This artcle is about the cuurent economic crisis. I am trying here to argue that the crisis is not capitalism's crisis , in fact , it is our crisis. For this, I relied on what we see in real life and proving it by showing evidence and statistics . I believe we are the one we suffer and taking disadvantage in this crisis not the capitalists and the system in general.
Is the current economic crisis capitalism crisis or ours?
By Zaher Baher
Oct 2015
Capitalism and its Media have always worked on confusing and deceiving us by introducing reactionary movements, events and experiments as a revolution, that in fact benefit the system rather than us.
For almost a century the Media outlets tried to sell state capitalism to us as socialism. They called Russian bourgeois society a socialist society, for about forty years they tried to tell us what happened in Iran was a revolution. And recently they tried hard to convince us what happened in some of the Arab countries was the “Arab Spring” or “Arab Revolution”. The same applies with regards to an economic crisis. For more than 150 years we have been told that these crisis were capitalism crisis not us. They tell us this to confuse and deceive us as if the capitalists in general have to pay the price, not us. So we should think this crisis is nothing to do with us and we should believe that it is business is as usual.
Many of us cannot form our opinions and analyse things independently and think freely. In other words, we are influenced by the Media. We also think by the brain of somebody else, so that much of our thinking and analysis of issues like economics, politics and social issues are shaped by the Media, famous people and academics that write or talk about them.
During his time, Karl Marx noticed that in the future the duration gap between the crises will get shorter and the crisis time will get longer. However, the whole crisis, whether it remains for a short or a long time has never been the crisis of a capitalist system. It has always remained our crisis. It was us who paid the price by losing our job, consequently becoming homeless as well. We lost many of the achievements that we gained before, and then we became weaker and weaker. It was the capitalism system which escaped the crisis and emerged stronger than before by reorganising itself in a new form and beginning to attack to us.
Although I believe Marx’s entire political theory failed and some parts of his economic theory are questionable, for the problems of his economic theory, he should not be blamed at least for a couple of reasons. First his analysis of the economy in general, especially after the second half of last century onwards, working class and the system, should not be expected. At his time the capitalism system compared to the present one was very weak but the working class movement was more united and stronger than now. Second we should not look to Marx as a God or at least a fortune teller to see his doctrine is correct for now and the future as a medicine for our present sickness. Whoever thinks about Marx this way, is not only unfair to and insulting him, but in fact, him/herself is a parrot just using a brain of somebody who died a long time ago rather than thinking by his/her own brain.
In this article, I am only relying on evidence, statistics on one hand and the current economic, political and social situation under this crisis on the other hand.
I believe it was us that built this system not capitalists; it is us that created money, wealth, capital and everything else. Meanwhile it is us that can live without money, the capitalism system, in a society free of private ownership and power of authority. It is us managing and maintaining every cell in society while capitalists never without using our power, our workforce alone can even make one simple thing, and carry on their normal life and manage maintaining this system even for a minute. It is us actually producing everything, but it is they who benefit. In short it is us all the time holding this system not the capitalists and elites, therefore, whenever and wherever the system became faulty and problematic, it will be us who will be at a disadvantage and pay the price.
What is the economic crisis?
The Oxford Dictionary definition for the economic crisis is “A situation in which the economy of a country experiences a sudden downturn brought on by a financial crisis. An economy facing an economic crisis will most likely experience a falling GDP, a drying up of liquidity and rising/falling prices due to inflation/deflation. An economic crisis can take the form of a recession or a depression. Also called real economic crisis”
The definition of Google for economic crisis is “ A downturn is part of the economic cycle (sometimes referred to as trade cycle or business cycle) The UK definition of a recession is – negative economic growth for two consecutive quarters. The definition of an economic downturn is less strict than a recession”…..” A situation in which the economy of a country experiences a sudden downturn brought on by a financial crisis. An economy facing ... some financial assets suddenly lose a large part of their nominal value”
Many economists believe the current crisis is the worst the world has seen since the great Depression of 1930s.
