but their active leadership as a revolutionary force. I'm not talking about creating a 'scene' of well intentioned revolutionaries that go around stealing food and cooking it in some squat kitchen, I'm talking about workers building institutions of working class power that can directly challenge the state and capitalism. What these institutions look like will be dependent on their objectives. The form of it will arise depending on the immediate organisational needs of the workers.

[blake 3:17]

peace up to those who struggle

Wal-Mart workers fasting for a $15 wage
By Tim Devaney - 11/12/15 02:37 PM EST
Wal-Mart employees who say they don’t make enough money to put food on their own tables are fasting — some for as many as 15 days, until after Thanksgiving — to pressure one of the nation’s top grocery stores to raise minimum wages to $15 an hour.

The Wal-Mart fasters are part of a growing movement of low-wage workers around the country who are pushing for higher pay.

As many as 1,000 people, including 100 Wal-Mart workers, will join the fast in the weeks leading up to Black Friday, the popular shopping day that follows Thanksgiving. Some plan to fast for the entire duration, while others will stop eating for only a day or two, or rely on a “liquid diet” to sustain themselves.
Wal-Mart's “workers can’t even afford to buy groceries there,” said Andrea Dehlendorf, co-executive director of the Organization United for Respect at Walmart.

“The number of people willing to go hungry to call out Wal-Mart injustice is simply unheard of,” she added.

The Wal-Mart workers say they often share sandwiches during their lunch breaks because some employees can’t afford to buy their own meals.

“Many of the conversations in the break room were about getting gas on the way home, or getting something to eat,” said Denise Barlage, a former Wal-Mart employee who is joining the fast. “These are decisions no one should have to make."

“Even worse, I see Walmart throw away food every day all the time,” said Jasmine Dixon, a Wal-Mart employee in Denver.

Nancy Reynolds, a Wal-Mart employee in Florida, is organizing a petition for Wal-Mart to offer employees a 10 percent discount on food.

Wal-Mart employees say this could go a long way toward ending hunger.

"My mother grew up during the Great Depression, and she passed on some lessons of how to get through difficult times,” Reynolds said.

http://thehill.com/regulation/labor/259962-walmart-workers-fasting-for-15

[Alan OldStudent]

Hello Citizen Feral Underclass,

I refer to you as “Citizen” because you don’t want me to call you “comrade,” even though you concede we might be on the same side of the barricades when the revolution comes. I wouldn’t want to make you cross, so I’ll use “Citizen Feral Underclass.”

Several statements in your post here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2857102#post2857102) were just plain daft. For example, you said this: “Marx and Lenin both heavily criticised reformism. Indeed, the former rarely even spoke of it.”

That struck me as being a somewhat odd juxtaposition. How can you say that Marx hardly spoke of reformism in one sentence and then, in the very next sentence, say he heavily criticized reformism? Which one did you mean?

In another sentence attempting to summarize my views, you also accuse me of arguing that the “ends justify the means.” Golly! Gee whiz!! Oy vey!!!

Where did I do that? I’m not even sure exactly what your badly written sentence means. It was so poorly written that I can’t squeeze any real meaning from it. Whatever your summary may have meant, it certainly bears no resemblance to any argument that I’ve ever made.

Moreover, that whole claptrap about ends and means sounds suspiciously like some kind of moralistic nonsense to me. Besides, who the hell do you think justifies the correctness of any particular means we use, God?

Also, you seem to be assuming I’m arguing in favor of reformism. That’s a red herring. I don’t argue in support of reformism anywhere, and you can’t find one scintilla of evidence to back up this absurd claim.

However, I don’t blame you for wanting to mischaracterize my position. Refuting reformism is certainly a lot easier than refuting my actual arguments. It doesn’t require much analysis to say that the $15/hour minimum wage demand isn’t revolutionary enough for you because it does not call for abolishing wage slavery.

Really, it’s so much easier just to jeer at the activists who are leading real struggles, to label them as reformists. Besides, ultra-revolutionary jeering at demands for reform sets you above the masses, like the wise vanguard that so many abstentionist and ultraleft groups imagine themselves to be. I guess they’ll decide join when the workers create soviets, if they’re revolutionary enough, but not one instant before, eh?

***AOS***

[The Feral Underclass]

Hello Citizen Feral Underclass,

I refer to you as “Citizen” because you don’t want me to call you “comrade,” even though you concede we might be on the same side of the barricades when the revolution comes. I wouldn’t want to make you cross, so I’ll use “Citizen Feral Underclass.”

