Joanna responded:
THE question! Why do the working class not respond? First because the enemy is armed and ruthless. If the working class is not united, it's curtains! ******************************************************* MB: I don't think that most of the working class see the capitalist class and its State as their enemy. I think that is because they are 'brought up' within societal structures which punish this view; but more importantly, which 'teach' obediance to the dominant authorities of the societies.
The alternative would be to raise children who respected their own power and would not give it up to authority without knowing that the authority would be helping their own self-power to grow. For example, a child would willingly listen and give authority to a teacher who was passing on knowledge of how to play the violin.
On the issue of classwide unity, I agree entirely. That's what we need. The question is: how do we get there considering the psychological character structures which are nurtured in such a way as to reward obeissance to top down authoritarian behaviours?
******************************************************* J:
Then, ideologically/culturally .....Partly it's the relentless brainwashing, partly it's the human predilection to identify with the interests of one's oppressors, who are by definition more powerful. ****************************************************** MB: Exactly. Power is the essence of the question here. Most proles see attaining power through obedience to the authority of their bosses. This is obviously why most proles don't challenge the system, but rather seek to become part of it and even dream of becoming one of the bosses themselves.
***** J:
I guess I'm arguing that the various identification processeses that start in childhood continue throughout one's life. When you're "grown up" you identify with the capitalists instead of identifying with your parents. ****************************************************** MB: Yes and no. Most of the parents are identifying with their class dominators themselves. They impart that behaviour to their children--not in order to harm them, but to help them survive and possibly to *win*, when they leave home to join the adulterated rat race.
Of course, even the winners remain rats.
********************* J: (it's an absurd identification; their interests are completely counter to each other but....) We all know that a kid won't rat on parents when severely abused, because the parents are "everything." This gets translated into adult life and is exacerbated by the alienation and fragmentation that accompanies daily labor: the working class may in fact be running the world, but it doesn't feel like that to them because they make very few decisions and are culturally represented as being crap. ******************************************************* MB: "Life's a ball, we run the world from city hall." an old Frank Zappa lyical quip.
You're right as rain though. Workers do create the world. They don't control it though. I'd say that it's a learned behaviour to accept that situation as a 'fact of life'.
Buying this load of bull costs though. The innate urge towards freedom and self-power which is continually smashed down to conform within the confines of a particular set of societal norms--determined, of course, by the ruling class of the era--tries to raise its head now and again. The working class has that boogie in 'em and they just gotta let it out.
It happens. To the extent that it doesn't, we see the various and sundry neurotic behaviours which pockmark our daily lives.
****************************************************** J: Moreover, unless they unite, they are as helpless and vulnerable as the children of abusive parents. ****************************************************** MB: Yes, maybe they need to *untie* too. ;D
********* J: So we need an anti-consumerist identity politics for the working class....oh, and a radical "spirituality." I know religion/spirituality are dirty words for the left, but I profoundly disagree with this. ****************************************************** MB: The sigh of the oppressed.....
Well, my prescription for what's ailing us is not totally clear. We're moving all the time as human beings--I'm a Wobbly. ;D
***********
At any rate, I don't think people will ever get on the other side of obfuscating identifications if they don't start to understand the workings of their own consciousness. Trading one master for another is not what we want. *****************
Hooray for that sentiment! A little self-mastery would be nice. That and maybe social ownership of the means of production under our own democratic control, production for use and need, the abolition of wage-labour an end to commodity production............
Cheers, solidarity and happiness, Mike B)
===== ***************************************************************** "Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy."
Benjamin Franklin
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