With the tremendous flop of Occupy’s promised May Day General Strike, and the rancorous denunciations by libertarian Occupiers of the labor-backed “99% Spring” non-violence trainings over the last couple of months, even the most ardent Occupiers are beginning to admit they need a change of strategy, calling for a new “meme” to continue New York’s OWS movement which promised much, but has produced little. The outcome of the Chicago protests have energized some, while causing others to question the trend of some more extremist elements escalating towards more aggressive radicalization. Disturbing reports of some former Occupiers caught in an FBI sting operation to bomb a commuter bridge in the northeast, and the increasing alignment of others toward the controversial “Black Bloc” have left working-class supporters feeling increasingly alienated. It has become increasingly clear to this observer that without a proper understanding of the greater struggle at hand and its causes, and lacking a clear and comprehensive solution, the movement is doomed to failure.
This is not the first time this has happened. The SDS (Students for a Democratic Society) movement in the 1960s, born out of older left and labor movements energized by the 60s New Left had a huge following for several years as students swelled their ranks across the country, protesting the Vietnam War. However, as the war dragged on without relief and the protests seemed to be becoming increasingly ineffectual against the monolithic military-industrial complex and complacent voting base, a faction within the SDS grew restless and formed the Weathermen, in order to “bring the war home” – and awaken the American public to the horrors that were being inflicted on a daily basis to the people of Vietnam. The bombings of government targets they conducted over the following years at first generated much publicity and discussion, but quickly lost support with the very people they were attempting to goad into action. Despite evading capture for over 10 years, the group of radicals had little to show for their daring actions, and it caused the SDS as a whole to fracture and crumble, and they themselves had to spend more time trying to survive than actually get their message out to the public.
What Occupy and the SDS have in common is this: without laying the groundwork of educating and organizing the working class (and Occupy has yet to even identify and align itself as a solidly working class movement), radical direct actions will only serve to alienate the very people they are seeking to awaken. This is not to say that there is no place for openly confronting the oppressors of the people with force in the streets. However, it must be done with the support of the people, and that only comes with time, and a solid message and awakening class-consciousness.
Daniel Lee
June 23, 2012
Andrew, you accuse Prole of being a “classist” as if it were some dirty word. I freely acknowledge that I am a classist – I believe that the Working Class is the only class that matters. The “Middle Class” is a capitalist illusion – a combination of petite – bourgeois and working class lumped together to give the illusion of upward mobility, when in reality, the working class are the ones who built this country, who produce everything, on whose backs the rich build their fortunes. It is the working class which rightly deserves the fruits of its labors, and complete control of the means of production. There can be no commonality shared between the master and the slave, the exploiter and the exploited. In order for one to prosper, the other must be subjugated. I, as a Communist and a proud member of the proletariat, know that as long as the rich have control, there is not, nor will there ever be true democracy and freedom for the working man. Only when they have been entirely eliminated from their positions of power and influence and their ill-gotten gains for which they have raped and enslaved the people been taken away, can the working class know peace and prosperity. There can only be true democracy in a working-class democracy – a society of equals undivided by wealth and status. Should a rapist or child molester be entrusted as a school teacher or principal? Absolutely not! Why then should the rapists and exploiters of the people, who actively scheme to enslave generation after generation of workers, be allowed to govern society or have a say in its operation? Capitalists are criminals of the worst sort. A mass murderer in his career of crime may kill dozens, even a hundred. But a Capitalist enslaves billions, and robs entire generations of workers not yet even born through promoting the destruction of worker’s rights, wars of profit, low wages, and crippling inequality. The Capitalist class must be dealt with as criminals, and their influence eradicated from society. Then, and only then, will the working class find freedom and peace which it so very much deserves.
Andrew
June 23, 2012
Then you are no better than the Nazi’s who burned Jews in ovens because they believed that the Jews were the greatest evil of the world. They did what they were told to do and went along with the “Because they are evil” line that was fed to them. Your hatred is not rational, it is not logical, it is not righteous. You are not a defender of the people, nor are you some guardian of equality. You are a fanatic, you will believe even if whatever god you believe in were to descend from the sky and inform you of your failing, because it is not a political ideology that you follow, you follow the religion of Communism. As your counterparts in the religion of capitalism, or the religion of liberal politics do, you simply believe without thought. You can not articulate beyond your doctrine, the mantra is all that matters.
You do not recognize the vast fallacy in logic you perpetrate because you do not think logically. You think emotionally only. You don’t even recognize that you just said the people you think matter, don’t matter and that your way is one of endless death and constant destruction.
Pretend for a moment you succeed, all is as you claim to wish it to be. We will pretend you’ve managed to solve all the problems in practical implementation of pure socialism. Imagine now a group of 1000000 crops up in your little paradise. This group, by your standards doesn’t think right. They think that people should trade shells with one another for favors. They decide they don’t want to live in your utopia, they want to trade their shells with each other instead of be given something for nothing, they aren’t right in the head, remember. Do you stop them from breaking away from your society? If they grow, they might attract more people and take away from your society, but if they are wrong, they could all die slowly of starvation or exposure. Maybe they grow strong enough and wage war, maybe they stay peaceful and only want to coexist…Do you let them go, do you force them to stay or do you exterminate the threat they might pose before they have a chance to plunge your paradise into a new capitalist era?
Do you have the right to tell people what to think, even if you think it’s for their own good? Do you have the right to force them how to think? What to do? Does anyone have that right? Your proletariat is as much a communist illusion as you believe the middle class is a capitalist illusion. They are means of division by people smart enough to recognize they can’t fight everyone. You fight me, even though we both want equality, help for the poor and people to stop killing whales. We have more in common than you think, and you fight me anyway, because I don’t think exactly like you’ve been told a good little communist thinks. You want to keep dancing on your strings? Your business, but don’t fool yourself into thinking it’s for some noble cause, it’s because you heard it somewhere that capitalism is the work of the devil and by gum you won’t be caught up in the devils work. Maybe it is, but you don’t have a clue how the system really works, where it came from or why it works. So you have no idea why it’s evil, just that your supposed to fight it because that’s how you save all the people “just like you.”
