Should salaries be lowered in the western world?

no

You seem to be under the impression that workers in the West don't want a communist revolution because they're too well-off, and that the bourgeoisie keeps them complacent with high wages.

That sounds odd. Even a superficial look at what's going in Europe or America should tell you that workers are anything but satisfied, because no matter how "rich" they are in comparison to other countries they live in a world where all the contradictions and failings of capitalism still exist.

Also, aside from the fact that impoverishing people would be ridiculously stupid in itself, you assume that any dissatisfaction with the present order would express itself as a communist movement. That's not true: anti-migrant sentiment, nationalism, a generic and unfocused opposition to "the big banks", anti-Semitism, racial violence, petty criminality etc., are all ways through which their opposition can (and often does, in fact) take form.

no

Sounds fair. I woke up this morning thinking what I really, really needed was to make less money.

Who are these "rich" workers and "rich" proletarians you speak of?

Anyway, I'd just point out that two of the high points of class struggle in the latter half of the 20th century were Hungary in 56 and Paris in 68. Workers in both of these situations were relatively well off, yet somehow capable of undertaking revolutionary acts.

Also, mate, I definitely surpass your arbitrary threshold, but you know what? My rent (in not exactly a luxury apartment) goes up every year more than my wages, I have few benefits at my job (my partner has even less), and neither of us has health insurance. So spoiled, I know...

I got paid yesterday. Paid the bills this morning. Oh well, it was nice being rich for 24 hours.

Tagore2

Let me explain.

What do you think about it?

I'm thinking `I really hope you live to the West of me and this is a late April Fools joke.

I mean Third Worldism and bizarre mathematical equations aside, this isn't an accurate depiction of the world.

For example you say its in the interest of workers from poor nations to immigrate to rich nations, but simply put most of them simply don't. And those that do migrate, usually go next door or to a nation with cultural ties like language. Here's a global migration chart play around with it and see. The only real exception to that is when a society faces total collapse like a civil or famine.

You also state that immigration depresses wages and create unemployment, but you seem completely unaware of the phenomena of outsourcing. You know where capital moves to the labour rather than the other way round.

And I'm sorry but this"Conversely, the bourgeoisie is pleased to give these privileges to the rich proletarians, because they will never do the revolution." is total bollocks. What sector do you work in where the bosses are happy and proactive in giving out privileges? I've certainly not met one. Couldn't give me a reference could you?

As Marx so eloquently put it, "Instead of the conservative motto, ‘A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!’ they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword, ‘increase the rate of exploitation!’"

Scheveningen

impoverishing people would be ridiculously stupid in itself

There are thoughtful responses above, but I admit my own analysis pretty much stopped right there

Mate, we already had the libcom April Fool's joke yesterday!

Anyway, consumption-based theories of revolution are so shit. Funnily enough, I saw my rabidly right-wing uncle over Easter and he's told me more than once that American workers are too well off to embrace socialism, how American capitalism has given them such a high standard of living...

I'll tell you the same thing I tell him - besides the fact a huge percentage of Americans live paycheck-to-paycheck - alienation is far more of a motivating factor in class and revolutionary activity than poverty. It doesn't matter how much you make, everybody has problems at work, everyone has problems with their boss, and crises of capitalism are inevitable. And workers who are on the front line of struggles are often those who've build up confidence in previous struggles, the kind of struggles that gave them a decent wages and working conditions in the first place.

Tagore2

Above the average: PPP ~$17000 in 2016.

I make more than that, but I am far from rich. In some countries that would get me a nice house, a car, a domestic servant etc.
I don't have any of these things. I do have health insurance though thankfully, I've been riding my luck a little bit and the idea of being financially wiped out by an accident or illness is pretty terrifying.
"See how you somehow managed to save up the equivalent of a month's take-home pay."
"Yes."
"Well that covers three nights in hospital. Would you like to die in the street or sell a kidney?"

Most people in the west are materially better off, they are certainly financially better off in terms of income. But all of that is under attack by capital, every aspect of welfare and social care as well as employment terms and conditions is under attack in pretty much every country. For example I have a pension, but as they cut benefits and push back the age at which I can claim it I do ask if I'll ever claim it and whether it will be worth anything if I do. If I have kids they can go to university, but they'll have to take out huge loans, assuming that's an option. It's pretty sad that a millstone of debt seems like a good option. I find it odd that you think that doing what capital does to us to ourselves is communism. I also think that any drop in production would be temporary or based on a completely different type of production. For example no more planned obsolescence.

I'm getting depressed maybe we can just come up with some good slogans.

Communism, you'll be miserable!

Full communism : partial housing!

Tired of the daily grind, why not risk your life and work twice as hard to make your life worse!

maybe we can just come up with some good slogans

You know you got me thinking, Jef, and I think Tagore might just be right when he says...

I saw that simple proletarians easily understand this. But most of Communists do not understand this.

I mean, this does explain why when workers in Bangladesh go on strike, you always see placards demanding a reduction in wages in developed countries. You know, it never made sense to me before...

"Simple proletarians of the world unite - low wages for everyone!"

lowered by who? who do you imagine is going to lower wages to provoke revolution? the capitalists who are allegedly using high wages to prevent it?

has relative immiseration outside of the 'west' led to revolution?

why is there no revolution outside of the west?

also, mean incomes don't say much when you don't know the distribution of income. methodological issues aside, calling western workers 'rich' is rich. come around to baltimore or other cities with high numbers of urban poor and i'll show you how rich people are

There's so much wrong with your posts.

For starters you are ignoring the fact that 100$ in e.g. UK buys you a lot less than 100$ in India so the idea that you can do some calculation and work out a wage value over which workers are exploiting instead of being exploited.

But more importantly the idea communism will lead to a reduction in living standards for 1st world proletariat is q fallacy that for starters seems to imply there would still be wage labour (ie that money would somehow be globally redistributed after revolution ). We already have the capacity produce everything that most 1st world proletariat have access to, I.e. Food, roof over head, phone, computer, Internet, medical care, entertainment...

Ye there might not be enough for everyone to have yachts/high end luxuries (most of which would lose heir attraction in a moneyless world anyway)but the proletariat in 1st world doesn't have ready access to those anyway.

Also as others have mentioned you are completely ignoring alienation.

Revolutions are rarely made by revolutionaries. In any case, you misanthropy, utter lack of faith in the working class, and serious misunderstanding of class movements is glaring.

You ever read Beecher's Strike? His whole thing is that heightened periods of class struggle make clear the nature of capitalist society and force people to pick a side. Win or lose, people rarely come away from those struggles the same way.

Given the incredibly low level of class struggle in Britain today, it's hardly surprising people fall back on received wisdom.

I might also point out we opinion polls are pretty useless when it actually comes to predicting behavior - especially in relation to class issues.

Yes, if you make more than super gross PPP $17000, you are above the average, you don’t have any objective interest in the communist revolution. The world revolution should lower your standard of living.

Erm, making better than average doesn't preclude you from being a class conscious person, or a communist. It does begin to shape the exact role, given this or that actual form of employment, in the fight to get rid of capitalism.

Capitalism can always provide slightly better than average income for some section of the working population; the point of being a communist, and of class struggle is that recognition that capitalism cannot provide higher than average for all. That is, that the working class *as a class* cannot escape the horrors, only this or that section of it. That's a factual point; a point of education, that has to be hammered home. It's not some spontaneous realization based on getting fucked over.

When a section escapes the horrors, even it's sectional interests would indicate the necessity of working class unity. Of course this strategy my be denied given any particular bourgeois notion (national interest, racial interest, gendered interest, as taking precedent over class; some illusion about the rising tide lifting all boats, general economic ignorance, etc.) which substitutes a conservative policy for one which would unite the class around a program of revolution.
:D

When people rightly claim that the British welfare state and health service was created off the backs of workers from Iran, India, ex-colonies, what is the political implication?

Tagore2

The political implication is the corrupt proletariat will never do the revolution. Corrupt proletariat fight against immigration, fight for national and corporatist interests, that is, against the world proletariat.

We need 20 or even 40 million of real proletarians to make the revolution instead of the English. The English working class will never take up arms against the parlement, it is so obvious! His only goal is to become even fatter, richer, as complacently allows it the English aristocracy.

Only people who have nothing to lose are willing to risk their lives for the revolution. Certainly not the English!

so, where is the non-western revolution? it must be well-hidden

Only people who have nothing to lose are willing to risk their lives for the revolution. Certainly not the English!

Where are these revolutions in the developing world? Going by your logic and the fact that in particular Africa people have been destitute, revolutions should have been happening everywhere and all the time. Here's the shitty fact: if you are worried about feeding yourself and your family--the condition of having lost everything since your life is reduced to mere survival--you simply won't worry about more than food.

And also, if you actually know something about the proletariat in countries in the poorer parts of the world, they are as equally racist, against immigration, typically firmly nationalist and interested in getting "richer" as much as the English proletariat.

Really, Maoist third worldism was always bankrupt and more of pet theory of people in the rich world; people believing in such theories can effectively just ignore doing anything in their home country with an excuse that everyone is corrupt. It's really just a cop out and an excuse for doing nothing.

so, strikes are revolutions now? i don't say this to diminish the actions of the workers, but your argument implies that there is an direct relationship between immiseration and revolutionary activity, but there are many impoverished areas that have not seen the struggles seen in South Africa or Gurgaon - what is your explanation for that?

also, i live in a city in the wealthiest state by median income in the US, which was in the news last year following the murder of a worker by the state, which happens with regularity. a curfew was imposed by the barrel of the gun, hoisted by the military; i'm sure you saw the violence meted out against the protesting workers. so, yes, i don't agree that western workers are bought off and feted, as you do.

As gram negative said, strikes don't make a revolution. And also, repression happens in the Western world as well. While the death count may be lower, strikes, protests, square occupations are met with the organized violence of the state. People are increasingly being arrested for statements made on social media and so on. In the US, the police has open season on black proletarians etc.

In any case, you are data mining what happens in the developing world. At the same time as there are strikes, there are pogroms against immigrants, proletarians lining up behind xenophobic politicians.

This belief of yours is kind of juvenile to be honest, and quite orientalist (for lack of a better word). I am sure many people thought in your terms when they were young and new to politics. I certainly did for some time, but then I realized that the world is more than just what I had directly experienced.

Agree with the last two posts.

Where does this kind of view of the western proletariat get you? I remember a guy who was really into that. He told me that by going on strike for higher wages I was killing people in the Third World.

You would be hard pressed to explain why the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are so kind to each other in the UK?

No, not at all. It only takes a bit of knowledge of the period stretching from 1945 to 1973.

In any case, you are offering the crudest determinist argument about why people revolt. It's all about the "objective conditions".

Income can't really be understood as some dollar amount but has to be understood in terms of actual consumption. In many peripheral countries cost of living is lower for a variety of reasons.

Wages are not higher in the more developed countries due to "niceness" of the capitalists. They don't ever give away their loot for fun. Rather, capitalism is a process of investment in workplaces that is used to expand productivity per worker hour through technological change & work re-organization. This has gone on for a very long time in the core capitalist countries so that they ended up with higher labor productivity by mid 20th century.

Even after vast amounts of more recent investment, labor productivity in China and Mexico is estimated to be about 80 percent of USA.

This is important because the level of productivity sets the lower bound for compensation that workers can get. The employers do not automatically increase wages with productivity -- contrary to what conservative economists say -- but if workers organize & engage in forms of militancy such as strikes, then can gain more of the increases in productivity. This is why wages tended to rise during the post World War 2 boom years.

But the bargaining power of workers in USA and Europe has been eroded during the neo-liberal period. In USA labor productivity has gone up more than 80 percent since '70s but wages have remained stagnant or declining, especially for the core manual working class. Strikes have all but disappeared and union membership in private sector collapsed from 35 percent to 7 percent.

Generally workers in USA today face extremely precarious circumstances and half the population is in poverty or on edge of poverty. You comparisons of dollar income across the world are simply irrelevant since poverty is defined in terms of what you can obtain from your income in *this* country.

So much for your bullshit about the ruling class providing goodies for a "privileged" working class.

