<!doctype html public "-//W3C//DTD W3 HTML//EN"> <html><head><style type="text/css"></style><title>Re: Working class/communism</title></head><body> <div>At 10:34 AM +0200 4/7/02, Tahir Wood wrote:</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite>What is controversial is your definition, which your long post failed to set out. If your definition of working class holds up, your observation that it is paradoxical for them to be arguing that "only workers can be communist" etc is a justifiable one.</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: Rubbish. Engels was quite obviously bourgeois and a communist; there are as many other examples as one might wish to find.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I stand corrected and reverse that position then. Even if your definition of working class holds up, your observation that it is paradoxical for them to be arguing that "only workers can be communist" etc is<u> NOT</u> a justifiable one. But just because Engels was a communist and a capitalist, doesn't mean that all communists are capitalists.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Essentially, my objection is that you seem to be trying to gloss over the real issue. You are treating it as settled, when I don't think it is at all.</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: I suspect that the real issue here is that Bill really, really wants to establish his own working class credientials.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Perhaps that is the real issue so far as you are concerned. But the real issue for me is the one I stated, my working class credentials are a given.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite>I reject that definition. I concur with Joanna Bujes, who suggested we distinguish on the basis of whether one has to work for one's living or not. The difference between this definition and your characterisation of it, is of course the *need* to work for a living. This is such a simple definition, I'm surprised you didn't understand it.</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: I ignored it because it makes no difference to my argument.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>You didn't ignore it, you misrepresented it. If it makes no difference, why would you attempt to misrepresent my position?</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> The point I made is that you can take any reasonable definition you like and the fuzzy boundary will remain. I sketched what I think is the political significance of this. Why don't you pick up on what was actually being discussed? Have you read What is to Be Done, for example? What is your angle then on infusing class consciousness from without, as Lenin argued and as certain communists have for years followed? I reject it as fatally flawed and gave some reasons why I reject that as well as its opposite (workerism).</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I can't recall whether I've read "what is to be done" or not. Probably did, years and years ago and got nothing out of it. My position on "infusing class consciousness from without" is that, if I ever get out, I promise to try. But since getting out of the working class seems extremely unlikely (given that I don't even buy lotto tickets) it is somewhat abstract and hypothetical.</div> <div><br></div> <div>I am content to infuse class consciousness from<u> within</u>. Which is exactly what I'm doing at this moment. Explaining to those who think they are a bit above the working class that they are really in the same boat, up the same shit creek.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Workerism seems, from what I can tell, to share the flawed premise of a narrow interpretation of working class. I've previously explained that I think this sort of thinking is motivated by a moralistic, idealised notion of the working class. A notion that those who play unsavoury roles under capitalism (like social workers) are in some way guilty by association with those whose orders they carry out.</div> <div><br></div> <div>To argue that they have something to lose by ending capitalism is to ignore the fact that they carry out their orders for the same reason the garbage collector does. If they don't follow orders, they will be on the bread-line. This nonsense that their disgusting work is a privilege which it is not in their interests to give up, even to achieve their own emancipation, is preposterous. But the idea of "infusing class consciousness from without" is similarly flawed, in that it is also premised on the notion that those who would do so are "without".</div> <div><br></div> <div>Its all very well to talk about Lenin. In Russia in his time most of the population was "without." The working class was a minority. The capitalists were the middle class and a revolutionary class at that. It seems quite irrelevant to the current situation.</div> <div><br></div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: OK so according to you small shopkeepers are working class too, because if they close their businesses they will have no income, since the work they do is what they are doing to make a living. So the only people in the whole wide world who are not workers according to you are those whose investments can sustain them without any action at all required from them that might possibly be construed as 'work'.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Actions that I would construe as work anyhow, some people might construe cashing their dividend cheque as "work" I suppose. Yep. You got a problem with that?</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> But those of us who know a bit of Marx think the old guy had a bit of a point when he spoke about the petty bourgeoisie.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I thought that was<u> petit</u> bourgeoisie? But maybe if we stick to speaking English it would be less confusing for us both? It means small capitalist I gather. I've already agreed with you that there is some fuzziness at the boundaries of class status. The status of small capitalists is particularly precarious. There are those on the way down into the pit, while a few workers are always managing to claw their way out of it. Its messy around the brink, sometimes impossible to work out who's going in what direction.