[lbo-talk] Why aren't the poor storming the barricades?

Mike Ballard mbbtraven5 at gmail.com
Sun Feb 16 16:53:12 PST 2014


@Mike Ballard: "I think the critique of the wage system which Marx began and which was largely abandoned by the left in the 20th century is the key to getting people to see that 'storming the barricades' is an option." In principle I agree with this statement (see Kliman's *Reclaiming Marx's "Capital": A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency* (2006) for a capable and persuasive analysis of the abortion that is 20th century Marxist Economics). However, enlightenment is not enough to get people to see that 'storming the barricades' is an option. A great deal of difficult and dangerous organizational work is necessary to transform inchoate anger into an effective political force http://www.labourstart.org/2013/, http://www.ituc-csi.org/, etc, etc. etc..... ************************************************************

Cheers Victor. I've added

Reclaiming Marx's 'Capital': A Refutation of the Myth of Inconsistency (The Raya Dunayevskaya Series in Marxism and Humanism)

by Andrew Kliman (Paperback)

to my Amazon wish list.

As for your labourstart link, I find more of the same i.e. 'fair day's wage for a fair day's work' unions not addressing the issue of wage labour as being a system workers can replace with social ownership and democratic control of the product of their labour. And that's the problem which the left, boring from within those unions as they have since the Bolshevik Revolution, needs to address if it is ever to become something more than a bunch of micro-sects engaged in ideological faction fights over who would have been more capable as Soviet leader after the death of Lenin.

Mike B)

-- Wobbly times http://wobblytimes.blogspot.com.au/



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