Young Master Smeet
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SP,Considering I never said "our class conceived" I said it was not an idea imposed upon our class or alien to it, and I pointed to artisans and labourers from the puritain and protestant movement as demonstration that the workign class was there when the idea was born. I would also dispute that religion is always a tool of the ruling class. Many working class revolutionaries conceived their ideas as adaptations of religious thought: the muggletonians, the diggers, the levellers. EP Thompson's 'Witness against the beast' is a wonderful journey through the religious fringes of eighteenth century artisan london.No idea belongs wholly to one person or one class, its terms are contested and layered with different meanings. The dignity of labour, the freedom from the oppression of the guildmaster and the idea that your employer leaves charge of you at the work door were gains for our class, freed from the structured hieracrhies of feudal life. My pay packet is mine, I earned it, I spend it how I want, and I keep myself independently. Those are powerful working class ideas.
As I said, you introduced the term, not me. Having realised my mistake in not making that correction, I now have. I should pay more attention.Dignity of labour has indeed been used by the ruling class, in an attempt to hijack the term.I have, incidentally, provided examples for which you have provided no rebuttal of the development of working class notions of the value of work, including contribution to protestant notions. I think there is some onus on yourself to explain why you think the working class have brought nothing to the intellectual party, and seem only to enter history bearing the thumb prints of other classes (by your account).I'll also throw in the history of the friendly societies (which Frank Field has tried to raise in his attacks on the welfare state) as a vector for the working class values:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_society
Well, first off, after due consideration I decided to clarify that "work ethic" was your term, that I shouldn't have let pass in the first instance. Providing proof would be difficult, since it involves going back to a time when the nascent working class and the bourgoisie both spent a lot of time attacking the aristocracy. I have given examples in which the elevation to free labourer from bondsman was part of the class struggle to realise its freedom. I could produce "When adam delved and eve span" except that goes all the way back to the peasants revolt, so it's not autochthonous to the working class. I've already produced the protestant sectaries who would have had a strong working class presence (even without having a local capitalist also as a member). Add the Miners, and I think there's enough for my purposes.Lets remember that the eary working class would have been in the same guilds as their employers: they were apprentices to master, so they would necessarilly have shared a lot of views (the masters go on to be industrialists, the apprentices waged workers).
Surely we could stand on the principle that our mayor would become a figurehead for an elected body. I beleive in Canada the Governor of one province did something like that. i.e. we'd have to stand on a slate of spreading democracy. Admittedly, it does raise the terrifying prospect of use having a city fall into our lap (as happened to the English Democrats in Doncaster) where we'd actually have to take charge of administering a city under capitalism, but we'd have to show how we can be different. If we're going to be taken seriously, we have to take this issue on head on.
SP, ISTR it ws you who introduced the term 'Work ethic' I didn't use those words, I'd categoprise what I was talking about under the rubric of 'dignity of labour' which is very much the workng class version.Alan,
Quote:Bonded servitude is a red herring, YMS, and the weighmen was a response to already existing piece -rates system to control it, they did not initiate it.But the struggle against bonded labour and the freedom to sell labour power at a market rate is at the very nub of the argument, when it was in the interests of workers to do so, they promoted and built market relations. Ruskin might have sighed about the cash nexus breaking down the relations between men, but for workers it was a liberation, of sorts. yes, in the context of enclosure there was a form of compulsion, but for the bst part of a century weavers were doing very nicely thank you. There was as much pull as push.The workers formed their own churches, and their own theology, hence the likes of William Blake (OK, technically an artisan, but the working class culture was very much driven by the artisans as much as the proletarians).
But the wages system precisely does away with betters, "never say thank you for a paycheck" means there is no gratitude to the employer, but money paid for work done well. The independent workers is freed from subservience and looks the employer in the eye and says 'How much?'.We can look to sport, the gentlemen versus players. For the middle class, they venerated the gentlemen, seeing professionalism as being subservient to the aristocracy (17th Century squires kept farm hands who were professional cricketers to play for them and back up their gambling), being a gentleman amateur meant playing the game for itself. For the working class sportsmen being paid for a job well done was a necessity and also a point of pride: just look at today how amateur is a universal perjorative, wheras professional is a positive term.For the work ethic, ask: who were the quakers, the protestants, the dissenters? Why were so many weavers of that disposition?
SP,I've already given one example, teh Durham miners, at the turn of the nineteenth century, were bonded labour. They couldn't leave their jobs. they fought to introduce the wages system and market pay. Later the National Union of Miners fought for the check-weigh-men to implement peice rates and hold the employers to account. The working class struggled and devloped the wages system, and for many being a skilled workers was a step up from being a poor farm labourer. Yes, there were industrial horrors, but for some of the the wages system was the remedy.As has been pointed out the main response is 'it sounds lovely, but it'll never work', at a basic level capitalism does work for the majority of workers. For many it doesn't, but it's proved adaptive to them.
