Jenny: I meant the organizable and the leadership. There's a pretty good survey I think 4 years old now that Peter Hart did for the AFL-CIO showing that women-dominated shops were more easily organized and despite this, perhaps because of the lower pay (and therefore lower dues) the unions still focused on male-dominated employment. There are a lot of factors, of course, workplace size, turnover, male organizers who don't get it, etc.
David: Are we not in agreement here?
David wrote:
>From what I've read, the largest section of wage-workers
>consists of service workers, mostly immigrants and people of color. Sorry
>I do not have any sources to cite off-hand, but rest assured they are out
>there.
Jenny: Ok, I'm going to try again. What in your experience as a person living in (I assume) the U.S.--as opposed to your reading--is getting you to the program you suggest. The reason I ask is that direct experience is how I check and understand things, without that it's just a lot of rhetoric--which I may think I agree with or not--but so what. Abstractions are abstracted from something, right?
David: Okay, I didn't see why you were asking before, but now I see you are interested in my own personal experience. Unfortunately, I can't agree with your premise that social and economic realities are simply "rhetoric" unless one can endorse them with their own personal, subjective, experience. Do I need to tell you I've personally run an electrical current through water for you to "check and understand" that two atoms of hydrogen and one of oxygen make H2O? Do folks need to starve themselves to the point of loss of consciousness to verify the fact that 32,000 people in the world starve to death every day due to global economic policies, and that otherwise, all this talk is just an "abstraction"? No, I'm sorry, I don't agree with your premise. But, rest assured, I am a wage laborer and union member, if that eases your mind any. Not that it matters at all, because it is a subjective individual experience, apart from the a more collective, rational understanding. Besides, I think that even in the most developed countries people of all classes experience the alienation of commodity production in one way or another.
>David:
>Oh, I didn't say there weren't innumerable ways to ameliorate the
bourgeoisie
>or at least temporarily slow down the imperialist drive to war. But, on
>an objective level, I don't see how the working class of every upcoming
>generation will avoid facing war unless the current modes of production,
>distribution, and exchange are completely uprooted.
Jenny: There are lot of surprises if you look at even just the last 20 years. Sure, that's what Bush says, they want endless war and they're by god gonna get it.
But a lot of very fucking drastic changes have occurred without that the "current modes of production, distribution, and exchange are completely uprooted." Not to mention that there's been a lot of replanting going on in various places where these were fairly well uprooted.
David: Again, I don't see where there's supposed to be a disagreement. Given these conditions, it is no wonder that a variety of reform movements of various sorts are popping up all over the place-- all without, as we are saying, fundamentally altering the current modes of p,d, and e. I've participated and continue to participate in many local reform and protest movements. But these in and of themselves are not revolutionary and will not, in the final analysis, end the exploitation and death of working people in the name of capitalism. By the way, could you give some examples of the "fucking drastic changes" of the last 20 years you are talking about, just so we're on the same page?
David:
>These splits in the
>ruling class you mention are also among the causes of war, globally, and
>tremendous opportunities for the working class to organize.
Jenny: Again, an example would be helpful.
David: Uh... WWI.... WWII... But I suppose these aren't good examples because they weren't part of "my experience as a person living"?
--d