Class Contempt

Great post, Tommy, and a vital discussion to pursue. Which political party will put "working class issues" on at least an equal priority as others? And I don't mean just workers as consumers (ATM fees, credit cards, and other cheap gimmicks).

http://rabble.ca/news/white-trash-arent

I think that working class participation/representation in politics [or not], and class contempt are 2 very different issues.

As related as they are- they are very different phenomena.

The kind of class contempt Mallick expressed I see as essentially a cultural phenomena- located in a particular time and place. Politics may have a lot to do with it- but it is in the final instence a cultural phenomena.

And thinking back to the 1960s- I think the intelligentsia just ignored us then. Class contempt was at least as strong- but sort of like they didn't need to bother expressing it.

I was struck at a meeting recently  - metaphorically that is - at class difference, and it was at a poverty meeting, that discussed class difference.

 The presentation was on the "Bridges Out of Poverty" program, that first educates those that work with the poor, on how the poor 'think' and what is important to them.  Essentially it highlights why the poor make the decisions they do, and that it isn't wrong, it's just not middle class thinking.

 Where if falls apart for me is how the second phase is to educate the poor on how to think like the middle class.

 I won't go into too much detail about all of this as it will detrail my point.

I got 15 minutes on the agenda to talk about local efforts.  Well I stood up and identified myself as "one of them".

The presenter kept lasping into describing the poor as "them", although you could tell she was trying to be inclusive.

I also pointed out that there were poor people in the room.  We had invited some low income people to come and hear the presentation.  Interestingly enough, they all sat at our table - safe space.  Not to mention they love listening to my sarcastic mutterings as I listened to the presentation. 

So in pointing out (there is a point I'm getting there) there were poor people in the room, I reminded them that none of them were getting paid to be there, there was no mileage paid to them, no honourarium.

Later that night I was at a Labour Council meeting and mentioned a situation with a client, and in describing the labour related challenge, someone slipped me $50 to give to the client, to help out.

It really struck me, if the first meeitng was full of trade unionists, instead of management staff, and they heard there were poor people there, contributing without compensation, they would have passed the hat.

I've seen it happen enough.

But here were management types, just squirming in thier seats.

And yet the class distincition we were being taught about was that middle class values were valuable, and poverty values caused problems.

Piss on them, I'll take the values of the poor and working folk over middle management any day.

(Upper management has slipped me $ before too, but the wealthy don't think too much about that)

Good thread. I have to agree with Spector about Hister's assumptions about the image. Hister, however can be forgiven for that because this image is interchangably used for working class males and the urban poor. The cross linkages between this image, which is often used to reference the urban poor and working class males, and criminals is all part of the same prejudiced media package.

It's been a long time since the state sanctioned left made any real effort to avoid stygmatizing the urban poor that also find themselves pursuing criminal activity just to survive. Rather, it has jumped on the right-wing "tough on crime" bandwagon.

A lot of my friends have been in trouble with the law at one time or another, and a good portion of those have served time, and as my favourite lawyer likes to say, "my clients aren't bad people, they just have bad days."

The so called "criminal element", are also a constituency, a constituency which all of the state sanctioned parties jointly act to marginalize. Any kind of nuanced perspective on the causes of criminality, is increasingly a no go zone in main stream politics.

Thank you Eliza Q,  Polly and Refuge for the technical assistance.

"

First observation, please do give examples of how the NDP have dropped working class issues?

Secondly, I find this hugely funny, as a statement, given the numerous and sometimes endless yapping sessions here about the NDP's use of "working families", "worker's" and "working people", in their campaign literature, and how they should NOT be using such language as it is not inclusive. Some people went to great length here stating that such a term offended them and their families. Demands were even made that those in the NDP loop go back to the NDP and suggest other terminology. Subsequently, we saw the NDP drop the use of  any words with "work" in them."

Well, that's just the thing.  If the NDP were championing working class issues, then the nattering about what we call ourselves wouldn't matter quite so much.  It puts me in mind of Douglas Adam's books, where the useless third of Golgafinchion society set up shop on earth and coudn't invent the wheel because no one could agree on what colour to paint it.

