not just workers

[admice]

I finally identified what was bugging me. It’s not just the language being archaic “workers” “proletariat” and the, imo, affectation, of “comrade”, just my opinion, mind you, but it’s that it’s not just WORKERS it’s about HUMAN rights. What about the population of, primarily women, who are raising children and not directly contributing to the economy? (I know I’m repeating other people’s thoughts here). Shouldn’t they be provided for? I had to work while raising my child, but some women do not.

Was reading this http://www.deleonism.org/deleon.htm today and it struck me again: There are a whole lot of other people on this planet than ‘worker’s’.

I know language is important and communism and socialism have been so twisted in meaning as well as rendered confusing by all the distinctions, but seems to me some should just be updated and made more inclusive.

[alanjjohnstone]

Fraid even "people"  has had its meaning corrupted. "We are the people" is a popular loyalist slogan in Northern Ireland and with extremist protestants in Scotland. i am still prone to using worker or labouring class, since under our definition regardless of wheher you work or not, if you aren't a capitalist, you are a worker. Older articles will also invariably call a worker a he, his or a him.But more you read recent stuff , more humanity or community and gender neutral is substituted. Like everything it will take a while to fully.   

[steve colborn]

Whether or not one is in employment, if, at the end of the day, you rely on selling yoyur mental and physical abilities, for a wage or a salary, you are a member of the working class, a worker. If what you do, (which is not, nor has been overly valued by Capitalists), is be a stay at home mom, then great, in a Socialist society, where "all" human beings are valued, this will be a valuable, (perhaps the most valuable) contribution to the continuation of Socialism, society and most assuredly, the species.As a life time Socialist, I can gaurentee I think no differently about a fellow human being, because of their gender, colour, ethnicty, sexual orientation, or any other of the plethora of terms our "betters" use to divide us.Their divide and conquer does not work here! Stevie C.

[admice]

My point was, if we/you are trying to appeal to a mass of people, using 'worker' is misleading. Won't appeal to as many. However "Fraid even "people"  has had its meaning corrupted. "We are the people" is a popular loyalist slogan in Northern Ireland and with extremist protestants in Scotland" if it's already been corrupted, which sucks, then, yes using an alternative, I guess, is better. Sigh.

[steve colborn]

Actually Ad, worker is not misleading. One is either a "worker", someone who sells their  abilities for a wage or salary, or one is a Capitalist, someone who lives of the surplus value, created by the majority.Yeah I know you know this but it bears to be restated. What I really meant to say, was, that with a "class consciousness", then all these "corrupted" phrases, will not be corrupted, because the majority will know their meaning. Ideas spread, once a critical mass is reached, exponentially. Look at the events of the "Arab Spring", as an example. Stevie C.

[Anonymous]

This is a society based on illusions.  mythologies, and fetishismWe are workers, and we are wage slaves too. The only freedom that what we  have is that,  we can elect our own masters, it is a relationship master-slave. Some modern slaves have a car to present themselves at the point of production, and some modern slaves carry a credit card in their wallets. A retiree is also a worker, and retirement is defined is  deferred salary. We have been brainwashed to believe that we are free, and that we have rightsWe do not pay taxes, they are paid by the capitalist class from their own surplus value, and the state is financed with surplus value. Welfare, food stamps, state employees, policemen, military,  presidents, senator, etc, etc, are run, financed,  and paid  with surplus valueThe middle class does not exist, it is a fallacy created by the capitalist class, we all fall within the category of workers, disposed, we do not even own the cemeteries,we do not own anything, but we produce everything which is legally stolen ( legal crime )  by a group of parasitesSocial classes are defined according to their relationship with the means of production, if we do not own any means of production, we are workers, proletariat, exploited, or wage slaves, and exploitation takes place at the point of productionThe net salary is the payment that we receive for selling our labor power to the capitalist class, and they are the necessary means to keep the slaves alive, and ready to continue producing more profits. Intellectuals are proletarians too.Blue collar workers, white collars workers they are just fetish and fallacy created by the capitalist society, they are wage slaves too. Some romantic peoples do not like to be called wages slaves, but that is what we are, slaves without chains in our feet.

