Appearances

This site is very class-war focused, I think it's unrivaled in that across the internet. And to answer your question, yes.

Welcome to the site jataomm, keep looking around the library, its pretty good.
Your post mentions some interesting stuff, and I've got some questions.

Who are these wage slaves that would not be considered working class?
Many many workers don't consider themselves "working class", but it fails to change their actual material position in society.

Please explain.

Hi jataomm

Insofar as the goal is the abolition of capitalism, it's pretty clear, is it not, that that can only be accomplished by the working class. Focusing on the working class is not outdated. However, I suspect that it is your understanding of the term "working class" that is outdated. The working class is not just blue collar industrial workers in huge factories. Capitalism has changed, but wage slaves are still the constituent elements of the working class. If wage slaves think they do not belong to the working class that is because they have been deceived by capitalist propaganda and ideology. When they are forced to struggle with their fellow wage slaves against their bosses or other forces of capital, they will come to realize which class they belong to. (Unless they are particularly ignorant, but then their active resistance to capital will trump their beliefs, since action always speaks louder than words/beliefs.)

Unless one is a member of the ruling class, the benefits of the downfall of capitalism and its replacement by communism are pretty clear. Most non-ruling class people just don't think the prospect of abolishing capitalism and replacing it with communism is realistic or feasible. But given that only the working class can abolish capitalism, that means that non-working class enemies of capitalism need to support the class struggle of workers developing into revolutionary struggle to abolish capitalism.

Finally, there are other anarchist tendencies which do not orientate themselves to class struggle, to abolishing capitalism, and bringing about communism. They are no less anarchist (well, some of them may be) than class struggle anarchism or libertarian communism.

welcome to the site jataomm.

to echo what others have said, the concept of working class (or proletariat if you want to use really out-dated language ) applies to all those who have nothing to sell but their ability to work (and therefore nothing to lose but their chains ). so all wage slaves, as well as the unemployed are working class. it's true that many workers don't identify with the term, but this doesn't change their material position in society - basically dispossessed.

now obviously there are individuals who don't fit neatly into the category, like wage slaves who rent out their spare room or run a small business in their spare time (and so receive a (small) capital income as well as a wage), or managers who don't own any shares but whose role is to act as the agents of capital. but the purpose of class analysis isn't to neatly classify all individuals into two clear categories, but to understand the tension in society between the needs of the majority and the needs of capital/the bosses/the economy, and the potential for this tension to explode into a radical break with existing social relations.

so to me, the only people excluded by class politics are the bosses (well they're included, but not on our side!) - alongside the obvious workplace stuff a myriad of struggles from anti-racism to abortion rights all come under asserting our class needs, so to me this is already a broad approach.

For a different view from the familiar 2-class theory often spouted on here, see;
http://libcom.org/forums/news/instant-muscle-workfare-racketeers-gone-gone-gone-29022008

This would not be clear to someone who hasn't read enough Marxist theory. It is certainly not self-evident.

Again, not unless you've read a lot of Marxist theory, perhaps some of Marx's early, more obscure work, as well as stuff by others.

In the U.S. very few people refer to themselves as working-class. Most people, even the very poor, call themselves middle class. So, if we are agreed that the vast majority of people are working class why can’t we use terms like “the people?” I understand we want to avoid being confused with populists (both right and left), and I suspect a lot of the phrases we use are for insider purposes, but the capitalists are expert at using doublespeak. Perfect example: in the U.S. the estate tax was applicable only to the very, very wealthy. By changing the vernacular to the Death Tax, the Right was able to rally poor working people to the cause because thought they were going to be taxed for leaving the family heirlooms.

Of course, I’m not advocating for lying, but we have to remember the amazing propaganda job done by the bosses as well as the common perception of the public when it comes to words like communism and anarchism.