The issue of cross-national comparisons between the core & periphery, as something revolutionaries have to concern themselves with, have to do with things like what international relations should be under revolutionary control...and this would mean things like supports for development & ensuring that economic gains from activity & innovation in periphery are not sucked off via parasitic international corporations & imperialist states but can be used to benefit the local population.

Only people who have nothing to lose are willing to risk their lives for the revolution. Certainly not the English!

Bring back the libcom taglines!!!

Tagore2

Above the average: PPP ~$17000 in 2016.

Uh that's les than £12,000 a year mate. If you were making that and were the only wage earner in the UK you'd be up to your eyeballs in debt and soon homeless.

This explains very simply why these revolutions have failed and why many French proletarians were very happy to return to work with a higher salary (cf. Grenelle agreements: +35% and +10%).

Yeah but you were saying high living standards (though your definition of high leaves a lot to be desired) prevent revolutions from occurring, but now you're saying it doesn't but it does undermine them. Also whats your explanation for 56 or any of the major political ruptures in East Europe and the Soviet Union?

This is true, but the migration would be 10x more important without migration restrictions.

Er, evidence please? Britain brought in immigration controls in 1905. at the time Britain was the richest economy in the world and the rate of poverty in the world was much higher, yet the majority of immigrants were political refugees who wound up in the East of London, and the Irish who were British citizens so not actually immigrants.

In modern times the UK allowed immigration controls on Romania and Bulgaria expire, and despite right wing propaganda(which at one point claimed the entire populations of both nations who show up) the UK has not been overrun by them. Indeed if what you were saying were true then the EU nations that are relatively poorer would be empty, with their entire populations moving to the wealthier ones. And yet this hasn't happened why not? Open borders everywhere would probably lead to increased migration globally but not in the numbers your suggesting.

"Pleased", maybe not, but it is knowingly that the bourgeoisie has agreements with the National proletariat rather than make a massive call to immigration.

???? What agreements are these?

The bourgeoisie built a fortress, with a bunch of servants ready to defend it. Why fight for the revolution if you are privileged? it does not make sense.

Indeed it has, but that fortress is called the World. Capitalism is global and international, your arbitrary geographical distinctions are meaningless. In every nation on the planet there are relatively well off proletarians, and people barely surviving.

Tagore2

Yes, if you make more than super gross PPP $17000, you are above the average, you don’t have any objective interest in the communist revolution. The world revolution should lower your standard of living.

How much do you earn out of curiosity? Also if you think Communism will maintain wage labour than you simply don't know what that word means.

The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, so that this most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming ultimately at the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie. For a nation which exploits the whole world this is of course to a certain extent justifiable.

Stop using this word you don't know what it means. Bourgeoisie does not mean rich, it means capitalist one who owns the means of production. And "England" (Scotland and Wales not count for some reason?) is the most bourgeois of nations? What are you a time traveller from the 19th century?

would even say: the English proletariat is completely bourgeois now!

Then you're a moron, because that's physically impossible. Like seriously you don't understand the class system, you need to go back and do some basic reading.

The English proletarians love the monarchy. 85% are monarchists.

The English proletarians hate migrants. 4% want to increase immigration, and 77% want to reduce it.

So?? This has nothing to do with the growth of the Capitalist class. Indeed Capitalist meritocracy is actually hostile to Feudalism because its a fetter on the growth and mobility of capitalism. And why do you keep saying England? Those figures are for the UK which includes Scotland Wales and Northern Ireland. You one of those Americans who keeps getting Britain and England mixed up?

The English proletariat has an objective interest to be allied with the national bourgeoisie. The bourgeois state prevents mass immigration, limiting competition and increases wages far above the average. No wonder if the English proletariat like the monarchy and do never a real hard strike.

Objective? That's a poor choice of words, even if you were correct (and you ain't) you would be describing false consciousness, so it wouldn't be objective at all. Unless of course you reject the class struggle and believe in national solidarity instead. Do you? You also know nothing of British history, in 1918 there was a Hands of Russia campaign involving strikes and mutinies which crippled the British intervention in the Russian civil war. In 1926 there was a nation wide general strike that crippled the government. In 1974 a Miners strike brought down a government. In 1984 a year long strike of miners saw widespread battles with the police and forced the government to us measures perfected in Northern Ireland to break. These are just the most obvious off the top of my head examples.

We need 20 or even 40 million of real proletarians to make the revolution instead of the English. The English working class will never take up arms against the parlement, it is so obvious! His only goal is to become even fatter, richer, as complacently allows it the English aristocracy.

???? This is just infantile delusion. You're a teenager aren't you.

The class war is much harder in "developing countries" than in developed countries. You would be hard pressed to explain why the proletariat and the bourgeoisie are so kind to each other in the UK? is it really necessary to recall that the South African police fired on miners of Marikana? Or that the police tortured the Susuki strikers in India? You think it is a coincidence that it never happens in the UK?

??? Both those strikes were for higher pay and better working conditions. In Marikana there was also discontent about migrant labourers, South Africa has actually seen vicious racist riots against migrants too. So this would be examples of racist proletarians fighting to get fatter and richer and thus become bourgeois in your world view anyway.

The British workers know what limit they must not cross, and conversely the bourgeoisie paid attention to well-being of its nice proletariat. So there is no revolution in UK. But in Africa, the Middle East or India, where are the real proletarians: tatatatatata!

You know in the Middle East Asian migrants are treated like slaves, and that during the political turmoil's of the Arab Spring the real Arab revolutionaries refused to engage with or support these migrants and left them to rot in their camps. How's that for world revolution?

DP

I'd guess French, or francophone rather than American based on the language

your reverence for received knowledge aside, how do you explain the lack of revolutionary activity in areas that fall below that PPP level?

How do you explain discrimination against non-Han Chinese in the PRC? How would you describe recent PRC expansion into Africa?

Tagore2

@syndicalistcat
PPP means “ purchasing power parity”.

See the definition.

Syndicalistcat knows what PPP means his comment explains why its completely stupid to impose a global PPP rate. Perhaps you should try engaging with those reasons rather than arrogantly restating your position over and over as if we're all thick?

Oh and stop ignoring the bits you don't have an answer to either please.

>> The English proletariat is actually becoming more and more bourgeois, etc.
> Stop using this word you don't know what it means.

I'm glad you find errors in this paragraph, it is in fact an Engels’s quotation.

So what? I can give you quotes from Engles supporting the Prussians in there war with France, or the US in its war with Mexico, I can even show you a time when Engles publicly slandered some German opponents by implying they were homosexuals. Because Engles says something doesn't make it right.

Funnily enough though Engels was part of the British bourgeoisie owning factories and such, so I guess he can't be a real revolutionary either.

Oh and that Engels quote is from 1858 back when the term Bourgeoisie still had the contemporary French meaning of well to do professional, so in modern English, Engels would be saying that Britain is becoming more and more middle class. Still a stupid analysis but better than what your claiming.

At least you have not been influenced by the argument of authority, and you could say knowingly that Engels did not know what "bourgeois" meant.

??? Of course I can say that, because again Bourgeoisie means capitalist class, to be a capitalist you must own capital. Are you disputing this oui or non?

However I agree with Engels to say that the English proletariat began to become bourgeois in the second half of the nineteenth century (with the industrial monopoly),

This is not an answer, in order for the "English" (I guess the Scottish and Welsh are exempt?) working class to become bourgeois they must become capitalists, this has not happened, and you know it hasn't happened which is why your clutching at straws. This hasn't happened. Oh and by your twisted criteria this isn't applicable because Britain doesn't have an industrial monopoly (whatever the hell that actually means)

and became almost completely bourgeois in the twentieth century (with imperialism). ~ 90% of British proletariat are currently bourgeois, and perhaps 10% are real proletarians.

Okay well that simply isn't true and you've clearly pulled those figures from your arse.

And about the juvenile character of this theory, Engels will defend it until his death, and recalled it in "the Preface to the Second German Edition of the Condition of the Working Class in England", written in 1892 (he was then 71 years).

So what? His theory is wrong and you've proven that is so by being incapable of providing a defence beyond "Engels said it so there". That is the textbook stereotype of a teenager. Don't like being compared to one? Then get better arguments.

You're a teenager aren't you.

Those were good posts, Red, but I'm not sure comments like this help your argument. While, I was undoubtedly an ill-informed liberal for most of my teenage years, let's not tar all teenagers with the same brush, you know what I mean?

Chilli Sauce

You're a teenager aren't you.

Those were good posts, Red, but I'm not sure comments like this help your argument. While, I was undoubtedly an ill-informed liberal for most of my teenage years, let's not tar all teenagers with the same brush, you know what I mean?

I don't really think you can take the moral high ground here, when most of your comments in this thread have been dismissive piss takes.

It may be true that higher wages/salaries in some countries (and in some parts of some countries) are on average higher than in other countries (and some other parts of some countries) reflecting the inevitable uneven development of capitalism across the globe but they do not cause that uneven development. Lenin's understanding of Imperialism was just plain wrong.

Reddebrek

Chilli Sauce

You're a teenager aren't you.

Those were good posts, Red, but I'm not sure comments like this help your argument. While, I was undoubtedly an ill-informed liberal for most of my teenage years, let's not tar all teenagers with the same brush, you know what I mean?

I don't really think you can take the moral high ground here, when most of your comments in this thread have been dismissive piss takes.

That's an impressive level of defensiveness. Mocking one clearly misanthropic individual is far cry from ageism - which is not a word I typically use but is what's going on here.

Also, considering my first post on this thread was an attempt to engage with the OP and your first post began with:

I'm thinking `I really hope you live to the West of me and this is a late April Fools joke

I'm not sure you're in much of a position to judge.

I'm not really well-read enough in this area to engage seriously with you, comrade Tagore2, especially on an economic level. And I am kind of sympathetic with third worldism, honestly. But perhaps I could present some challenges to your theoretical line, not from a defensive position but in the spirit of open debate:

Tagore2

I would even say: the English proletariat is completely bourgeois now!

The English proletarians love the monarchy. 85% are monarchists.

The English proletarians hate migrants. 4% want to increase immigration, and 77% want to reduce it.

It's woth noting that 91% of the English population are white - outside of London, 80% of the English working class are white (link) - a figure suspiciously close to the ones that love the monarchy and hate migrants according to your figures. This might be a plausible alternative explanation to their conservatism (one, I notice, a lot of first world third worldists aren't keen to confront!)

This is a challenge I have heard a few answers to, though, the most convincing being from MIM-Prisons, who, in MIM Theory Vol. 1 (link), accepting J. Sakai's conclusion that there is no white proletariat in the United States (from link), put forward a theory that people of colour in the United $nakes of Amerika (as they call it) represent a separate nation altogether from white people - an exploited, thid world nation. The white imperialist core and brown colonized periphery occupy the same geographical space, but differing economic positions.

This is a theory that deserves to be considered seriously, I think, although they encounter a bit of a stumbling block when it comes to the numbers, which they cover in chapter 2.5, "who is really exploited?" - where they discover black manufacturing workers in the US make about 3 times what manufacturing workers make in Greece or Portugal. "If Spanish, Portuguese and Greek workers as a groups are not exploited, then it would be hard to argue that exploited workers are the majority of U.S. Black workers", they say. They don't resolve this in their essay, leaving it as a kind of open ended question.

I think they're getting to the heart of a certain problem that M-Ls and M-L-Ms are experiencing in the 21st century - this focus on industrial workers and, in the case of M-L-Ms, agricultural workers. The left has had this focus for a long time, and it's one that was getting criticised by theorists like Sylvia Federici and Leopoldina Fortunati in the 1970s -

In the name of “class struggle” and “the unified interest of the working class,” the Left has always selected certain sectors of the working class as revolutionary subjects and condemned others to a merely supportive role in the struggles these sectors were waging. The Left has thus reproduced in its organizational and strategic objectives the same divisions of the class that characterize the capitalist division of labor. In this respect, despite the variety of tactical positions, the Left has been strategically united. When it comes to the choice of revolutionary subjects, Stalinists, Trotskyites, Anarcho-Libertarians, old and new Left, join hands with the same assumptions and arguments for a common cause.