Daniel Lee
June 23, 2012
Andrew, LOL oh Andrew you assume so much, but know so little. I don’t hate the bourgeoisie, any more than the scorpion hated the frog in the fable – the fact is that history shows us a continuing cycle of struggle between peoples, or classes. As Marx said in the Communist Manifesto, “Freeman and slave, patrician and plebeian, lord and serf, guild-master and journeyman, in a word, oppressor and oppressed, stood in constant opposition to one another, carried on an uninterrupted, now hidden, now open fight, a fight that each time ended, either in a revolutionary reconstitution of society at large, or in the common ruin of the contending classes.”
I have not always been a Marxist, this is not something I was forced to believe in. I have seen and felt the reality of capitalist exploitation, even when I had been brought up to blindly believe in the “free market” and the values of capitalism. It was experience which taught me the truth of the science of Marxism, and an understanding of history which has proved the dialectic. You cannot presume to know me or anything about me.
As with any struggle, there is a side to be chosen. I have chosen the side of the working class. You have made yourself and apologist for the oppressor. For now, you feel secure denouncing those of us fighting for the proletariat, but everything changes, and capitalism’s imperialist death grip on this society is already slipping. In this class war, all must choose a side. Choose wisely.
Andrew
June 23, 2012
Don’t hate huh? If you say so, know yourself, know your enemies, know your friends or know defeat. Forced enslavement of your mind, or voluntary enslavement of your mind, it makes little difference, the result is the same. Rigid unthinking adherence based on intellectualism and tugged heart strings.
You can tell yourself I don’t know anything, dismiss me however makes you feel better about yourself. We both know you didn’t answer the question and we both know why you didn’t answer the question. You had the chance to “convert” me to your way of thought, and you couldn’t take it. So, scoff and shake your head at sad little misguided me, who just doesn’t understand the “truth” and can’t see the “logic” of your religion. Don’t worry though, somehow I’ll manage in my “ignorance.”
Twice now, you’ve accused me of something, and twice now you’ve done so devoid of evidence. First, I don’t provide evidence for statistics, now, I’m an apologist? I don’t recall apologizing for anyone, or anything. If considering multiple viewpoints before deciding on core values is “apologist” then I can understand even better why you are the staunch ideologue that you are. Considering that is all we have been talking about, I can only assume that is what you mean by “apologist.” Unless of course you mean citing facts that discount a communist thinker, in which case, you are exactly what I thought, someone who will ignore facts in favor of your religious zeal.
In the end, you’ll pick your side, and you’ll fight your war, and like all who seek war, you’ll find the horror in it’s reality and fervently wish you could wring the blood stains out of what will be left of your blackened shadow of a soul. The tragedy is, you’ll fight people you don’t have too, just because you refuse to see people, only “sides.”
Andrew
June 23, 2012
correction in spelling-
“based on intellectualism” should read “based on pseudo-intellectualism”
Daniel Lee
June 22, 2012
Andrew, well the Tea Bagger convo is a little OT, but the main reason why they have been “successful” as opposed to OWS is that they have been founded and funded by David and Charles Koch and their “Americans for Prosperity” PAC. Money talks in politics, and the the baggers are certainly well-funded, using a false populist message of small government (where it suits them – just not in cutting Medicare or letting Gay people marry or Immigrants live here) and good old-fashioned McCarthyist Red Scare tactics with religious overtones (that Socialist Muslim Obummer, we knows he aint got his birth certificate!).
As for the so-called “white” majority, I notice how you love to throw percentages out there without supporting them. I checked the US Census data for 2010, and the percentage identified as “white” NOT “White, non-Hispanic” is 72%. What it doesn’t show is a trend in many Latino people not to identify as Latino or Hispanic origin on the Census – ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/for-many-latinos-race-is-more-culture-than-color.html?pagewanted=all ) mostly due to other issues which factor in much larger for them than simply the boneheaded way the US classifies race as color.
But The blog post was NOT about the Tea Party. I could’ve written a lot about that had I decided to, but anyone with half a brain in their head knows they’re a bunch of idiots – as evidenced by a Gallup Poll in August of last year which showed only 26% of registered voters supported the Tea Party: ( http://www.gallup.com/poll/148940/Tea-Party-Sparks-Antipathy-Passion.aspx ).
I would much rather discuss why Occupy is not a working-class movement, and what it would take to scrape together the remnants of it and give it proper goals and focus before it is completely lost.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
Daniel, if you read my original post, you’d realize I was talking about the OWS and was not the one who took the conversation away from the topic. I merely responded to comments that did so and only then those parts that maintained some semblance of relevance or contradicted truth.
You noticed I love to throw statistics out there without supporting them? Interesting, I thought I put a link to the data I was talking about at the bottom of that post…With the words “Do not believe what I say, look things up yourself.” (Paraphrasing). Oh, wait… I did put a link to the data I was using, which was drawn from census data by Gallup, don’t like their data, not my problem.(Since your using them to exclusively support and assert that the tea party are “idiots”, i’ll assume you don’t have any trouble accepting the validity of their data, or you might reconsider the definition of the word “idiot” to include yourself.) Write Gallup, as for more supporting evidence, here https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/us.html, perhaps the CIA and Gallup are wrong, in which case, the New York Times is the only credible source of information and we should both be ashamed of ourselves for not listening exclusively to them.
As for the data, lets use your New York Times articles data to modify mine from Gallup, 18 million identified as other but were counted as white? Ok, that’s a little less than 6% of the population, so we’ll drop that out of the 75%, 69%. Crazy, my comment still stands true, they say there are roughly 50 million Hispanics in the country, ok, we’ll count all of them then as Hispanic and not allow that number to shift to white, regardless of how the individual feels. that’s about 17% of the population, we wouldn’t want to take anything away from any other races for this argument, so lets say that ALL Hispanics identified as white and just knock that off the 75%, we find ourselves looking at a white population of 53%, still the largest population of a single ethnicity, so the comment is still, unfortunately for you, true. We can keep deciding that one ethnicity derived from European ancestry is or is not classifiable as white, or we can simply agree that the majority population of the US is white and therefore any movement that gains traction with the majority of the population will have a significant white majority population within it. In much the same manner a movement in japan that is supported by a majority of the nations population will invariably have a majority Japanese following and is therefore as I said before, not out of the norm.
