>>> "Gar W. Lipow" writes:
Michael Moore's comments make sense to me.. His works are tremendous tools for steering people to towards mass movements. It is not his fault that there aren't many mass movements to steer them to.
I do disagree with him on one point:
"If you don't own the business, you're part of the working class as far as I'm concerned."
If this were true, organizing would be a lot easier.>>>
Charles comments: I think we need an objective and subjective definition of working class. Michael Moore's definition is good for the objective definition. Gar Lipow's discussion below is helpful at trying to get at and solve the problem that many or most objective workers do not think of themselves in the Marxist paradigm, and in order to make them conscious of their own objective circumstance, we have to take into account of where their minds are right now, and how it might be "converted" to a more objective consciousness.
>>>LIpow continues:But I think we can argue that there are not two classes to deal with but three. There is a large minority -- somewhere between ten and twenty percent of the population -- who without owning businesses make decisions, plan, and coordinate on behalf of the owners of business. Coordinators earn far more than they would if hourly earnings were pretty well equal. Their jobs not only provide them with power, but with practice in the exercise of power, and usually more pleasant than those of ordinary working people.
I think one could argue that this is a true class -- one with interests in common with the working class, but also one having interests that are objectively different. I think what it amounts to is that the ideal society (from the point of view if this class) is one where capitalist are eliminated but all the power is in the hands or co-ordinators and planners.
Note that this is not identical to intellectuals. Intellectuals (even within academia, let alone outside it) often have neither a reasonable income, nor a particularly rewarding nor powerful work life. And many co-ordinators especially those in management are far from being an intellectual of any type. None the less there is a tremendous overlap between intellectuals and co-ordinators. A good part of academia is devoted to developing ideology and and practical techniques for controlling workers. A great deal of both education and media *ARE* means of control. A good part of top management are intellectuals of a sort.
This leads to the problems Michael Moore points to. On the whole members of the coordinator class are the vast majority of those with both the spare time and objective class interests to devote a great deal of spare time to opposing capitalism. Also members of these classes have more experience with the coordinating tasks necessary to run such organizations. (I know people on this list can give plenty of individual counter-examples. But can you really deny that this is true on average?)
As a result liberal and left organizations tend to be run by in ways that both coincide and conflict with those of workers.
A good programmatic example would be debates among pectrum -- through layoffs and price increases...........
If there are ways to make programs (or wish lists as somebody put it) more worker friendly, it is even more important that organizational style and structure and atmosphere not be coordinator oriented. Michael Moore has given a great many tips on the matter of style in Downsize This. In terms of structure, I don't know how you make an organization less hiearchal -- while keeping it workable -- but I know you have to do it. How many "pwogwessive" organizations are organized like a damn corporation these days -- complete with a self-perpetuating board of directors? Atmosphere, which goes beyond style, is a matter of being genuinely welcoming to ordinairy people, of not having contempt or hatred for them -- for example not having the mentality which refers collectively to all white male workers as "scabs" by virtue of being pink penis people.>>>
Charles comments: On this thread of white male workers as "scabs", I think there should be a division of labor in the socialist movement. Some of us should continue to bang away at these profoundly self-defeating characteristics of a significant proportion of the mass of white, male workers. Some of us should hold their hands and smooze them. Good cop bad cop. Of course they are victims too and they are not the main enemy and all of that. But I don't think coddling is the only effective method of persuasion. Also, it is paternalistic toward the white male workers. They are smart enough to know better.They are being opportunist, as the posts on the empirical facts of short term self-interested advantage to racism for white workers, demonstrate. They should be shamed and empathised with both.: comradely "tough love".This "identity" opportunism by the dominant identities in the working class IS the whole ballgame, pretty much, from what I can see, especially in the sense that it includes "American" (European) vs. "foreigners" or "third worlders". What else is stopping the revolution ?
Charles Brown