Since the Left has accepted the wage as the dividing line between work and non-work, production and parasitism, potential power and powerlessness, the immense amount of unwaged labor that women perform for capital in the home has escaped their analysis and strategy [...] According to the Left, as housewives, women are not suffering from capital, but are suffering from the absence of it. Our problem, it seems, is that capital has failed to reach into our kitchens and bedrooms, with the twofold consequence that we presumably remain at a feudal, precapitalist stage, and whatever we do in our kitchens and bedrooms is irrelevant to social change.

Sylvia Federici & Nicole Cox, Counterplanning from the Kitchen (1975) (link)

Of course, the Left didn't listen to any of the working class women of the 1970s, and still tunnel-vision productive labour as the ground zero of class society (a preoccupation that has not, for example, affected the Venezuelan leftists in the same way - or at least so it would seem) - and then can very easily look straight past the thousands of poor & starving homeless, disabled, imprisoned, criminalized and even enslaved people in the metropolis, to the few embourgeoisified factory and agricultural workers left in the imperial core, and say "look at how bourgeois the working class of the first world is! Degenerates!"

[T]he era of programmatic organized labor is dead. The capitalist mode of production is not static, and throughout its history it has shifted in the most dynamic of ways. Whereas traditionally workerist radical politics had a specific context, time, and place, in the history of anarchist or communist struggles, we polemically argue that they have no place in the contemporary moment today. The ILWU struggles of the last few decades have been primarily self-preservationist, with all radical potentiality appropriated and nullified by the logic of union bureaucracy. Yes, the longshoremen will occasionally engage in “solidarity” actions (mark May Day on your calendar). Yes, it is true that they ostensibly control the levers and mechanisms of the most significant physical infrastructure of the entire global economy. Yes, some of the most militant labor actions on the West Coast were initiated by the ILWU.

This is all very fine and well for the history books, but because of the changes attendant to the most recent restructuring of capital after the early 1970s (some will call this the neoliberal moment, but we avoid the term because it privileges ideological reasons over structural explanations for the reorganization of capital), we concur with the position that the definition of the proletariat must now be more expansive: it must now encompass all of us excluded from the means of production whether or not we sell our labor-power for a wage, whether or not we are domestic caregivers continuously laboring without formal recognition from the capital/labor relation, whether or not we are students encountering a present leveraged with debt against an absent future, and finally, whether or not we are completely expelled from the formal economy and barely subsisting within emergent surplus populations. The ILWU may sympathize with the struggles to come of the new, more expansive proletariat, but we tend to feel that with the average yearly salary of a longshoreman being close to $147,000 that we cannot necessarily count on their “solidarity.”

L.A. Onda, How to Stop a Wound from Bleeding (link)

These considerations aside, I have another issue: how do you know the working class in the periphery is so much more radical than that of the core?

The idea, as far as I can see, comes from the fact that there are armed movements in the periphery that don't exist in Euro-Amerika. Particularly the campaign of the Naxalites, the Communist Party of Nepal, the Communst Party and the National Democratic Front of the Philippines, to a certain extent the Zapatistas, to a certain extent the IRA (among those who consider Ireland to be part of the periphery), resistance militaries of Palestinians and of Kurds, and leftst states like Cuba, Venezuela, the DPRK and, dependng on who you ask, either especially or not at all, China.

If this is what you're basing the revolutioary character of the peripheral workers off of, I'd like to ask for a clearer relationship between the two facts. Because, to me it isn't really clear... It doesn't take many soldiers to stage a coup, especially if you're already a bourgeois with unrestricted access to military technology. I know for a fact that the majority of the IRA, for an example of one national liberation movement, are not honestly working class, or even labour aristocrat, but real-deal bourgeoisie; and the majority of the Northern Irish catholic working class doesn't support them or doesn't support them very much. They exist in spite of the conservative working class, often working against their desires and, when necessary, coralling their support by force. I wonder what the class make-up of the national liberation movements of the periphery are? I wonder what percentage of the working class in the periphery support the armed liberation movements? How many third world working class folks have you talked to, in your life time? Do you know the answers to those questions?

I don't. But, I just don't buy that the existence of Maoist armies in the Philippines proves that the Philippine working class is inherently revolutionary.

Anyway - maybe I'm wrong on this, maybe someone can show me the right way. But that's my criticism & at the moment my views on the third worldist position. Not that you're wrong about the first world working class not being revolutionary - we're not - but that I doubt the third world working class are either! :P

I propose a different answer: that material conditions prefigure consciousness; that people (not necessarily working class) in certain areas of the periphery (not the entire periphery) are responding to entirely different material circumstances to those of other people (not necessarily working class) in the wold (not just the core) - that are not predicated much if at all on those people's intense inner desire for communism, that would be happening without revolutionary leading lights to organise them, and that the wage disparity is only one part of a larger puzzle in a world of conflicts.

A final challenge I'd like to pose:

Should salaries be lowered in the western world?

What do you mean should?

Are you asking for our input before you make the decision? Are you sitting in an EU consilium right now, prepared to make a major speech before our world leaders, stressing the need for lower salaries for first world workers? Have you infiltrated the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe and are about to pull the lever on your long-con to force down first-world wages? What are you about to do?

The answer is nothing. Salaries in the western world will not be lowered by stern-faced Maoists with an understanding of economics. So what is the point of the question, if you want advice on a situation you can do nothing about? Maybe you come as a preacher, to encourage us to reject materialism and prefer simple living, donating the surplus of our excessive wages to the heroic revolutionary communists of the global south?

Hopefully not. So, why are you here? To encourage a kind of praxis no one can ever participate in? Let's not daydream about a better world where strong-biceped Red Army soldiers from the third world will take us in their arms and carry us to a brighter future. It's silly! Let's deal instead with the world we really live in, here and now.

missed this one

Tagore2

simple proletarians

comrade

Chilli wrote:

While, I was undoubtedly an ill-informed liberal for most of my teenage years, let's not tar all teenagers with the same brush, you know what I mean?

Yeah, I have a couple of them in my house, while verging on the irritating at times, they're a lot better informed and capable of critical thinking than the OP. Let's not dismiss all teens please.

Spikymike

It may be true that higher wages/salaries in some countries (and in some parts of some countries) are on average higher than in other countries (and some other parts of some countries) reflecting the inevitable uneven development of capitalism across the globe but they do not cause that uneven development. Lenin's understanding of Imperialism was just plain wrong.

Worse than wrong, Lenin's "understanding" is a distortion, is dishonest, "opportunistic," and fundamentally anti-revolutionary.

Chilli Sauce

That's an impressive level of defensiveness. Mocking one clearly misanthropic individual is far cry from ageism - which is not a word I typically use but is what's going on here.

Said the pot to the kettle. I'm sorry but I was actually pointing out that your behaviour isn't any better than mine. Apparently you think its okay to offer behavioural tips but not okay when you receive it.

Feel free to brush off my comments as defensive though. As for ageism, that's your opinion, not mine. I don't agree with that and I'm sorry to see you take it so poorly.

Also, considering my first post on this thread was an attempt to engage with the OP and your first post began with:

I'm thinking `I really hope you live to the West of me and this is a late April Fools joke

I'm not sure you're in much of a position to judge.[/quote]

Yeah I'm the one being defensive here, sure.I said your behaviour wasn't better than mine, not that I'm above reproach, so all your doing is confirming my point for me. So thank you I guess.

Also for the record I was being semi-serious, I saw the poster joined round about April 1st depending on time zone and wanted to guard against falling for a joke before actually engage with them.

Again climb off your high horse Chilli.

Mate, let's look at this:

Those were good posts, Red, but I'm not sure comments like this help your argument. While, I was undoubtedly an ill-informed liberal for most of my teenage years, let's not tar all teenagers with the same brush, you know what I mean?

What's in this comment is a compliment, self-deprecation, and a polite suggestion to reconsider one small aspect of your post. That's hardly taking the moral high ground or getting on my high horse.

As for the ratio of serious posts to snarky ones on this thread, I'm pretty sure - as you point out - we're basically equal. However, given that you raised the snarkiness, it's you calling the kettle black, not me!

As for ageism, I can do pedantry with the best of them, but dismissing the intellectual capability of a group of people based on their age....

Chilli Sauce

Mate, let's look at this:

What's in this comment is a compliment, self-deprecation, and a polite suggestion to reconsider one small aspect of your post. That's hardly taking the moral high ground or getting on my high horse.

Okay, I didn't know I had to take into account every word of a post when I only take issue with certain parts, okay.

I'm sorry but this

As for the ratio of serious posts to snarky ones on this thread, I'm pretty sure - as you point out - we're basically equal. However, given that you raised the snarkiness, it's you calling the kettle black, not me!

Okay you win, congratulations. I didn't slander you though which I think is a much more serious breach of etiquette but whatever you win the bag of kettle chips.

As for ageism, I can do pedantry with the best of them, but dismissing the intellectual capability of a group of people based on their age....

Do you honestly wonder why I think you should stop being such a hypocrite?

I'm sorry but I didn't do that at all, and I'm actually very insulted now. I called someone I thought was a teenager a teenager, I also called Tagore2 an American I notice you haven't called me a racist yet. Why not, it is the same thing no matter which of our interpretation is correct.

Also if you're being completely honest why didn't you call me an Ageist immediately? My initial comment hasn't changed but you only did that when I didn't immediately agree with you.

I'll be honest I find that deeply suspect.

LauraMarx

Tagore2

I would even say: the English proletariat is completely bourgeois now!

The English proletarians love the monarchy. 85% are monarchists.

The English proletarians hate migrants. 4% want to increase immigration, and 77% want to reduce it.

It's woth noting that 91% of the English population are white - outside of London, 80% of the English working class are white (link) - a figure suspiciously close to the ones that love the monarchy and hate migrants according to your figures. This might be a plausible alternative explanation to their conservatism (one, I notice, a lot of first world third worldists aren't keen to confront!)

I may be misreading you here but it seems like you're saying that you're offering 'they're all racist' as a rebuttal to 'they're all middle class'. I hope I have misunderstood your point.

Chili and reddebrek, give it a rest. You've both made your points so carrying on just makes you both look petty.

jef costello

LauraMarx

Tagore2

I would even say: the English proletariat is completely bourgeois now!

The English proletarians love the monarchy. 85% are monarchists.

The English proletarians hate migrants. 4% want to increase immigration, and 77% want to reduce it.

It's woth noting that 91% of the English population are white - outside of London, 80% of the English working class are white (link) - a figure suspiciously close to the ones that love the monarchy and hate migrants according to your figures. This might be a plausible alternative explanation to their conservatism (one, I notice, a lot of first world third worldists aren't keen to confront!)

I may be misreading you here but it seems like you're saying that you're offering 'they're all racist' as a rebuttal to 'they're all middle class'. I hope I have misunderstood your point.

Chili and reddebrek, give it a rest. You've both made your points so carrying on just makes you both look petty.

I don't know why it should be controversial to say that the reason most working class english people support racist policies might be because they're racist! (not that I really put much stock in opinion polls like that - but it was a rhetorial point, y'know, a stepping stone into talking about the racial dynamic that this line of argument stumbles over, some responses to it in the literature and what their conclusions were...) - anyway, aren't they? A good number of flags burned on last years 11th night bonfires in my estate were from middle eastern countries, along with the irish & eastern european ones. I don't think there's anything too crazy about suggesting racism is a legitimate antagonism in working class communities (as with all the others)...

Well, just start by saying that l live in a low-wage country and l don't think workers earn too much anywhere and if anybody needs to "earn less" it is the parasite managers and owners. lt is quite interesting to see how people here who earn a pittance are generally too afraid to strike, while their counterparts in even the same company in other countries, earning 3-4 times more than they do, are out of strike. This is a fact and runs counter to the idea that earning to much makes workers fat and satisfied. This all said, what motivates people towards revolution is complex.

black Americans are privileged compared to the Whites in Eastern Europe.

Wow.

Rarely workers take adjustable wrenches to beat their masters and destroy the machines in Europe.

