Why is the white working class deprecated under neoliberalism? - Page 2 - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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Modern liberalism. Civil rights and liberties, State responsibility to the people (welfare).
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#14755363
quetzalcoatl wrote:My takeaway from TiG's post is that no effective change is possible without a communist revolution (being equivalent to ending slavery in the nineteenth century). This is demonstrably false. Massive social and economic changes (including ending slavery) have occurred in capitalist nations with no hint of a communist revolution.


To push back a little bit against my friend and the honored gentleman quetzalcoatl, I think my narrative may not have been clear enough.

To begin with, the general premise you have correct in what I was attempting to convey. The problems that we are discussing are a result of capitalism, and while it is possible to change the problems that result from it (like child labour being moved from the imperial powers to somewhere we don't have to see it) the reason these kinds of issues exist at all are a result of capitalism.

I would also push back against the idea that there was "no hint of a communist revolution." Certainly there had been throughout the world, I don't think anybody could argue against that. Within the imperial powers, I think we also need to remember that when they were at their weakest, the people were at their strongest in attempting to destroy capitalism. The easiest place to put this was as World War I was wrapping up and in the inter-war years.

The French military were singing the Internatonale and marching under red flags. The British were putting down the communist movement that inspired the Bolsheviks in Ireland. The Americans had red guerrillas throughout the West and bombs being detonated in cities. Central Europe was engaged in unofficial war against the communists. Red Berlin was the most culturally important place on the planet while Chinese peasants turned against their masters and started to learn about Marx. And dozens of other examples, even in the conservative American heartland (this is a map of just the Socialist Party making advances):

Image

Even if we are to look at far less extreme times that were still strained by comparison, like 1968, you have armed Maoists in California, Trotskyists building barricades in Paris, and Stalinists working with students in Britain.

Communism is the specter haunting Europe, and now the rest of the world. When people can't ignore what's going on any further, they tend to see things for what they are.

Left-wing literature has been exploding for the last year or two (1, 2, 3, 4)—and for good reason. It is incorrect to say that there were no communist revolutions, certainly false to say that there was no hint of them in the major powers in the past, and probably wrong to dismiss the interest in Marx today.

quetzalcoatl wrote:The critique of the New Deal based on its lack of universality is particularly shortsighted. Change never occurs systemically - it occurs locally and is propagated. There is no sense in which it is true that concentration camps (for example) were a prerequisite for the success of the New Deal economic changes.


I was not criticizing the utility of the New Deal. I am ultimately a result of it via my grandparents that benefitted from it. I was only attempting to contextualize the racial component in the United States.

Nor am I saying that Japanese concentration camps were needed for the success of the New Deal, nor lynching of blacks, nor Jim Crow, nor anything else.

But the fact was that all of these things hemmed in the New Deal to one particular set of people. The left side of liberalism will say that this was an unfortunate racial dynamic that needs to be addressed. I think the Marxist would ask why racial dynamic existed in the first place and how it related to the means of production.

I'm not an Americanist, but I could take a few stabs at it:

In the case of Asian exclusion, this was a fear of capital leaving the nation on the one hand, and the fears of the established working class being undercut (and their own actions served to undercut themselves further).

In the case for blacks it was, to some extent, the problem that Toussaint ran across when he liberated the slaves in Haiti—economic production needed to continue. He was able to put many back to work in the fields for virtually no money on the reasonable promise they'd try to find another solution, in the US they used a certain amount of terror to address the problem.

In these situations, it was the premise of capitalism that was the issue. Especially in the 19th/20th century examples in the US, there was no shortage of land and production the like of which the world had never seen. That there was such cruelty and want came from how this was distributed. The New Deal attempted to address this within the limitations of not changing the premise that created the issues to begin with. And so an imperfect racialized solution that, in a dialectic way, reflected the imperfect and racialized question.

quetzalcoatl wrote:Having been involved in labor all my life, it is particularly frustrating to be told that the existence of particular evils precludes any advancement elsewhere. The barriers we face getting people to get off their butts are high enough already without that kind of crap.