For Marx “Capitalism IS an economic system that is inherently crisis-prone. It is driven by forces which cause it to be unstable, anarchic and self-destructive”
Marx with Frederic Engels described capitalism in the Communist Manifesto as “a society that has conjured up such gigantic means of production and of exchange, [that it] is like the sorcerer, who is no longer able to control the powers of the nether world whom he has called up by his spells."A few questions here are coming up: Has that really happened? The sorcerer no longer controlled the power? When and where after 170 to 180 years we have seen that?
Elsewhere Marx argues that crises "carry the most frightful devastation in their train, and, like an earthquake, cause bourgeois society to shake to its very foundations.” Have we really seen bourgeois society shake to its very foundation?
Whatever the definitions of the crisis, this crisis happened and continues although the apologetic capitalists repeatedly say there will be no more “bust and slum”.
For Marx the causing of the crises are over-production, under-consumption, luck of purchase power and disproportion.
And the only solution from Marx and Engels for the above was democratic economic planning–socialism: “If the producers as such knew how much the consumers required, if they were to organize production, if they were to share it out amongst themselves, then the fluctuations of competition and its tendency to crisis would be impossible. Carry on production consciously as human beings–not as dispersed atoms without consciousness of your species–and you have overcome all these artificial and untenable antitheses. But as long as you continue to produce in the present unconscious, thoughtless manner, at the mercy of chance...crises will remain; and each successive crisis is bound to become more universal and therefore worse than the preceding one; is bound to impoverish a larger body of small capitalists, and to augment...the numbers of the class who live by labour alone”
There is no doubt that the chaotic form of production of the capitalism system and private ownership contradict with workforce of production. This brings crisis with itself which in the end brings disaster to the vast majority of us on one hand and accumulate the huge amount of capital in the hands of a tiny minority on the other hand.
If the causes of crisis is due to over-production and this causes the stagnation of economic, then at present time this ‘reason’ is questionable for me. At present because of the new technologies this problem to certain extent can be resolved by reorganising, making plans in advance before the stagnation starts in the market. No doubt nowadays any major company can find a huge amount of information within second, by using one click they can work out anywhere in the world where they have a branch how much goods, are sold, the profit and loss, the boom period for that particular branch, the number of customers they have, how many workers they have, their work conditions and their performances, and much more. Obviously things have changed very much since when Marx was alive, so they can gather all the above information in a matter of minutes. This may be a reason nowadays as to why the crisis is financially rather than the crisis of the business and trades, although it always ended up with the economic crisis.
However, here I am not attempting to find the causes of crisis but the influences and the implementation of crisis on the vast majority of us. It is true that from here to there a few capitalists, a few companies, banks will be bankrupted or even collapse but whatever happens, the system in general is intact and safe. It looks like an earthquake that comes and goes damaging some area but the rest of the world will remain undamaged.
We usually do not know much about the crisis or we do not feel it until the governments impose the austerity policy.
Imposing the austerity policy:
What has been so far introduced to us as capitalism’s crisis, in fact, was neither the crisis of capitalists nor the crisis of the capitalist system. When there are competitions and struggles between the varieties of the corporations, companies happen to cause bankrupting or collapsing some of them. In this situation capitalism through its nation states via its political representative, the parliamentary system imposes austerity on nation and citizens. Their justification for that, as they say, are the economic, is very bad, that without taking a serious measures the entire economy in the country even in the Continent will collapse then we will lose everything.
With this justification their vicious attack from privatising, selling the state ownerships and assets, reducing wages and pensions, sacking workers, reducing and cutting benefits, increasing working hours, imposing the worse work condition, putting up the prices of everything starts, to increase the rent, closing down the public services, forcing the worker to accept any shit jobs while there are millions unemployed in the market.
Austerity, as all of us know, brings so many more problems, like making the unions and working movement much weaker, decreasing corporation tax, increasing crime, racism and fascism, extending the hospital waiting list, homeless and homelessness list and list of eviction and repossessions usually go up.