The fact is, I don’t care particularly for either movement, the OWS or the TP, that your so hung up in your hateful ideology to bother considering their point of view tells me your as much a socialist as Mr. Center is. Socialism means equality, not equality for anyone you happen to feel should have it and no one else. Marx didn’t advocate that SOME people are equal and others are less so, that’s where the Soviet Union, China and North Korea have all failed. He advocated for taking power and equalizing it across ALL people, not just some people that you think should have it and others that shouldn’t. How is that any better than you imagine the current system of “wealthy oppression” is? So go and hate your “tea baggers” or whatever nonsense “clever” little name you can think of to marginalize people. Dream, dream away about how your better than they are and they just aren’t really people so they don’t matter. I hope you never find yourself in a position of power, the world has enough tyrants and dictators who feel they *know* whats best for everyone if only people would just do what they say.
Andrew
June 23, 2012
If you care, this my first comment on the article, my first comment at all on the page, that spawned off all of this gibberish about the tea party;
“The occupy movement is as much of a failure as anticipated for a simple reason. There is no clear, concise and united goal. Ask any two protesters what the main goal of the movement is and your just as likely to get opposite answers as you are similar ones. Communism has been partly effective because it mostly has a concise goal, it has not been completely effective because it lacks a fully clear, concise and united goal. A movement can not be effective without a discernible “end game” scenario. Least of all a “radical” movement can not ever succeed if it is in perpetuity “radical.” It has to, at some point “normalize” with the populace and become the “conservative” point of view. That is, the point of view the majority of people want to conserve against change.
The OWS movement is fractious, lacks a common, identifiable goal, common identifiable supporters and has grown ever more radical as time drives forward. It has failed to gain normalcy. Take for example, the “Tea Party movement” (I just felt you dear readers shudder…), It has grown from nothing to being a serious contender in politics affecting real changes at the highest levels of government. Whether you agree with them or not, they have been successful, one may scoff and dismiss if it makes themselves feel better, however, they will continue to make changes regardless. The question one needs to ask is, why were they successful?
Clear, concise point; smaller government
Identifiable supporters; average discontented conservative voters
Normalizing viewpoint; Simple, logical message led to widespread adoption of the view that smaller government is the key to our future. In technical terms, their “radical” view point was “normalized” into a socially conservative viewpoint.
These things the OWS has failed to achieve. One can not identify who supports them with any amount of accuracy and thus can not easily identify themselves with the movement, one can not identify exactly or even roughly what the central goal of the movement is aimed at achieving and thus can not support a movement with no clear goal and finally they have grown more radical in their actions to the point of alienating one time supporters. The movement is thus, unsustainable in the long term and is doomed to collapse if it does not change, and change rapidly to adopt these three key foundations for a successful movement.” -Andrew June 21st
Prole Center
June 22, 2012
I can definitely tell you’re not a socialist of any stripe, Andrew. There’s no way you’ve ever even read the Communist Manifesto. When I speak of the working class and middle class, I’m using the Marxist definition which is different from the bourgeois, American deception about class. A household earning $25K annually, especially a couple with one or more kids, should be considered poor. A single individual making that much, only taking care of him/herself, might not be considered poor, but definitely not middle class. From a Marxist viewpoint, middle class DOES mean at least somewhat affluent. They are not middle class in the sense of making an average income; they are middle class simply for being in the middle between the upper/ruling class and the working class including the poor. I think I tried to explain this to you before. I think most Leftists would agree that the working class should be considered to be (give or take) around 80% of the U.S. population. You’ve got your upper class 1% or so and then the middle class between these two groups.
Growing up in the U.S., I received the right-wing, bourgeois, establishment, status-quo indoctrination through school, church, advertising, etc. I got that side of the story. Then, I discovered the left-wing, socialist, anarchist, communist, version of history and philosophical point of view. They are opposite viewpoints. I studied and pondered and finally threw my support behind the Left and joined the class struggle to free the working class majority from its slavery. There is a class war going on and there has been for a very long time. I leave you with this quote:
“Washing one’s hands of the conflict between the powerful and the powerless means to side with the powerful, not to be neutral.” – Paulo Freire
Which side are you on? I think I already know, but it’s never too late to change sides.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
So I understand fully;
“It’s not really clear to me what you really stand for. ”
However, you can still deduce that;
“I can definitely tell you’re not a socialist of any stripe, Andrew. There’s no way you’ve ever even read the Communist Manifesto.”
Amazing what the power of assumption can do…Which of us is more socialist? I wonder, how about a test then, I’ll make a series of statements and identify which ones I believe in, then you identify simply which ones you do or don’t believe in.
All people are equal, no matter their ethnicity, socioeconomic circumstances or sexual preference.
True
Power spread amongst many hands protects more people than power concentrated into the hands of only a few.
True
People should be afforded the basic human rights of, self determination, pursuit of prosperity, due process, equality under the law and freedom of expression.
True
Understanding is essential to cooperation.
True
Cooperation is essential to any truly free society.
True
Governance by the people, for the people is essential to any truly free society.
True
Some people are more equal than others.
False
A Social Market Economy is far superior to state, free market or corporate capitalism.
True
The government should be allowed to force people to cooperate with it, or others.
False
Homosexuals and Bisexuals should have the same rights as Heterosexuals.
True
Prospective mothers should have the right to kill their infants in the womb if they feel like it.
False
Doctors should be permitted to kill infants in the womb to save the prospective mother’s life.
True
People who don’t want to kill infants or raise children should think more about avoiding the activity that leads to those decisions.
True
So then, am I Socialist, Capitalist or Martian Wizard? Where do you stand?
LWM
June 24, 2012
Wow. There’s a lot going on here. I wanted to add to the fray, but I didn’t know quite where to jump in, so I figured I’d just start with this “equality” stuff that Andrew was talking about.
“All people are equal, no matter their ethnicity, socioeconomic circumstances or sexual preference.”
True.
Well, it’s “True” in theory; obviously not in practice, though. Just watch an episode of Cops.