Massive changes will continue to occur, and occur without benefit of communist revolution. The only pertinent question is who controls these changes and who benefits. This is the province of politics. The notion that politics is 'only' an interim solution until revolutionary change can be effected is self-indulgent. All our interim solutions are aggregated and become the real world as we see it.


I'm not an accelerationist. I do agree with you that that any advancement for the working people is a good advancement and should be fought for. I also agree with you that getting people off their butts is the number one priority.

On this forum I can go off into long diatribes about history and whatnot, but in actual life, my part of the struggle has been to keep my mouth shut about it (for the most part) and organize labour and unionize where I can. This doesn't directly make Marxists, but there can be no debate about proletarian revolution until there's a sense of a working class that has rights and responsibilities.

quetzalcoatl wrote:Capitalism will not die. It will not be defeated nor eliminated. There will be no revolution, whether televised or not. It can only evolve and mutate. The question of politics is this: can its evolution be guided or molded, or are we helpless in the face of historical forces?


I find this a little silly. Of every single thing humans have ever put together, capitalism is the only thing that will remain forever?

If it helps, we do see capitalism perhaps "mutating" as a result of its contradictions in the same way that feudalism's own form and contradictions "mutated" into capitalism. But this will mean some violence, just as Charles I didn't simply reason that the confused, contradictory, and despotic steps to parliamentary rule was going to lead to an end to the evils of feudalism.
#14755396
One Degree wrote:6. Allow local governments to compete fairly against business.

That won't be a lasting solution without far-reaching campaign finance reform, to block out the business interests that prevent this in the first place.

Banning private campaign donations brushes up against so many vested interests that it would take the equivalent of a revolution to enact, whether it begins violently or is elected and then faces inevitable backlash. The latter seems less chaotic, like it would lend more perceived legitimacy, and much more feasible than some sort of guerrilla movement fighting predator drones. A guerrilla movement that would be immediately be branded treasonous due to its likely foreign backing from a source like Cuba, bearing in mind that no military revolution against a state apparatus has ever succeeded without foreign state backing or backing from a faction within their own nation's state.

The Immortal Goon wrote:even in the conservative American heartland (this is a map of just the Socialist Party making advances):

The Socialist Party actually saw its greatest strength relative to population size in the American heartland. Kansas and Oklahoma were socialist strongholds. Racial tensions changed their leftward bent, as did economic growth in other states like California and Colorado prompting population movement and less demand for land reform.
Last edited by Rousse on 28 Dec 2016 02:40, edited 1 time in total.
#14755447
quetzalcoatl wrote:The divide has always existed. For a few generations, this disruptive effect of this divide was limited by labor getting a relatively larger share of generated wealth. This trend was reversed in the early seventies (The Great Disconnect). The other factor is the decline of the family farm - only in the first half of the twentieth century did the US transform itself from a largely agrarian society into an urban one.


Actually, centralization is a temporary phenomenon. There is no inherent reason why productivity requires geographic concentration. The long-term effect of automation will be decentralization. This can be a good thing, but there's going to be a lot of dislocation and political chaos.


- The decrease of the labor share isn't that large. It seems rural workers are more affected by the general increase in wage inequality also.
- That's quite a claim to make. So far huge advancements in communication did not reverse the trend.
#14755531
The Immortal Goon wrote:I find this a little silly. Of every single thing humans have ever put together, capitalism is the only thing that will remain forever?


Unfortunately, I tend towards rhetorical excess on occasion. But you are correct to point out that nothing lasts forever.

If I had to gamble, I'd say that capitalism liquidates itself, just as it liquidates everything else. Marx kind of said this. But what replaces it is not communism, but another form of capitalism. In fact, this process is ongoing and continuous. This is the revolutionary nature of capitalism: it both contains the seed of its own destruction, and clears the way for its rebirth. Capitalism creates its own dialectic.