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> I don't think that a small shopkeeper (or an engineer, or an academic, or a drug dealer, or a politician) relates to the mode of production in quite the same way as the proletarian who lines up at the factory gate every morning and receives a weekly wage.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>They have a different form of legal contract with the capitalists. But it is unwise to favour form over substance in analysing class. If they do these jobs because they need to work to earn a living, then their substantial relationship to capital is the same. The product of their labour may be technically theirs, but if the bank, the franchisor or the shopping centre landlord reaps all the shop-keepers surplus value, via interest and rent, then their situation adds up to much the same in principle. And for the same reason - they don't own the capital they need to earn their living and must agree to the terms of those who do own that capital.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>Tahir: I didn't set out to define working class - you can take any</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>reasonable definition you like and the problem I was referring to</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>will still remain.</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>This is not true. The problem you raised disappears if most left intellectuals turn out to be working class after all. I submit that they are.</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: And I say that their class position is more often at the nexus of the two great classes and that this has political significance. This helps to explain some of the phenomena that are well known: e.g. the class ambivalence and political vacillation that can be observed among these strata.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>What has political significance is the lack of class consciousness. You aren't helping by telling these poor bastards that they are a class above the majority and that they have a lot to lose if the proles get out of hand.</div> <div><br></div> <div>But class ambivalence is not confined to professionals. Trust me, there's just as much to be found in the dole queues.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite>> I think workers are those people whose alienated labour brings</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>capital into being.</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Why?</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: Why? Which part of this definition don't you understand?</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I understand all the individual words, but they don't convey any meaning to me. Thought I might get it if you re-phrase, so I was asking you why you think that.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>This or any other definition cannot do more than give you a general</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>mental model of what workers are. There remain people whose status</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>with respect to the class and membership of it is variable - I gave</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>examples so there is absolutely no reason for you to not know what I</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>>mean by this.</blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Yes, you gave examples. I have a rough idea what you conclude, but not how you arrive at these conclusions. I assume that those examples were selected according to some criteria. You aren't just determining class arbitrarily are you?</blockquote> </blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite><br></blockquote> <blockquote type="cite" cite>Tahir: They were mostly examples of people whose class membership in my opinion shifts during the course of their lives. To me this helps to explain the porous nature of class boundaries,</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>You are playing with words. To give examples of people changing classes would not in any way explain why people can change classes. In any event, my assertion is that they haven't changed classes.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> which I will remind you once again is what I was writing about and which you still haven't expressed an opinion about.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>I have expressed the opinion that your conclusions were based on a false premise. An interesting hypothetical exploration perhaps, but I am unwilling to let the premise go unchallenged. If the premise is flawed, it follows that the theory which rests on it is suspect too.</div> <div><br></div> <blockquote type="cite" cite> I am familiar with the arguments that everyone except the haute bourgeoisie is a worker - it was done to death by some people on aut-op-sy a while ago - so I don't really need to be told over and over something that I don't agree with, and which I think is based on a naive commonsense notion of categorisation.</blockquote> <div><br></div> <div>Naive now? That isn't so simple to answer, since the accusation is lacking in specifics.</div> <div><br></div> <div>It must be quite distracting when people challenge the premise of your arguments. But it is hard to take seriously a theory the author of which will not substantiate that premise. If you insist on saying something that I don't agree with, over and over again, then it would be remiss of me not to challenge you over and over. To do otherwise is to give the impression that your analysis is unchallenged. Just as failing to substantiate your premise gives the impression that you are unable to substantiate it with rational argument.</div> <div><br></div> <div>Bill Bartlett</div> <div>Bracknell Tas</div> <div><br></div> </body> </html>