[J Surman]

Words, terms, labels, interpretations – all liable to be thought of differently by just about anybody! There was a very interesting discussion at this year's Birmingham summer school whether to use 'comrade', with whom to use it, how attendees felt about using it, having it used to address them etc, etc. I believe many of us thought more about it that day than maybe we had for some time. My point being that it comes down to usage – where , when, how ; to habit – you use it or don't; and comfort – what sits comforably for the individual.But to move on to 'workers' and the use thereof. How I think of it is this. Whether or not you are reimbursed for your efforts, if you need to work at something, either a 'job', a 'profession', a 'calling' or at home doing the washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, rearing offspring, planting, weeding and picking the family plot, fetching firewood, fetching water, picking berries and roots in the forest – it matters not whether you 'earn'  a lot, a little or nothing. If you HAVE to do any of these things in this current system because if you didn't you would soon become homeless or hungry or without the means to pay your bills, on whatever level (in your mind compare examples from' developed'  and 'developing' or even 'under-developed' world – more labels for misinterpretation!) -then you are of the working class. Those who live off the work of the rest of us, that tiny minority of individuals around the world who don't have to do anything for survival, because the rest of us collectively perform that function, can be labelled 'parasites' or 'capitalists'.Admice said, 'I had to work whilst raising my child' – and that is the position that most mothers and fathers are in. They HAVE to. When we achieve the goal of a truly equitable, fair and impartial world system the pressures will be reduced considerably for all 'workers' – but that's a different topic!Use whatever words sit comfortably but endeavour to be understood as widely as possible. It's the THOUGHT that counts, not the individual words.

[rodshaw]

I, too, sometimes wish there were better words for some of the things we are trying to describe. We have enough trouble with the very words 'socialism' and 'communism' because of how they have been hijacked. But they're the best we've got. It can be difficult for non-socialists to grasp the party's notion of a worker, or being working class. There are certainly grey areas. What about, say, an ex-middle manager who has retired on a reasonably comfortable pension and may have another 20 or 30 years to live without actually having to work? Or a highly paid lawyer in a big firm who works 12 hours a day and has a fat bank account but doesn't employ or exploit anyone? What about a self-employed small businessman, say a builder, who employs a few workers himself and isn't relying on a wage or salary as an employee but on his own small profits to make the business tick over? Or what about people who are on benefits (and may actually be perceived as scroungers) because they can't find work?Despite these grey areas, the general position holds true. So it's not really about whether you actually go to work for an employer on a daily basis (although it is mostly). It's a question of economic dependence. The comfortably retired pensioner is effectively living off deferred payments from his employer, the amount of which was calculated in a very hard-headed way while he was employed. The housewife and children depend on the husband's income (or vice versa). The small businessman would have serious problems if he stopped getting customers.Some people are certainly luckier or more able than others and this in itself breeds resentment or a feeling that the better off are a different class, or that anyone can make it big if they try hard enough. We know it's all smoke and mirrors.

[Anonymous]

J Surman wrote:

Words, terms , labels, interpretations – all liable to be thought of differently by just about anybody! There was a very interesting discussion at this year's Birmingham summer school whether to use 'comrade', with whom to use it, how attendees felt about using it, having it used to address them etc, etc. I believe many of us thought more about it that day than maybe we had for some time. My point being that it comes down to usage – where , when, how ; to habit – you use it or don't; and comfort – what sits comforably for the individual.But to move on to 'workers' and the use thereof. How I think of it is this. Whether  or not you are reimbursed for your efforts, if you need to work at something, either a 'job' , a 'profession', a 'calling' or at home doing the washing, ironing, cleaning, cooking, rearing offspring, planting, weeding and picking the family plot, fetching firewood, fetching water, picking berries and roots in the forest – it matters not whether you 'earn'  a lot, a little or nothing. If you HAVE to do any of these things in this current system because if you didn't you would soon become homeless or hungry or without the means to pay your bills, on whatever level (in your mind compare examples from' developed'  and 'developing' or even 'under-developed' world – more labels for misinterpretation!) -then you are of the working class. Those who live off the work of the rest of us, that tiny minority of individuals around the world who don't have to do anything for survival, because the rest of us collectively perform that function, can be labelled 'parasites' or 'capitalists.Admice said, 'I had to work whlist raising my child' – and that is the position that most mothers and fathers are in. They HAVE to. When we achieve the goal of a truly equitable, fair and impartial world system the pressures will be reduced considerably for all 'workers' – but that's a different topic!Use whatever words sit comfortably but endeavour to be understood as widely as possible. It's theTHOUGHT that counts, not the individual words.