Is there a limit to this process? There are of course hard external limits of resource, population and environmental degradation, but assuming humanity does not destroy itself, the process would simply rebound. Like bacteria after a die-off.

The only permanent end to this cycle lies within the nature of the means of production itself. As long as it can be centrally controlled, it will be. This is an iron law. Thus the technological nature of the means of production inevitably fosters an oligarchy. It doesn't really matter to the worker if that oligarchy is nominally socialist. Only if the means of production evolves in such a way that it can no longer be centrally controlled will the cycle of oligarchic control of the means of production be finally ended.

I could be an optimist and say the arc of history is leading us in such a direction. But, as my Mom once told me, there's many a slip twixt cup and lip.
#14770438
One Degree wrote:6. Allow local governments to compete fairly against business.


Have you any idea how 'government' runs, 'local' or otherwise?

If you did, you would know that there is an 'incestuous' relationship between business & 'government'.

In 'government' as in 'business', you never see the 'brown-envelopes', but they do exist, more commonly than you may suppose.
That 'incestuous' relationship, is why so-called 'democracy' is a SHAM, what's the point of voting, when you do not have open & transparent government?

Why do you think the 'Labour' Party would never, ever give the people a referendum over Europe, it's because, like the Tories, they ONLY want 'democracy' as the key to 'power', once elected, YOU the people are irrelevant.

One will never smell the oxygen of real democracy in corridors of 'power', the 'Labour' Party will do everything in it's power to subvert democracy over Europe, they nearly, with the help of the neo-Lib Tories, eliminated the nation state & the formation of one defence force in Europe would have been the final step in the elimination of sovereign states in Europe.

'Labour' want the elimination of our sovereignty, as did the Tories , now, they think that they can, "Divide & Rule" once we leave Europe, they are WRONG on that count.

'Business' has no reason to be involved in any 'democracy', 'democracy' is about 'people', it was New Labour, who couldn't run a whelk stall that subverted our democracy, by allowing them into our democratic government & we will end up like America.
New Labour pumped £ BILLIONS into the pockets of 'private' business, that's why the NHS, education, health, pensioners, housing et'c have all suffered, because of the ideological nonsense embraced by Labour & their buying-off the 'opposition' in business.

Anyone that thinks the 'white working- class exist in the political minds inside or outside of Westminster are sadly mistaken, just try reading any political party's, Liberal, Labour or Tory manifesto's, there will be no mention anywhere of the working class, yet alone 'white' one's.
#14770443
Have you any idea how 'government' runs, 'local' or otherwise?

If you did, you would know that there is an 'incestuous' relationship between business & 'government'.


I am aware of it and it is why I believe the best way to unravel it is by making it a reality. Part of the platform of their relationship is undermining local government ownership of utilities, hospitals, etc. to eliminate competition for private business. We even forbid prisons to compete now. This is the place to fight back because people will embrace the locally government owned rather than the national/international alternatives if given a fair playing field. Private locally owned can not compete, but government owned can through tax subsidy initially. Once established, private locally owned will also flourish.
#14770447
quetzalcoatl wrote:The only permanent end to this cycle lies within the nature of the means of production itself. As long as it can be centrally controlled, it will be. This is an iron law. Thus the technological nature of the means of production inevitably fosters an oligarchy. It doesn't really matter to the worker if that oligarchy is nominally socialist. Only if the means of production evolves in such a way that it can no longer be centrally controlled will the cycle of oligarchic control of the means of production be finally ended.


I do think that there is some wisdom in this. However, it seems to me that this breaks down faster than we think. I don't need to list off to you the various transitions from feudalism and their forms and whatnot into capitalism.

Applying what you said, from that view, there is a certain amount of centralization that remains within the political sphere. But the way things are processed are different.

To my mind, the most compelling argument for your preverbal man on the street has to do with this kind of an argument. We were told that computers would have us work less. But we work longer hours and do more. Electrification promised that we would work less. But we work more. Industrialization had man thousands of times more productive than his fathers, and yet he had to work more. Is not time that our machines work for us instead of generating bigger and bigger profits for our bosses so we can work longer and longer?

