On 2013-07-19, at 4:17 PM, Wojtek S wrote:
> I suspect that unions may be popular among a few die hard
> communists, socialists and social democrats, and that is about it. For
> everyone else, they are a part of the dinosaur world of blue collar culture
> - straight from Bourdieu's book "Distinctions."
Actually, polls consistently show a majority of Americans - a bare majority, admittedly - have a favourable view of unions. This is quite remarkable in view of the constant drumbeat of propaganda directed against trade unionism, and also that the great majority of Americans no longer belong to unions, where the advantages of a unionized workplace to them and their families are more immediately apparent. Younger workers tend to be the most sympathetic to unions; those surveyed most recently ranked them higher than corporations. It's clear they would readily join labour organizations if they were more freely given the opportunity to do so. Even more than the legal obstacles, the casual, temporary, part-time transient nature of work at the lower levels of a service economy is the biggest deterrent to union organizing today. But your understanding that it is only a few die-hard leftists who support unions while "everyone else" thinks they are only dinosaurs for blue collar workers is just plain wrong.
See: http://prospect.org/article/state-unions-0
> Bourdieu's argument is that cultural differences play a major role in
> making distinctions among segments of the same class (in a Marxist sense) -
> which is basically a modern version of the argument proposed by MAx Weber.
> BY this logic, there is no "working class" in the Marxian sense, but
> various segments of that class identified by different types of work and
> different consumption styles, especially cultural consumption. This is
> what did the Left in in the first place, as I argue it here
> http://wsokol.blogspot.com/2012/01/day-after-neoliberalism.html. And this
> fragmentation is likely to persist, putting the old language of the left
> about working class mobilization into the realm of dinosaurs.
Cultural differences undeniably divide workers in normal times, along with the other differences I noted previously. But the separation begins to break down when professional, technical, clerical, retail and industrial workers find themselves in the same organizations. If they belong to the labour movement, they frequently mix, if not in the same unions, then in the same labour councils and federations where they are able to develop an understanding that what they have in common as wage- and salary-earners outweighs their cultural, racial, gender, and other differences. The tendency to solidarity varies, of course, in relation to the level of class conflict, and can manifest itself in the streets as well as the workplace. The recent mobilizations of workers from across all occupations and income levels against anti-labour legislation in Wisconsin, Indiana, and Chicago and in support of the Occupy movement reflected the growing strains between labour and capital since the outbreak of the financial crisis. They may or may not be a harbinger of things to come. You have too static a view of class fragmentation.
> The promising way, as I see it, is to build institutions that are
> organically linked to the interests of people who work for a living - that
> is ones that are democratically governed, distribute wealth in a democratic
> way, and offer collective security, such as various cooperatives, mutuals,
> and even ESOPs and certain types of nonprofits, social investments, and
> public-private partnerships. These are a;ready existing institutions that
> offer an alternative to the top heavy profit maximizing firms, and they can
> provide the institutional basis for the "new" left. However, the "new"
> left also needs to stop living in the past and chanting old slogans and
> battle cries and figure out how to use these institutions as a platform of
> a new social movement.
Oh my, this nostrum again. We argued at length about the viability of such a strategy on a previous occasion. Not only are such institutions difficult to build in competition with larger capitalist enterprises, but it is thoroughly utopian to believe they can serve as an incubator of heightened class consciousness and "a platform of a new social movement." How does belonging to a credit union or a food coop or an employee stock ownership plan (!) or some jointly sponsored public-private entity (!) lead to that. Which "already existing institutions" have played that role? Give us some names so we can judge further.
> On Fri, Jul 19, 2013 at 8:06 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 2013-07-18, at 9:30 AM, Wojtek S wrote:
>>
>>> On Wed, Jul 17, 2013 at 10:00 PM, Marv Gandall <marvgand2 at gmail.com>
>> wrote:
>>>
>>>> The working class has always been divided by religious, racial,
>> regional,
>>>> occupational, and gender differences, perhaps more so in early
>> industrial
>>>> capitalism than today. Yet it was in that earlier period that the
>> working
>>>> class spawned powerful movements for reform and revolution which were
>>>> periodically able to overcome these differences and win democratic
>> rights
>>>> and improved living standards.
>>>>
>>>> In fact, therein lies the primary reason for today's relative lack of
>>>> worker militancy. The social safety net - food stamps but, more
>> generally,
>>>> unemployment insurance, pensions, health care, and other universal
>> benefits
>>>> - HAS held up the system, despite resentment from reactionaries and
>> ongoing
>>>> efforts to trim and constrain the welfare state.