Here Andrew has arrived at the classic version of bourgeois equality-before-the-law in a capitalist society. From the FORMAL standpoint of the Law in a bourgeois society everyone is “equal”. (Examples of bourgeois societies would be, say, France after 1789 or the U.S. after the Civil War, although, of course, the history is much more complicated, and we can say that the IDEAL bourgeois society has, in fact, NEVER been created… Why was the Civil Rights movement necessary?) But that’s all in FORMAL legal theory. Of course, in reality, none of this “equality” actually exists. To cite one example that Andrew used, black people get routinely (systematically, one could easily argue, and many do) screwed by the legal system in America. But all this talk of “ethnicity” and “sexual preference” leads us astray because these categories are ultimately ARBITRARY in the sense that there is no absolutely necessary fundamental basis to them. The way that U.S. census categories work is ultimately arbitrary (and, notably, they have changed radically over time). The categories of heterosexual and homosexual are ultimately arbitrary, and not even that old (everyone has been making sweet, sweet love to everyone else since time immemorial, just study ancient civilization or read medieval Islamic love poetry; it’s only relatively recently that concepts like “gay” and “straight” and “bi” have come into being, and even more recently that they’ve gained legal status).
On the other hand, class distinctions in a capitalist society have an ABSOLUTE NECESSITY to them. In the capitalist mode of production under which we live, there are some people who own productive capital, and there are other people who have no choice but to sell their labor-power. (This is a completely different thing, you will note, from simply how “rich” or “poor” somebody might be… “rich” and “poor” isn’t really the issue.) Capitalist society NECESSARILY produces classes, based on the simple principle that capitalist production necessarily requires employers and employees: “job creators” and everyone else (who need jobs), to use the parlance of our times.
At the same time, the Law of a good, liberal bourgeois capitalist society is supposed to, in theory, erase all differences: It does not recognize distinctions like “black” and “white” or “gay” and “straight” or “Jew” or “vegan” or “bald” or any other possible category that you could come up with. It doesn’t matter: all are free, all are equal, to the LAW. (“Male” and “female” is a slightly trickier one, because of the weight of a thousand generations of patriarchy: marriage, the family, and, crucially, property inheritance laws, to be precise. We’ll have to come back to it another time. For what it’s worth, though, these are exactly the issues at stake in the current gay marriage debate: Who says the privileged property relations of the bourgeois family unit can’t be held by people of the same sex? From the standpoint of the law, that shouldn’t be a problem, and, indeed, it should be obvious by this point that gay marriage is the wave of the future, no matter how hard anyone might thump his bible.)
Class distinctions, in theory, disappear before the law, too, and yet this formal freedom and equality between owners of capital and wage laborers means, in practice, the freedom of the former to buy (as a commodity) the productive capacity of the latter.
So what, then, is this “freedom and equality” that capitalist society presents us with? It is precisely the freedom to participate IN A MARKET. In a market, in the exchange of commodities, it doesn’t matter whether the person you are doing business with is black or white or Jewish or bald; it’s all the same commodity, and it’s all Money and Capital. Money knows no master, as the old aphorism goes. In capitalism, everyone is free and equal to sell any commodity they have to anyone else; however, most people have only one commodity to sell: their own labor-power. And then the law of surplus-value explains why the more you sell your labor-power, the deeper and deeper in the whole you actually get, but I don’t have space to get into all the nitty-gritty economics here. Instead, I’ll just close by invoking the image that you always see on late-night infomercials: “Learn how to start your own business!” “Stop working for someone else!” “Stop making your boss rich and work for yourself!” These infomercials make it obvious that the man who sells his labor-power already instinctively knows that all the work he does enriches somebody else, not himself. But under capitalism, these stupid infomercials can of course only sell false dreams because, obviously, it’s not possible for everybody to become a “job creator”. Who would these illustrious job creators hire? And there you see the necessity of class distinctions constantly reproducing themselves under capitalism.
So, there you have it. The bourgeois understanding of universal freedom and equality means one thing and one thing only: the freedom to buy and sell commodities in a market, and in particular that one strange commodity called labor-power, i.e., the productive capacity of another person. The inherent contradiction of capitalism lies in the way that this market is set up and the way those commodities (including labor-power) are created.
Andrew
June 25, 2012
Your very much correct, LWM. That is an astute observation of the necessity of of class in the labor system of capitalism. Regardless of what brand of capitalism one adheres to, you’ve nailed down firmly exactly what must be true for the system to work. Some people work, other people provide work. One might argue that those providing work are working to do so, but now we’re just talking semantics, mostly because it matters very little.
I’m not entirely sure what you intend with this observation however, you did take a core belief, one that any descent human being will have and run into a long explanation of the rather unintricate workings of capitalist society. The statement was made as example of a personal belief, not a critique of any kind.
That aside, you expertly explained an important circumstance that must be in place for a capitalist society, but failed to point out that it is, to date, the fairest, most equalizing system to hit the world in 2000 years or more. The current alternatives are a system that routinely is abused into dictatorships around the world and has been for more than half a century, feudalism, tyranny, dictatorship, direct democracy(which I might point out was tried in ancient Athens to disastrous effect do to the size of the city state, nothing could ever be decided on. The system was abandoned for that reason.) fascism(which worked well in Italy and Germany…) monarchy or imperial state. Hate capitalism or love it, one can not deny that it is so far, the best system we humans have developed so far. It is a far cry from perfect and something better has to be on the horizon, until then, what do we do? Tear down the first system that allowed an age of widespread self governance for the first time in Milena? There are times I wonder at the sanity of people, and must remind myself of the dangers of fanaticism.
Yes, capitalism is flawed, some brands of capitalism are better than others by far, some are worse than other systems by far. It however remains true that we little blue marble walkers have not created a better system yet, despite how badly some want some older ideas to magically cure everything. Does anyone really think that if America were restructured tomorrow, all of the “rich oppressors” murdered and burnt, their assets redistributed and “equality” established that within a decade there wouldn’t be a new class of “wealthy oppressors” we would have to then again kill off, where exactly does a cycle like that stop? Would we be any better than the “wealthy oppressors” if we simply decided at one point what we have is deserved but what they have is not? You state equality under the law, as though it were something terrible, something we should not have. I would take the current system of “oppression” over a system that requires constant revolution. I know there is a better way.
I have seen real oppression, and the spoiled brats of this nation no nothing of it. I have seen first hand real tyranny, real hopelessness, real slavery. I know it in a way I wish I never did and wish no one else had too, and I know where it is not. We have pain in this nation, we have suffering, we have corruption and we have tragedy, but we do not have slavery, we do not have tyranny, we do not have hopelessness. What we have in this nation we can fix, what we have broken can be repaired and where we have holes, we can fill them. Laborer, job creator? Sure, is anywhere else in the world any different? Has there ever been a nation without both? Has there ever really been a system without both?
