Carrol is in this post responding to Anthony D'Costa's question on the last
sentence in a previous post.
Note that Carrol's last sentence is THIS post makes an important clarification.
Some here post on the economic crisis, some on the crisis of capitalism. And
then contend with each other without realizing they are on two different topics.
Gene
On Oct 12, 2012, at 11:48 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
> Anthony D'Costa: What does the last sentence mean? 'Discipline the working
> classes'
>
> (My posts on this topic, on this & other lists, are essentially crude drafts
> of a position I'm trying to work out. Your post has helped my further
> thinking.)
>
> Your question. It underlines the last sentence in the quotation from Marx:
> "By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would
> certainly
> disqualify themselves for the initiating of any larger movement." Leaving
> aside Marx's moralistic adverb ("cowardly") the working classes of the
> 'developed' nations did, in the 1970s and subsequent decades, certainly
> reduce their level of struggle, and the resistance that has emerged since
> Wisconsin has been (mostly) from marginal sectors of the class. We can hope
> (and work) for the intensification of that embryonic resistance, but
> Austerity (precariousness) tends to focus each person's attention on his/her
> own circumstances; while it provokes _some_ to resistance it causes many or
> most to scramble for personal survival. A heavy load of debt keeps a
> person's "nose to the grindstone."
>
> And I might add, the chances of serious worker resistance are not enhanced
> by those leftists or Marxists who treat an economic crisis as a crisis of
> capitalism.
>
> Carrol
>
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