The crisis situation for which the austerity is imposed brings us terrible packages which we are the only losers. It stays with us and it will be our crisis until we will be completely aware and conscious about the situation and understanding fully of its causes. Unless we rise up against it by organising ourselves and work collectively to reject the parliamentary system, using direct action and direct democracy to bring back the power from the corporations and their political representative, the government, our crisis will continue and worsen.
In the absence of the above, this system will remain and the economic crisis will stay with us for a long time as well. History has shown us that after each economic crisis the capitalist system became stronger than before by organising itself better and becoming more efficient. Just looking back after the Great Depression what happened in the end of 1920s we can see instead of revolution, in fact, capitalism emerged so strongly it managed to launch WW2. Once the war was over again it managed to create so many small, big, short and long wars: civil wars, religious wars, nationalist wars in so many countries. No doubt these wars made the movement of people weaker and the system much stronger.
If we look at the current crisis closely on the World level and its impact on us we can start from the Oxfam report of 19/01/2015 that says half of global wealth held by 1%. The report shows that the share of the world’s wealth owned by the best-off 1% has increased from 44% in 2009 to 48% in 2014, while the least well-off 80% currently own just 5.5%.And also the report added that on current trends the richest 1% would own more than 50% of the world’s wealth by 2016. The report mentioned that last year, 2014, the 85 richest people on the planet have the same wealth as the poorest 50% (3.5 billion people).
In separate research the Equality Trust, which campaigns to reduce inequality in the UK, found that the richest 100 families in Britain in 2008 had seen their combined wealth increase by at least £15bn.
In this crisis in Europe the riches, the bankers and the companies are getting richer and making more profits while this crisis for us is getting deeper and making us poorer. We see the rate of unemployment has increased. For instance : In Italy the rate of unemployment rose to 12.4%, in Portugal 13% in France 10.5 % in Greece 25.6%, In Ireland 9.7%, in Germany 4.8%, in Spain 22.7% in UK 5.4% and in US 10.3%. The unemployment rate among the young people is much higher; for example, in Greece it is 56%, in Spain 53.5%, in Italy 43.9% and in Croatia 45.5%. According to Joseph Stieglitz, the former deputy of the World Bank, the rate of unemployment among the young African Americans between 17 and 20 years old who have graduated from high school but not enrolled in college is over 50%.
Although a few of the Banks and big companies have been bankrupted or collapsed, the vast majority of them have benefited from the current crisis. Their profits have gone up compared to previous years. Here is an example of some of them; the profit of Walmart in 2014 was $16.4Bn –an increased of 2% since 2013. The profit of the first season of JP Morgan for this year that disclosed on 14/07/15 has gone up by 5.2% and the Electronic Arts predicts the profit of each of its share go up by $2.85, twice the profit of last year. Amazon online retailers Luxemburg Unit took £5.3bn sale just from British internet shoppers that rose by 14%. . Apple profit for last year increased by 6% to $39.1bn compared to 2013. Costco profit $20.6bn, IBM profit is $12bn, Microsoft profit $22.1bn increased by 1%, Google $14.4bn, the profit increased by 11%. Coca-Cola $7.1bn and Nike $2.7bn, was increased by 8%. These are only a few examples among 10 more of the world’s top corporations that their profits have gone up on our expenses.
In UK according to a report from Sunday Times of 15/04 that listed down the rich people shows the 1000 wealthiest people in the UK are now worth £547bn, not counting what’s in their bank account. The report says “The figure has more than doubled since a total of just under £250bn was recorded in 2005, despite the world economy being gripped by a punishing recession over much of the last decade”. The list also includes 117 billionaires – up from 104 last year.
