At 02:46 PM 5/27/2013, Marv Gandall wrote:
>Scroll down to the post at the bottom dated 5/24/2103: "Liberal
>ideological hegemony is treated as the cause rather than the consequence
>of the decline of the organized industrial working class and of the mass
>international socialist movement which developed within it. There is no
>reference to the underlying material conditions which have ultimately been
>responsible for the decline, in particular the technological advances and
>global spread of capitalism which gave the system a new lease on life in
>the latter half of the twentieth century."
>
>On 2013-05-27, at 11:24 AM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
> > ok. but i don't understand what this has to do with the claim that you
> made about carrol's argument being idealism.
> > At 11:21 AM 5/26/2013, Marv Gandall wrote:
> >
> >> On 2013-05-25, at 1:48 PM, shag carpet bomb wrote:
> >>
> >> > I'm confused though. Isn't the fact that the *actions* of these
> parties the practical, embodied reality that does, indeed, through
> legislation, cause the decline of the working class. Not only do they
> create legislation and institutions - such as employer provided health
> care or right to work laws or, recently, a push to make unemployment
> beneficiaries take drug tests -- they also drag people along into a
> system of party-based politics where people think political actions
> consists of voting?
> >>
> >> No doubt the open shop and other anti-union legislation has weakened
> the unions and working people are subjected to different forms of
> harassment, but these do not in themselves account for the precipitous
> decline in popular protest. The successive working class generations
> which produced the trade unions and socialist parties during the long
> period of labour's rise from the mid-19th to mid-20th century were
> subject to much fiercer repression than we face today, and fought back
> far more vigorously.
> >>
> >> What has changed is the condition of the working class then and now.
> The rise of the workers' movement occurred in the context of a strong
> demand for labour in an rapidly expanding industrial economy. The workers
> were highly concentrated in factories and mines where they could share
> their grievances and exercise their bargaining power. Their militancy was
> fuelled by a desperate need for shorter hours, better pay and working
> conditions, pensions, unemployment insurance, and other social programs,
> as well as the right to vote and to organize their own unions and
> political parties.
> >>
> >> The realization of these demands over time reconciled the working
> class to the system and led to a corresponding drop in political
> consciousness and political militancy, although the trade unions
> continued to expand and to secure concessions from employers who still
> needed to retain and attract workers.
> >>
> >> But now even industrial militancy has disappeared, and the unions have
> declined sharply as a percentage of the workforce. The American and West
> European working class has gone into reverse over the past three decades
> as global capitalism has opened up new zones of exploitation in China,
> Eastern Europe, and in what used to be known as the third world. Along
> with tech change and changes in the organization of work, this has
> produced much higher levels of unemployment and widespread job insecurity
> among the employed and ever-increasing numbers of the underemployed, the
> so-called new "precariat".
> >>
> >> These workers in the new service industries are more dispersed,
> atomized, and transient than the industrial workers who used to be
> concentrated in factories and neighbourhoods, and are consequently more
> difficult to organize in unions as well as politically. There was also
> once a powerful international socialist movement which could inspire
> young workers and intellectuals and provide them with the opportunity for
> sustained political action and political education. Since the collapse of
> the Soviet Union and the transformation of China and the corresponding
> withering away of the socialist ideal, that is another condition which is
> no longer present. Finally, as you note above, the winning of the right
> to vote has led the masses into an electoral system dominated by the rich
> and powerful where the act of voting is now the primary means of
> political expression, and is rarely replaced or supported by more
> effective forms of mass action in the streets and workplaces.
> >>
> >> Today's lower level of political consciousness of urban workers and
> their allies in the universities, professions, and elsewhere is a product
> of the changed economic and political environment described above. My
> argument has been that the liberal bourgeois politicians in the US and
> Europe are a reflection rather than the cause of the diminished
> consciousness and combativity of the working class. It is not as though
> left-wing activists in the unions and have not tried to raise the
> consciousness of the masses, but today's workers have been notably
> unresponsive to their appeals and, except for that part of the working
> class which supports the right, have remained stubbornly loyal to their
> liberal and social democratic trade union and political party leaders in
> any confrontation with the left. If it were simply a clash of conflicting
> ideas, we would have seen more left-wing insurgencies and campaigns
> succeed and effect lasting changes inside the unions and political parties a!
> nd !
> >> in the community.
> >>
> >> That hasn't happened, which is not to say it never can. History is
> unpredictable, political consciousness ebbs and flows, and ideas and
> individuals matter at decisive turning points. But changes in
> consciousness are ultimately rooted in the material conditions of
> existence, in the circumstances we're forced to confront. I don't what
> other interpretation you can give to Marx's well-known statement that
> people "make their own history, but they do not make it just as they
> please; they do not make it under circumstances chosen by themselves, but
> under circumstances directly encountered, given and transmitted from the past."
> >>
> >> > At 05:50 PM 5/24/2013, Marv Gandall wrote:
> >> >> Below is a rather overwrought illustration in today's Counterpunch
> of the idealist pessimism of the US left which I alluded to in my
> previous post. The cry of despair by the magazine's editor, Jeffrey St.
> Clair attributes the "somnambulism" of the masses to their "betrayal" by
> cowardly and wrongheaded liberals and DP-oriented leftists - a favourite
> theme of Carrol's and others on this and related lists. Liberal
> ideological hegemony is treated as the cause rather than the consequence
> of the decline of the organized industrial working class and of the mass
> international socialist movement which developed within it. There is no
> reference to the underlying material conditions which have ultimately
> been responsible for the decline, in particular the technological
> advances and global spread of capitalism which gave the system a new
> lease on life in the latter half of the twentieth century. Capitalism's
> unexpected resilience is in conflict with Marxist orthodoxy, which had be!
> en forecasting the system's imminent demise for more than 150 years. But
> since it is perceptibly easier to change ideas than material conditions,
> and ideas are the stock in trade of today's campus-based left, the
> development of a strong idealist streak in contemporary Marxism is not
> surprising.
> >>
> >>
> >> ___________________________________
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> >
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> >
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>
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