>>>>
>>> [WS:] Although I agree with the general idea of your argument, I do not
>>> agree with your views on the welfare state. In reality, the welfare
>> state
>>> was not only the main goal of labor struggles, but also an attainable
>> one…
>>
>> In retrospect, we can see this was so. You may have misinterpreted my
>> comments to infer that I'm hostile to the "welfare state". I'm not. I've
>> always supported the reforms which compose it, would like to see them
>> extended and supplemented, and am opposed to efforts to roll them back.
>>
>>> ...as opposed to revolutionary fantasies.
>>
>> They weren't "fantasies" when working class militancy was on the rise.
>> Social democrats and revolutionary Marxists were united in the belief that
>> the struggle for reforms would necessarily result in the abolition of the
>> capitalist system by a workers' government which brought the major means of
>> production under public ownership. The two factions of the socialist
>> movement differed on whether the process would be gradual and peaceful, or
>> whether it would be insurrectionary and produce new forms of democratic
>> control.
>>
>> The Bolshevik revolution and the economic and political chaos which
>> followed WWI reinforced the position of the revolutionary socialists, and
>> prompted alarmed capitalists throughout Europe and in America to respond to
>> the revolution's spreading influence with a combination of repression and
>> concessions. It seemed to many that history was moving in the direction
>> foreseen by Marx and Engels, and I don't doubt that with clear eyes I'd
>> have been on the side of Lenin, Luxemburg, Trotsky and the other
>> revolutionary Marxists had I lived in that period. Though the future course
>> of events proved them wrong, it was a close run thing, and they can only be
>> accused of having lived in a fantasy world by someone with an inadequate
>> understanding of that historical period. The Great Depression revived the
>> perception within both the working class and the bourgeoisie that
>> capitalism was on its last legs, and it has only been the very long period
>> of relative stability and prosperity since then which has made the idea of
>> a socialist revolution appear fantastic. The financial crisis and the
>> continuing bleak economic outlook has somewhat shaken that comfortable
>> consensus.
>>
>>
>>> Welfare state provided major
>>> tangible benefits to the working class as a whole while maintaining
>>> democracy, unlike revolutionary pursuits that often resulted in
>>> totalitarian states of one sort or another, while providing much more
>>> meager, if any, benefits to the working class vis a vis those offered by
>>> welfare states.
>>
>> This is largely true, though you don't seem to take into account the
>> economic backwardness in Eastern Europe where capitalism was overthrown.
>> The USSR from the start wasn't able to match the living standards of the
>> advanced capitalist countries in the West, forced as it was to rapidly
>> industrialize and arm itself against persistent threats of aggression,
>> culminating in the savage and highly destructive war against Nazi Germany.
>> Given these obstacles, the success of the USSR and its East European
>> satellites in elevating the health, education, culture, and social welfare
>> standards of their urban and rural workers was remarkable.
>>
>>
>>> The reasons why the Left can't inspire anymore are twofold. First, the
>>> Left has become the rear guard instead of avant garde - ritualistically
>>> repeating old slogans and battle cries that lost their appeal long time
>> ago
>>> or altogether retreating into literary analyses of sacred scriptures.
>>
>> Some on "The Left" match your stereotype, but I would say most don't. My
>> impression is that most of those who continue to identify with the left
>> tradition are trying to make sense of what happened to a once powerful
>> working class movement, and are exploring new ways to contribute to its
>> revival. This is evident on the LBO, Pen-L, and Marxmail lists and in other
>> left-wing forums.
>>
>>
>>> Second, and more importantly, the Left does not have what Gramsci called
>>> "organic intellectuals" and what I would call "organic institutions" i.e.
>>> institutions organically linked to broad working class interests. Labor
>>> unions are in decline, labor and socialist parties are no longer tied to
>>> working class interests, and institutions that are "organically" aligned
>>> with working class interests, such as cooperatives, mutuals and similar
>>> institutions practicing democratic governance and wealth distribution are
>>> generally frowned upon by what passes for the Left today. We have a
>>> situation where cultural manifestations of individual nonconformism and
>>> rejection of bourgeois values are more important for many Leftists than
>>> building institutions organically linked to broad working class
>> interests.
>>> Little wonder that this "culturalist Left" has little appeal to the
>>> working class concerned about mundane "bread and butter" issues.
>>> What undermined the appeal of the Left is not the welfare state but
>>> academia that become the home of the Left today.
>>
>> The relocation of the greatly shrivelled left from the working class into
>> the academy was indeed the result of the welfare state which reconciled the
>> working class and its traditional parties to capitalism and eliminated
>> socialist influences. It coincided with the spread of mass education in the
>> 60's and 70's which created a pool of radicalized intellectuals from
>> working and lower middle class backgrounds who went on to staff expanding
>> university faculties, especially in the humanities and social sciences.
>>
>>
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> Wojtek
>
> "An anarchist is a neoliberal without money."
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