What we see here should not actually shock or surprise us because; first the rate of corporation tax when Winston Churchill was in power was 97%. When Margaret Thatcher came to power it reduced to 60% and under the Labor and then Conservative gradually reduced to 20%. It was just recently disclosed that the taxpayers are handing businesses £93bn a year by subsiding them and tax break, a transfer of more than £3,500 from each household in the UK. Second the income of ordinary family has since 2008 gone down by 10% and also more than 900,000 people live on food banks. This figure has since last year gone up by 38%. In the meantime the gender pay gap has not closed after 70 years.
While we look at the actual evidence on day to day life with having more than 1.7 million workers on zero-hour contracts, reducing or cutting the benefits, selling the state properties and its assets including social housing , increasing the gap between the poor and the richer, the standard of people’s life lower than 5 years ago, the home owners rate from 70% reduced to 64% and the number of eviction in a day reaches more than 1000 , only between July and September of last year the number of evicted rent payers arrived to 11,000 and 2805 mortgage borrowers lost their homes during the quarter. And also it is expected if life goes on like now, the average UK household will be in debt by £10,000 by end of 2016, the number of Housing Benefit claimants have gone up by 500,000 and the working family claiming housing benefit more than doubled between 2009-10 and 2014-15 and now stands at more than 1.1 million, the rate of young unemployment among ethnic minorities went up by 50%, the cost of bringing up a child compare to years before increased by £2,000 , one of five UK earn less than living wage and more….How can you say this crisis is capitalism’s crisis not ours? And how can the crisis be “like an earthquake, cause bourgeois society to shake to its very foundations”?
When we have a spirit of defiance and challenge, we do not have to accept anymore of the above. When we resist orders from elites and their states, when we fight back, not surrendering, and believe that we can make changes. When we have the desire and the tendency of rebellion, the consciousness of being used and exploited and, the mentality of resistance that are extremely important for the job to be done. Then, we can freely and loudly say capitalism is in crisis not us.
Comments
Well the class struggle is a
Well the class struggle is a reality of capitalism which at it's high points has succeeeded in advancing or defending working class interests at least for a time but so far has not advanced to a situation where it has challenged the capitalist social system in it's entirety which has survived, modernised and conitues to this day. So to that extent you can argue that the only real crisis of capitalism is yet to come but this (and the undisputed facts in the article) hardly amounts to any refutation of a marxist based analysis of capitalist crisis and it's evolution in the modern world. Posing the question this way is little more than semantics.
There is overproduction and
There is overproduction and underconsumption just as Marx predicted. All of Marx's theories about alienation and Fetishism are still correct. Marx's political theory relies on the leadership of the Working class. We have yet to see this class take SOLE leadership of any revolution. Yet Baher claims Marx's political theory has failed. Something has to be used in order to have failed. Saying that Marx's political theory is incorrect is the same thing as saying that workers should not have sole leadership of the revolution and the consequent Socialist society. What class or classes should replace or substitute for the working class. No doubt Baher would substitute the word "masses" for the working class. This is a convenient term for the sneaking in the concept of petty bourgeois leadership. But this is precisely the entire problem of all previous revolutions led almost exclusively by the petty bourgeois . What Baher suggests is more of the same.
If the petty bourgeois would make the sacrifices necessary to become a part of the working class then there would be no contradiction to their leadership. But this is the essence of the problem very few petty bourgeois have the character that it takes to pay the painful price of earning their way into the working class. Most just wish to put a saddle on the working class and ride the class like knight riding to battle on the working class horse. Only after victory it is very difficult to get the Castros, Chavezs, Stalins etc... off the backs of the working class.
The Baher's repeated thesis that it is a crisis for the masses and not for the capitalists was also well understood by Marx. Marx knew very well that capitalists would NOT personally suffer from the crisis. But the falling rate of profit remain a crisis for Capitalism as a class.
The problem that the dialectically illiterate Baher is not able to distinguish between an individual and a class. Indeed he cannot understand the concept of class at all.