Tactically, I'm not opposed to using violence in strikes, but why is that a measure of revolutionary activity/consciousness or even radicalism?

I remember a thread a while back talking about how in both North American and England, prison officers unions are often some of the most militant in their respective countries - wildcat strikes, taking on political issues that other unions won't, snubbing politicians. However, their goals are reactionary as shit. Clearly militancy in itself does not inherently equal radicalism.

In any case, I'll point out that places like France have a rich history of boss-napping and who can ever forget this beautiful scene:

[youtube]3GCYnXsQiGc[/youtube]

PPP is like equilibrium: it doesn't exist, but neoclassicals need to theoretically impose it to make their lives easier. It's a normative model of which the world doesn't really follow, because like equilibrium, it can't.

@ Tagore2

You should definitely read libcom.org's introductory guides, especially the ones on capitalism and class. There's also a massive amount of other things on this site that you can read to greatly improve your understanding of these issues.

Here is a collection of reading guides as well.

For example, black Americans are privileged compared to the Whites in Eastern Europe.

Polite response: What Agentsaid, or: All African-Americans as compared to all white Eastern Europeans?

Proper response: Piss off, you obviously don't know what your are talking about.

"Privilege" is a nonsense category; designed to obscure the creation and expropriation of value.

Should wages be lowered?

Polite response: What do you mean by "should" and "lowered"?

Proper response: Go fuck yourself you shill for lowering living standards everywhere.

Tagore

For example, black Americans are privileged compared to the Whites in Eastern Europe.

S.

"Privilege" is a nonsense category; designed to obscure the creation and expropriation of value.

So, I'm actually with you here, I think the term "privilege" is inadequate on a lot of levels. However, if one is using the privilege discourse, it is so abundantly clear that within their respective societies - and regardless of "PPP" - African-Americans are so much less privileged than "whites" in Eastern Europe.

l really don't like and don't agree with most of what this Tagore is saying. And l don't like this messy argument about Eastern Europeans that somehow has brought race into it. That said, l find some of the comments about Eastern Europeans to be... well... just totally out of there.

ln general, the living standards in the US far surpass those in this area - if we want to make a generality about "average people". That said, l know plenty of American people facing chronic poverty and l know some E. European people that are doing OK financially. Nonetheless, (and l consider myself experienced in this subject since l am from E. Europe and also have travelled a lot), the idea Tagore is putting forth about the comparative wealth of say Bulgarians and Americans is quite clear. Despite great gaps in income in many "western" developed countries, the overall standards of living are just not comparable. Likewise, l have been to a lot of places which are quite poor compared to Poland.

The sort of argument about "white" Eastern Europeans having more economic power within their societies than black Americans have within theirs is a bit silly but if anybody wanted to take it up seriously, we'd find something much more complex. We probably do not have great statistics, but l know one group which is marginalized throughout E. Europe and that is Roma. Further north, for example where l live, the issue of relative economic power is not too connected to race as there is a large group of non-white business people. There are of course some "non-white" people in very bad working conditions, mostly Asian and Central Asian but there is no indication that they are more likely to fall into exploitation because of their race. l could say more about it in detail, but basically some of the stuff said here is just way off base.

Mate, at least keep things consistent on your own terms!

Is it about "riches" or "privilege"? Because if we mean privilege in terms of access and power in interpersonal and institutional relationships, whites in Bulgaria obviously occupy a more privileged position than working class blacks in America in their respective countries.

In regard to wages, rental costs are significantly cheaper in Bulgaria and there's a national health insurance system - two main sources of poverty for American workers. But more broadly, just what the fuck is your point? That because one group of workers might be relatively better or worse off, what? Do you really think poor people in Bulgaria blame black American workers for their poverty?

Class consciousness - for all the faults of that term - is about realizing that you're exploited by your employer and a global capitalist system of class exploitation. Debating with you really is like debating the worst sort of right-winger.

You're also using the US Bureau of Labor statistics as a source. And while I haven't looked at the methodology in that particular link, when they calculate the poverty line it doesn't include rental costs! A more honest calculation of the poverty line in America (which should include inadequate access to healthcare, affordable housing, and some amount of savings) would mean something like a 40% poverty rate. Something to keep in mind when you look to the US government to bolster your arguments.

Cross-posted

The sort of argument about "white" Eastern Europeans having more economic power within their societies than black Americans have within theirs is a bit silly but if anybody wanted to take it up seriously, we'd find something much more complex. We probably do not have great statistics, but l know one group which is marginalized throughout E. Europe and that is Roma

This is fair enough Akai and you're right the whole thing is silly and a digression for any substantive arguments. That said, would the position of the Roma in Eastern Europe be a more adequate comparison to certain oppressed groups in America? I mean clearly within particular societies there are relative positions of power and wealth within the working class - a point that's being obscured by Tagore's nonsensical arguments.

EDITED

This is just silly.

I'm beginning to formulate a vague conspiracy theory that somewhere like the Daily Kos - or somewhere else annoyingly liberal - have set a competition and this is why libcom is getting lots of drive by newbies posting preposterous things. It's actually a competition who can piss off a commie the most. First prize, a year's subscription to New Statesman. Anyway, it's a far more sensible theory than lowering wages in the western world will bring about communist revolution.

ok, tagore, where is your resentment coming from? you obviously wanted to provoke, not discuss.

your idea is still silly, though. do workers magically become more revolutionary when the PPP is recalculated and they find themselves under the average? does only apply among nation-states or within nation-states as well? is a worker making more than the PPP while another doesn't at the other side of the country, town, or workplace less "revolutionary"? were workers more revolutionary last year when the PPP was lower?

The correct analysis is that capitalism in the US is more developed than capitalism in Eastern Europe, not that the workers are "privileged" thereby; but that the actual development of capitalism does in fact hold out the prospect for improvements to living standards, to some degree, and temporarily, subject to attack and reversal.

Wages in the US having always been higher than in many other parts of the world, including the Britain, stretching back to the 19th century. Was that "privilege"? Wages may even have been the highest in the world for US workers, but the bourgeoisie have done a fine job of demolishing that "privilege" over the last 40 years. I think the "average wage" in the US now stands at something like 35th. Whatever it is, it sure isn't #1 anymore. Does that mean US workers are now "less privileged"?

Nationality isn't a "privilege." It's a construct, erected by the bourgeoisie to control markets and labor.

"University" isn't a privilege. Education isn't a privilege, no more than proper medical care is a privilege. It's a fucking commodity.

The issue is class; the issues aren't wage rates, but the wage system.

Since Tagore2 (screen-name perhaps taken from India’s foremost poet) has a passing acquaintance with Marxism then surely he will accept the analysis of how wage-levels i.e. the price of labour power are determined.

In Marxian economics the level of exploitation is not measured by how high or low wages are but by reference to the amount of surplus value produced as compared with the amount of wages paid, whether high or low. By this measure the workers of the advanced countries were more exploited thin those of the colonies, despite their higher wages, because they produced more profits per worker. As a commodity, labour power has an exchange value and a use value, like all other commodities. Its exchange value is equal to the sum total of the exchange values of all those commodities necessary to produce and reproduce the labour power of the worker and his or her family. In other words, wages are the monetary expression of the value of labour power and since it costs more to produce and maintain the labour power of a skilled worker than an unskilled worker, this is bound to be reflected in the different wages each receives. In short, labour power being a commodity, its price (our wages) must reflect on average the amount of socially necessary labour time (or value) embodied in it.

Broadly speaking, the value of labour-power is equal to the value of the goods workers need to consume in order to keep themselves fit to work in the job they have been trained to do and to raise a future working class. Not all labour-power is of the same quality. Workers acquire different skills, and it takes more labour to train and maintain a skilled worker than it does an unskilled one. Inequality of wages is a feature of the wages system, a simple reflection of the economic fact that different types of labour-power require the expenditure of different amounts of labour-power to train and maintain them. In trying to push wages down the employers are trying to increase the exploitation of the workers. In trying to push wages up the working class is in effect trying to reduce its exploitation.

Wages do fluctuate through supply and demand, but in essence: “The cost of production of labour power is the cost required for maintaining the worker as a worker and developing him into a worker. The price of his labour is therefore determined by the price of the necessary means of subsistence.” Just as the cost of replacing machines needs to be factored into prices: “The cost of reproduction must also be included, whereby the race of workers is enabled to multiply and replace worn out workers by new ones. Wages, the cost of production of labour power for the working class as a whole - as opposed to individual workers - amounts to the costs of existence and reproduction of the whole working class.”

Because of the class struggle over generations the reproduction cost in certain countries being subject to particular conditions are more expensive. Try comparing South Korea of the 50s and 60s with today's South Korean wage lavels.

High wages and better conditions are never a gift nor a bribe given to the working class. And the quest for equal wages has never been a Marxist aspiration but the goal of utopians

Oh look at the mess I caused! (but now you see why I brought up race in the first place, right?)

Tagore2

So yes, Black Americans are richer than Burgarians, two times richer.

Like I said, this is what MIM-Prisons found when they number-crunched. I already offered a challenge to this conclusion but I guess you didn't stick with me that far :( So let me retread: the average productive woker in the U.S. earns a lot more, for damn sure. What's the conclusion...? Are they embourgified labour aristocrats or are wages just inadequate for dealing with this kind of problem?

I don't know a damn thing about economics so I won't bother entering into all that, but what I do know is about 1 million black people in the US are currently in prison (if my math is correct, that's about 25% of black people in the US) - prisoners minimum wage in the US is $0.23 and maximum $1.15, by the way - 1,754,000 are unemployd (if my math is correct, thats 4%) - and I don't know how many do criminalized labour like sex work, drug smuggling, etc. etc.

Where do those groups of people - extremely significant groups of people - fit into your privileged labour aristocracy of the west?

There is also, of course, the question of all the other demographics in the US and their own particularities - indigenous reservations, undocumented immigrants, poor white people, whatever. And that's just the US, nevermid the remainder of western Europe and (depending on your school of thought) Japan. The situation is complicated. So why focus only on waged labour in England...?

Anyway, all that said basically I agree most closely w/ comrade Akai, I guess.

akai

The sort of argument about "white" Eastern Europeans having more economic power within their societies than black Americans have within theirs is a bit silly"

I agree with this especially and I think we are reaching the limits of a reductive economic analysis of the subject, honestly? And I do not mean class analysis but an economic one, focusing strictly on wages and PPP and so on, inherent to both comrade Tagore2's analysis and comrade Chilli Sauce's rebuttals. Maybe there is more to the story, eh :P Like how comrade S. Artesian insists on "the creation and expropriation of value" - I agree 100% with this with the implication carried that value =/= $$$

(PS. why scare-quote white and not black? hmm)

Anyway,

tagore2

Strikes are more violent. Rarely workers take adjustable wrenches to beat their masters and destroy the machines in Europe. I think of class violence in a mass movement, not the violence of guerrillas in the mountains. The violence of small isolated groups can not be decisive.

I respect that a lot, especially the last sentence. And you are not coming from the trend I thought you were, so I owe you an apology. My only issue is, I guess, that - and it has been brought up a few times in this thread - strikes =/= revolution, and killing capitalists =/= ending capitalism. But if you don't care about an organized revolution, and you don't care about ending capitalism, and just want to see the capitalists dead, then we are of the same mind, and perhaps you have a found a convert in me! :P

In other words: violence is a part, but not the whole. Do you want the violence, or the whole? (I want the violence)

Or maybe you just see the violence as a means to an end, and it is the conclusion of the strikes, on a mass scale - better working conditions, more $$$ - I get it. That is IMO the form any route towards communism will take; the playing out of the inevitability of class conflict. If that's the case, though, why base it on violence - a means to an end - and not the end?

tagore2

This is provocation naturaly.

okay, of course :P

tagore2

But mass immigration will lower wages in Western Europe. Conversely, immigrants will have higher wages than in their own countries. Homogenize is the real goal.

This is honestly the strangest praxis I've ever heard, though! What is it you're proposing? That we support a movement of mass immigration into the first world? Force a change in the material conditions the same way you flush a toilet? That's... honestly... yeah. Okay. I'm in. How do we do it? Or will it just happen, on its own? You come not as a precher but as a prophet?

