[lbo-talk] The Empire's Freedom

Marvin Gandall marvgandall at videotron.ca
Fri Nov 4 18:16:47 PST 2005


Wojtek:


> I think that you exaggerate the
> freedom from popular pressure the elites faced in the past - in fact they
> lived in the shadow of the guillotine since the French Revolution, not to
> mention Comrade Mauser during the Russian revolution...the elite gained
> unprecedented technological
> and organizational advances - communications, marketing, surveillance,
> media
> blitz, technology of war, scientific understanding of human behavior -
> they
> have it all, while the non-elites still go by popular stock-knowledge..
-------------------------------- It's true that the elites could lose their heads in the past - the sharpest expression, forgive the pun, of "public pressure". But apart from riots and revolutions, which were irregular occurences, the masses had much less opportunity than they do now to apply consistent pressure on the ruling classes concerning the production and distribution of the surplus. They only acquired this capacity when they fought and won the right to organize in both the industrial and political arenas. The former allowed them to improve their living standards and working conditions; the latter gave them the further means to redistribute income through more favourable tax and spending policies. Although there was much Sunday speechifying by labour and social democratic leaders about "socialism", and the Marxist left genuinely tried to place the overthrow of capitalism at the forefront, the great class battles in the advanced capitalist countries were mostly at bottom about winning these two fundamental democratic rights - to unionize and to vote. Their acquisition subsequently laid the basis for the modern welfare state.

It's almost commonplace on the left these days to ignore these gains or dismiss them as trivial or even to see them as the cause of the working class' historic reluctance to advance to state power and socialism. But working people have never experienced these reforms as insignificant - even today, long after the battles have been fought - as every public opinion poll and effort to erode them indicates. If there were a serious attempt at the wholesale elimination of political and trade union rights and social benefits, it's likely that you'd see a corresponding deepening of popular protest which would require strong measures to surpress. So far we haven't reached that stage, and the Bush administration shows no intention of testing this proposition.

It's curious that you share the same view of the modern working class as largely backward, corrupted, inert, and incapable of defending its interests as does that part of the disappointed left you decry as "utopian". You're frequently insightful and a good sounding board for myself and others on the list, Woj, but have you considered that your consistent dystopianism might be an inverted form of utopianism?



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