Several statements in your post here (http://www.revleft.com/vb/showthread.php?p=2857102#post2857102) were just plain daft. For example, you said this: “Marx and Lenin both heavily criticised reformism. Indeed, the former rarely even spoke of it.”

That struck me as being a somewhat odd juxtaposition. How can you say that Marx hardly spoke of reformism in one sentence and then, in the very next sentence, say he heavily criticized reformism? Which one did you mean?

In another sentence attempting to summarize my views, you also accuse me of arguing that the “ends justify the means.” Golly! Gee whiz!! Oy vey!!!

Where did I do that? I’m not even sure exactly what your badly written sentence means. It was so poorly written that I can’t squeeze any real meaning from it. Whatever your summary may have meant, it certainly bears no resemblance to any argument that I’ve ever made.

Moreover, that whole claptrap about ends and means sounds suspiciously like some kind of moralistic nonsense to me. Besides, who the hell do you think justifies the correctness of any particular means we use, God?

Also, you seem to be assuming I’m arguing in favor of reformism. That’s a red herring. I don’t argue in support of reformism anywhere, and you can’t find one scintilla of evidence to back up this absurd claim.

However, I don’t blame you for wanting to mischaracterize my position. Refuting reformism is certainly a lot easier than refuting my actual arguments. It doesn’t require much analysis to say that the $15/hour minimum wage demand isn’t revolutionary enough for you because it does not call for abolishing wage slavery.

Your need to refer to people as comrade or citizen shows quite aptly what a complete anachronism you and your politics really are. If you're not living in the 1960s, you're living in the 1790s.

There seems to be some continued confusion. I've pointed out to you and others several times that I am not accusing you of supporting reformism. Although that's how I characterised your view in my initial post, I've subsequently gone on to explain my actual meaning at least three times.

You support the struggle for reform, despite opposing reformism, because you believe the reform can create something positive. This is literally the definition of ends justifying means. While you didn't expressly make this point, it is fairly easy to extrapolate from your actual stated view that this is fundamentally what your belief is based on. No amount of pomposity is going to disguise that fact.

Also, just for your information, someone can criticise something heavily while only talking about that thing rarely. That's actually something that's possible...And rareness is relative, isn't it? Something can happen rarely and still be a lot.


Really, it’s so much easier just to jeer at the activists who are leading real struggles, to label them as reformists. Besides, ultra-revolutionary jeering at demands for reform sets you above the masses, like the wise vanguard that so many abstentionist and ultraleft groups imagine themselves to be. I guess they’ll decide join when the workers create soviets, if they’re revolutionary enough, but not one instant before, eh?

Once again you have reduced my criticisms to this popular RevLeft banality. I'm not jeering, I'm telling you your strategy is incompetent. You can either listen to that or you can refute it, but simply characterising this position as "jeering" is petty and lazy.

Once again you accuse me of abstentionism, despite the fact I've provided an alternative strategy in this thread. When are you going to engage with that? Perhaps you are living proof that you cannot teach old dogs new tricks.

Communists should participate in struggles, but the line they should take is that achieving reforms are not in the interest of the class nor is the struggle for the reform useful. The line should be the building of working class power that can challenge the state and capitalism. Creating an institution of working class power that can respond to needs, challenge the logic of capital, build insurrectionary solidarity and escalate conflict is more useful to producing communism than fighting for an increased minimum wage.

[Alan OldStudent]

Hey You, Yoo-hoo!


Your need to refer to people as comrade or citizen shows quite aptly what a complete anachronism you and your politics really are. If you're not living in the 1960s, you're living in the 1790s.

Golly, that’s quite a devastating riposte! Hats off to your mastery of dialectical materialist logic and formidable debating skills.

You’ve managed to undermine my whole argument by referring to my age!!!

I confess, I’m not part of the with-it generation. It’s also true that I’m old enough to be your grandfather. After all, I’m in my middle 70s and have been a communist for well over 50 years.

Therefore, there’s no doubt that my age and experience disqualify me from having anything valid to say to a young person like you about communism or workers’ struggles. (By the way, in case it has escaped your attention, on rare occasion, I also engage in a bit of lame satirical commentary, such as referring to you as “Citizen” or “Hey You, Yoo-hoo.”

Now that you’ve ripped me a new one, I got a quick question or three for you:

Concretely, do you support the ongoing nationwide fast-food worker demonstrations and strikes demanding the $15/hour minimum wage?
Concretely, do you support fast-food workers’ demands for union recognition and representation?
If you’ve answered yes to either of the previous two questions, what have you done concretely to advance those struggles aside from offering advice and revolutionary analyses from the sidelines?