Chilli Sauce

This is fair enough Akai and you're right the whole thing is silly and a digression for any substantive arguments. That said, would the position of the Roma in Eastern Europe be a more adequate comparison to certain oppressed groups in America? I mean clearly within particular societies there are relative positions of power and wealth within the working class

W/r/t this I wanna say: comparisons are odious

I think maybe an issue here is viewing the whole of the working class as sharing identical material conditions - all working side-by-side in the same factories, and so on. Really the material conditions of the working class are varied. With romani & traveller communities it is a really obvious difference; they primarily live in caravans, in many places in Europe & western Asia are not considered citizens in law (or even human beings, at least 20 years ago), are not employed - at all - are denied medical care, education, etc. have limited access to transport infrastructure due to the frequency of racial antagonism, face a constant police antagonism and constant forced relocation, etc. etc.

Their relationship to Capital is an entirely different one to that of a traditionally employed industrial labourer, who is forced to sell their labour power, drinks lead-poisoned water or inhales dangerous chemicals, works in dangerous conditions, has limited or no access to medical care depending on their country, etc. -- which is entirely different to agricultural workers, to that of those in reproductive labour positions (which encompasses a whole number of conditions also, from retail to sex work to housewifery), that of prisoners, of those in criminalized labour markets, etc. etc.

Which is of course entirely different to the equally varied conditions of the bourgeoisie! And this division of labour is not broken up only on racial lines but on all lines - gender, sexuality, age, location in the world, etc. etc. An infinite number of divisions of labour. The conditions of class society are fractally different, so to speak; no matter how far you zoom in, the conditions are always different. But we are all full-time engaged in class war, nonetheless.

Well, thats my pet theory, at least. Maybe I am just unecessarily obfuscating a simple system of class domination and dragging the discussion to a dead end. I don't know.

Anoter point: as you mention, "relative positions of power and wealth within the working class" - is it necessarily tied to power, in that sense of the word, and wealth? I don't need to have access to a lot of power or wealth to burn down a synagogue or whatever. Often times it is the most disenfranchised white people who carry out the most concentrated racial antagonisms. And as an Irish Catholic living in a strictly Protestant housing estate in Northern Ireland, I certainly don't feel that my neighbours have a lot more power and wealth than I do; yet I still fear for my life!!! So why does this all happen, I wonder? oh boy...

-

Customer support is counter revolutionary? That's a first.

As a counter revolutionary working in what is loosely described as the entertainment business I hang my head in shame. I did try to forge a proper proletarian path in the ditch digging industry but I found there was little demand for it.

-

At you Maoists give me a chuckle.

Is Sally from tech support not literally the tong of the snake?

That made my day. Thank you. I'll pass that on to our tech support guy tomorrow. He'll be tickled.

timthelion

@ Tagore2
I think that you are on to something, when you point out that the first world is entirely bourgeois. Or at least, that they are unfairly well off. Go to the grocery store and look at the cheep bananas, grown on land stolen from the native peoples of South America. Land which has recently been stolen from them by the force of the gun.

Go to the grocery store, and look at all of the cheep packaged foods containing "vegitable oil" or "palm oil" that palm oil was produced in Indonesia on land that has been even more recently been stolen using the force of the gun, from local Indonesians.

If you buy these inexpensive products, you are benefiting from the exploitation of others.

Go to the store, and look at the inexpensive textiles, produced by children in Bangladesh and Turkey, who are paid less in a year, than what you are paid in two days work. If you purchase these textiles, you are benefiting from exploitation.

Go to the store and look at the inexpensive injection molded plastic goods made in china, assembled by people, who, too, are being exploited more than you ever will be.

We all live off the fruits of exploitation, even the poorest in the west do. And so of course, we are ill inclined to revolt...

Consumption politics suck and have no place in a communist analysis of the world.

So, what are you suggesting? First world consumers don't buy anything? Or that they only buy....what? Fair trade? Domestic products made in a less exploited environment? What about all the super-exploited products we can't avoid using - those in the construction of our houses or those that we use at work? Does that make us all complacent?

What a load of nonsense.

What determines exchange rates?

-

Post deleted

-

Customer support is counter revolutionary? That's a first.

Non-productive labour?

In some instances it is unproductive (telesales); in some instances not (technical support).

Counter-revolutionary? I'd probably say it was the opposite, if anything. The task of telesales is even more alienated than a productive role in Customer Support. The more alienated the subject, the more impetus to overthrow the system.

-

Revolutionary action: shit customer service and a pay cut. Capitalism must be pretty revolutionary.

-

timthelion

@ Joseph Kay well, given that hatered of Comcast seems to be the main reason for revolution in America today, then perhaps shit customer service really is an impitus for revolution...

Fucking brilliant. Right, forget all about those Latino workers organizing and demonstrating in the US; forget all about the opposition to ICE raids on the workplace; forget all about the demands for raising the minimum wage, which raises will benefit the lowest paid most abused sectors-- namely immigrant laborers, women laborers, and people of color; forget all those struggles-- yeah what's going on in the US is really people pissed off about cable TV service.

As a matter of fact, timthehousecat says cut the minimum wage so that those immigrant workers don't lose their revolutionary fervor and start worrying about how many channels they get in the cable TV package.

It just occured to me, that the unionists interpretation of third world exploitation, is that third world workers are actually a bunch of scabbies which have prevented the revolution.

What the fuck are you actually talking about?

wojtek

What determines exchange rates?

trade in national money commodities (either public or private) that is determined by conceptions of the national economy in question (unemployment, production, debt, etc.), which is also affected by financial instruments that pay out depending on the movement of the "price" of the national money. all this is to be understood relative to other national monies

Timthelion must be having a larf. No other way to make sense of what s/he is writing.

@ Schmoopie I understand unproductive labor as being an artificial phenomena which is intentionally created by central banks in the keynesiocapitalist system in order to occupy people and thus reduce discontentedness.

I understand unproductive labour as labour that nah produce nuttin'.

-

i'm not completely sure what you think the politics here is, but its vary obvious that you are completely wrong, what ever you are assuming

timthelion,
Actually many people on this site, including those such as Chilli who seems to have annoyed you, would share many of your frustrations with the world and your opposition to imperialism and consumerism as well as your desire for a revolution that actually changes the way we live in a more human, equal and ecologically sustainable way BUT don't think you have expressed any real understanding of the way that global capitalism works in practice or the realities of working class survival in a hostile world, have an exaggerated idea of the potential of individual protest action to change the world in the direction you desire and a tendency to moralise about others behaviour. We are none of us 'innocent' wherever we live but to change the world requires more than wishful thinking.

timthelion

While I don't know or care what the supreme leader has declared to be the proper communist analysis of the world, I would like to know why you think that consumption politics suck. For me, living in a non-democratic capitalist country, I find that a vote with my dollars is the only vote I really get. I believe that if we all bought as little as possible, than the keynesian model would soon run into big problems.

Consumption politics 'sucks' because:

1) Consumption is the sphere of the economy that we, as workers (even western workers), have the least influence on. The nature of capitalism ensures that I produce more value than I make back in wages, which means that I have more power over the process of production (I mean production of value, which can include services, transport, etc.) than I do on consumption.

2) Consumption is the most individualized sphere of the economy. Production naturally tends to be a social process, almost all of my jobs have had a directly social component, while almost none of my shopping trips have, outside of brief interactions with cashiers. This means that it's much easier to make common cause with fellow workers than fellow shoppers.

3) A person's power as a consumer is directly based on how much wealth they have. Someone like myself, who has relatively little money, has much less power as a consumer than most of the people in, say, the obscenely rich suburb where I work, which is why consumer politics are ubiquitous there. I'm always kind of amused by people who use the phrase "vote with your dollar" without realizing that they're explicitly saying they think the rich should have more votes than the poor.

Modern day crapitalism is a deluge of commodities, you can't be in society without having to move through this as if it were a swamp. That said, I think the "proflmaotariat" is complicit with the "brbourgeoisie" to the extent that they have agency and participate in crapitalism, according to their tendency to operate under the egotistical norms of crapitalism or not.

Tim

I seem to have gotten off on the wrong foot, and I guess I probably do not belong here, with the seeming prevailing belief here, that the western working class is inocent of all western crimes. I do not believe in a bourgeois which sits around in a smoky room and painstakingly plans the systematic exploitation of the proletariat. I kind of get the feeling, that there is a religion in which there is some kind of bourgeois god who causes all evil, and come the end times, Jesus Marxus will come down from heaven and the revolution will occure and everything will be heavenly utopic. I'm not saying all of you believe that. I know that there are lots of smart people here who do not believe that, but I've definitely got a taste of that religion from lurking here for a week.

So, first off, good job here trying to get back on the right foot...

Second, good post from Red.

Third, what do you mean you're a rentier? Does that mean you're a fucking landlord?

timthelion

Is Chilli Sauce really saying that no one has a responsibility for their own role in promoting exploitation? Can I go to a prostitute who I know is forced to have sex, and fuck him / her just because Chilli Sauce thinks that consumption politics is a load of nonsense?

This is an example of buying a persons labour.

Is there even any point in me discussing with you people? I came here, because I am discontented with imperialism, consumerism, the work to spend cuture, and the dishonesty, waste, and vicousness of our current society.

Its funny you should mention religion in this comment, since the movements that oppose consumerism and the purchasing of things the most are usually religious movements. Like the Muslim Brotherhood or the Puritans. The societies they establish are austere not anti-capitalist, the class system survives unchanged, only now the sanscullotte having even plainer trousers to buy.

But what I get is "well, blame the bourgeois for those problems, we're not going to change our own ways!"

Changing our ways won't change the system. As long as wealth is produced for those who own its means* the system will continue. Capitalist societies have lowered wages before, and been forced to embrace harsh rationing regimes at times. And yet the class system endures.

Changing this and that may well be worthwhile on its own merits, sustainability for one thing. But its not a solution to the core problem. And if you don't have a solution to the core problem than this is all just a distraction.

*Like for example you, who live off the labour of your tenants.

Post deleted

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It is good you find solace in ‘Major Barbara’. The movie Major Barbara (1941), was enjoyable, a comedy with social commentary. The writer of the original play (and the screen play) was George Bernard Shaw, who was a member of the Fabian Society sometimes referred to as ‘the tortoise road to socialism’, who advocate ‘gradualist, reformist and democratic means in a journey towards radical ends’.

My understanding of capitalism leads me to think that we are all in varying degrees victims and perpetrators in a vile economic system, which has long outgrown its usefulness to humanity. To tinker with the system, by ethical consumerism or a more equitable distribution of profits, etc., if successful, is only to make a short term and therefore cosmetic reform. The struggle against capitalism will only be successful when enough people wish to replace capitalism and embrace a new set of economic principals based on libertarian communist values. If the market economy or the wages system remain – then capitalism will simply have been rebranded.

I actually rent out to an advertising agency, who's main client is a bank which sells shity financial instruments to the proletariate.

You dodged a bullet here. Although renting out to individuals or banks, you still generate your income through your ownership of capital. Do you know what that makes you?

Anyway, any notion of class power is absent from your analysis. "Stopping buying obviously bad products" is not revolutionary in any way, nor will it build revolutionary activity or class consciousness or a wider confidence in the class to confront our exploiters. In fact, such "choice" is the kind of shit that's promoted by capital - and is part of the logic of apologists for capitalism: capitalism is so great precisely because we can "vote with our dollars".

Anyway, if you want to engage with folks around here, I'd suggest you start by reading the intro guides, so at least you'll have less of any excuse for whatever really weird ideas you've concocted in your head about libcom concepts of revolution and social change:

http://libcom.org/library/libcom-introductory-guide

And, also, just using your own logic: you rent out to bank that, by your own admission, sells really exploitative products to the working class. That same bank is, no doubt, tied up in all sorts of investments in super-exploitative projects in the global south. Surely, your role in providing them the space to do business is far worse and far more complicit than consuming palm oil.

So, instead of writing some little conscience-salving poem, put your money where your mouth is: pull the lease.