The solution to all of the World's problems will not not come about by individuals in a class deciding that they are in crisis and will refuse to continue to be victims any more. Like Nancy Reagan suggestion that people just say no to drugs. It is clear to the billions of the planet earning $1 a day that they are in crisis. They are also well aware that they cannot do anything about it since the Capitalists are actively warring on them. Tens of millions of soldiers and police are beating and killing them on a daily basis.
The real problem lies in the loyal middle and working classes in the First World who are NOT in an economic crisis and thus loyally create every means and weapon necessary to repress the remaining part of the Global working class. As long as there are workers and middle class in the First World who willing to put their own personal lives above all other considerations nothing will change.
There is a possibility that the Capitalists will turn on their First World workers and force them into to real crisis. (The Greek Working class is showing that it takes a great deal more pain and suffering before they begin to really fight back. Meanwhile they are still a part of the problem and no part of the solution). This process will be driven against the Capitalist class will by the declining rate of profit, automation etc.... Again something predicted by Marx, Engels, Lenin, Trotsky etc....
I wish all of these left wing infantilists would stop wasting all their (and Marxist's precious time refuting them) time attacking Marxism. They should instead create their own theories. The theory of Marxism could fill entire libraries.
Anti-Marxist diatribes by both Capitalists and confused or just lazy petty bourgeois could fill all the garbage dumps on the planet.
This article is full of facts, whining and nagging about how Marxism has not created the Communist World promised????
When Baher writes, "When we have a spirit of defiance and challenge" , I want to vomit. This is not any kind of rational discourse. It is practically agent provocateur statements design to misled and waste the precious time of the masses. Attacks on Marxism adds to my suspicion that this essay is the work of an Capitalist agent.
All scientific discoveries are based on the work of previous incomplete but still valuable scientific work. Marxism will always be a part of any revolutionary theory. The point is to expand the theory not destroy it. Newtonian physics is still useful in most situations of everyday civil engineering. Einstein theories just expand beyond those limitations into astrophysics.
Richard
Dear Comrade Richard. Thanks
Dear Comrade Richard.
Thanks for taking a time to make your comments and apologise for not coming back to you earlier. I also thank you for accusing me by a “ Petty Bourgeois and Capitalism agent” well my 50 years old history of struggle shows exactly opposite of what you said. But I must admit there is some truth in what you said. For a long time I was thinking like you and thought I can change or can take a part with others in changing the current society to a socialist society through having : a disciplinary political party, a strong determined leadership, imposing the sacred texts, theories and paragraph in the old books that have been written over century ago on the society, never asking a curtail questions but just listen, obey and stay loyal to the leaders and the books forever, believe in domination and working class as the most revolutionary class. Furthermore believing in dividing the socialist society into two stages: socialism and communism by forming a state/government of Dictatorship of Proletariat as I thought this is will abolished the state and making it disappeared then we could reach the communism society in this way. Many more of these craps, yes, so who has benefits of this sort of Ideas? Capitalism or socialisms?
I am sure people like me at the time and like you today provided and providing the best service to capitalism system better than MI5, MI6 and CIA. But the good news for me is , for the last 16 years I have left this idea and now I am a freethinker not like you a parrot to think by the brain of somebody died 132, 133 years ago. Comrade in this aspect what is difference between the real Muslims and Christians people and you, that they want to impose over society or implement what it was came to exist over 15 centuries ago?
Anyway let me come to answering your comments very briefly:
• Of course I do not believe in leaderships and any political parties under any names. And also not just I do not believe the working class revolutionary even I do not believe the working class is any more a class. That was one of the big problem of Marx when he has hold his hope and the future of human beings on the hands of this class , working class, to take the society to a socialist society as we have seen it under the Bolsheviks in 1921. Lenin did not do anything except developing Marx’s theory of Dictatorship of Proletariat and put it in practices. In my opinion the current working class very reactionary. They are not just the sources of racisms, sexism, nationalism and fascism, in fact they are the best in holding this system and maintaining it . If you live in UK probably you know about the attitude of United Union , the biggest Union in UK, when the new Leader of Labour Party, Corbyen, tried to convince the conference members about not supporting renewing the Trident/ new clear power submarines, but failed. I can bring you up many more examples.
