the Class war

It's certainly class warfare. Not as effective as threatening a general strike if we don't get a 30 hour week would be though... nothing wrong with taking back what you can from them, it's just not capable of the same successes as organised class warfare is.

That's why we need effective anarchist organisation within the workplace organising around day-to-day issues and pointing out the potential for more.

I'll tell you what pisses me off, see when you go to buy a tin of Heinz baked beans and you get beans with pork sausages 'cos they look the same? That's a nightmare, especially if you're a vegan like me. It's like blue packets for cheese and onion crisps. It's fucking annoying.

Ive worked in places where people dont even know that class politics exist, and ive found that sometimes you only need to enlighten them a bit and in an encouraging way & the next thing you know there as militant as anything. Before they wouldent of even thought of pulling a sicky as something political, so the potentials always there, they just dont know it yet.

That's how I was enlightened by a work mate, I've never looked back since. I have since "recruited" several mates who work in various companies round the country and they all said why haven't we come across this before?!

maybe its because most people that are politicised dont always want certain people to know that there militant as it makes the bosses aware that you are a potential threat. I think you have to be careful who you discuss your politics with in most places as you always get your brown nosers who try an get in with the bosses thru spying on their workmates etc. One of my friends was a shop steward in a civil service branch and came in one day to find a safetyclip in his milk and various other subtle vindictive techniques used against him. I always find it difficult to keep my politics to trusted workmates, coz when your boss is an arsehole its difficult not to tell them that their capitalist pigs. hehe

That has gotta be the lamest union-busting tactic ever.

That wouldn't have rattled the CNT in the 30s...

lol...yeah it didnt stop him, although he was a bit worried that he might of not realized it was in there and then choked to death on it...beware the safetyclip assasinators!

I guess so, In the socialist utopia of the future i know we will never take sickies, because we will enjoy our work so much we will sing while we labour for the good of society as a whole.

In fact i have my song finished already, its dedicated to the social emancipatory power of henry hoovers.

Would you like to hear it?

john

ps sorry but this thread seems to be the equivalent of asking if apples are red or green

Yes please John!

ummmm...

Your plastic smile greets me at the gates of this workers paradise

er even if you don't really hoover up much

now i'm not alienated

you keep me in touch

john

I wrote a piece on this for Resistance a couple of months ago:

What has happened to resistance?

According to the Office for National Statistics, the number of strikes fell last last year to an all-time low, with workers striking for only 500,000 working days. The unions themselves, once bastions of working-class resistance, have shrunk to cover only around 29% of the UK workforce. Increased casualisation of work means that 14% of us are temporary employees – with much fewer rights and no union representation. UK workers work the longest hours in Europe, and we get the least number of days off. It is not as if there is workplace peace- a poll by HR Gateway showed that two-thirds of workers don’t trust their immediate superiors, while 80% distrust their directors.

So, where is the resistance?

Resistance is all around us, but is less organised and more atomised than it once was. It is less immediately visible as political resistance, but not all political action waves a banner and marches around.

Last month, the Economist warned UK bosses that they were operating in the worst climate in Europe for theft (what they euphemistically call “shrinkage”). Britain has the honour of having the highest rate of shoplifting in Europe, and it is heartening to know that “shrinkage is increasing alarmingly in some countries and is generally on the rise” throughout the continent.

Despite the decline in union activity, resistance carries on at the point if production itself: the workplace. UK workers manage to take back £1.2bn a year from their employers though theft. Interestingly, employee theft also shows a pattern of targeting larger capitalists: 19% of firms with fewer than 15 employees have experienced staff fraud, with the figure being more than doubled (48%) for businesses with over 36 staff. This desire to take back what the bosses have stolen from us was highlighted in a survey by Leicester University, which showed that 70% of the 2,000 people questioned admitted they would steal from their employer if they felt that could get away with it.

It is not only the money and goods that our labour produces that we take back, it is also our time. What the bosses call “absenteeism”, and we call “sickies” is up to an all-time high of around 30% of total time taken off work. A recent poll indicated that a third of UK employees pull a sickie if they don’t want to go to work. Figures released by the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) showed that sickies cost businesses around £11.6bn a year.

The real figures for all these acts of resistance are likely to be much higher, as most of it goes unnoticed. How many don’t use company phones to speak to their families, use the internet while at work or knock off early when the boss is out for the day?

Capitalism is based on a contradiction that cannot be solved- bosses want to pay us as little as possible for the most amount of work, whereas we want to work the least amount possible for the most amount of money. It tries to reduce all human interaction to monetary exchange: to live we must sell our bodies and minds in return for a wage, which we then have to give back by buying a small proportion of what we produced. In reasserting our dignity as human beings, it is natural that we resist this exploitation.

These are all acts of resistance because they seek to go beyond this commodification of life, and meet human needs directly. Any action that tries to sever the link between capitalist work and life contains within it the seed of revolutionary activity.

We must not forget that behind the world of offices of grey-faced workers, factories humming to the sound of repetitive drudgery and commodities kept separate from us by pricetags, there is a world of enforced slavery.

We do manage to go beyond this, every day. A world where work and life blend together, where human needs are met and exploitation ends is possible- we glimpse it in every act of resistance. The task before us is to link up with each other, and make our resistance as organised as possible.

Beautiful, sniff