Examples?  In the English language leadership debate two  elections ago, between Harper, Martin, Layton and Duceppe, it was Duceppe that drew attention to the theft from the E.I. fund, and called Martin on his claims that he and the Liberals "paid off the deficit"-- reminding people that it was Canadian workers who paid off the deficit. 

Duceppe-- not Layton. 

It's not an abandonment by deed, it's an abandonment through omission, for the most part.  

And, I don't think it's part of any grand conspiracy, or becasue leadership in the NDP is "bad".  I think it's an unavoidable consequence of trying to be inclusive, and putting the emphasis on a person's gender or ethnicity or sexual orientation before their economic status.   And I wouldn't argue that this wasn't a very necessary thing over the past twenty to thirty years. 

But now it's time to realize that gay people work, that women work, that people of all ethnic backgrounds share a common bond in that we can change all the laws regarding descrimination on this basis, make the halls of government and our public and private institutions as inclusive as possible, but if we do not address the economic descrimination that faces us all, all that stuff is for naught. 

We have made it political suicide, for the most part, for even right wing politicians to descriminate or say stupid things about people of colour, gays and women.  Yes, it still happens-- but it is met imediately by public outcry.

Not so descrimination on the basis of economic status.  It is alive and well, and is in fact enjoying a resurgence.   Due in no small part to the various factions on the left who allow the wealthy a clear field to play in.

And there's going to be a hell of a lot more migration in the comming year or two.  I may well be one of them. 

Cueball's example of "tough on crime" is interesting.   In the election before last, the NDP jumped on board because they wanted to avoid being "Willie Hortoned", for which I cannot blame them.

Also, from a working class perspective, it's notable that workers who commit crimes tend to commit them against workers or the poor, and the same can be said of poor criminals.  It might be said that governments who ignored crime would be engaged in class warfare against us.   I certainly see lenient judges as so engaged. 

But the NDP didn't seem to address this aspect of getting "tough on crime", nor did it introduce the idea of a "tough on crime" policy for Bay Street criminals, or criminal wrong doing in the professional class.  Or, if they did, it was done in a way that did not grab headlines. 

Leaving workers and the poor to think that maybe it's because the people who run the NDP rather enjoy the professional and middle class priveledge of having electronic security on their houses, and a get out of jail free card, and the worst that could happen to them is a few uncomfortable days on the hot seat at our seemingly endless amounts of Public Inquiries.

"You know, this is pretty much a common knowledge truth that gets talked up a lot. My impression is that this is partly because much of the common knowledge understanding of criminality is derived from our knowledge of ghetto crime in the US."

I'm going by my neighborhood, which is solidly working class, and yes borrowing from the American experience which seems to back up my annecdotal observations. 

 You'll have to forgive me, Cueball, for forgetting your location.  But here in London, as it is in many places in the Windsor/Quebec corridor, neighbourhoods have been economically stratified for a long time. There are still pockets of old sections where there is a "mix", but more often than not it due to the process of "gentrification". 

As for not shitting in your own backyard, I think that has fallen by the wayside.  The desperate edge that drugs like crystal meth, crack and oxycontin puts on a person rarely makes them think too much about where they do break and enters.  Likely, they pick targets that aren't too much of a walk to the person they owe money too,  who in turn probably doesn't live too far from a pawn shop.

"Seriously, have you been living in an alternate world or something?"  

It's quite apparent I am.

I recognize the argument that the NDP has difficulty grabbing headlines with a media that is controlled by the very people who probably feel very threatened by calls for government action on white collar crime.   And I would admit that it's a problem.

It's also part of the job of the politician to get around this problem.  So I am reluctant to give it the attention that you do, and perhaps in fairness, it deserves.

Either way, the stuff you site, which I know is there in the NDP platform, is not making inroads into the alternative world of the working class.

I don't know. What I do know is that I have seen a lot people criminalized because of poverty, and racial bias. I have a friend who admittedly was on a pretty bad path to start of with, who essentially got criminalized for a minor crime (DUI -- first offence, no accident, no victims, just pulled over for being native while driving) and has since spent the better part of the last 2 years in and out of jail on bench warrants for parole violations and missed court dates, even though she already served her 2 week term for the original offence, while waiting for trial.