Not that I have the answers, mind you, but I think it’s something we should think about.

i think 'the people' is problematic since it's always been used to identify the population as a whole, bosses and workers, with the state. some people (notably Antonio Negri, Michael Hardt and Paolo Virno) have tried to remedy this by coining a new term, 'the multitude' (which i think is problematic for other reasons).

i think ultimately though whatever terms we successfully use to express radical ideas will be mis-represented and propagandised against - so 'anarchism' comes to mean bomb-throwing terrorists, 'communism' comes to mean totalitarian dictatorship, 'revolution' comes to mean replacing one set of politicians with another etc.

imho we should just explain ourselves clearly when necessary, and focus on concrete struggles. when trying to organise with my co-workers the need to mention any of the above things explicitly hasn't even come up, we're all in the same boat, our bosses aren't, and this 'us and them' antagonism can be pointed out and organised around without hiccuping political jargon (not that i hide my politics, but neither to i shout 'i'm an anarchist! i'm a communist!' when i know it will be misunderstood).

edited

as i said above, whatever terms we use successfully will be given other meanings by our enemies. that said i have used 'working people' and 'ordinary people' in propaganda i've written (neither of which is unproblematic, but they're both less ideologically loaded the 'the working class' or 'the people'). i mean in talking to my workmates, literally 'us' and 'them' suffices, due to our actual material relations (our boss makes us work late while going home early etc).

however i think you're right that jargon can alienate. the more outward-looking parts of this site - particularly news - have style guides to ensure they're easily understood by anyone. the library is a mixed bag by necessity as it's thousands of texts by hundreds of authors over two centuries or so, while the forums do tend to assume a level of familiarity with the jargon, which is somewhat inevitable as after all it's a libertarian communist site and many of the regular posters share understandings of the key terms (or have disagreements over them that are obscure to the uninitiated). generally people are happy to explain themselves in plain english though, i certainly am.

A couple of points -

First, the terminology that people use in discussions on these forums isn' t necessarily what they use in day-to-day conversation or written publications. Jargon (and 'working class' is jargon when it's used in the specific way it's used on here) is essential when certain groups of people have conversations to avoid repeating the same things over and over - at the same time, we need to be very conscious of it when writing for people unfamiliar with our particular usage (some publications do this, others don't).

Secondly, there was a survey within the past couple years, where a majority of people answered that they consider themselves working class - what exactly the respondents meant by this is anyone's guess, but IMO there's an increasing awareness that certain issues are 'class issues', and that we live in a class society - certainly in comparison to the '80s/'90s - and it's one that doesn't require a cultural identification with 'working class culture' or any other fetishism.
edit - crossposted with JK

Jataomm - I think most of us would agree that using certain terminology without explanation can lead to problems. Which is why recent interventions such as Tea Break for instance avoid this, whilst retaining the substance of the class analysis. This has been my approach in recent propaganda efforts too.

Edit - cross-post with Catch

Capitalism is the social relation that allows the working class to be exploited by the bourgeoisie (to put it very, possibly excessively, simply) and he bourgeoisie are very unlikely to put an end to it voluntarily, whereas as a conscious working class would be practically impossible to stop.

If you accept a marxist definition of society then these people are working class. Revolutionary consciousness relies on them accepting this sooner or later, so they do need to realise that they working class and being exploited.
Just because someone thinks they are, or are not something doesn't affect whether they are or not when this can be measured objectively. A lot of people would not describe themselves as racist, sexist or a variety of things when they in fact are.

It's a bit deterministic I suppose, just because the conditions seem right to some and it seems obvious to some doesn't mean it is to others.

Well if you are going to limit yourself to class struggle anarchism then you will probably need to accept that class does exist and that it is more sophisticated and fluid than simply factory worker.

jataomm wrote that. two noobies with sn's starting with j both asking more or less the same questions. confusing. (though i will say i am firmly in the working class is the only route to revolution camp, fyi.)

i agree with you joseph k. that most co-workers are right with me so long as i don't use the a or c word, and while it's pretty much always been the case, it is vastly more so now after the financial crisis. workers in the u.s. have been instantly radicalized by this mess. the problem over here is making sure that radicalization doesn't mean a move toward fascism which i see as a very real possibility. in my one on one conversations i avoid the a and c words like the plague and use "direct democracy" and "economic equality" in their stead. it just works better that way.

i don't know if i agree here. a lot of the stuff we say makes it clear we're not talking about the bosses or the state so i'm not really concerned about that level of confusion. thanks for engaging with me on this. "the multitude." yikes.

d'oh, sorry

i'm pretty fussy over terminology mind. 'the people' does sometimes have an anti-state populist slant, but i'm still wary of it as it tends to obscure class divisions. but like i say i have used 'ordinary people' in propaganda/discussions instead, which gets round this (although imho ignores the fact that cultural 'freaks' can still be working class) - there's no perfect way to be understood unfortunately, just have to use terms appropriate to your audience really.

It is an important problem; do you approach the working class up to your eyeballs in theory, or you take a purely practical approach?