Or not (or wouldn't make a difference anyway), but then shut the hell up about people who eat bananas being "responsible" for Western crimes or participating in imperialism.

Although renting out to individuals or banks, you still generate your income through your ownership of capital. Do you know what that makes you?

Pray tell! I presume you are talking about our fellow poster's relationship to the means of production. If that is the case, the information that we have tells us nothing with regard to this matter.

I must confess I did not read the Introductory Guide to libcom.org before I began contributing to it's pages. I knew that it stood for libertarian communism and that much sufficed. What does that make me?

I'm sorry I've wasted my time on this discussion. 'Should salaries be lowered in the western world?' It's an academic question. For my whole working life in the Western world my real wages have been decreasing and I presume that is the general trend.

Schmoopie, I'm totally with you on that last paragraph. But I can't say I understand what points you're trying to make in those first two?

Fair enough – I was just in a grump

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If you have excess space you could move out to a smaller house so you didnt had to be a parasite on someone else labour.

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timthelion #107

How can you describe a parasite as free? That's a contradiction in terms.

While we have prisons and prisoners everyone is under threat. The answer is to create a society where it is the norm to be free from fear, and we share the necessities of life.

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You are renting your capital to capitalists rather than selling your labour. This makes you a capitalist, as you have said. However your argument that it is the fault of the western consumer is pointless.
To be honest you sound like you're guilty and trying to find a way to make everyone guilty so you feel less so.
I can see why you don't want to work, fair enough I wouldn't if I didn't have to.

I have more free time to devote myself to trying to find a replacement for capitalism.

But you don't seem to have reached a conclusion other than that the working class are pacified witflath consumer goods, which is to an extent true, but aside from that judgement you don't seem to have gone any further. I do find it amusing that a landlord is helping squatters though.
I'm not saying you should give up your rooms or the income from them but I think it puts you in a different position to those of us who have to pay rent or a mortgage every month or lose our homes and who have to put up with jobs in order to do so.

Incidentally I've never come across a Maoist that worked to live.

I just started reading through this thread so haven't read it all, but this;

Yes, if you make more than super gross PPP $17000, you are above the average, you don’t have any objective interest in the communist revolution

Ha! Fucking priceless!

While it refers to the unemployed and not workers in general, it still shows the poverty of timthelion's understanding of capitalism.

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timthelion

Chilli Sauce

And, also, just using your own logic: you rent out to bank that, by your own admission, sells really exploitative products to the working class. That same bank is, no doubt, tied up in all sorts of investments in super-exploitative projects in the global south. Surely, your role in providing them the space to do business is far worse and far more complicit than consuming palm oil.

So, instead of writing some little conscience-salving poem, put your money where your mouth is: pull the lease.

Or not (or wouldn't make a difference anyway), but then shut the hell up about people who eat bananas being "responsible" for Western crimes or participating in imperialism.

Right now, I rent out 3 rooms, set up as office space in my basement. I could kick out the current tennants and leave the space empty. I don't need the space. Would that be better? I could have a different firm in there, but I don't think any businesses in todays economic model in the Czech Republic are really good. I cannot rent it out as living space, as it is moist and does not have a shower. If I left it empty than I would have to work, which would actually mean more exploitation, not less. Why would I work when I don't have to? Then I would be CHOOSING to be exploited! Wouldn't my working actually be helping the capitalist system? Wouldn't it mean an increased supply of labor in an already saturated market? Or, since I'm a programmer, it could mean more automation thus giving capitalists more power over workers as they would need you less.

So, you missed my point. The point it is this: it's hypocritical as shit to judge people on what they consume when you are actively making a profit from the those same industries, companies, and investments that sell people those goods.

Like Jef (whose post hit all sort of important points), I don't blame you for not working. As I said, I might even be tempted to rent out some space if I had it. But have some perspective and understand that you generate you income through your ownership of capital. That doesn't give you much space to judge others for what they consume (which is a shit analysis anyway).

As for "choosing" to be exploited, you really need to understand that capitalism is a social relationship. We don't choose to work any more than we choose to consume. That's the shit we do to survive.

And, again, here's the contradiction: what do you think helps capitalism more -
(a) you working or
(b) you choosing (here it really is a choice) to become a capitalist and renting out space to other capitalists?

Besides, it's not through dropping out of capitalism (as if...) that we overcome it. It's through class struggle and our control of the means of production that we come together as a class and exercise the sort of power that will lead us to building a new society.

Trumpism is capitalism without a heart. It is the pure celibration of capitalist evil. And yet it is a working class movment.

It's not nearly as clear cut as the media play that. It's more of a disaffected Gen X white guy movement.

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If you are only consuming that which is necessary for survival, than that is what I am promoting.

Maybe you should join the church, a life is a monastery sounds more to your liking than any sort of post-capitalist society.

Anyway, you're writing your posts from a computer, no? Is your computer "necessary for survival"?

In any case, the point of communism isn't to lower us all into a state of poverty, it's to:

a) in the short term, for the working class to get as much of the wealth we create as possible and
b) create a society in which the wealth we collectively create is shared equitably and democratically.

What do you mean, by "our control of the means of production" is this something that only happens post revolution or is it something that can happen in pre-revolution times as well?

Bosses own the means of production, the working class controls them. This is why strikes are effective: companies, industries, and economies don't function if we don't work. It's through our recognition and exercise of this fact we can extract concessions now and build a new world.

I don't mean to be a dick, but this is like anti-capitalism 101. You've said you've read the intro guides but I'm not really sure you understood them. And that's okay - and questions like the above are fine - but please, please, please try to understand the basic politics of libertarian communism before you have a go at posters on the site and their supposed beliefs.

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Right now, I rent out 3 rooms, set up as office space in my basement. I could kick out the current tennants and leave the space empty. I don't need the space. Would that be better? I could have a different firm in there, but I don't think any businesses in todays economic model in the Czech Republic are really good. I cannot rent it out as living space, as it is moist and does not have a shower. If I left it empty than I would have to work, which would actually mean more exploitation, not less. Why would I work when I don't have to? Then I would be CHOOSING to be exploited! Wouldn't my working actually be helping the capitalist system? Wouldn't it mean an increased supply of labor in an already saturated market? Or, since I'm a programmer, it could mean more automation thus giving capitalists more power over workers as they would need you less.

Am I reading this right? Timethelion rents out property he owns and contends that wages should be lowered in the "West"? That workers in the West are parasites?

Come on. Drown this fucking cat.

S and I don't always agree, but he's certainly cut through the crap on that last post.

Anyway, as for co-ops, the problem isn't land or resources but, as a friend said, "co-ops don't get rid of the boss, they get rid of the worker".

Try giving these a read:

https://libcom.org/library/co-operatives-all-together
https://libcom.org/library/co-ops-or-workers-revolution
https://libcom.org/library/participatory-society-or-libertarian-communism

You also ignored basically all of my post. Could you at least try to respond to the direct questions I ask you?

timthelion

Trumpism is capitalism without a heart. It is the pure celibration of capitalist evil. And yet it is a working class movment. And yet you are here angry at me, as if I am responsible for creating, promoting, and maintaining this system.

Actually this isn't true, for a start the majority of Trump's support base come from the small business owner, landlords and upper management groups. http://www.publicseminar.org/2016/03/the-republicans-trump-problem/#.V0nXV7n2bcu

But even if 90% of Trump's voter base came from the Federated Brotherhood of Teamsters, Miners and Longshoremen, that still wouldn't make Trump the leader of a working class movement.

Because Trump's platform has nothing to do with the proletariat and proletarian issues aren't a reason why his supporters support him. That just isn't how it works.

The Popular Front in France (to pick an example at random) was described as a Jewish movement and that was nonsense too, even though Leon Blum headed it and it had the support of a large number of French Jews. A movements character is determined by its stated goals and acts and why its members support it.

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That presumes there is any "deradicalizing" to be done. The answer, given your obvious reactionary political and economic orientation, is there is none. You are your own creation, reactionary in full; pretending you give a rat's ass about anything other than your next rent payment.

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Presumably the people who rent your rooms have to work somewhere in the evil capitalist system to pay you your money, so in effect you are just outsourcing your working to salve your conscience? Capitalism - a set of social relations which nobody can step outside of.

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timthelion

While it is true that I cannot step outside the system, you have not answered my question. Would it be better if those rooms were empty? As I have already stated, my house is not so large as to be larger than my "fair share" of space within the city.

Yeah you really don't get it do you. No one cares how large or small your house is, or how big your yearly expenditure is. We find your economic relationship objectionable. Do you really have to ask a communist forum if we'd prefer more or fewer capitalists in the world?

Do what you want with those rooms but don't don't expect any sympathy for your proselytizing about how other people should behave when you're living off rent money to finance your ethical lifestyle.

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It's difficult to know how to engage with you Timmy but your relationship with your tenants is reminiscent of that between Pozzo and Lucky in the second act of Waiting for Godot, in which Pozzo (capitalist) is blind and Lucky (wage slave) is mute. And this would be true even (and I can't stress this enough) if you don't drive a car or produce open source software that runs on palm oil any more..(?)

The thing is that vegan, straight-edge, bus-pass haver are all just lifestyle choices, not political actions. You can not spend much money because you have enough privilege to do so. Most of us have to pay housing costs, have to buy food because even if we do grow our own veggies we don't have enough land to be self-sufficient, have to sell our labour to evil capitalist companies to do so. Therefore, when someone who lives off an inheritance, their wife's labour and rent tell us poor sheeple proles not to spend any money because these things are beneath you, then it's hardly surprising that you go down like a knackered lift.

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Honestly dear, theres nothing revolutionary about anything you say or do. And I can't really be bothered anymore.

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Fleur I came here to learn about libertarian communism

Then do some of the reading people have suggested to you, instead of being holier than thou about your lifestyle choices.

Fucking kulak ;)

timthelion

Fleur I came here to learn about libertarian communism. Not to get dragged through the dirt. But if your idea of revolution is attacking ernest well intentioned small time land owners on the internet, then have fun.

If that's true you've done a spectacularly poor job of it. You don't appear to have understood anything that's been said to you, and your behaviour does not make you appear earnest or well intentioned at all. You're clearly going out of your way to make excuses for yourself.

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timthelion

So far, I have read what has been suggested to me. I've learned a lot about why capitalism sucks. But I've still not learned what your solution is, other than "real communism". But I don't know what "real communism" is yet.

Sorry but that quite obviously isn't true, if you had understood what's been suggested to you, then you wouldn't still be asking what's the problem with you living off rent, or defending yourself by pleading frugality. Comments like that just show how you've failed to grasp the very basics.

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Timthelion, you probably are earnest and well-intentioned, in which case, why not address some of the points that have been put to you? I don't mean that in an attack-y way.

But there is a contradiction between you saying people should only consume what they need to survive and the fact that you're a landlord with extra room in your house. And the fact you obviously have a computer/tablet/phone or something to access libcom with. Genuinely wondering how you square that in your head?

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Tim, I don't think you understood commie's post - or, indeed, many similar post others and I have put to you.

The point people are trying to make is that acknowledging those contradictions is fine, sometimes you can't square a round hole. But what is really hypocritical is accepting those explicit contradictions (or rather, offering some weird rationalization) but still judging others who - by your own logic - are far less complicit in the functioning of capitalism than yourself.

There's a further point that consumption politics are pretty roundly dismissed around here, but I think it's the hypocrisy that people find frustrating.

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Tim. Just do not go there with Veganism on this site. It ain't worth the bother. I am a vegan and contrary to the general view around here I believe animal exploitation is relevant in anarchist politics but it's not that big an issue in creating revolution and it does no good to use it as a yardstick to measure people's moral status against. It just ain't that simple. And yes, I've been guilty of this too anLd probably will again but it sure as hell won't get me, you or revolutionary politics anywhere to brandish our moral position around even when, as in this case, there is a lot of answering to do.

I'm also a landlord but since I came to understand the nature of capitalism I've been selling my portfolio as each property becomes available through a tenant deciding to move out. They are all mortgaged heavily so there is very little capital advantage to selling and I lose my monthly income. Of course, it won't make much difference in the scheme of things in exactly the same way as me not consuming animal products but I just want nothing to do with either thing.

