the assumption is that those who didn't need immiseration to become enlightened are special and different. unique little snowflakes seemingly unlike everyone else -- who are nondescript snowflakes, everyone the same pattern. it's those poor, poor snowflakes who aren't special and unique who need to be immiserated into enlightenment.
********* Tahir responded:
In fact immiseration may very well be a path to greater barbarism, rather than greater enlightenment. Certainly the evidence from some of the most 'immiserated' parts of the world strongly suggests this. I'm sure I don't need to give examples. However, let's just note in passing that this immiseration argument, which is rightly despised, is often deliberately conflated with another quite different argument concerning the sustainability of capitalist society. (The very prominent list member who does this most often for rhetorical effect knows who he is.) To point out that capitalism may be leading towards horrific catastrophe is not an argument for hastening on that catastrophe. In fact it is the opposite. By opening the imagination to the horrors that may be still to come, if not immediately, is not to wish for them but rather to forestall them by suggesting that a different way of living may be necessary for the survival and flourishing of the species and its habitat.
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Immiseration is what...becoming poorer and less powerful? Isn't the class struggle over the social product of labour? If we lose those battles with the employing class over the wealth we produce and become even more 'immerserated', doesn't that demonstrate our lack of power? If we win class victories and get more control and ownership of the social product of our labour, don't we show that we are more organized?
It seems to me that the more organizationally powerful we are, the more class conscious we become, not the opposite. They divide us as a class and rule us as a class and to the extent that they can make us believe that we are freest when we embrace narrow individualism and compete with each other to get those *jobs* for 'a fair day's wage' as opposed to class solidarity aimed at abolishing wage labour, we remain weak and powerless. The more powerful we are, the more we can influence production/consumption decisions which impact on the issues like climate change.
Mike B)
http://www.iww.org.au/node/10 "Would you have freedom from wage-slavery.." Joe Hill http://www.iww.org/en/join
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