Now Marx doesn't anything about any _particular_ capitalism but rather theorizes the "ideal average" capitalism, since (a) he recognized (explicitly) the endless contingency of any actual capitalist order and (b) aimed at being relevant to the inner dynamic of capitalism, not in misled e4conomists who fantasize a "scientific" economics. (Put another way, he wrote a critique of political economy, not a critical political economy.) And value captures the social relations of capitalism; "working class" expresses the structure of capitalism; it does not describe a collection of people or say anything at all but high or low wages, since it doesn't try to explain either wages or price in the way "economists" try (vainly) to do.
The aim of the working-class movement (in so far as it is Marxist) is to abolish itself.
For the simples explanation of all this¸see the Introduction to Rubin written by the Marxist-Anarchist Fredy Perlman. (Name spelled correctly -- only one "d.")
Carrol
-----Original Message----- From: lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org [mailto:lbo-talk-bounces at lbo-talk.org] On Behalf Of Alan Rudy Sent: Thursday, December 02, 2010 1:47 PM To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] INSTANT POPULISM: A short history of populism old and new
On Thu, Dec 2, 2010 at 2:30 PM, Somebody Somebody <philos_case at yahoo.com>wrote:
> Somebody: Marxism has problems dealing with low wage service industry
> workers just as it has with high wage skilled workers. Like Wojtek pointed
> out, geographic dispersion and lack of concentration matter as much, at
> least, as class position. In fact, class as a unit of analysis really only
> succeeds when dealing with the bourgeoisie, the most cohesive and
> self-conscious class in history.
>
What do you mean by "dealing with"? What Marxism are you talking about? This issue was and has been a major concern within the sociological and geographic efforts to develop a political economy of agriculture since the 1970s - there's a huge literature on this in general and a good bit on ag labor organizing.
Are you saying that Marxist theorists and groups don't understand the issues of low wage service industry workers because of dispersion and lack of concentration or that Marxist theorists and groups find it difficult to organize such folks because of geographic dispersion and lack of retail concentration or something else? If it is the latter, there are counter examples associated with the variously successful efforts to organize dispersed migratory agricultural laborers in an unconcentrated industry in the 1930s and the 1970s. ___________________________________ http://mailman.lbo-talk.org/mailman/listinfo/lbo-talk