But you're right to admire the programs intimation by the pre-1914 SPD. But that was a *political party* and an opposition movement of the working class. They provided services that the state could not or would not provide and were important in building class consciousness. Comparing the disjointed, voluntaristic efforts of a few hundred or thousand or whatever Marxists to "enter the 'arena' of the market" to this is silly.
--------------- I'm not sure where we disagree on anything I've said. I'm well aware that there would be serious limits to anything business-related that leftists tried to get off the ground. From procuring credit to outright political and cultural demonization, it would be an uphill battle.
I'm not saying this will change things overnight. I'm not saying it would even help in the direct political struggle...
BUT, I am trying to think through certain problems that are ESPECIALLY bad among the unemployed, the young, the marginalized. I know too many people around my age who have no choice but to flip burgers; and even then, they're up against so many other people, older, more 'experienced,' or even younger, still in high school, who don't 'need' the work.
I'm not saying fight fire with fire; I'm saying that the skills and knowledges required to start a small business, or to work for a cooperative-type small business, are skills and knowledges that are becoming simply unavailable, in fact, unthinkable, to wider and wider swathes of the population.
So many people I know can't think for themselves; can't think a way out; they don't even know enough to blame the system... They blame their roommates, or their high school, or the other masses of unemployed that they compete with. They are intimidated or completely turned off of politics; they are so broken spiritually.
Trying to start cooperative, democratically managed enterprises; banking, or agriculture, or bookselling, or a record label, whatever, seems to me to be a radically positive step towards empowering these people, giving them work, giving them a voice, giving them hope; especially since they've mentally taken other avenues of self-advancement off the table, such as college.
From: Dissenting Wren <dissentingwren at yahoo.com> To: "lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org" <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Date: Sun, 3 Jul 2011 17:20:16 -0700 (PDT) Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] lbo-talk Digest, Vol 1618, Issue 1 There's a long history of entering the market, and there's nothing intrinsically wrong with it. Consumer cooperatives, community credit unions, union-owned financial institutions, producer cooperatives. Hell, Cornelius Castoriadis was an economist for the OECD, Harry Magdoff worked for the Department of Commerce, Michael Tanzer worked for Standard Oil, and even our distinguished host is a man with a past. You can learn something about the real workings of the market this way, the things you learn can be put to use your employers never intended in later life (not so much while you still work there), and alternative market institutions can make a marginal difference. But if your real aim is to do away with an economic system based on capital's hiring of wage labor and its attendant exploitation, alienation, wage-slavery, etc., none of this is going to get you there. Since no one has a road map for getting there, I repeat that there is no good
reason not to use any of these routes to explore the market's limits, but if you go in with grandiose expectations you are bound to be sorely disappointed.
------- This is more attuned to what I'm trying to say. I agree that wage slavery needs to end; I agree with all those far-off goals, but that's just it, they seem far off... so far off, to me; completely impossible to so many young people I know who have no respect for capitalism, yet no hope for alternatives. So, in the interim, shouldn't "alternative market solutions" be at least as supported as other really 'undesirable' or 'imperfect' allies, like the unions or SOME DP politicians (I don't wanna restart that firestorm.... but arguably some DP politicians are preferable to other RP or DP politicians...I do hate the DP quite a bit, but I can see the argument).
Gaining those knowledges and experiences and connections in various industries will be invaluable, especially in the hypothetical revolution: capitalist loyalists, 'middle management' will abandon their posts in the factories, or the banks, or the farm, or any industry, in droves, and workers will need some real form of expertise AND leadership to fill this gap. They are more likely to find this in their own cooperatives, than they would be unemployed.....
---------- Forwarded message ---------- From: 123hop at comcast.net To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Date: Mon, 4 Jul 2011 00:00:42 +0000 (UTC) Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] lbo-talk Digest, Vol 1618, Issue 1
Providing education, credit unions, and the like would be a good thing, but it would not affect the larger picture.
The problem is our economic fate is indissolubly tied with political reality. We are poor because the ruling class appropriates most of the surplus and because it owns the means of production. That's not an economic problem; that's a political problem.
---------- The separation, as you know, between the 'economic' and the 'political' is paper-thin, if not outright contrived...
Some of what I've said above applies to this too. Wouldn't credit unions, or farms, or schools, run on a cooperative basis, ineffective and limited as they might be, form both a center of economic empowerment in the here and now, as well as rallying points for present and future political struggles?
Again, best to all of you; I'm trying to think through some of my thoughts on necessary tactics and strategy for trying to change the dreadful state of this country.... Especially as I am facing up to the rather large question of what I *should* do with my own life once I graduate. Academia seems like a dimming prospect, just from a purely financial/practical standpoint. Other avenues, such as science or engineering, are not for my type of mind. I am thinking law, or perhaps even finance, or something that will allow me to infiltrate/understand/subvert/reinvent the predominant sectors of society.