Todays Class struggle

[ElvisTrout]

Have you ever thought that today most of the underpaid and abused workers are in third world countries. Sure we claim to have a hard time but even the homeless in our rich countries eat better than some hardworking homeowners in the developing world. We have the harsh class differences of yesteryear but as we have globalised the dissatisfied and the oppressors can be in different countries. That is why it is hard to infuse people with revolutionary fervor these days, where we live there are very few people with the problems of poverty. People fight when they need to. When they are hungry. No-one here is. If we are to start a revolution here it must be on behalf of those in the sweatshops. Either that or provide them with adequate transport to come here and burn down the headquarters of the big corporations that have oppressed them.

[The Feral Underclass]

Originally posted by ElvisTrout
Have you ever thought that today most of the underpaid and abused workers are in third world countries. Sure we claim to have a hard time but even the homeless in our rich countries eat better than some hardworking homeowners in the developing world.

That's true comparatively, but the system of exploitation still exists; only it has more obvious consequences in third world countries.


We have the harsh class differences of yesteryear but as we have globalised the dissatisfied and the oppressors can be in different countries.

I don't really understand what that means?


That is why it is hard to infuse people with revolutionary fervor these days, where we live there are very few people with the problems of poverty. People fight when they need to. When they are hungry. No-one here is.

This is true, but we often see sparks of revolutionary consciousness in times of massive political unrest. In Paris for example or to some smaller extent during the beginning of the anti-war movement on the eve of the invasion of Iraq.

In any case, you are right. We live in a society that has created an inverted reality of reality. We have created an appearance of reality that will be a difficult thing to destroy.

History has shown that moments of social upheaval will happen when reality is challenged and the prevailing ideas in society are no longer able to justify themselves. Change is inevitable; it's a question of how long we will have to wait.

My advice is always to continue political activism by challenging capitalism and the state and propagating the ideas necessary for successful revolutionary change.

[Not entirely illiterate]

In any case, you are right. We live in a society that has created an inverted reality of reality. We have created an appearance of reality that will be a difficult thing to destroy.

I agree wholeheartedly; it's essential to the bourgeois to keep the lower classes in a illusory state through comfort-feeding the physical body and tending its "needs" (that said, most physical needs are IMHO fabricated, the rest could be considered a necessary evil). As long as people are force-fed with information that life will be splendid if you "only had more money" so you could "buy all that stuff you've always wanted", the desire to transcend is all but forgotten. What couch-potato would ever dream of celestial, undying harmony anyways?

I am having a hard time to see the new revolution taking place by convential force of arms, raiding the ivory towers and burning flags. Modern society cannot be crushed with a sledgehammer. Instead, apply the surgeon's knife; we've already seen how well-planned terrorist strikes can shake society. I'm not proposing terrorism, but it poses as an example how the "introvert revolution" can manifest in an exoteric form.

The esoteric form, then, as I see it, is primarily through education. Education today is already the salvation for most people emanating from the lower classes, but unfortunately only by absorbing itself into higher-class society. Most likely then, we've lost ourselves an ally to the bourgeois.

Educate yourself, reflect upon the world, consider your own mortality and the fragility of everything material (indeed, if the world is fragile like balsa wood, then society is fragile as glass) around you. By conquering and controlling your own body, you can reduce your needs and discard the manacles given to you by the upper classes. History shows us that men and women who achieve peace of mind then develop the potential to become the most formidable of weapons. Everyone has the seed of a true warrior-monk hidden inside, and a whole society of such warriors will break any boundaries, smash any shackles.

[p.m.a.]

Poverty is only a symptom of class society; alienation is the inherent problem with capitalism. So while abject poverty is rampant in the underdeveloped areas of capitalism, massive alienation in our society of spectacle is what we're trying to destroy.

Capital requires places of relative prosperity in order to perpetuate itself, but this does not negate the class struggle in the industrialized world, but rather masks it with spectacle: the spectacle of television and the abandonment of independent thought; of flashy technology that is completely unnecessary but you "must" have; and the replacement of hunger with boredom, depression, and isolation. And in this post-modern era, society has replaced self-justification of the structure with the assumption that what exists now is inherently right - that "there is no alternative", and the neoliberal variant of capitalism, by nature of its dominance with the lack of a competing alternative (eg. the state capitalism of the Soviet era), is a right of existence.

But the key isn't spreading consciousness about the poverty of the third world - we can't fight their struggle for them, just as they can't fight ours. So we must struggle against the alienation in our own lives, rather than crusading for the third-world.

[dannthraxxx]

Originally posted by [email protected] 06, 2007 01:11 am
Poverty is only a symptom of class society; alienation is the inherent problem with capitalism. So while abject poverty is rampant in the underdeveloped areas of capitalism, massive alienation in our society of spectacle is what we're trying to destroy.

Capital requires places of relative prosperity in order to perpetuate itself, but this does not negate the class struggle in the industrialized world, but rather masks it with spectacle: the spectacle of television and the abandonment of independent thought; of flashy technology that is completely unnecessary but you "must" have; and the replacement of hunger with boredom, depression, and isolation. And in this post-modern era, society has replaced self-justification of the structure with the assumption that what exists now is inherently right - that "there is no alternative", and the neoliberal variant of capitalism, by nature of its dominance with the lack of a competing alternative (eg. the state capitalism of the Soviet era), is a right of existence.

But the key isn't spreading consciousness about the poverty of the third world - we can't fight their struggle for them, just as they can't fight ours. So we must struggle against the alienation in our own lives, rather than crusading for the third-world.
i, could not agree with this more. this sounds a lot like what erich fromm said wrote in the "art of loving."