Lawrence
June 25, 2012
“Laborer, job creator? Sure, is anywhere else in the world any different? Has there ever been a nation without both? Has there ever really been a system without both?”
You’re forgetting the basic principle that the way things ARE isn’t the way they’ve always BEEN. Today, of course, more or less the entire world operates under capitalism, so everywhere there are laborers and “job creators”. In the Soviet Union, there weren’t laborers and job creators: there were only laborers. That was the whole point, and you have to wrap your mind around this (the fact that their specific implementation of this basic goal was deeply flawed is another issue altogether; the Soviets did, more or less, achieve what they set out to do, though… the French had another brief experiment with the same principle in 1871, but it was quickly crushed; the Chileans may well have been on their way to a whole new experiment from 1970 to 1973, but the CIA quickly aborted the whole thing, so we’ll never know where they may have been headed)
Laborers and job creators. Yes, you’re describing capitalism, a system of production based essentially on wage labor and private ownership of the primary means of production. Remember: It has only existed for, give or take, two centuries, some places longer (in various transitional forms), some places much less. A feudal lord was not a “job creator”… the peasants were already there; he just had to take their surplus produce. A plantation owner was not a “job creator”… he was a purchaser of human beings.
Andrew
June 25, 2012
Ahh, the ol’ Russia was doing fine defense. Sure, after they murdered and drove out of the country anyone they thought of as bourgeoisie, the country remained single party from it’s inception in 1922 to it’s fall in 1991, but somehow, it wasn’t the fault of the system in any way shape or form. Despite that the party was able to craft things exactly the way they wanted from day one. What did Russia get for it? People barred from higher education because of family members of differing political beliefs, only 20% of the population permitted to attain higher education, the rest forced into the labor industries, government officials who assassinated one another, mass starvation, genocide, military officials who were permitted to hold both military rank and “elected” offices, a trend of dissenters towards sudden disappearance and finally a crashed economy due to insane levels of corruption, unbelievable inefficiency and bloated bureaucracy.
Yes, The Soviet Union is a paragon of the Communist way. Keep it, it’s yours. Such an enlightened utopia…Don’t have to take my word for anything, though and I don’t expect it, heres a book to start doing research into the Soviet Union from. http://books.google.com/books?id=jla71nIxeBUC&dq
“Yes, you’re describing capitalism, a system of production based essentially on wage labor and private ownership of the primary means of production.”
I’m not certain you understood what I wrote. I was summarizing in much fewer words exactly what you wrote and acknowledging that you were in fact correct in describing how most any economic system works, regardless of what it is. You have workers, you have people who direct the workers. Laborers and job creators.
“Remember: It has only existed for, give or take, two centuries, some places longer (in various transitional forms), some places much less.”
I don’t exactly need to be reminded of something I just stated in the post your responding too. Capitalism as it applies to the modern world is, as I said, the fairest system we have created in 2000 years or more. Take your feudal lord for a moment, he was lord why? Because he had an army, and the peasants around him wanted his protection. So in exchange for providing safety from the myriad of dark and dangerous things prowling the landscape of mid-evil Europe, they traded their work for his spears and soldiers. If a peasant got people to surge around him and built up an army, guess who the newest lord was…The king was simply the lord with the biggest army who could subdue the other lords and make them follow him. These warlords were the system that mercantilism replaced, and the heavy merchant focused system pulled power from these feudal lords by building large fortunes and dropping them into the hands of the peasant classes. With the creation of capitalism out of mercantilism, this method of production and wealth generation was applied to society at large and focus was moved from force by army to force by pen. I don’t know if you’ve ever faced down an army, but I can tell you, I prefer facing down a pen.
All of this leads me to a final conclusion. You understand the failings I’ve outlined and you have no defense for them or you would have presented it instead of attempting to change the subject. I will count our conversation at it’s end then, I wish you luck.
Andrew
June 23, 2012
“I think most Leftists would agree that the working class should be considered to be (give or take) around 80% of the U.S. population.”
If half the nation makes 49,999 a year or less, and the other half makes 50,000 or more, while the working class is only considered to be anyone not in the middle class by your definition, anyone making around 25k a year is not in the middle class, but not poor, so he must be in the working class, where exactly do you stop counting people as working? According to you, if 80% of the population is working class and decidedly not middle class, the cut off is around 99,999 dollars a year. So anyone making that much or less is working class(as a family or individual), while anyone between that bracket and the top 1% are middle class. Were talking about 80% of all households here, family, married and non-family households according to the census, make 99,999 dollars a year or less. Sounds to me like the working class is a well paid group. So your gripe then is that the middle class, who apparently are anyone who makes between 100,000 and 199,999 dollars a year are evil, greedy oppressors who, along with the top income earners, those making 200,000 dollars or more keep everyone else down? Hmm, what about lottery winners? Are they rich people or working class people? How about writers, many of them can make more than 99,999 dollars a year, are they oppressing people too with their wealth? They would be middle to upper class, right? Or is it just most middle class and most wealthy are evil oppressors?
You finally ask a relevant and poignant question though, what side am I on? I am on the side that speaks for all people as people. I am for the side that asks, “why should I follow you?”, instead of asking, “how far do you want me to follow you?”. I am for the side that respects all people, and carries the sword of “equality under the law.” I am for the side that says “Let me help you with that.” and against the side that whines “won’t you just do it for me?” I am for the side that not only demands these things, but stands firmly for them against any who would fight against them. I have stood on the line of battle against those who would take by force your right to believe I’m an idiot. I have felt the blood of your enemies heat the backs of my knuckles, and I have done so because I stand for the side that believes you have the right to decide your life so long as that doesn’t mean your trying to decide someone Else’s for them. That, Mr. Center is the side I am on. I toe no one’s line and march to no one’s orders but my own. I have decided that your right to say and do more or less whatever you want, is important enough to me to have raised a rifle for it. I stand on the side of people who just want to live their lives. How about you, Mr. Center, have you stood up for anything? I know my enemy, and I understand them, I also know who my enemy isn’t and I understand them too, can you recognize who your enemy isn’t?
