[lbo-talk] Labor in the US ( was Salon on Andrea Dworkin)

[amadeus amadeus]

The US political system, as set into motion by the
Constitution, ensures the dominance of the two most
hyper-capitalist parties. This means that the working
class, to the extent that it is politicized at all,
ends up relying on a political party that does not
represent their economic interests in any way. This
paves the way for reactionary propaganda from
capitalists, who control a consolidated media. I
really  don't think we can look at class politics in
the US without making critical analyses of the media.
The half-trillion yearly in wage surplus extracted
from the existing labor bureaucracy might best be put
into creating democratically controlled worker-run
media.

I don't believe that US workers are inherently
reactionary, but the political system has left us with
no other choice; this explains why many workers do not
vote in the united states to begin with, let alone in
a majority for this or that political party. People
talk about the degree to which Sunnis boycotted the
interim Iraq elections; well, there has been an
unofficial, de facto vote boycott by the working class
in the United States for 50 or so years. The blame
does not rest on workers per se so much as it rests
on, among other things, a labor bureaucracy which
pisses away hundreds of billions of dollars on the
Democratic Party. I was a teamster in '04 and I
watched them push through an endorsement of Dick
Gephardt. What the fuck was that?

Most European states have ruling political parties
which are nominally 'socialist', though they are
really simply various strains of liberal-reformist and
state-monopoly capitalism. This at least indicates a
mass worker consciousness, however flawed, which we do
not have in the united states.

The ruling class has used numberous propaganda
mechanisms and resource schematics to divide the
working class around racialist lines in particular
since the US began. Identity politics is one
continuation of this stratagem by other means.
Identity politics changed the personification of
capital, but not capital itself.

This crap will not work forever, though. No crap does.
--adx
--- joanna bujes <jbujes at covad.net> wrote:
> 
> 
> Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> 
> >Which makes me wonder, why is the US left so
> crackpot and way in the left
> >field?  What happened to the good old social
> democrats or socialists - which
> >are legitimate political parties in Europe and
> elsewhere?  
> >
> Because
> 
> 1. They're organized around consumption (lifestyle)
> rather than production.
> 2. Racism.
> 3. Identity Politics (which I guess is another spin
> on 1. and 2.)
> 4. Americans are intensely uncomfortable with
> politics/history.
> 5. ???
> 
> >  
> >
> 
> 
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"Mary Poppins is alive and well in Argentina, she sends her regards."
- Rod McKuen, The Mud Kids

		
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