The way I see it, is that they are by no means mutually exclusive.

If you take, for example, the questions of unions. I think it would be the wrong approach to attempt to persuade workers with a purely theoretical critique of the nature of unions. The way I have approached the question is in a purely practical manner - whom does this unions serve and what we will need to do to actually win this dispute (assuming there is a strike). The way I see it, is that the unions constantly take the side of the employers, that they pacify the workers - indeed, their very nature is one of arbitration and conciliation. And their you draw the circle with the theoretical nature of the unions.

The problem of national independence movements is the same - people argue that Left-Communists take a purely impractical approach to this question. But we have repeatedly seen that the vast majority of workers actually take the Left-Communist position; rather than defending their ruling class against another they flee their country. Of course, this is a disgusting terror which they have to face, but the opposing terror which the bourgeoisie left present them with - i.e. dying for their ruling class - is by no means more appealing or practical!

We oppose parliamentary participation because we see that, practically, it will achieve nothing revolutionary. And indeed, the bourgeoisie leftist regimes which have attempted the parliamentary road have been involved in attacks on the revolutionary working class - Chavez and Allende among them.

In this manner, I see that the Left-Communist approach is the most practical, and the most beneficial to the actual interests of the working class.

Jataomm, I think you raise a relevant point in that many people do not consider themselves 'working class.' However, as many people have pointed out, this does not reject real social relations.

But I think it reveals more than that. It reveals that the ruling class loves us to imagine that there are no such things as classes - why they were outdated several centuries ago! The bourgeoisie encourages us to discuss everything but class - race, gender, sexuality, nationality, religion etc. This is not to say that these things are unimportant, they certainly are, but without a class content whom do they really end up serving? I have seen recently, so-called 'class struggle' anarchists arguing for the vote for Obama in the name of feminism - the fear that the Republicans will outlaw abortion (which I think isn't really founded anyway). Imperialist wars, liberation struggles, identity politics, the scam of democracy and anti-fascism, all hide the one thing that the ruling class really fears: class war.

What can we do to push forward the revolutionary struggle? Sometimes it is important to acknowledge that there is not much we can do at all - that we may live in a period of stagnation or in circumstances which are unfavorable (I think, however, that if the Italian Left were able to agitate in World War 2, both against Italian fascism, Stalinism and the Allied war effort, then there is no excuse for us) Clearly, there are periods of increased revolutionary potential and the opposite. But I think that the one place where class politics are always welcome is the workplace.

Broad descriptions, but that is my view.

but this book has an interesting response to that view.

believe it or not, this pedantry has been an area of heated debate... is a shared material condition sufficient, or do we have to consciously recognise ourselves as sharing this condition to push immediate defensive struggles beyond themselves into social, revolutionary struggles? my feeling is the latter, but this is to a large extent a product of the former - by this i mean in struggling together over immediate things, we start to see what we have in common with each other, and with other workers doing the same elsewhere. of course propaganda by politicised minorities can play a part in making these links too, it's not purely spontaneous.

whether any of this requires particular labels, particularly in the here and now is certainly debateable. i certainly tend towards the view that jargon should be avoided in outward-looking propaganda, for the reasons mentioned above about labels alienating etc.

They need to accept the analysis and that will most likely lead to them accepting the label, but the label is not the important part.

The terminology is not the be all and end all. It's likely people will use these terms more as they learn about capitalism, but it is not essential.

I'm not sure where I'd point them. I'm not sure how quickly I'd point them to anything, I'd talk to them and if they asked me where they could get more info I'd help them. If they wanted theoretical texts I'd probably ask someone on here for some recommendations, if they wanted history then I'd recommend they browse the library on here. I'd also suggest that they check out the news here on libcom as well.

it's a weakness of this site at the moment that there's not a lot of clear, outward-looking 'introduction to our politics' type content. we (the libcom collective) are soon to have a debate with another group hosted by yet another website, and hopefully some of the arguments there can be adapted to a new, accessible introduction to our politics. what we have at the moment is this, which is quite old and hasn't been looked at by the collective in a few years, but gives an idea. it's not that prominently linked-to either (via the about page, which is in a drop-down menu at the top).

in terms of other sites, http://www.prole.info/ is one of my favourites - Work Community Politics War is one of the best introductions to anarchist/communist politics i've seen, managing to explain sometimes complex ideas clearly, and with sexy pictures. i may well point people at that if they were sufficiently interested.

the first chapter looks really good. thanks.