I don't know about the cost of living where you are but $160,000 is a hell of an income over here. My daughter grafts all week every week for around a quarter of that.

Finally, you've got to get over your reverse crush on Chilli. He is not following you around and he does know his shit. Quit with the defensiveness and try listening to him. Same with everyone else. You're not just gonna come here and change everyone's views to make them fit with your vision of yourself.

Ironically, I'm a vegetarian - although that has zero bearing on my revolutionary credentials. But way to try to deflect the conversation.

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timthelion

So far, I have read what has been suggested to me. I've learned a lot about why capitalism sucks. But I've still not learned what your solution is, other than "real communism". But I don't know what "real communism" is yet.

Reading this book might help you
https://libcom.org/library/abc-anarchism-alexander-berkman

Tim, we all make compromises in the way we live. The people I know who live frugally do so through necessity. From what you’ve written you appear to do so through choice, inferring that you could splash out if you wished. How you spend your money is really your business and I’m no kill joy. It is just irrelevant (unless you believe capitalism can be ended through individuals making the correct purchases – like in the sixties the hippies lining up outside the trendy boutiques to buy their kaftans).

If you wish to understand libertarian communism, read up, then ask questions. Forget yourself and your lifestyle and enter the world of revolutionary transformation. If you haven’t read it yet read Orwell’s ‘Homage to Catalonia’, which is a kind of introduction.

timthelion

Noah Fence

I don't know about the cost of living where you are but $160,000 is a hell of an income over here.

You've accidently multiplied my families combined income by a factor of ten. It's 16K not 160K.

This has been a silly argument that I never wanted to get into.

Oops. I that case can I rent a room from you - they must be cheap as fuck!

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DP

timthelion

Noah Fence

I don't know about the cost of living where you are but $160,000 is a hell of an income over here.

You've accidently multiplied my families combined income by a factor of ten. It's 16K not 160K.

This has been a silly argument that I never wanted to get into.

Oops. I that case can I rent a room from you - they must be cheap as fuck!

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If you save your money, where do you put it?
If there was a general strike how would you get to your money and what good would it do you? You can't eat it.

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Tim, I know I told you to fuck off after you did an asshole post but I'm being genuine and honest here, I just don't know where to start with how wrong your approach to communism is. You've said you've read recommended texts, if you really have you need to read them again coz it ain't sinking in. You sound like a straight up an-cap and as such are incredibly difficult to engage with.

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It's not name calling, it's a description of those that advocate an irreconcilable combination of two political ideologies. You are advocating straight up capitalist ideas as a way of somehow acting in the interests of anarchism. You may not see it that when and I guess I could be wrong but surely you can see my difficulty considering my assessment?
If you read the introductory guides you can either agree with the general thrust of them and throw your ideas in the trash or you can disagree with them and accept that anarchism is not compatible with your beliefs. That doesn't mean you have to agree with everyone here, God knows I have plenty of disagreements myself, but you need to be on board with the general principle.

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Frugality seems to me to be a puritanical lifestyle choice. Of course, in a revolutionary situation where there are shortages it could be a necessary political tactic to practice frugality but my vision of a communist world is one of plenty and the practice of frugality for its own sake would be the practice of a hair shirt morality. I would expect 3500 calories of good quality food a day, I would expect a warm comfortable place to dwell in. I would expect long lasting, high quality, comfortable clothing. I would hope to enjoy the benefits of technology. I would hope for the availability of music, film, art, TV, sport and other forms of entertainment.
With inequity largely eradicated these things would be entirely feasible.
To me, whilst I see an undeniable link between my moral outlook and my politics, I mostly see communism as a purely practical way of organising society. It certainly isn't a blueprint for an egotistical program of self improvement through the denial of sensual pleasure.

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Of course consumerism is dumb and wasteful. What does that have to do with the level of hoped for physically comfort set out in my post?

I'll put it more simply, I want the good shit we have now without the dumb shit and without the inequity that is currently employed to produce both.

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tim #163

I have a very different idea of the strike weapon and the idea of using frugality to decrease the profits of capitalists.

If workers strike for more pay or better conditions it may well increase the price of products. If the employer increases productivity to offset the pay rise the long term outcome may well be to decrease the need for labour, thereby increasing the pool of unemployed; with the cyclical effect of putting pressure on workers to suppress wage demands. The working class are always on a catchup unless they raise their ideas above trade unionism (which is just a part of the same game).

I’ve seen no evidence that frugality lowers prices and decreases profits. Even if it did, lower profits allows the big capitalists to squeeze out the small fry by virtue of economy of scale. In a recession it is survival of the fittest. And again the market returns with more vigor and larger monopolies.
Capitalism cannot be ‘marketed’ away any more than it can be wished away.

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timthelion

Do you have any examples this idea of consuming less being effective in practice?

Because there are a lot of examples of workers using their power as workers in the workplace to affect change.

Tim it seems that you subscribe to some idea that if you can squeeze profits capitalists wil just give up, this won't happen, tye might retreat from certain markets but they won't give in. They'll bury us all first.

To be honest it seems like you think you can shrink capitalism like libertarians think that they can shrink the state. It simply doesn't work.

I'm pretty frugal but I don't make a virtue of it, I just don't want much stuff that I can buy and I earn more than I can spend. Am also a bit of a cheapskate but I prefer to make and renovate stuff when I can. I can't see why anyone would pay for planters when you can just hack up a pallet. (I live near an industrial area and going for a walk of more than three minutes is usually enough to find a palet or two.) But again it's not fighting capitalism, it's just making me feel better. And saving me some money, maybe one day I'll get myself an ivory backscratcher...

capitalists who sell cheep shit are still capitalists, if you buy cheaper products the capitalists still own everything, it may change the distribution of wealth amongst the capitalist but it doesn't change the social relationship.

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What if people stopped buying these clothes and started, for instance, investing their money and time in the development of small scale means of production. I think that many of these stores would close, and the natural feudalism of the free market would become more and more exposed. There would be increasingly empty buildings and, as people worked less and bought less, an absurdist situation would appear. And I think that such absurdisms are good for revolution. People would start to squat those empty store spaces, and the police would throw them out with increasing violence. This would, I hope, lead to mass depression among the populous that still worked, especially among the police who would see themselves as being absurd figures in an absurdist drama

Without getting into the practicalities of this (that is some serious optimism about the police), don't you think this is asking a lot of people?

I'm not against mass squatting, but it usually occurs of necessity, in the midst of serious economic and social distress. To wish for this as a goal - alongside "mass depression" and a desire to see "increasing violence" from the police - really ignores how stressful and precarious such a situation would be for people with families, responsibilities, or who just want to maintain their current housing.

I mean, weren't you the one going on about how attached your family was to their family home and how shit it was that Czech state broke it up?

timthelion

commieprincess
- veal, the meat of baby cows, is now much harder to get than it once was, because people feel it is cruel.
- wearing of fur coats is similarly out of style in the US, ever since 101 dalmations came out ;)

No effect on capitalism. A few capitalists may have lost out but that's a part of capitalism.

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Man, capitalism developed from feudalism and it's not going to go in the other direction.

That said, this...

I've also thought about the idea of a strike in which the workers, rather than standing around with signs, started actively working towards collectivizing things. Simply disobeying their bosses and trying to organize everything themselves.

..is much more in keeping with a libertarian understanding of revolutionary social change.

What could bring this about - the balance between conscious action, economic necessity, mass organization, the transformation of consciousness through struggle - that's all up for debate.

Although, I'd argue that, at the very least, for this to occur on a mass scale, spontaneity would be a minor part of it. The confidence to begin collectivizing under worker control will only develop through previous class struggles in the workplace and outside of it.

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timthelion

Chilli Sauce

Man, capitalism developed from feudalism and it's not going to go in the other direction.

When I say feudalism, I'm not refering to noble blood, but surfs and land owners. It has happened before, in the US for example, during the dust bowl years. This devolution is described nicely in Grapes of Wrath. Read anything about Truck wages and you will find that there are a number of places within capitalism that feudalism exists.

No the Grapes of Wrath does not describe feudalism it describes several of the worst practices of Capitalism in a period of severe scarcity and low wages. The truck system isn't feudal because the economic relationship between employer and worker is still the wage labour dynamic. In Feudalism the serf was tied to the land and had to give his crops and labour to his master for the privilege of being allowed to survive and continue giving crops and labour to the Feudal lord.

In Grapes of Wraith they are paid for their labour and are free to leave, indeed that's the ace that the grower bosses have over the Okie's "That's what we're paying, don't like it? Y'can shove off". It's still wage labour even if you pay someone in Monopoly money.

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timthelion

That's not how I undestand it. With the Truck system, the employee is kept in debt and is NOT free to leave. They can only leave once they've payed off the debt, which is to be payed off in truck wages. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Joo90ZWrUkU

Yeah, debt is not remotely unique to the Truck system at all. It happens in jobs that are paid in normal currency all the time. Hell that was the case in Grapes of Wrath, the Joads were paid in real American dollars, but the prices at the company store would bleed them dry after awhile as would driving to another shop.

Also debt is not a product of Feudalism, its a capitalist phenomena, and under Feudalism you couldn't leave even if you never borrowed a Groat, there were very wealthy serfs, some tried to buy their freedom but the only way you could get your freedom was an indulgence from your master.

timthelion

But that's not really the point. My point, is that it is possible for a privilaged few to gain a monopoly on the means of production

???? Err yes that's called capitalism, this is literally the definition of Capitalism, and class society, a minority dominates the majority through the economic power of private property.

in such a way that it is impossible for anyone else to gain the means of production,

Well that certainly isn't the case today and I see no reason why that would be so in the future. Capitalism is inherently unstable, so any predictions about it becoming stable which it would have to be for an unchanging monolithic group of capitalists to exist would need some compelling evidence to back it up.

Individual capitalists lose and are replaced every day, occasionally entire business sectors go under, and new ones spring up.

and the American dream myth of upward movement becomes a plain farce, because literally NO ONE is able to move up,

People can and do move up all the time. The communist criticism of social mobility isn't that it's impossible its that its not a viable solution to the problem of exploitation and inequality.

and everyone is either rich with servants or literally a slave only making enough to keep them alive. I think that's actually the natural state of capitalism.

No, absolutely not, a wage slave is not a chattel slave, these comparisons are not only wrong but actually quite offensive.

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To whom is the comparison offensive?

To people who are the descendants of people who were abducted and transported from Africa to the new world as chattel slaves, who were maimed, dumped overboard, separated from their families, raped, tortured, murdered, bought and sold, whose slavery created the wealth which was a pre-condition for the development of capitalism. The is a huge difference and it is offensive to through the word slavery around willy-nilly to describe something else.

Slavery does very much still happen today. If you a wi-fi enabled device, slavery was involved in gathering the minerals which it needs to work. That being only one example.

timthelion

Chilli Sauce

Man, capitalism developed from feudalism and it's not going to go in the other direction.

When I say feudalism, I'm not refering to noble blood, but surfs and land owners. It has happened before, in the US for example, during the dust bowl years. This devolution is described nicely in Grapes of Wrath. Read anything about Truck wages and you will find that there are a number of places within capitalism that feudalism exists.

You don't know what you are talking about. The "Dustbowl Years" were anything but feudalism. There were no serfs tied to the land, part and parcel of the landed property. Just the opposite. The Dustbowl/Depression was the dispossession of the petty producers and small capitalists, who migrated and became a source of labor, of agricultural migrant labor, in Arizona, California, etc.

This notion of "feudalism" doesn't apply at any point in US history, not even in the post Civil War restoration of the plantation economy on the backs of the emancipated ex-slaves, ensnared in share-cropping or tenant-farming relations.

Today such slavery is rare as we have reformed capitalism a lot, but it is slavery when a person works merely for room and board.

Enough's enough. You're either an idiot, a sophist, or a dilettante-- or all three. And in all cases, it's a waste of time arguing with you.