The fact is that overworked duty councels simply can not defend the poor in court, and "bad days" can turn into pretty substantial criminal records, without the proper legal advice. For the same offence upstanding citizens, who could afford proper legal advice would walk within hours.

I have a friend who was pulled over for Jay Walking, then busted on an immigration warrant, searched, and then spent 3 months in jail, waiting for a hearing on an associated drug charge, even though the search was later discovered to be illegal, since Jay Walking is not a criminal offence, and Immigration Warrants are not "criminal" warrants.

The Crown cut a deal on Jay Walking fines, and admitted that even had he been able to proceed on the drug charge, the time served waiting for trial far exceeded the likely sentence of the drug conviction on the first offence.

Who figured out the search was illegal? The duty councel? No. The free immigration state funded law service? No. The crown? No. It was the clients bail officer. LOL.

A huge number of people spend ridiculous amounts of time waiting for bail even on minor criminal charges, especially the poor, who have no rich friends, and are not of the category of persons (middle class, or working people with assets) who judges feel they can release on their own  recognizance. 

The poor are regularly railroaded and criminalized by the judicial system, simply because they can not afford the proper legal advice, and even though I have known a few people who were actually "career" criminals, by and large most of the people I know who have served time, are of the variety of those people who are just having bad days, without any planning whatsoever.

And in the last two years, I have had two close aquiantences that have have had not a "bad day" but a momentary lapse of judgement in an emotional situation that landed them in an astounding amount of legal difficulties.   And in both cases-- the more recent more than the one two or so years ago, things were exascerbated by their deffence councel that told them not to bother showing up for a routine court appearance, that they'd show up for them.

 In both cases, the deffence councel's were, I dunno, busy that day.  Fortunately for one of my aquaintences, while it did result in a bench warrant for arrest on failure to appear, it did not result in jail time.  Not so fortunate for my other friend, who spent two days in jail getting it straightened out.

One, I guess could be called "poor", the other certainly working class.

 I wonder how many deffence councel's forget to appear for clients who wear three piece suits like they do?

Meanwhile, Dr. Smith tells lies on the witness stand for years, gets poor and working class people jailed for heinous crimes they did not commit, and he walks free amoung us.

 I'd like to believe the law is just capricious, but it's not.  It's a leading foot soldier in the class warfare against us.

Now you are backing off from saying the NDP weren't doing anything, to faulting them for not getting the message out that they were. It was in all the news media at the time. 

And you know, engagement in  democracy is not a 1 way street. Perhaps the disengaged working class needs to pay attention to what governments and political parties are doing,  or not doing? That some are not, is to their own detrement and at some point they need to stop blaming others and take responsibility for their own actions and ignorance,  and these lack of actions are very close to bringing about their own downfall. Blaming others, and pretending to be victims, is starting to get boring and tedious, say nothing of creating the appearance that some want to be coddled by a parent state instead of growing up and taking direct action in their own lives and  for the lives of their children and grandchildren.

Moreover, if you knew it was in the platform why did you say the NDP were doing nothing?

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What are you talking about cue? Other than your usual nothings of course..

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"And you know, engagement in  democracy is not a 1 way street. Perhaps the disengaged working class needs to pay attention to what governments and political parties are doing,  or not doing? That some are not, is to their own detrement and at some point they need to stop blaming others and take responsibility for their own actions and ignorance,  and these lack of actions are very close to bringing about their own downfall."

Actually, Remind, I do that with my peers.  And, if you hung on every juicey morsel of wisdom I impart here like you should*, you'd remember that in several posts since returning from my latest hiatus, I have been pointing the finger at my compadres in the working class just as you point out. 

*

I imagine there all things bright and wonderfull in the NDP platform, or policy.  I've sat at too many conventions etc, to know otherwise.  But which of these policies get the royal jelly depends on a lot of things.  Some of it pragmatic attention to election dynamics, some of it not.  And I fear class contempt plays a role, or more kindly and fairly, class analysis gets short shrift in that internal process.

Pretty contemptuous if you ask me.

Nope reality, as much as some would like to deny it, or silence said opinion. Or indeed give a solution of "not voting".

