https://twitter.com/colinmdownes/status/1328716228245008386
The communist manifesto is only like thirty pages, please god just read the thing
marx took the time to just reduce everything to the simplest way he could and people just REFUSE TO READ IT
jesus fucking christ
EDIT: to expand on that, there's a distinction between "selling your labor" and "being forced to sell your labor to survive"
there's also the fact that marx described the stratification in different ways depending on what level he was analyzing (how specific/how general, we call it "level of abstraction" in portuguese, not sure if that's the case in english)
for instance, in the 18th brumaire, since he was specifically analyzing france at that time, he goes into more classes, or at least subclasses
For what it's worth in theoretical discussion it definitely is worth understanding the distinction of the "proletariat" and it's role as the vanguard of the working class, but for broader discussion with those not already committed to socialist ideas "working class" (as in those that must work to survive) is probably more effective. Not to mention there hasn't been a revolution without multiple strata of the working class involved. Really one of the major failures of orthodox Marxism was to not realize the importance of the working classes as a whole.
that might be true, but for instance, in places with very high income inequality i think it confuses people because there's a very clear distinction between two or more sections of the working class, and as such their class interests present themselves very differently too
this is specially true in latin america where one sector is generally white, high income, and heavily separated - geographically, economically and often even culturally - from the other, which is generally latino/black/indigenous and low income
talking to either of them as belonging to the same class is basically useless because neither will believe you, and rightfully so
part of the reason why the MAS is so successful is that they've realized this, especially the ethnic aspect (in the specific case of bolivia)
I can see how that would be true in an immediate sense, but isn't our goal to demonstrate to these people that their interest is generally the same? That their relationship with each-other is not antagonistic as it may appear and that they are both exploited by capitalists and imperialists? While speaking to and serving their short-term needs it is necessary to recognize the distinction but without teaching them the bigger picture they will struggle to be revolutionaries.
I would contend that MAS has been successful precisely because they organized the urban worker's unions with the peasant farmers along a line of indigenous socialism, uniting two strata of the working class. Besides they have anti-communist tendencies and cannot serve as a model to move forward in the imperial core.
but isn’t our goal to demonstrate to these people that their interest is generally the same? That their relationship with each-other is not antagonistic as it may appear and that they are both exploited by capitalists and imperialists?
the problem is that their class interests are not necessarily the same and can be very antagonistic, it heavily depends on how classes developed in the specific material conditions of each country (especially regarding colonial history), and can't be defined in absolute terms, only relative ones
in the specific case of brazil, the higher income sector of the working class, while technically being exploited by the bourgeoisie, also benefits from the exploitation of its lower income counterpart, so their interests are not aligned
their absolute hatred for the PT comes not from lack of class consciousness but from realizing that by giving that counterpart some attention, the PT was actively taking away some of their privileges - like the right of having permanent, heavily exploited and subjugated house servants
when marx talks about proletariat vs bourgeoisie (mainly capital/manifesto) he's giving us a general framework, but as we apply that general framework when analyzing class compositions in each country, we gotta deal with certain specificities that go beyond simply describing how a group of people relates to the mode of production (like he did in the 18th brumaire)
I would contend that MAS has been successful precisely because they organized the urban worker’s unions with the peasant farmers along a line of indigenous socialism, uniting two strata of the working class.
the indigenous identity plays a heavy part in their ideology because it represents an actual class divide among workers, it's not just about pulling from indigenous socialism, but part of an actual materialist class analysis that people like linera have made
of course they have brought lower income white workers into the action, but the traditionally privileged high income salaried whites? those are generally supporting people like mesa, not MAS, because that's where their class interests (eg the defense of their privileges) lie
Besides they have anti-communist tendencies
you mean the MAS? how are they anti-communist? linera (evo's former VP) is a marxist and one of their main theoreticians, they're not socdems
and can’t be defined in absolute terms, only relative ones
The relation between all of the working classes and the bourgeoisie is one of exploitation, even the colonizing working class or the PMC or whatever is exploited by the bourgeoisie. This is the primary antagonism in capitalism. There absolutely are antagonistic contradictions between the working classes as you describe (though I would contend that people keeping borderline slaves as you describe in Brazil are not of the working class), but our goal as communists is to overcome those contradictions through demonstrating the primary contradiction of the capitalist mode of production and making the working classes conscious of their commonality.