Erm, the Labour Party owes more to Methodism than is does to Marxism: Methodism, and non-conformist low protestantism (which developed from the late seventeenth century onwards) was very much part and parcel of the working class freeing itself from Anglican domination, especially the aspirant skilled working class. It wasn't imposed, and its imposition couldn't have been welcomed if the working class had no usef for such ideas anyway.
Quote:A brief perusal of the case for Socialism, is the most that can be given to the claim of the, "heard and rejecting our case".And most people stop there. they have no need to read on, they reject at that point. In discussion, though, they do put forward sophisticated understandings of how markets work, they might not have a deep knowledged of collatoralised default swaps or futures trading, but then, neither do most economists. We're getting close to "No True Scotsman" Fallacies here.If the workers are 'conditioned' we are doomed, and the only alternative is Leninist style leqadership to break the chains. We should be wary of the siren voices of the 'What if I told you…' Matrix memes. the workers are Sheeple. If the working class makes itself, and capitalism, then it has the power to transform itself and capitalism. The capitalist class are like the villagers tryign to placate a volcan, they're not in charge, their just riding their luck.
I stand by the claim that many workers have heard and rejected our case, and that they stand consciously by capitalism, that can be seen in any conversation with even the mosts eemingly politically illiterate worker, in my experience. For now, they have something that works (for them) even when our case is explained, they have the examples of failed revolutions in their mind as real examples against our hypothetical (and different) model.The work ethic was very much developed by our class and is part of the way the working class built capitalism. Yes, it has historic roots with the apprentices in the guilds which were (late middle ages) part of the wider bourgeois coalition. If it didn't work for us, it wouldn't have such a hold. We have use of it too. The working class fought hard to create the wages system, for fair markets, to build capitalism, because that freed us. We need workplace discipline, because that's the only way our workplaces can function.Tehre's no muddle here. the working class could have socalism if it wanted, and has chosen not to.
Sp,I can only take you at your word, and try and explain my position accordingly. I'd rather not see the working class as the passive objects of the ruling class, teh work ethic, things like 'never say thank you for a pay check' run deep within working class culture: you worked for it, you earned it. Also, looking out for your mates, and wanting to see them allright, mutual aid. The most venemous people wrt benefits are usually those who don't have to work for a living themselves, but that doesn't mean that they aren't latching on to some genuine wworking class feeling (that they hvave to do so is testament to the political power of working class votes). We do the same when we talk about the scroungers in Buckingham Palace.Those millions of conversations take the form of suspicion against political changes that may weaken the working class (workers are very keen on the vote) and its current freedoms; also a suspiscion that the claims of the socialists will not be delivered. After all, the examples of the Russian and French and other revolutions are there. Personally, I'd advise you not to talk down the sophistication of working class political analysis. The key point is that the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class, but they're not the only ideas. There is a constant contest, but it is towo sided, and sometimes (some sections of) the workers entirely in their own interests take positions with which we would profoundly disagree.
Quote:The Communists do not form a separate party opposed to the other working-class parties.They have no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole.In many ways, this is the most psychologically difficult (or should that be, temprementally) part of of the manifesto, since in many ways its an abdication of responsibility, it says 'We can't change the world by an act of will, we can only join in with actual existing movements', it is part and parcel with the ide that the emancipation of the working class must be its own act. Substitution not allowed. The question becomes, what do the blue sky thinkers and early adopters do? Simply join in with the working class (even when we feel they are deadly wrong) or try to take charge of the movement to promote and guide its actions to speed the way? Or, as in our case, stand vry much on the sidelines with a clear banner saying 'This way'? It's clear, i think, that by temprement and interest that the working class is the bulwark of democracy in society, and defending that must be our minimum position.
SP,Identity is simply how a person sees themself being and becoming. So long as thy live up to their own expectations, they will be relatively content. The question is, what is more revolutionary, wanting to be more, or trying to stay the same when it is being taken away.Marx used the analogy of living next door to someone in a bigger house, it doesn't matter if you live in a mansion if your neighbour lives in a palace, you'll always want a palace. In that instance, part of your identity is being the same, or equal to your neighbour.The alternative is when, say, after swinging rounds of redundancies, people's communities are ripped apart, and they can no linger see themselves living as they have hitherto, and they rise up to defend a communal and personal identity.To take another example, in a heternormative society, a person might identify as heterosexual, and get married, have children, etc. but be confronted with their lack of engagement with heterosexual sex and their experience of feelings of homosexual attracton, this would lead, eventually, to the collapse of their heterosexual identity, and drastic change in their life.A further point, there is plenty of socialisation going on, but much of that is the working class socialising it's memebrs in it's interest. yes, the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class, but they're not the only ideas. A lot of working people dislike scroungers, and believe in work: the ruling class home in on such views, but they are not alien viws to the class.
LBird,I trot it out because, in spite of your protestations, there's precious little real in your realism. Railing against the tyranny of rocks is to be a Cnut railing against the tides. Understanding that we are rocks, that rocks.