 I have been to way too many union meetings,  in differing unions even, with a memberships of 500+, where somewhere between 10-20 have shown up to the monthly meetings, and maybe 30-40 for the yearly.

I have lived in a town, which is almost no more, that had 98% of its workers unionized, with 11 different unions presents as well as a CLC office, and they voted in Jay fucking Hill. Because of their lack of involvement, in both their union structures, and politics in general. And trying to get them to look past; playing golf, sports hunting and fishing, and the dart league, was impossible.

You can deny union member apathy all you want, and disparage me for saying so, all you want, but the apathy reality is there, and it is a problem.  I am pro union all the way, but yet I still understand that there is a problem and I recognize it needs to be voiced. Hell, my best friend is CUPW, and when I asked her if she voted, in either the federal or civic elections, she told me she was too tired for one and had a party to go to for the other, but yet she had me join the facebook group to save Canada Post from privatization, and write letters to the gov.This electoral disconnect and apathy is real, and workers must take responsibility, for their actions, or lack thereof. And perhaps this  economic crisis and what it means is a wake-up call?!

Just as the apathy of non-union workers is a problem. Women fought to get the vote, and  our other rights, we did not sit around whining waiting for dispensation of it.

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No one gave inferences, remind. Your words speak for themselves. I've often asked you to reflect again on some such passage, but somehow you always always take that as a condescending attack on your integrity. So I won't ask you to do that this time. Instead, I'll just answer you. If you meant what you said about the working class, then you are wrong. It is the working class that houses, clothes, and feeds you materially, and is responsible for every social advance in our society in the past century and more.

Think about that the next time you stoop to lecture workers that they should "pay attention to what governments and political parties are doing", and that workers should "take responsibility for their own actions and ignorance".

There are rank right wingers within the working class.  People who hate unions even though they belong to them and have benifited from all the good things accrued by their brothers and sisters.  Who care for guns more then they care for socialized medicine and despise teachers more then authoritarian police and politicians. 

All that having been said, many in the working class are good people who  have horrendous burdens to deal with and we should not stereotype all of the people in that absolutely massive group as lazy.

P.S. Can you really blame someone for wanting to go trout fishing rather then subjecting him or herself to  boring political meetings?

Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york

It is the same arrogant contempt put to another purpose.

And thanks very much for giving us your pro-union resume. Very good. Let's be clear though, the greatest numbers of the people who you have shit upon, work in non-union shops, and have none of the protections of privileges of the union movement, which you are right in pointing out has been very much co-opted by short sighted objectives. The "working class", does not begin and end with union movement, nor does it represent a majority of persons who might be deemed "working class", in this country.

....and if those people had attended all the meetings and read up on what all the parties stood for,  they might still have voted for a rightwing barbarian.  Political opinions don't come entirely from books.  They come from culture too.  If you have deeply held beliefs about guns and small government, no amount of education will sway you. 

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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york

Leave her alone Cue.  Everybody says thoughtless things out of frustration sometimes.  Please stop.

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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york

Again cue, you are putting words in my mouth about whom I was talking about. You may be talking about "The dispossessed are being marginalized and criminalized as a class.", I however was quite clear whom I was speaking about in my first response to Tommy, as per the quoted section, I responded to. And subsequent posts, never once did I mention "the dispossessed".

If you would have paid attention to my actual words, instead of deciding to see what you wanted to, perhaps you would have observed me being angry at those who have by their apathy and negligence allowed for the dispossessed to be marginalized and criminalized as a class, and because of this many many more are, or are about to, or could become dispossessed  and criminalized themselves.

In fact, in the community in which I live now, pretty much half the population is living on welfare and using the food bank to exist, when just 5 years ago they were "those bully boys driving around with there giant sized Tonka Toy trucks with their 4 wheelers or Ski-doos in tow,"

And through not fault of ours, and even though we are union members, and activists, we could be joining those dispossessed ranks fairly shortly, ourselves, and we live as frugally as we can. The number of friends we have had who are no longer alive, because they were dispossessed and/or criminalized, and  have either died from drug over doses, or directly at their own hands is appalling, and I too am angry that some on the left were/are so self absorbed, that they could/can not see what was happening...long ago now it seems. Every 2 months almost I go to another persons funeral that died way way too young.