• Yes I am with a Mass movement, not political party movement. For me either the revolution is the social revolution , by ( us/ People) or there is no revolution at all. If you look in history whatever the political parties done tried , it was not revolution even they could not make a major changes.
• We have a couple of conceptions comrade: either you have to stick with Marx’s definition for working class or we have to accept that nowadays the vast majority of us are working class. If you accept Marx’s one, surely the working class according to his definition is a very minority in the societies in anywhere in the world. The revolution is not the act of a tiny minority but the masses. If the tiny minority does revolution, they need leaderships and typical political parties like Bolshevik and then the outcome of the revolution won’t be better than what we saw in Russia and the rest of so-called the socialist countries. If we accept the second choice that means we have to abounding Marx’s theory about working class and its revolution.
• Marx believed that the capitalism was in crisis not us, in my article I have referred to his writing. And for all the Marxist when they see a few days of Demos or strike or even riots that will be a beginning of revolution for them but the reality showed it was not and it is not.
• You said that “Baher is not able to distinguish between and individual and the class. Indeed he cannot understand the concept of class at all” but you have failed to show any reason/s or explanation for what you said.
• I am like you, I believe it is a class issue but the difference between me and you is: you only believe in workers as they are classified by Marx, but I believe the issue is between us and them, between the masses and the tiny minority of people, elites. If you reduce this big problem to only a problem between working classes and the system that means the system stays forever.
• I do not think pushing the working class beyond their ability and capacity will be the way for resisting the system to make major changes. That is not enough. In real life we can see having war or starvation, poverty are not the only condition for the revolution to be happened, in fact postponed the revolution . I do not want to repeat myself here because I explained in my article how the real crisis happens and how we can transfer this crisis to Capitalism crisis.
• You think people like me while we do not believe in the state, power and authority and believe in direct democracy, direct action and assemblies of people are leftists but not yourself and people like you. I am hoping if I have a time to write about how the leftist, communists and the authoritarian socialist damaged the socialist/anarchist movement more than the right wings.
• You think anybody criticises Marx is “capitalists, lazy or petty bourgeois” but that is wrong completely and you have no evidence to say that. The history from a century and a half ago to date proved that the anarchists/libertarians continuously criticised Max and his Theory and they were always right.
• What you said in your second last paragraph, that is the saying of all the dictators around the world. I remember in Iraq the regime always accused us and people like us as an agents of Iran, Syria, US and any other countries the regime did not get on well.
• Ok comrade if you think “Marxism will always be a part of any revolutionary theory” can you please prove your statement, if you do not mind.
Wishing you best
Zaher
Zaher, I suspect that you are
Zaher,
I suspect that you are aware that there is no one 'Marxism' nor any one 'anarchism' and that in practice there has always been an evolving relationship between these two broad categories which I, if not you given you apparent wholesale rejection of class analysis, still consider to be beneficial to our understanding of and action upon the world today.
Hi Comrade, Thanks for your
Hi Comrade,
Thanks for your comment. I am sorry to say hat i disagree with you. Anarchism is Idea, thought and the way of life herefore always can be developed , promoted and can be renewed all the time. While Marxism is ideology the Marxists cannot develope Marxism at all and this is their terrible weakness point that reached to a point their mnd and brain are completely closed. They never look into different way/s. They always go back to the yellow books hat been written by Marx and his friend Eagles , so this makes them implemnt their ideology on the real ground not vice-versa. In other words, for them the idea , thought and the conciseness create or prepare the ground for the revolution regardless whether the ground, climate is ready or not.
The next point that is Marxism and the Marxists believe in the class strugle and their understanding for class struggle is the struggle between Proletariats/ working class and the capitalism and their aim is establishing of the power of Dictatorship of Proletariat. They do not accept that today the struggle is between the vast majority of us and the capitalism and the power we need should not be a power of working class , it should be the people's power .