=========================================================================================================It does not make any difference how we are called, or what terms and definition they use, or  what interpretation has been  propagated or given by the best professor of the most prestigious universities,  we are workers,  even if we are seating on a rocking chair, or laying on a Hamaca, or holding a bottle of Bacardi or Barbacourt rum, or Johnny Walker.We are the real producers, and at the present time, from the bottom to the top, or vice versa, this society is being run by the working class, the only problem is that we do not own the means of production, if we had the proper subjective conditions in our minds, the capitalists would  last less than a roach in a chicken nest, and they would be forced to give up, and go along with us.We, the workers, united become the powerful ones, we do not need them, they need us, and we do not need their politicians either, and we do not need their leaders, they are not giving anything to us, they are not our benefactors, they do not represent the workers, the poor ( the workers ) do not need the rich, they need us, we are paying for their luxury with our sweat, we are supporting a bunch of thievesThe definition is based in regard to our relationship with the means of production, or the relationship of having, or not having the means of production, the relationship of exploited or exploiter ( exploitation in political economy means extraction of surplus value, or profits ) We do not need a PHD in economics to understand that. The real definition of democracy strive on who controls and owns the means of production, we as workers, we are living under their democracy, it is not our own democracy, workers put them in power, and when we protest they beat us using their repressive forces, their gendarmes. If we do not understand that we are all workers we have serious sociological and economical conflicts in our minds,  Franz Fanon called it:  The colonized mentality The capitalists  are always  saying that the workers are lazy when they are the real lazy one, because they do not have to work in order to accumulate wealth. Nobody can accumulate wealth by being a wage slaves, you have to be a thieve of others peoples sweats in order to be a capitalist, it is only a pipe dream inserted in our minds that some peoples became rich with their own efforts. To create one rich person they need  millions of poor peoples, and when we say poor peoples, we mean wage slaves, you can be a poor person even if you have a jobAfter the black slaves worked for more than 400 years for free to their masters they were considered as lazy peoples, after the natives of the Americas ( North, South, Central and the Caribbean ) were killed,  robbed their lands and possessions,  were forced to work for free at the mines, and in the plantation and the houses of their masters, and working for free for the religious leaders,  they were considered as lazy and savages.All the peoples from the Aztlan Territories were expelled, enslaved, and killed, and the remaining were considered as illegal, lazy, and discriminated after their lands was also stolen for the expansion of capitalism.In the particular case of the Mexican and the US how can the Mexican be considered as illegal and lazy when those territories were stolen and they were forced to work as slaves ? The original Guadalupe-Hidalgo treaty said that they were able to cross the borders anytime they want, and in 1930 more than 2 millions were deported and many were citizen of the USIn order to understand the history of the working class, and what we are, and what we can do, and what we do and produce on the planet earth,   we must read and study the proper sources, and when we understand that, we acquire what is called class consciousness, and then, we can throw in the toilet, or in  the latrine, or in the trash bin, the bourgeois ideology, that is the reason why the ruling class does not want the workers to read about Marx or Engels or other socialists thinkers and they have distorted their body of ideas. In some countries in the past it was a criminal act to study and read those ideas

[Anonymous]

rodshaw wrote:

I, too, sometimes wish there were better words for some of the things we are trying to describe. We have enough trouble with the very words 'socialism' and 'communism' because of how they have been hijacked. But they're the best we've got. It can be difficult for non-socialists to grasp the party's notion of a worker, or being working class. There are certainly grey areas. What about, say, an ex-middle manager who has retired on a reasonably comfortable pension and may have another 20 or 30 years to live without actually having to work? Or a highly paid lawyer in a big firm who works 12 hours a day and has a fat bank account but doesn't employ or exploit anyone? What about a self-employed small businessman, say a builder, who employs a few workers himself and isn't relying on a wage or salary as an employee but on his own small profits to make the business tick over? Or what about people who are on benefits (and may actually be perceived as scroungers) because they can't find work?Despite these grey areas, the general position holds true. So it's not really about whether you actually go to work for an employer on a daily basis (although it is mostly). It's a question of economic dependence. The comfortably retired pensioner is effectively living off deferred payments from his employer, the amount of which was calculated in a very hard-headed way while he was employed. The housewife and children depend on the husband's income (or vice versa). The small businessman would have serious problems if he stopped getting customers.Some people are certainly luckier or more able than others and this in itself breeds resentment or a feeling that the better off are a different class, or that anyone can make it big if they try hard enough. We know it's all smoke and mirrors.

Some small business owners fall in the category of workers

[rodshaw]

mcolome1 wrote:

Some small business owners fall in the category of workers

Yes, exactly, even though they're not working for an employer for a wage or salary. They no doubt have dreams of expanding their business to become capitalists – but of course the vast majority never do.

[Anonymous]

rodshaw wrote:

mcolome1 wrote:

Some small business owners fall in the category of workers

Yes, exactly, even though they're not working for an employer for a wage or salary. They no doubt have dreams of expanding their business to become capitalists – but of course the vast majority never do.

 The Leninist will consider them as petty bourgeois because they are also mistaken in their class definition, but In the past I saw many so called 'petty bourgeois helping them financially, and most of the members of their groups can be called petty bourgeois according to their definition because they were intellectuals, small business owners, students, and artisans. PS Some small business owners they also have a salary, they have to do it, otherwise they will go into bankruptcy, and many of them can not compete with the largest  business owners, and many have been forced to join the proletarian class. This crisis has taken into bankruptcy many small business owners ( sole proprietorship, and partnership  ) 

[Author]

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