Andrew
June 23, 2012
http://factfinder2.census.gov/faces/tableservices/jsf/pages/productview.xhtml?pid=ACS_10_1YR_S1901&prodType=table
Daniel Lee
June 22, 2012
Andrew, well the Tea Bagger convo is a little OT, but the main reason why they have been “successful” as opposed to OWS is that they have been founded and funded by David and Charles Koch and their “Americans for Prosperity” PAC. Money talks in politics, and the the baggers are certainly well-funded, using a false populist message of small government (where it suits them – just not in cutting Medicare or letting Gay people marry or Immigrants live here) and good old-fashioned McCarthyist Red Scare tactics with religious overtones (that Socialist Muslim Obummer, we knows he aint got his birth certificate!).
As for the so-called “white” majority, I notice how you love to throw percentages out there without supporting them. I checked the US Census data for 2010, and the percentage identified as “white” NOT “White, non-Hispanic” is 72%. What it doesn’t show is a trend in many Latino people not to identify as Latino or Hispanic origin on the Census – ( http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/14/us/for-many-latinos-race-is-more-culture-than-color.html?pagewanted=all ) mostly due to other issues which factor in much larger for them than simply the boneheaded way the US classifies race as color.
But The blog post was NOT about the Tea Party. I could’ve written a lot about that had I decided to, but anyone with half a brain in their head knows they’re a bunch of idiots – as evidenced by a Gallup Poll in August of last year which showed only 26% of registered voters supported the Tea Party: ( http://www.gallup.com/poll/148940/Tea-Party-Sparks-Antipathy-Passion.aspx ).
I would much rather discuss why Occupy is not a working-class movement, and what it would take to scrape together the remnants of it and give it proper goals and focus before it is completely lost.
Prole Center
June 22, 2012
Here’s one of Paul Street’s articles about the tea party if you’re interested:
http://prolecenter.wordpress.com/2012/01/15/tea-party-republicans-are-petit-bourgeois-militarists/
Prole Center
June 21, 2012
Reblogged this on Proletarian Center for Research, Education and Culture.
Andrew
June 21, 2012
“Despite evading capture for over 10 years, the group of radicals had little to show for their daring actions, and it caused the SDS as a whole to fracture and crumble, and they themselves had to spend more time trying to survive than actually get their message out to the public.”
I wouldn’t go so far as to state causing some property damage, killing three of their own members while trying to make a bomb and staging a couple of violent riots as “daring.” The group was largely ineffectual because it’s stated goal was simply violent and racist. Far too radical to ever normalize with the populace. I would describe their actions as deplorable.
Andrew
June 21, 2012
The occupy movement is as much of a failure as anticipated for a simple reason. There is no clear, concise and united goal. Ask any two protesters what the main goal of the movement is and your just as likely to get opposite answers as you are similar ones. Communism has been partly effective because it mostly has a concise goal, it has not been completely effective because it lacks a fully clear, concise and united goal. A movement can not be effective without a discernible “end game” scenario. Least of all a “radical” movement can not ever succeed if it is in perpetuity “radical.” It has to, at some point “normalize” with the populace and become the “conservative” point of view. That is, the point of view the majority of people want to conserve against change.
The OWS movement is fractious, lacks a common, identifiable goal, common identifiable supporters and has grown ever more radical as time drives forward. It has failed to gain normalcy. Take for example, the “Tea Party movement” (I just felt you dear readers shudder…), It has grown from nothing to being a serious contender in politics affecting real changes at the highest levels of government. Whether you agree with them or not, they have been successful, one may scoff and dismiss if it makes themselves feel better, however, they will continue to make changes regardless. The question one needs to ask is, why were they successful?
Clear, concise point; smaller government
Identifiable supporters; average discontented conservative voters
Normalizing viewpoint; Simple, logical message led to widespread adoption of the view that smaller government is the key to our future. In technical terms, their “radical” view point was “normalized” into a socially conservative viewpoint.
These things the OWS has failed to achieve. One can not identify who supports them with any amount of accuracy and thus can not easily identify themselves with the movement, one can not identify exactly or even roughly what the central goal of the movement is aimed at achieving and thus can not support a movement with no clear goal and finally they have grown more radical in their actions to the point of alienating one time supporters. The movement is thus, unsustainable in the long term and is doomed to collapse if it does not change, and change rapidly to adopt these three key foundations for a successful movement.
Lawrence McMahon
June 21, 2012
Come on… as if there’s anything logically consistent within the Tea Party other than that it appeals to “conservatives” (and as if “conservative” actually meant anything. How do, for example, “small government” and “states’ rights” have anything to do with each other?… Does this mean it’s okay to have the most heavy-handed authoritarian state imaginable, so long as it’s called “West Virginia” instead of “The United States of America”, and there’s another place called “Ohio” that’s run by anarchists?) Is the only thing holding the Tea Party together that they all want to run a 21st-century economy with 18th-century laws? Well, good for them.
To be clear, my own personal opinion is that I don’t see much difference between OWS and the Tea Party; they’re two different approaches to “End the Fed”, with basically only an aesthetic difference between them (because they both objectively represent the interests of small business owners… I’ve explained this in the articles I’ve written).
The problem with both of them (and with American politics in general) is that it’s all just a bunch of religion. Not as in they’re “religious”, but as in they can’t see beyond the basically childish worldview of unbending, unwavering, always-everywhere-one-and-the-same (read, metaphysical) ideals and “principles” (to use the popular term). It’s just a bunch of religious conviction, not actual thought. One of them thinks that Jesus wants “small government” (whatever that means), and the other one thinks that Jesus wants “regulations on big corporations” (again, whatever that means). And they’ll stick with whatever Jesus they’ve got: it’s religion. The basic point that certain things are relevant in one situation and other things are relevant in another situation (and that these situations change over time) somehow drops off the map.
Why is it that, in American politics, the worse thing an electoral candidate could ever be is a “flip-flopper”? Oh, because, of course: what you want in an administrator is an unwavering ideologue totally incapable making adjustments, learning from mistakes, and adapting to new circumstances when they present themselves??? It’s a worldview totally consistent with throwing up some random quote of a slave owner named Thomas Jefferson to support whatever cause you happen to be advancing on a given day, whether it be gay marriage or gun ownership.