From What is to be done
it is our bounden duty, to guide these “activities of the various opposition strata”, if we desire to be the “vanguard”. Not only will our students and liberals, etc., themselves take care of “the struggle that brings them face to face with our political regime”; the police and the officials of the autocratic government will see to this first and foremost. But if “we” desire to be front-rank democrats, we must make it our concern to direct the thoughts of those who are dissatisfied only with conditions at the university, or in the Zemstvo, etc., to the idea that the entire political system is worthless. We must take upon ourselves the task of organising an all-round political struggle under the leadership of our Party in such a manner as to make it possible for all oppositional strata to render their fullest support to the struggle and to our Party. We must train our Social-Democratic practical workers to become political leaders, able to guide all the manifestations of this all-round struggle, able at the right time to “dictate a positive programme of action” for the aroused students, the discontented Zemstvo people, the incensed religious sects, the offended elementary schoolteachers, etc., etc.
Now I understand that the conditions of the early 1900s in Russia are quite different than today, but I think it remains true (and you see this idea echoed by revolutionaries til the present day) that we need to lead as many classes as possible to the conclusion that political struggle against capitalism is in their interest. Just because certain segments might be more open to that fact does not preclude others from being useful to us. As I have said, speaking directly to and serving certain classes may entail exposing and challenging others position, but our goal is the broad challenging of the capitalist mode of production led by the working class as a self conscious force.
I feel like it's a nice transition so I'm also going to include this quote from Linera from this interview
The middle class and the ascending part of the popular class that have influence. They are the ones that buy newspapers, that listen to the radio, that appear on television, that drive taxis. And they're influential. This is where there are limitations to bring in our social and popular movements, and political leadership.
It's not enough to mobilize and conquer the unions to govern Bolivia. This also requires the disorganized popular sectors, who constitute the majority at the urban level. This is a second element that the movements have as a challenge; it's a contemporary weakness and a challenge.
And a fourth element, but one that is much more in the longer term, is the reconstitution of the proletariat in Bolivia. There are many workers in Bolivia, but the working class is divided into other identities, fragmented, diluted,a working class that identifies as neighbours not as workers, that identify as students, not as workers... To reconstruct this workers fabric is the plank for another type of modernization, through work, that compliments the indigenous project which is more agrarian. This includes their urban force, which is still related to the countryside. This the great challenge that we have here in Bolivia to construct forces of emancipation.
As to MAS and their relationship to communism, I seem to have misunderstood something I had seen earlier. Anti-communism in the Bolivian left came from a poor relationship between the rural indigenous movements and the communists in the mid 20th century but according to that Linera interview they have been reconciling and developing one another. There are Bolivian communists and I am not sure what their current relationship to MAS is though I can only assume in the absence of an explicitly communist party they take the next logical step of supporting a communist program within MAS. My point still stands that they have achieved success precisely because they have organized the larger subclasses within the working class and if they want to take the next step towards lower stage communism they have to begin integrating those middle class white workers as revolutionaries (or I guess remove them altogether).