Something to that affect. Because it's generally true; we don't need to work this hard if we just decide that we don't want to and do something about it.

But we're a long way from that argument landing on anything now.
#14770451
But we're a long way from that argument landing on anything now.


Maybe instead of working to increase the minimum wage, we should work for fewer hours to be considered full time. The higher wages would then come naturally from a desire from workers to maintain their current buying power.
#14770463
One Degree wrote:Maybe instead of working to increase the minimum wage, we should work for fewer hours to be considered full time. The higher wages would then come naturally from a desire from workers to maintain their current buying power.


Desires of workers will not have an effect on either their wages or buying power. They just won't. We already have limits on hours for an increasing number of workers. Among the many valid critiques of Obama's recovery is that most of the gains in employment were in part-time and contingent workers - the so-called gig economy. The hours people at the bottom feel compelled to work will be determined exclusively by the minimum necessary to ensure the survival of their families. For them, working fewer hours can only serve to submerge them further.

We are now at a point where the ability of our oligarchy to effectively depress wages is unlimited.
#14770563
The hours people at the bottom feel compelled to work will be determined exclusively by the minimum necessary to ensure the survival of their families. For them, working fewer hours can only serve to submerge them further.

Indeed. The only way the working class can 'choose' to work fewer hours is to overthrow the capitalist system itself. Under capitalism, wages naturally tend to drop to subsistence levels. The capitalists will, after all, only pay us enough money to ensure that we keep turning up for work every morning and not a penny more. After all, why would they pay more than that? It would be irrational.

We are now at a point where the ability of our oligarchy to effectively depress wages is unlimited.

We were already at that stage in the 19th century. In retrospect, the 'consumer society' of the 20th century may turn out simply to have been a mirage, a temporary retreat of the bourgeoisie in the face of the threat of communism during the Cold War. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, neo-liberalism went into overdrive and all of the economic and political gains of the working class have been steadily reversed in an attempt to return us to the 'natural' state of capitalism in the 1840s. As Goethe pointed out, history isn't linear and it isn't a circle; it is, in fact, a spiral - we keep returning to the past, but each time at a higher level, and each time there is more at stake.
#14770565
Potemkin wrote:Under capitalism, wages naturally tend to drop to subsistence levels. The capitalists will, after all, only pay us enough money to ensure that we keep turning up for work every morning and not a penny more. After all, why would they pay more than that? It would be irrational.

Interesting that intelligent people can believe such drivel. Under what you call industrial capitalism, there has been a staggering increase in the real wages of non union workers.
#14770591
Interesting that intelligent people can believe such drivel. Under what you call industrial capitalism, there has been a staggering increase in the real wages of non union workers.


There has been no increase in buying power. It now takes two people working in most families to have the buying power of one person pre womens liberation. Another movement that was used to depress wages under the guise of being morally correct, which it was IMO.
#14770670
That was, of course, the effect. Something, incidentally, Marxist feminists had always pointed out.

The cause of feminism for liberal feminists had been the right of every woman to have a maid, a cook, and a nanny.

The cause of feminism for Marxist feminists were to liberate the maid, the cook, and the nanny as the working class itself was liberated.
#14770672
That was, of course, the effect. Something, incidentally, Marxist feminists had always pointed out.


Nice to know, I have always thought I was the only one who understood what was going to happen. I was not very popular at the time. :hmm:
#14770677
Nice to know, I have always thought I was the only one who understood what was going to happen. I was not very popular at the time. :hmm:

Nobody likes a Cassandra, One Degree. Her curse was always to be right but never to be believed. Of course, everybody hated her on sight. ;)
#14770716
Rich wrote:Interesting that intelligent people can believe such drivel. Under what you call industrial capitalism, there has been a staggering increase in the real wages of non union workers.