Prole Center
June 21, 2012
I concur with my good comrade, Lawrence.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
My friend, you know I hold you in high regard. This is why I will respond to you.
“The problem with both of them (and with American politics in general) is that it’s all just a bunch of religion.”
For you, I will posit with help from from Mr. Center;
“Paul Street, a Marxist scholar I admire, and others more “mainstream” have analyzed the tea party and found them to be…”
“Any working class folks among them are dupes and racists.”
Mr. Center is a good example of what your talking about, those who adhere blindly to an ideology. Within every ideology this kind of follower exists. When an idea is persuasive or attractive, there will always be those who will follow it to the utter logical exclusion of any other ideas. It is unfortunate, but not unique to any ideology.
More to my point, until we stop and decide for ourselves what is right and wrong and stop looking to our political leaders to tell us, we will keep fighting the wars of those we allow to lead us. I see the value in socialist thought, despite the stigma attached and traditional of American conservative political thinking. I do not lockstep to the idea that my political opposites must be my enemies and can not be correct. To do so is to claim that you have perfect, divine understanding. My view is not perfect, and it is not without failings, recognizing this, the only logical and reasonable thing one can do is look for the weaknesses in their thinking and find ways to strengthen themselves, logically and morally.
“Come on… as if there’s anything logically consistent within the Tea Party other than that it appeals to “conservatives””
I just explained that you didn’t have to agree with them to acknowledge their success. More than that, yes, they are consistent, they consistently call for small government, deregulation in areas of over-regulation, transparency in government and adherence to the constitution.
Small government; Government that is of a size consistent with performing it’s duties in an efficient and competent manner.
Deregulation; Removal of laws put in place by members of congress obviously designed to give favor to one private company or another within an industry based on that senators private relations with someone in association with said company. Removal of laws that duplicate other laws and thus require two or more government entities be formed to enforce what is essentially the same law.
Transparency in government; I don’t think I need to explain what this is. It’s fairly universally supported by nearly all political parties in America, even if only token support is professed.
Adherence to the constitution; Tea Party members like the framework of the constitution, the protections it affords to citizens through the bill of rights and the limitations on federal power it maintains. They therefore seek to support candidates who feel in a like manner that the constitution should be supported and upheld.
Whether one agrees with these viewpoints or not isn’t relevant. That the group is successful is. Like it or not, you can think every member is a racist martian wizard who summons bunnies that poop corn pops, it won’t change that they are a successful political party who’s gained traction in American Politics, appealing to a large number of Americans. Knowing this, we can either argue that they are or are not martian wizards, or we can accept that it doesn’t matter and look hard at why they are successful, then modify our own tactics accordingly. I only explained them because you fell into the trap of instant dismissal based on ideological rift. They are not crazy “far right loons” with no basis in reality, and that is what Mr. Dixon is trying to explain, we often view our political opposites through a self comforting lens of “crazy,” “delusional” or “stupid.” So long as one does this, one will never achieve their political goals.
We are all people, and all people are capable of intelligence and reason. When someone disagrees with us, it is not automatically because they are stupid, racist or delusional ideologues. I know it’s hard to accept, but sometimes, it might just be that they know something we don’t. Much like people often assume that they know something someone else doesn’t. At some point we have to realize that we can’t ALL know something that someone else doesn’t, some of us have to be wrong sometimes.
I realize I’ve written much more than I intended, I will answer one final question;
“Why is it that, in American politics, the worse thing an electoral candidate could ever be is a “flip-flopper”?”
Because someone who can change his core beliefs back and forth does not have core beliefs or does not think before deciding what their core beliefs are. Neither kind of person is a good person to have leading you. If for example;
You tell me that you believe that people with brown hair aren’t really people. I would ask you why?
Your answer won’t matter, it could be something as valid as, “people with brown hair have slightly different genetic codes” or as invalid as “they just look silly.” Suppose then, I tell you a fact. Such as, people with brown hair according to all genetic scientists are really no different than any other person. Now, you change your core belief based on this new information. You have flip flopped because you didn’t take the time to think before deciding that people with brown hair were or were not people. Are you the kind of leader then that you would want?
Imagine the other scenario, that you don’t have scruples of any kind. Your willing to say or do whatever you have to to achieve your goals. Whatever those goals are, it doesn’t matter, they can be to cure all diseases or to become president of the united states, are you then the kind of person you want leading you?
Either way, we are not talking about minor opinions like “what kind of coffee you like” or “your favorite color.” When we call someone in politics a “flip-flopper” it is that they are changing flippantly, based on who they talk to, what they state their core beliefs to be.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
“How do, for example, “small government” and “states’ rights” have anything to do with each other?”
states rights, as they pertain to American politics are the right of local state governments to remain sovereign in all powers not specifically enumerated by the constitution as belonging to the federal government. What this means is, a federal government is established with the consent of the states who represent their local populaces, to administer certain duties deemed necessary and appropriate for a central federal government while allowing for local populations to retain control of their lives from an often removed and highly detached central power that can not possibly speak for everyone everywhere. The American government was set up the way it is to protect the population, not make it easier for government to govern. The states have certain powers and rights that the federal government does not for precisely the reason that a centralized power can not possibly represent the will of every citizen. Local governments therefore maintain the majority of domestic governing decisions at the will of the local populations they serve.
Small government as it pertains to American politics is government of a minimally centralized nature, with most of the power and authority to govern residing on the local levels to limit the effects of upper level corruption and the possibility of dictatorial tyranny. This is a principle that also exists in communism, with direct democracy or similar to American politics, representative councils or committees voted into power by direct democracy. Unfortunately, when communism moves away from the “small government” model, and towards the heavily centralized model it is easily corrupted in much the same manner as we see today in the substantial over reaching of the federal government past it’s constitutional limits and saw in the fall of the Soviet Union and the corruption of North Korea.
You can see then, how the two are interrelated. States require rights to maintain local sovereignty from a centralized power that is necessary to speak on an international stage for a union of nation states. The Idea of Small government supports these rights by calling for authority to govern staying in the hands of local governments while only the minimum of power be afforded to a federal government to secure on the global stage the rights and prosperity of a united group of nation states.