though I would contend that people keeping borderline slaves as you describe in Brazil are not of the working class
they used to be salaried workers who owned middle class, 3 to 4 bedroom houses/apartments (1 for the parents, 1-2 for the kids, and 1 other built closer to service areas and away from the rest, for the "empregada" to spend most of the week in)
these are people who have to work for a living, they earn salaries, they have a boss, they wake up in the morning, go to work, and come home in the late afternoon to homes that are very mediocre in size; hard to say they're anything other than working class, and yet their experience is radically different
and i agree that we need to get as many of these people as possible (i used to be one of them myself after all), but my point is that it can't be done in the name of class solidarity; you have to convince them through other means, maybe empathy (my case), maybe nationalist pride (as marxism is also a fight for independence, as we saw in africa and in this continent, as castro actually became a revolutionary before becoming a marxist), maybe "rational sciencey" talk about the inherent contradictions of capitalism (like planned obsolescence and the environmental destruction), etc, but they'll never see themselves as belonging to the same class. even i don't, and every time i talk to a person born in the favelas they don't either. there's no identifier in common besides "getting a paycheck" every month and depending on it to eat, and this just isn't enough and doesn't work
Now I understand that the conditions of the early 1900s in Russia are quite different than today
it's not just about the 1900s, but also the place and the nature of its historical development. there's a lot to learn from lenin, but each country needs its own marxism, as long as you're maintaining your discipline in using the historical materialist method (but not the conclusions arising from this method as applied by other revolutionaries when they analyzed other places) and not falling into eclecticism (very important)
because they have organized the larger subclasses within the working class
but they haven't - again, those people are not supportive of the MAS. back in early 2019 (or i guess 2017 after the referendum? i can't find the interview) linera was already saying how part of the slight drop in popularity of the MAS had actually come from some of the disorganized lower income workers actually going to higher stratas and shifting their ideology into conservatism
it's a mistake to think of this working class segment as lumpens, they constitute a class in and of themselves within the general makeup of bolivian capitalism, which is why ideologies keep shifting slightly as people go from one segment to the other. it's an extremely hard contradiction to solve, and while linera clearly wants to solve it, he doesn't seem to have the answer yet (neither does the party) and he's conscious of this (which is why he describes this is a weakness of the MAS project)
my impression is that they're bandaging this issue for now with talks of defending democracy just to make sure those people can at least respect electoral results and not go from being conservatives into being reactionaries
now again, this is for bolivia, and in a larger way for most of latin america too, given our similar colonial history (this class divide arises from the class composition of that period, especially the transition into the 20th century) - i don't know where you live, but my point is to assure you that we need a detailed materialist analysis of the specific class composition of our own countries, and that our strategy needs this in order to be effective
basically: sure, we need people to unite behind our flag - but each group will do it for different reasons, we should be finding out what those reasons are for each group instead of doing a blanket strategy using what linera himself calls primitive marxism (not pejoratively, but to illustrate how insufficient it is)
I think that this divide isn't one Marx was unaware of. In England of the 1860s-70s there was the same divide between the working class proper and wealthy Clerks, Engineers, Civil Servants etc who worked for salaries but could afford a servant.
Right in the manifesto itself Marx states.
"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured arid looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers."
These are all people who would be able to afford a servant in Victorian times. Yes, they exploit the labour of the servant, but they also are not given the full value of their own labour. If the Servant and the Professional realised that the bosses that controlled the capital are taking the vast majority of value, than they would realise they both stood to benefit in the long run by combining forces against the ruling classes.
The way to get them on board is "how about we join together and steal the Rich Peoples stuff? It'll be fun!"
This kind of sentiment is coming from people who went to college, jumped through the hoops to get a white collar job, and finally has a $60k+ salary. They want to feel better than the "working class". Working class to them are poors who work in factories, retail, food service, etc. The idea of getting lumped in with the underclass disgusts them.
There is a version of me that took a couple different life decisions and is the regional manager of Dunkin' Donuts in Buffalo, NY. I would have dropped out of college, worked my way up the ranks and would be comfortable making $80k doing make-work and yelling minimum wage workers. The real version of me would hate that guy, but he also is significantly better off. College is a scam, is my point.
these people are fucking removed. they just interpret words on the surface and assign their own meanings to words instead of researching topics and reading for 30 fucking seconds.
you're not working class if you own a business simply by working inside that business because most of your income is still derived from the economic value of exploiting your fucking workers you fucking pieces of removed shits
you’re not working class if you own a business simply by working inside that business because most of your income is still derived from the economic value of exploiting your fucking workers
So I’m curious, a guy who owns a fully automated laundromat where he’s the only employee a really just goes in every other day to clean the shitter and collect the change, he be I guess petite bourgeois?
seriously it costs me like 20 bucks each time I go
Damn dude how much laundry do you have?
But yeah you’re right. Was just trying to dream up some situation where someone could make money doing nothing in a way that doesn’t exploit anyone. Outside of like twitch steaming I mean.
