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Right. With all due respect to Lenin and Joaquin, it's easy to quote sacred texts and wax on with analyses that don't take into consideration an actual diachronic and materialist examination of the working class as such. Instead, that is conveniently glossed over. After all, since the class has not been "in movement", why bother? And just to add my two cents worth of change, there was also some very good union organizing in the south which came out of the civil rights movement and the breakdown of rigid race barriers, in particular within the textile mills (most of which are now in other countries). On the other hand, I mostly agree with Joaquin's analysis of where the motor force of movement has been located, from the civil rights of the 1960's to identity politics, and on to indigenous rights in Bolivia, and even rights for Pachamama (too little too late)? But just as the indigenous of Bolivia are the most exploited sector of the working class there, so to the only layer of the working class in motion in the USA is also among the most exploited here, namely, the immigrant workers. Another possible point of consideration, one which dovetails with both perspectives proffered in this thread, is to examine the quote unquote structural leadership of said class, in contradistinction to the stagnant wages of the workers themselves, and how THEY have been bribed--namely, the union leadership of the AFL-CIA and the Change in your Pocket coalition. While it is quite clear the piecards have, since the end of WWII, received huge salaries replete with possibilities of upward mobility through the ranks of union "management", most workers have not. Instead, the factories have been taken apart and reconstructed in far-flung areas with cheap and plentiful non-union labor. The political aspect of this process, much discussed here as well, has been for the unions (what's left of them), to ally with the Democratic party. The whole idea, of course, was to construct a global economy with as much industrial production as possible offshored, and to establish a national service and information economy in the USA, with concomitant lower wages for the working class. The non-leadership of the workers having been disarticulated from the base, such a global reconstruction was fairly easy to accomplish. Much work has been done to examine the decentering aspect of the process which Artesian discusses below. Indeed, it has been a painstakingly planned approach on the part of capital--a very real pre-emptive attack. Small wonder there has been no monumental and sustained working class movement in the last 35 years. The reasons for that go way beyond simple bribery by sharing in so-called super-profits. Marxists can't have it both ways. One cannot have the tendency for the falling rate of profit, apparent from the mid-1970's on, leading to the financialization of the economy, AND superprofits for all at the same time. Greg McDonald On Sun, May 16, 2010 at 1:15 AM, S. Artesian <[email protected]> wrote: > We've been down this road before. The mechanisms that are usually > identified for the "workers sharing in the feast of capitalism" don't, upon > close examination, exist as mechanisms of sharing for the workers. > > Lenin's own work on imperialism is very problematic-- a charitable > characterizaton-- to say the least, based on a certain lack of > categorization of data where data is provided, a lack of data to support > certain key arguments, and the fact that the historical origin of trusts and > syndicates neither created a monopoly, nor is the result of imperialism, but > is the outgrowth of the "long deflation" of the 1873-1898 period which saw > tremendous increases in labor productivity in the more developed countries; > huge increases in the "fixed capital" component of industrial production > and, during that same period, DECLINES in nominal wages, although gains in > purchasing power due to greater declines in food products, rents and > clothing, based on that increased productivity. > > The gains the workers experienced during and after that long deflation had > nothing to do with superprofits utilized as "bribes." > > I don't think we can comprehend the lack of a working class social movement > in the US post WW2 [certainly working class social movements took the field > after WW2 in Europe, Asia, and Latin America] without acknowledging > coincidentally that the black struggle is, and always has been, about the > emancipation of black labor; that the struggle of women was propelled by the > large increases of women's participation in the social labor force. Nor > should we leave out the wildcat, and non-wildcat, strike movement that > peaked pretty much in 1974. > > And the response of the bourgeoisie and a response worldwide-- has been to > break up concentrations of workers, inside the factories [productivity > circles, production teams etc], outside the factories by decentralizing, > fragmenting production into smaller physical plants dispersed over greater > territories [favored tactic of the Italian bourgeoisie after the Turin > strikes], outsourcing, and years of breaking unions, firing workers. > > So if no social movement of the working class exists in the US-- yet, and it > doesn't, that hasn't stopped the bourgeoisie from pre-empting the > possibility of that development. > > Just as the civil rights struggle was the appearance of a struggle whose > essence is the emancipation of black labor, the current battle of immigrant > rights appears as a battle over identity, but is in essence nothing but > another pre-emptive attack of capital upon the most vulnerable of the > workers. ________________________________________________ Send list submissions to: [email protected] Set your options at: http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/options/marxism/archive%40mail-archive.com