At it’s core, America is a united group of separate nation states that have chosen to form a unified front. Permitting a federal government the states themselves brought into existence to protect each-other from foreign powers to then subvert their sovereignty and make them subservient to the will of their own union is then, in a word, unreasonable. It is simply too much power in the hands of far too few people. You think allowing a few million people to control the lives of a nation of more than 300 million is amoral? How about allowing less than a thousand people to govern every aspect of our lives. That is what supporting only a centralized federal government is. I may not agree with the Tea party on everything, but I do agree that dispersing power amongst many is better than concentrating it amongst only a few.
Prole Center
June 21, 2012
Paul Street, a Marxist scholar I admire, and others more “mainstream” have analyzed the tea party and found them to be mostly affluent, middle class, white, Republican; actually, very conservative Republicans who are even more militaristic than your average Republican. They represent nothing new at all. They are astroturf and are your basic ultra-reactionary. Any working class folks among them are dupes and racists.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
While it’s nice you listen to other people who do research, might you consider conducting your own? I mean, you did tell me once that “no one tells you what to think.” Except here, your contradicting yourself and admitting that because someone you admire, and other nameless people with the credentials of being “mainstream” say they have analyzed the tea party and found “X”, it must be therefore true and requires no further thought.
More disturbingly, you continue your trend of marginalization through ultimately highly prejudiced, strictly nonfactual and undeniably partisan generalizations. All of which you claim to deplore in your political opposites whom you decry as “racist fools who will not listen to reason or logic.”
I’m not attempting to be combative with you, I’m simply trying to help you see the logical errors your committing.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
I will tell you, Mr. Street and “company” are sort of correct in this statement;
“found them to be mostly affluent, middle class, white, Republican”
However, this also describes a large segment of the American population. So, examine why this is. Affluent and middle class in the same sentence should have red flagged you that there is a problem in your logic. Roughly half of the tea party supporters are middle or lower class, while the other half is middle to upper class. Or rather stated factually and not emotionally; Roughly half of the tea parties support is from those making $49,999 a year or less, while the other half makes $50,000 or more a year. That represents ALL of the country. From wealthy to poor.
To continue, “white” is the dominant ethnic designation because roughly 75% of all U.S. Adults are classified as non-Hispanic white. Meaning the majority ethnicity of the U.S. is non-Hispanic white. So, it goes without saying that a movement that spans the country is going to be majority “white.” It’s a bit like saying the majority of people in Japan are Japanese and then attempting to state that this is out of the norm.
Finally, roughly half of the tea party(49%) identifies as republican while nearly the other half identifies as independent(43%), so, yes a majority are republican, however, 32% of the nation identifies as democrat, while 40% identifies as independent and 28% identifies as republican, meaning that the tea party draws heavily from about 65%(68%) of the nations population making it a majority “in” group. As a side note 8% of democrats support the tea party.
So while they are mostly correct in their statement, they are still wrong in insinuating that the movement is not widespread, mainstream and representative of the American public.
Here’s a place you can start doing some research of your own at.
(http://www.gallup.com/poll/127181/tea-partiers-fairly-mainstream-demographics.aspx#1)
Prole Center
June 22, 2012
I think you’re Mr. Center, Andrew. It’s not really clear to me what you really stand for. “If you don’t stand for something, you’ll fall for anything” is an expression that comes to mind. Some positions and ideologies are completely irreconcilable. I believe I can learn something from anyone (even right-wingers), but no one knows something I don’t that will make me compromise my core values. I’m sorry if this sounds arrogant and narrow-minded to you, but I am absolutely convinced that capitalism is an evil, rotten system that can never bring justice. I am against slavery and domination in all its forms. I am hostile toward the middle and upper classes who keep the working class crushed under heel. I’m also against racism. I’m not going to have a discussion with a racist and “kinda’ see where he’s coming from.” Can you understand that?
Nowhere did I indicate that I believe every single thing Paul Street has had to say, but he has done extensive research on the tea party and I carefully read his conclusions and I largely agree with him. I have come to trust Paul Street so, no, I don’t feel the need to double check everything he writes about. I do and have done my own research, but I don’t have the time or qualifications to do much primary, direct research in the social sciences.
Andrew
June 22, 2012
If it’s not clear to you what I stand for, how do you deduce that I should use the name Mr. Center? Couldn’t it be equally possible that I lean to the far left or far right and simply take a long view on any issue? Or is it only centrists that think carefully before committing to a belief that shapes the fabric of their being?
You don’t know what I believe because you’ve never asked me, you’ve simply assumed that because I don’t attack people I don’t agree with, using generic talking point insults that I’m some sort of rich fool who oppresses the “working class.”
Yet, you don’t seem to know who the working class are. the median income of the united states is about 52%. What does that mean? It means the vast majority of Americans fall squarely into the category of middle class, middle class most often defined in the US as anyone making income between $25,000 and $100,000 dollars a year. If your income bracket is there, your middle class, or the class of people who have to WORK for a living. Hence, the working class. You sir, are classist. You’ve irrationally decided that one group of people is better than another group of people for the simple reason of their economic situation. That view is no better than believing that the poor are worthless because of their economic situation.
“but no one knows something I don’t that will make me compromise my core values.”
So, you have perfect understanding, omniscience and are incapable of mistakes? Hmm, I should be following you then. Perhaps you’d consider running for President of everything? Yes, it’s a highly arrogant and elitist viewpoint that you know everything there is to know about every aspect of your core values and therefore no one else knows anything that could possibly change your mind on any issue pertaining to the same.
“I am absolutely convinced that capitalism is an evil, rotten system that can never bring justice”
What an interesting viewpoint for a communist. You don’t think there is anything of value in capitalism?
“Nowhere did I indicate that I believe every single thing Paul Street has had to say”
Didn’t say that did I? Said you took what he said here and decided it was fact without bothering to check it out. Do you do that often then? Self conscious about it?
That is exactly what you did here, and when I pointed it out, and then outlined exactly how his “findings” were skewed and bias you tried to justify it by stating “I read his conclusions and largely agree with them” and that you “trust him, so there isn’t a need to double check anything.” Always double check, why do you think I gave you a link, I don’t expect you to believe me, I want you to disbelieve and look for yourself. If I give you a fish, you eat for a day, if I teach you to fish, well you know the saying.