I’m luckey that In that most places I’ve lived there’s been a washer and dryer. Still had to pay for them but I was only sharing with like 4-5 other units
Similar to asking if you are still a capitalist if all your workers were replaced with robots that you occasionally have to plug into a wall. Yes you are.
I went to check out new places because I'm moving by the new year, one duplex (an upstairs and downstairs) had a coin-operated laundry and was also charging for water utilities. It made no sense. At least it was only 50 cents for wash and dry per load.
This mindset is being pushed HARD by anyone in the NYTimes / Sam Harris / Centro-sphere.
It seems like the closer America gets to class consciousness, the harder we get flooded with disinformation.
A few months ago Sam Harris had a best-selling Yale Professor on to discuss 'The Failure of Meritocracy'... it was a hate-listen, but I was hoping that it might have faint traces of leftism. Wishful thinking. The episode quickly devolved into re-defining the word 'Capitalist' to encompass all of the petite bourgeois and most of the working class... and actually, according to our good professor, the only difference between a successful lawyer and Jeff Bezos is that Bezos works more hours than the lawyer, and we should feel bad for how many hours the top 20% is 'forced' to work.
Absolute laser-focused propaganda for the current (and aspiring) Petite Bourgeois.
The NYTimes review is actually more critical than you would expect, but the fact that this got boosted so hard kind of invalidates their latent criticism.
"When he squares off against the meritocratic elite, he keeps pulling his punches, assuring us that its members’ educational credentials really are excellent, that their skills are real and that they work extremely hard. At times he even seems to lament the psychic toll that all that work takes on our white-collar professionals, as though one might simply persuade them to give up their system of privileges.
The book’s most unfortunate blind spot is the past. Markovits asserts that the oligarchic situation we are in today has “no historical precedent,” by which he seems to mean there has never been a social order in which the people on top were there because they worked so hard and thus appeared to deserve what they had."
I know you already know this, but even a lawyer billing out $600 an hour putting in 100 billable hours a week (both very, very high and both involve actual labor) couldn't come close what Bezos earns merely by being an owner of Amazon. Like, that lawyer is closing maybe 3 million a year with that kind of billable hours. Bezos "makes" more than that in a half hour through investments.
That shit is such baby-brain nonsense and would instantly collapse if anyone pressed against it, but these authority figures seem so untouchable to regular people who tend to just fold instead of challenging authority figures.
“makes”
I've been trying to remove this language from how I talk about wages/pay because it's deceptive to the point of propaganda. I don't "make" X per hour at work, I am paid X per hour for the much higher value I make for the company.
That shit is such baby-brain nonsense and would instantly collapse if anyone pressed against it,
Very optimistic. This is how my conversation with boomers usually goes:
"So almost all of your money has come from a salary... and you've spent the vast majority of your life working in an office because if you wanted to have a family you didn't have a choice but to work . For most of modern history, Capitalists were referred to as 'the idle rich' because 'work' for the wealthy is an optional hobby."
"Yeah but I'm a capitalist now. If I work for another couple years I'll have saved up enough Capital to let me retire... you know, as long as the stock market doesn't crash again, which it can't because the last two crashes were improbable aberrations, just like Trump. If you work hard enough, one day you too can be a Capitalist. That's the American Dream."
but these authority figures seem so untouchable to regular people who tend to just fold instead of challenging authority figures.
I think another part of it is that the numbers just get too abstract for people to really take in. Like, a billion dollars is an INSANE amount of money; if you worked 40 hours a week and took no weeks off and were paid hourly the equivalent of what someone making minimum wage would make in an entire year ($15,080), it would still take you over 31 YEARS at that rate just to get to your 1st billion.
I think people's minds just kind of gloss this over a lot of times; a million is a lot, but it's not that much, right? And therefore a billion isn't really that much more than it, right? Close enough. And since it's not that far fetched to think that someone can achieve a million dollars in their life, surely it can't be that much harder to become a billionaire.
Liberals have no serious class analysis. Their idea of the working class is an incoherent mush of educational backgrounds, incomes, job functions and cultural preferences.
