[lbo-talk] Re: biz ethics/slavery/groups/constitutional

Mike Ballard swillsqueal at yahoo.com.au
Wed Aug 25 01:45:52 PDT 2004


Mike writes:


> When it comes to class interests and self-interest,
I want workers to know what they want and desire it on a material basis.

The rest of your post I understood and agree with. But this part puzzles me: what does it mean to "desire it on a material basis." *******************************************************

To know that you and your fellow workers produce the world's wealth (excepting what's found in Nature), but do not own and/or control said wealth and because of this you and your fellow workers have little (bourgeois democracy) to no (bureaucratic dictatorship) political power. You don't even have a say in what you will produce or whether to produce, say more SUVs. You just do it because you're a self-selling wage-slave. For an individual to desire to socially own and democratically manage the production of wealth and be righteously indignant that this is not the case in the here and now of capitalist social relations is what I mean when I say to, "desire it on a material basis".

********************************************************
> BD: Can you define the self in terms other than
self-interest?


> Mike: That's a big ask. Good question. I'd say
that the great authors of the centuries have attempted this feat. I'm not one of the great authors, but I have made attempts to describe this, socialist self in what I have written, both from a negative point of view i.e. presenting the casualties of the System and also the fighters against its tendencies to ground us down with its "Iron Heel". I have also hinted at in my posts to this list, including this one.

Could you be more explicit? I read your post several times and missed the hints. *******************************************************

Basically, the kind of self who realizes that freedom is attainable through class conscious solidarity. Our power to change the world grows as we act in classwide solidarity for ourselves. To the extent that we give our power to decide what will be and what we want over to bureaucracies, cliques, masters and other classes, we distance ourselves from attaining our own liberation.

For a good read on the negative side of the modern self, try Beckett's MALLOY. On the postive side, try B.Traven's GENERAL FROM THE JUNGLE.

Best, Mike B)

===== It is the simple thing that is difficult to do, being-for-oneself, whose ways must be won by fighting, whose excellence demands bravery.

Ernst Bloch, "Dialectics and Hope" http://profiles.yahoo.com/swillsqueal

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