That depends on what time period you select. The great spurt growth of industrial capitalism (from post Civil War to the immediate post WWII era) saw 'staggering' increases in wages of workers. The mass of Americans came to believe this progress would continue indefinitely.

Since the Great Disconnect (circa 1973) real wages of individuals have declined. This was partially made up by having more members of households working, and partly by raising household debt levels.

With private debt levels reaching saturation, and with female workforce levels essentially maxed out, the decline in real wages continues, unmasked. This is the untold story of the Obama years, and it's why the Democratic Party is in the wilderness. (Not to be too US-centric - a similar story held true for the rest of the industrilaized West.)

@Potemkin
This process is not, despite what both Marxists and Thatcherites tell us, the only alternative. It is in real terms, perfectly feasible technically to have stable living wages, health care, etc., in a mixed capitalist system, without inflation. Yes, our societies have failed to deliver on this, and this is an indictment of the notion of democratic socialism. Yet no other system has delivered either, and the argument for tearing it all down is a lot weaker now than in 1900.
#14771075
Potemkin wrote: As Goethe pointed out, history isn't linear and it isn't a circle; it is, in fact, a spiral - we keep returning to the past, but each time at a higher level, and each time there is more at stake.

Smart Germans pointed out smart things, didn't they, but are we smart enough to interpret them correctly? Marxists believe capitalism will fall as feudalism did just because a smart German said so, or did he? Or will it fall like slavery did? Neither Odoaker nor Alarik was Lenin of his time.
#14771096
Beren wrote:Marxists believe capitalism will fall as feudalism did just because a smart German said so, or did he?

So called Feudalism didn't fall. There was no Bourgeois revolution that overthrow the Feudal Aristocracy. The English civil war happened a hundred years after Mercantile Capitalism had supposedly replaced Feudalism, yet most of the big merchants supported the King. Then there's the problem of China, where Feudalism ended nearly 2000 years before anything that could be called capitalism
#14771113
Rich wrote:This is a Communist lie and the widespread credulity of this nonsense only proves my point to how far Marxism has corrupted the West's intellectual life. There was a expansion of the agricultural population of Britain in the eighteenth century and the early nineteenth century. The living standards of the British working class (agricultural and non agricultural) reached a low point about 1830. This was caused by massive population expansion. The fact that the Malthusian process stopped about the time that Malthus was writing does not invalidate Malthus. Society was Malthusian until recently. Our current prosperity is due to the dramatic fall in the birth rate. It was this fall that stopped technological improvements just leading to more people without any rise in living standards.

More population not only makes the average person poorer, it makes society more unequal. that why in the aftermath of Black Death the British worker had never had it so good. Marginal land and marginal industry could be abandoned, but the power of the worker increased allowing him to take a larger share of the cake relative to the average, the average which had it self increased. Its like these arse holes who think that workers small scale producers early United States had a high standard of living for the time, because of the American Constitution. No the US was prosperous because population density was low. Even without slavery ordinary White Americans would have been prosperous.

Some people know this full well, which is why we always see Libertarians, big business and the Marxists conspiring to flood our countries with more workers. the Marxists do it for their internationalist ideology. the Libertarians and big business do it to make rich people richer.


I agree that the Marxist analysis has big gaping holes, but seriously? Are you saying that if there was only one person alive on Earth, he'd be better off than if he was emebedded in an economic system composed of other people as well?
#14771114
The black death reduced the supply of labor, making it more dear. Obviously there is a limit to this process (the limit being the number necessary to sustain civilization at a particular technological level).

The long-term trend is toward the elimination of labor as a factor in production. We are not there yet, but we get closer every passing year. As a consequence, simply reducing the number of workers will not necessarily make their contributions more dear. We have reduced the number of buggy whips and wooden spokes to near zero, and yet the demand for them does not increase.

Inequality in the West has increased to staggering levels in the past half-century. It was reduced markedly in the first half of the 20th century. Something other than population levels was at work, no?

Human existence would indeed improve by leaps and bounds with a smaller population - but for other reasons than labor supply.

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