Fellows and Marxian subsistence

[Charles Brown]

This thread is interesting. Max is right.
And the Marxist thesis, is not, I am pretty
sure, that it is a threat to annihilate
the whole working class that motivates
revolutionary struggle inevitably. In fact,
it is the physical annihilation and
impoverishment of only part of the
working class that has been the basis for
dividing that class and preventing 
revolution - in other words, persuading
workers to take a chance on being
one of the lucky ones rather than 
taking up the onerous task of overthrowing
the whole system and establishing another
one. Afterall, the workers of the West
have not had a socialiist revolution.

Important in this ruling method is
that workers not think in terms
of the whole system or humanistically or
historically.  Alienated, individualistic,
anti-humanist, know-nothing-ism is a critical mass
consciousness to keep the working
class cowed.

Max is correct that persuasion,
persuasion of the masses that
self-interest is best conceived of
as collective class and human self-
interest ( SOCIAList self-interest) is the
better bet in coping with the system.
The objective factors
of capitalism, it's necessary economic
crises engendering fear of poverty
or death, are not sufficient to cause
the masses of workers to make
a revolution. The subjective factor
must be cultivated and persuaded.
Classically this is termed raising
class and socialist consciousness.

Charles Brown

  Detroit

Workers of the West, it's our turn.


>>> Max Sawicky <sawicky at epinet.org> 09/21 4:22 PM >>>
> The relative subsistence notion undermines the immiseration thesis; it
points to Keynesian "solutions" to capitalist crisis, since ultimately an
"upwardly mobile" subsistence level provides a level of demand that
mitigates against the "crisis" of falling wages (for the worker, and for
capitalists).>

Quite so.  For the advanced industrial countries,
there simply is no relevant immiseration level.
People may expect a certain standard of living,
but it can be beaten out of them by one means
or another, and they can be induced to accept
a lower standard.

Even facing threat of death doesn't necessarily
imply a resort to collective means of resistance.
It can and does give rise to indivdualist solutions.
Moral and rational aren't the same thing.

Bottom line is that it's about persuasion, not
desperation induced by fear of death.

MBS