> I believe that the method you propose was tried several times during the
> past century. Unions were formed as a means of mobilizing the working class
> against powerful industrial interests. Political ideologies were fashioned
> as formulas for the development of ideal states in which the working class
> was to have owned the means of production. Alas, what seems to suggest
> itself in retrospect is that the working class is something of a myth. What
> it seems really to have wanted is a ticket to the good life or at least the
> best life possible under the circumstances. Once this happened, it would
> seem that the working class's interests shifted to maintaining what it had,
> and not the general betterment.
>
You overlooked the fact that every inch towards shorter working
hours and social benefits was gained by the pressure of organised
labour movements,
and as soon as their pressure softens we are moving rapidly back
towards square one.
Of course working class people, like everyone else, are in it for
personal gains for a better life, who claimed anything else?
> Besides, is there still a "working class"? Was there ever a "working
> class"? Perhaps it never really was anything more than a theoretical
> construct and political generalization which conveniently glossed over the
> probability that society consisted of essentially self-serving and
> competitive interests. Ask a computer programmer if he feels his interests
> to be identical or even similar to those of a miner or factory worker.
>
Anyone who is forced to get out of bed in the morning for earning a
living is working class, including the computer programmer.
Ask the opinion of said person just after a redundancy or a shift
towards working longer hours in shorter contracts.
> I would add that the use of terms such as "unconscious" or "masses" in
> referring to working men and women is the height of insult and arrogance
> (perhaps also ignorance). I know a lot of working men and women, and there
> are very very few among them that have struck me as being either unconscious
> or part of some "mass". Most have a pretty realistic view of their world,
> are getting on with their lives as best they can and have little time for
> nonsense ideology.
>
This is a bad mannered misinterpretation on your part,
it is obvious that what I meant was
their class-conscioussness, which is you are as aware as me, giving
the programmer example above. As the vast majority of human kind is
working class as per the definition above, I can't see anything wrong
with described as a mass of people I am proud to belong to.
You may call it a nonsence, but without an informed concensus
and active participation of said masses to take over and transform
the economy, any attempt of yours to reform capitalism is futile -
and a nonsence, utopistic ideology...
Eva
> Ed Weick
>
>
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