Wishing you best. Zaher
Zaher, I obviously gave you
Zaher,
I obviously gave you too much credit with my last post since you have just contradicted yourself by positing a fairly obvious 'ideological anarchism' to your claimed 'ideological marxism'. Whilst libertarian communism will certainly benefit the majority of 'people' until such time as we are able to firmly establish a global communism there can be no unified 'people' or 'humanity' - class struggle and motivation will remain a reality of our everyday life whether you acknowledge it or not.
wow, what alot of words and
wow, what alot of words and time spent on a good human if ya personally knew something about him. he's asked me if i could to give a real response to his article but i have zero time now. i realy hope to get to it as i see he's bein slapped around too. what did he do? kick someones dog or something? (as a saying goes in the US). BELIEVE ME he aint no leninist or hidden authoritarian marxist. 1 point about his article thats obvious to me - the crises is ours, whether zaher calls us the "people" or i'd use the term working class. my definition of the latter is very broad and includes almost all of "the people". so me and him has agreed to disagree on such small items to us- but we see eye to eye on real time important living stuff like rojava which he physically knows about. more if i have time and permission from him to say a couple of personal things about him.
bob mcglynn, [email protected]
bob, Doubtless zaher is a
bob,
Doubtless zaher is a 'good human' and I'm aware that you agree with them on 'Rojava' none of which is a reason not to contest what I and some others regard as zaher's mistaken analysis of both the nature of modern global capitalism and it's expression in the current Middle East conflict including Rojava. Frankly I think my criticism on this discussion thread have been both mild and polite and really don't require you to come to their defense.
bob here- hi spiky-- i just
bob here- hi spiky-- i just see stuff like (i wont go back to see who said them) to papraphase 2 "zaher's stuff sounds like a capitalist agent" and "zaher don't understand dialectics 101"- please, can we just sit around, have a beer, and i bet we agree more than disagree? me and zaher plan to talk in PHONE electrons not email ones which i dig much better and i hope we can figure out some stuff better we hope. then lets see what more useful stuff can go on this thread. zaher you still have that bad problem with english (not that i'm a genious with it) and it gets in my way at least in understanding you. reading at least some marx in arabic could be that you read very lousy translations- i dont know. i must still disagree with you that the working class is a small minority, as i believe we're the vast majority. and our often reactionary shit ISNT hopeless till the end of time. and time is ticking qwik with global warming. as historys clock has ticked modern capitalism hasnt been around too long, so neither has its working class- or ok us "peoples or masses" or whatever term, but the majority "us" i think u'd agree can be very reactionary too. but watch THAT clock/global warming and bye bye earth. since the "us" vs modern/INDUSTRIAL capitalism (with other modes of production in other modern places- INDUSTRIAL often bein a key) exists as yet give "the masses are asses" time- untill there's no more time. the working class as i define it are hardly just a bunch of white trade unionists (i'm not sure if you said that exactly to be fair)- their me (in 1 small example) whose had his share of job jobs but is now unemployed/on disability because of a work accident (i make "officially" $332 a month!!!- can you believe the "benifits" the US doles out to some of us?!) but i'm still that part of the working class thats unpaid as i do the needed (for my partner with a "real" job job) daily housework ( i do it in between overthrowing governments HA! HA!) and according to labor theory of value economics (or perhaps marx/engels added the following) i get "paid" via my loves' job. zaher in advanced capitalist industrial nations (and the enslaved working masses in soviet-type despotisms) we are EVERYWHERE. ok so maybe it's "just" semantics...to be continued, if i get another state smashed today! and oh yeah, i gotta do the dishes.
theres a great phrase in logic? I guess: BEWARE of possibly IMPLYING when another can INFER completely WRONGLY!!! it saves in hatreds and a trillion miles of uneeded yacking...(like i'm doin now???)
"b"oB, [email protected]