[lbo-talk] How we got from there to here

[shag carpet bomb]

It is disappointingly boring, but I am trying to slog through _Stayin'
Alive'_ by Jefferson Cowie. I'm hoping it picks up; so far it is good
for getting a good night's sleep! But the "there" to which you refer
was apparently not well represented by Johnny Paycheck's song.
According to Cowie, the song isn't about open rebellion but about the
"hidden transcript" of minor acts of resistance people engage in at
work: stealing paperclips, surfing the web, etc.

The lyrics are indicative of a fantasy for, already, by the time that
song was popular, writes Cowie, people had already given up and could
identify with the lyrics, "I'd give the shirt right off my by/ If I
had the nerve to say / Take this job and shove it."

NOt that your point is wrong, just that the Paycheck song isn't the
best way to capture that time. The wildcat strikes maybe.


>From what little I've read of Cowie so far, he's also pointing at the
unions and the internal dissent among Vietnam era vets who didn't care
for the lack of democracy in the steel workers' and miners' unions.


> I presume list readers remember the review of a book on the '70s that
> Michael Yates posted.
>
> By there I mean the world that produced the song, "*Take this job and
> shove it."
>
> Here is the world of Austerity.
>
> Something happened over these 40 years. I believe Marv disagreed on
> this
> but  what I think the last 40 years can be described as a period of
> unrelenting capitalist pressure to reduce the wage level.
>
>   And that pressure was responded to by -- nothing. The working class
> in
> effect surrendered without a murmur.
>
> And I think that at the highest level of abstraction this whole
> process,
> and its inevitable results, are accurately described in the final
> chapter of Wages, Price and Profit. And if that is correct, then we
> cannot expect any serious struggle against capitalism until workers
> begin (with some success) to struggle against this process of
> immiseration.
>
> Note: Immiseration is a relative not an absolute process. State Farm
> has
> cut down on its benefits: that represents relative Immiseration  even
> for workers earning close to or above $100 thousand. The process
> affects
> all levels of the work force.
>
> How all that happened and how steps can be taken to reverse it seem to
> me much more interesting topics than why Obama is such a creep.
>
> Carrol
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>

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