Everybody works for room and board. You're a slave when you are owned as property; when your physical being can be exchanged, owned, sold, traded, or beaten to death.

timthelion

- veal, the meat of baby cows, is now much harder to get than it once was, because people feel it is cruel.
- wearing of fur coats is similarly out of style in the US, ever since 101 dalmations came out wink

Sorry I'm about 50 posts behind!

So how does the consumption of veal becoming rarer (ha!) undermine capitalism? People aren't consuming any less in general as a result of that, are they? Same with fur - people just buy clothes with fake fur. Clothes probably made by an extremely poorly treated worker.

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timthelion, most of your reasons for making the lifestyle choices you've made are laudable if we accept your stated end, the destruction of capitalism. And no doubt the collective activities you say you've been involved in all had a fair amount of mutuality and solidarity and so were prefiguratively pretty sound in many respects. It's just that none of the tactics you've mentioned are very useful means of achieving the particular end you claim. If people have debts to pay and others depending on them, or if they carry any of the hundred and one other burdens that even pampered western workers have to carry which curtail their freedom to act, then the notion of 'choosing' to live a minimalist rentier-capitalist lifestyle without working while 'ethically' consuming so as to keep their hands clean of the blood spilled by capitalism is more than a wee bit off their radar. Wage workers are too busy trying to keep it all going - as well as keep up with being brainwashed by their jobs and the media - to have enough head space to keep abreast of the possibilities that a 'political' rentier capitalist lifeway has to offer. Lifestylist-individualist ways of looking at capitalism very often end with workers seen as just as big a problem as capitalism itself. (At least you don't seem to have something against bipeds as such I suppose.)

Which do you think would be more threatening and likely to lead to change, individuals living 'minimally' and abstaining from capitalism as much as they can or a self-organising mass movement confronting capitalism head on? Which do you think are more effective as agents of change, people terrified of losing their jobs because social conditions are at starvation levels or people who have a habit of fighting together and have seen successes raise their level of power over society?

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timthelion

commieprincess it helps anarchy by reducing the oppression against animals.

I suggest once again that you don't go there. You're already (deservedly) getting enough scorn poured on your ass. I'd try to rectify that before opening another can of worms.

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How do you propose to achieve this conversion of these 'sheeple'? How would you protect the alternative arrangements that you would like to see arise from destruction by the capitalist state?

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Kind of a derail but I don't know about veal but the fur market has been increasing and demand is up globally, due to increased consumption of fur products in China and Russia. It's just moved somewhere else.

So would you have some mass anticonsumerist organisation converting people to the cause? If so, how would you prevent it from being absorbed, or just attacked and destroyed by capitalism? Are you in favour of local trading systems and currencies and the like?

And mob rule is something anarchists have to be careful to avoid.

But you're not an anarchist, so you really don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to telling anarchists what to do.

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timthelion

Fleur

But you're not an anarchist, so you really don't have much of a leg to stand on when it comes to telling anarchists what to do.

Ah I get it, so anarchists are allowed to tell eachother what to do...

Are you telling us not to?

.

See you? See you, you don’t tell me nuffin’. Get it? See you, aye you – WIT YOU LOOKIN’ AT?

timthelion

In any case, both systems are both very evil, present a self evident solution, and have had multiple revolutions. For example, a similar system was what lead to the virginia miners wars, which, while utterly unsuccessfull as a revolution proves that the system of truck wages and debt to the company store will lead people to violent rebelion. Right now, we don't have such a system and no revolution either.

Sorry but this is just a load of (false)assumptions piled ontop of each other. The Truck system may well have been the final straw that led to the Virginia Miners strike wave but that doesn't actually prove anything beyond this particular case. There were plenty of workplaces were a Truck system was used that didn't lead to a workers uprising, and plenty of workers uprisings were no such system existed, like in France in 1968, or Hungary 1956.

Revolutions and periods of mass unrest are more than their stated immediate grievances. The French Revolution was more than the price of bread, the 1905 Russian Revolution was more than revenge for the atrocities on Bloody Sunday, the Paris Commune was more than the seizure of the cannons on Mont Martre.

Factvalue:

You forgot the Arts and Crafts movement late 19th, early 20th century. You can buy William Morris wallpaper at about 70 quid a roll these days.

Honestly man, you've been telling people what to do ever since you arrived here. What to buy or not buy, how to live their lives, what to eat, what to wear, you are coming over as a bit patronizing with all your edicts.

I don't doubt that you mean well. You're living a charmed little existence off other people's labour but you are in no position to tell other people what to do. For one thing, you live in a place with a cost of living index of 44, which is significantly lower than nearly everyone else who is posting here, so of course you can get away with your mantra of non-consumption, especially when you're not paying housing costs. Then you have the gall to explain that working class people are just stupid automatons who pointlessly consume like the sad little sheeple that they are. Sometimes us poor fuckers who get up to go to work at 6am like to come home to a few creature comforts.

I've met some people with similar attitudes to you, often folks who wasted way too much of their time hanging around Occupy. They're generally people from pretty privileged backgrounds who have adopted certain lifestyle choices who think that by doing so they're somehow more clued up than the rest of us poor schmucks. You can try to be the change you want to be in the world as much as you like but it isn't going to make a sliver of difference in the great scheme of things.

Talking of Occupy, the Occupy Wall Street poster with the bull and the ballerina is now for sale in Walmart.

timthelion

commieprincess it helps anarchy by reducing the oppression against animals.

Surely, you must see how you've shifted the goalposts in this response?

Also, just FWIW, there are very few people on this forum who would
(a) use the term anarchy in anything but an ironic way or
(b) subscribe to any sort of silly animal rights nonsense about oppression of animals.

timthelion, earlier I asked but you didn't answer the following question:

Which do you think would be more threatening and likely to lead to change, individuals living 'minimally' and abstaining from capitalism as much as they can or a self-organising mass movement confronting capitalism head on?

Do you reject organisation as such? Is it your contention that by adopting a certain rigid lifestyle (intentionally not working, squatting, dumpster diving, hardcore veganism, individualism, DIY) each of us will somehow bring about the transition to anarchy, if not for everyone then at least for ourself? Not that we shouldn't engage in them, none of the above are in any way counter-revolutionary or anything, and I agree with you that we need to participate in all manner of resistance to build a culture of resistance. But in my experience they've usually gone hand in hand, as you have amply demonstrated on here, with a "more radical than thou" attitude, especially toward working people (mesmerised media consumption maniacs). Do you really believe that such things are at least as important in building a culture of resistance as a self-organising mass movement capable of fighting the capitalist state and open to all?

timthelion

I look around, and see people who are programmed to be wastefull consumerists.

So, my initial inclination is just to mock this for use of "programmed", but I do think it actually illustrates a serious deficiency of your analysis.

It's not consumption that defines capitalism or keeps it going: it's wage labor - the exploitation of the working class and the extraction of surplus value.

If you can't grasp that's the fundamental criticism people on the board have - you don't even have to accept it, just grasp it - you're not going to be able to have fruitful conversations.

Can somebody recommend a short 101 economics text which explains how capitalism works? I'm not sure that Tim really understands the process and relations.

anticonsumerism can be evangelized as well as communism.

You really don't understand how communists see class struggle developing. Sure, there's a need for propagandizing but it's the structure of capitalism that throws proles into collective opposition to their employers which fuels class consciousness.

You say your read the intro guides, but try again, because I really think you missed some key points.

Also, WTF is the problem with being a sports fan?

Reading Capital Politically is in the library.

timthelion

commieprincess it helps anarchy by reducing the oppression against animals.

I feel like I'm in a Lewis Carrol book.

How exactly does reducing the consumption of meat in any way have any kind of impact whatsoever on the functioning of capitalism?

Fleur

Can somebody recommend a short 101 economics text which explains how capitalism works? I'm not sure that Tim really understands the process and relations.

Maybe this?

[youtube]qOP2V_np2c0[/youtube]

Btw I agree with you about the sports bullshit Tim, it's gonna have to go after the rev.

Also, WTF is the problem with being a sports fan?

I really don't care about sports but a Harley Davidson is number one on my if only I had the money list.

Fleur

Can somebody recommend a short 101 economics text which explains how capitalism works? I'm not sure that Tim really understands the process and relations.

Maybe https://libcom.org/library/value-price-and-profit-karl-marx

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Fleur

Can somebody recommend a short 101 economics text which explains how capitalism works? I'm not sure that Tim really understands the process and relations.

This pamphlet on work https://libcom.org/library/work-anarchist-federation is very short and to the point.

Where do you stand on the 'population' question, Malthus etc.? Do you believe that we should have local power generation or are you against electricity and modern mass industrial society per se? Are you alright with us walking on two legs - not being flippant, just asking.

You don't believe that all life is a mistake we've been thrown into or something do you? Again, just asking.

I'm away to bed, just in case you were to think I was ignoring your answers.

I don't know if this has been raised as an issue but what's the mechanism by which you'd propose salaries are lowered? It's all well and good saying they are too high but the market more or less sets them, some things like the minimum wage aside and I don't see how you would get around that.

Personally I sort of support a maximum wage.

Presumably in some kind of communism wages would be set as appropriate with much less differential that presently. In anarchism either they would be free or society would change do radically that our idea of what a wage means would be different. Please correct me if I'm wrong or point me to the page this issue has been discussed on. I will try and catch up with this thread though.

timthelion

Ach jo, you guys are making it really hard to learn when you keep on insulting me. I'm not even sure if I should try to build an argument against S. Artesian. I would say that the collective upvoting of his insult makes this forum feel a lot like mob rule. And mob rule is something anarchists have to be careful to avoid.

Actually mob rule is a crucial part of anarchism. So is assassinations.
Wasnt it Robert A. Heinlein who said:
"an armed society is a polite society"?

Or should i say a polite society doesnt have to be armed...

Anarchist have always been the victim of mobrule. Because they stood out with their new ideas, challenged the status quo and as aliened they were towards the rest of society as strong they were in their convincion that their ideas were "true; it is good, it is social; let us not fear to push it to its ultimate."

So dont tell anarchists that they cant use mobrule because we will if needed because we have no fear of our own ideas. (its funny because even capitalists fear capitalism, thats why they need the state)

We deny government and the State, because we affirm that which the founders of States have never believed in, the personality and autonomy of the masses

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Fleur

Can somebody recommend a short 101 economics text which explains how capitalism works? I'm not sure that Tim really understands the process and relations.

Perhaps this past thread could help.

timthelion should also look at libcom.org's reading guide to capitalism, if s/he hasn't already

And, more specifically, Heinrich's Introduction to Marx's Capital is a fun and brief read.

subscribe to any sort of silly animal rights nonsense about oppression of animals.

Aw fuck, did you really have to say that? Your phrasing is insensitive at the least but I think deliberately provocative is a more accurate description.
I keep quiet about this stuff because discussing it in the past has never been good for Libcom. Do you really want to start the whole shitshow over again? It's not like AR is just a fetish of a couple of single issue fruitloops. They're are a number of regular posters who it is an important issue to but keep quiet for the same reasons as I do. That could have been put very differently although however you put it its accuracy would have been highly questionable.
Anyways, if you or anyone else fancies a few rounds of keyboard fisticuffs I dare say I could pretty easily be goaded into it but I'd really rather just leave it there.

I guess rather than thinking about wages you could think about material wellbeing. Definitely there are big issues that material wellbeing in the western world is dependant on exploitation of workers in other countries which is not right.

Material wellbeing or luxury is linked to overconsumption too.

Whether wages are too high generally for people to become dissatisfied enough to really want to change things seems to be the gist of the question which is different to if they are too high in a more general sense.

Workers have different standards of living within countries too. We wouldn't ask workers in a country to take a pay cut to improve conditions for others so why internationally? That's what internationalism is, solidarity between the working class everywhere.

In terms of sustainable consumption it's quite likely we need to make some changes, but let's get rid of all the useless things before we start putting on hair shirts.

If I may be so bold, I think one aspect of consumerism is the eviscerated bowels of the workers. Our psyches were torn open throughout the periods of industrialization, and the capitalists, needing an excuse to sell their commodities, offered us a platter of an endless deluge of goods