Karl Marx died in 1883, about the time my grandmother was born. So do you think we should abandon his analysis because it is SOOOO 19th century, maybe even boring to some? Do you think maybe we should stop living in the 1880s?

With kind and pompous regards,
***AOS***
__
__
__

[The Feral Underclass]

I’m old enough to be your grandfather. After all, I’m in my middle 70s

I'm 32.

Your age and experience doesn't make you a good communist.


Concretely, do you support the ongoing nationwide fast-food worker demonstrations and strikes demanding the $15/hour minimum wage?
Concretely, do you support fast-food workers’ demands for union recognition and representation?
If you’ve answered yes to either of the previous two questions, what have you done concretely to advance those struggles aside from offering advice and revolutionary analyses from the sidelines?


The answer is no to all of them, but that's because I don't live in America -- shockingly.


Karl Marx died in 1883, about the time my grandmother was born. So do you think we should abandon his analysis because it is SOOOO 19th century, maybe even boring to some? Do you think maybe we should stop living in the 1880s?

It depends what analysis you're referring to. Some of it is fundamental; some of it is outdated.

[Alan OldStudent]

Hello “Hey You, Yoo Hoo”:

When I asked 3 questions to tease out if you support American fast-food workers demanding a living wage and union representation, you answered:

The answer is no to all of them, but that's because I don't live in America -- shockingly.

Shockingly--One would expect that you have a bit more of an internationalist outlook. So let me reformulate the first two questions a bit differently:

Concretely, in the name of international working-class solidarity, do you support the ongoing nationwide fast-food worker demonstrations and strikes demanding the $15/hour minimum wage?
Concretely, in the name of international working class solidarity, do you support fast-food workers’ demands for union recognition and representation?

Please don’t waffle on answering these questions just because these workers aren’t denizens of the UK.

***AOS***
___
___
___

[The Feral Underclass]

Concretely, in the name of international working-class solidarity, do you support the ongoing nationwide fast-food worker demonstrations and strikes demanding the $15/hour minimum wage?
Concretely, in the name of international working class solidarity, do you support fast-food workers’ demands for union recognition and representation?

You're looking for me to provide a yes or no answer, but the question you are posing is misleading. Your question presents this binary opposition that I think doesn't really exist. It's very simple for you: you either support the working class or you don't. It's like the, "you're either with us or against us" argument. In the world of informal fallacies, it's called a false dilemma. This choice you are presenting is false.

In response to the reductive question, "do you support workers having higher wages" then, sure, yeah I do. I said as much in this thread. Having more money is great. I'm a minimum wage worker, of course I would support having more money. But the question you're asking me is not "do you support workers having more money," it's "do you agree that the struggle for reforms is a useful political strategy." The answer to that is no, I do not.

The question is then about how do communists respond to the emerging movement for a higher minimum wage. Well, the answer to that question is: what are your objectives? Once you have ascertained what they are, then you can build a response.

[blake 3:17]

The question is then about how do communists respond to the emerging movement for a higher minimum wage. Well, the answer to that question is: what are your objectives? Once you have ascertained what they are, then you can build a response.

Are you channeling Alex Callinicos now?

[The Feral Underclass]

Are you channeling Alex Callinicos now?

I have no idea what that's supposed to mean.

[blake 3:17]

Nov 17, 2015 | Vote0 0
Cambridge becomes first in Ontario to endorse living wage policy
Waterloo Region Record
By Anam Latif
CAMBRIDGE — Cambridge city council voted to become Ontario's first municipality to pay their employees a living wage on Tuesday night.

RELATED STORIES

$16 an hour? Cambridge may carry...
The city is officially a supporter of Waterloo Region Living Wage who calculated the living wage in this region is $16.05 an hour.

This means the city has committed to paying all full-time staff $16.05 an hour, but all of the city's full-time staff already make that much or more.

"We show we care about our employees and the community," said Coun. Pam Wolf who said she strongly supported the move.

Coun. Donna Reid said the city can "be a leader … to show other people it can be done."

Cambridge city council voted 6-1 Tuesday night.

A committee will be formed to advise council on the new move.

"You're already there at the supporter level," said Mark Xuereb, president of the Waterloo Regional Labour Council who presented the motion to council.

"The point is to recognize work you already do."

The next step as a supporter of paying living wages would be to transition to paying part-time employees living wages within a year.

New Westminster, B.C. and Vancouver are the only other Canadian municipalities who pay their employees living wages.

The city had been exploring the idea of paying their staff a living wage since July.

Minimum wage in Ontario was raised to $11.25 an hour in October

http://www.therecord.com/news-story/6122852-cambridge-becomes-first-in-ontario-to-endorse-living-wage-policy/