corrections to primitivist misconceptions on this board

oh shit! it was like at the top of forums so i assumed it was current, i always forget to look at the dates. ah well, there was some crazy stuff being said. oh well sorry to have dragged this back up for everyone...

edit

actually i think i must have followed the link from somewhere and forgotten.

hi but its an interesting thread, why not keep it going,

i am for once support rolling back technological progress, because thats what can stop the monster corporations from rolling on. Thats when capitalism would fall and industry would stagnate for a while enough for the working class to grasp its working. Capitalism exploits by keeping the real producers in dark because of the new technologies they constantly stir up.

Now if the technological progress is stopped , as the primitivist says we have a very vulnerable capitalism, what do u say

how do you think you could "roll back technology"? do you imagen the capitalists would go along with this? and anyway the capitalists exploit the workers by employing them for wages while they keep the product of the workers labour

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/East_India_Company

No chance. Capitalism works by maintaining a system of ppower. One method of maintaining this is to keep up consumption by selling products, but these do not require technical innovation etc. As long as companies are running, workers are employed prducing things and owners are making money it doesn't matter which company it is. For example if the ipod had never been invented and Apple had gone bust there would stillbe loads of other products to purchase. Generally when capitalism stagnates it leads to speculation which leads to market crashes which leads to massive attacks on the working class. A few capitalists lose something a tiny minority lose everything but not much changes as it is the system that counts above all, not the people in it.

Yeah you are right,I missed a point, capitalist corporations do dominate even low tech industries like say, milk production and distribution. So it could be true as well that corporations are independent of technology.

So a revolution is the answer. Will this path be feasible? We have to localize production and consumption, perform the production and employment operation from a cooperative kind of business. check this video -amul video . Even I dont know the language, but its very moving accomplishment in human cooperation without capitalist masters. The coop's product out competes even the most successful MNCs in the Indian market.

We cant have a widespread upraisal of working force as long as they are employed in a factory. But we can do simple stuff like this at a low scale and beat them in their own game. Then it is with this localization and downscaling of technology would open the door to a great success, I hope.

( I need good inputs(and criticisms), since I am in the process of initiating a revolution already, we are initiating steps to unionize the Indian offshore business units, where a deep mistrust between workers and management has already taken root. )

Why would you want to have people withdraw from the global economy post-revolution? Capitalism has given us the tools to create material abundance, as well as the infrastructure to grow/extract, manufacture, transport, anything on Earth to anywhere else on Earth. Localism wouldn't just be counter-productive, it just plain would not work with the global population we have now (which will only keep rising unless a terrible celestial event, widespread pandemic or nuclear war happens etc).

All workers (i.e. the majority of people on this planet, who do not own the means of production and have to sell their labor to survive) are revolutionary precisely because of their place in the production process. Workers in factories (and every other place of business) have been striking, performing solidarity actions, boycotting, occupying, rising up in insurrections, etc for over well over 150 years.

Unionism is not revolutionary. It is quite the opposite.

But atleast in India, where workers live on subsistence levels, the factory owners could always lock-out as a retailatory measure for a strike, and the hungry workers would give in. This is not working here. The police could be bought against the workers also.

But the coop model actually works, there are practical examples.

Definitely not, I have analysed statistics , barring a few countries with dense population that are dependent on external markets like taiwan or singapore. There is enough in each country to support its peoples basic needs, I mean basic needs, not ipods and stuff. WTO and globalism is just a tool to foster capitalistic interests, see the movie "battle in seattle". I would suggest dismantle globalism, why should coke sell its drinks all over the globe. I know that pre 90s so many local brands existed in India all run at a small scale by local entrepreneurs , ie poeple who labour and own a small means of production too, but these had been supplanted and now wealth concentrates with the bosses of coke. globalism is good only in ideological sharing , like we do now, not in terms of goods and services.