What is that full poem  first they came for...will go look... here it is

When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.

When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.

When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.

When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I was not a Jew.

When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.

- Martin Niemoller

This poem describes the very real dangers of political apathy, as it begins with focused and targeted fear and fosters hatred, which soon escalates beyond those bounds to the greater population at large.

All, those groups that the Nazis came for, remained silent until they came for them, and I am seeing that happen here more and more. It makes me angry and frightened that some people on the left are being willfully negiligent in deciding to remain oblivious.

Edited because cue did,

I agree with the majority of this cue, but the reality, most of the non-dispossessed are still deluded by the notion, no one will come for them. They cannot yet see that is not the case. In the meantime, there is only 1 party which contains people that do realize and that do give a shit, and are desperately trying to stave it off. Perhaps you are correct we should all just let it go and allow the chips to fall where they may and if a revolution happens, sobeit. 

However, I myself am hoping and working towards creating a space where it can be addressed, without the destruction of lives for many more generations by warfare and revolution. Moreover, the dispossessed do not vote aleady in the majority, so their fate is in the hands of those that do and who are activists already. 

You know today, I was at the grocery store, and the IWA union local leader was at the checkout with me, she has been laid off for 5 years too, but works for the union and as such gets a livable wage. Anyhow, there was a tray full of little jingle bells with a collection box like they use for poppies. She picked up a bell and asked what was it was for, as I was wadding  money (bills into a slot made for coins)  into it, and I told her  it was for food bank donations. Well, she dropped the bell she was holding like it was burning her fingers and literally walked away.

I thought "WTF there are at least 100 former IWA persons using that food bank here in town". And that to me says it all. There is only solidarity if you are currently in that union class, in respect to some anyway. Still deciding how I am going to handle that.

"Even Tommy got what I was saying ...."

Yeah, guys, even poor thick headed dullard Tommy got what she was saying....

I'm kidding, really.  But I just read that and started laughing-- not at anyone or at in contempt of invented umbrage or anything,  but it just struck me as very funny. 

 It's curious, the apathy that Remind points out.  Looking back at the great depression, when perhaps there was justification for revolutionary action, there were no revolutionaries.   Even the treck to Ottawa wasn't the threat that the paranoid government of day thought it was. 

Apparently, the government of Mackenzie King thought a revolution was justified.

 It disheartens me just how bad things have to get to shake working people out of their apathy. 

In fact, it won't happen until what I call the bourgeoisie of Canadian society starts to migrate into the working class and perhaps the ranks of the poor-- which they will find intollerable, and organize to change the scheme of things.  Which will return their fortunes and leave their grape shot fodder-- us denizens of the working class and poor-- no better off in the long run.

It's why, Remind, that while I vote NDP, and am a member of the NDP, and find it very much more to my liking than any other political party, I look upon it's bourgeois leadership with a sceptical eye.

Awwww..I am sorry, I did not mean it that way, I meant it as that it was you to whom I was directly positioning commentary towards, though not at you specifically, and that you could have taken it personally and thus might not have seen it for what it was saying. 

In looking at this and contemplating "why" over the years, I think there are a couple of factors, at least, in play.

First, I believe the reason why there was no revolution during and after the depression was because, the populace who in some cases were new immigrants, or first generation, were immigrants because they were sick of violent political strife in Europe and had thought it solved nothing and looked to what they thought was a better way. Also, a good many of them were either WWI vets, or family members, and they were heartily sick of warfare too. If a better way could be found to work things out, then it should be.

Secondly, the current apathy I believe is something along the lines of "if I do not acknowlege it, and stay behind my white picket fence, then it won't touch me, just the 'others'". Which is kinda like people do in respect to illness and disabilities, especially mental health ones. There is this inherent sub-conscious belief that if one feels anything other than pity from a distance, it may rub off on them too, or they may be seen to be one who has such problems, and that is why one is an activist helping.

Thirdly, is peoples fear of the unknown, and their wanting to believe that they are empowered, or part of the dynamics of power. Hence the divisions of class, and the subtle warfare contained in it. They do not realize this mindset has been subtly manufactured and really should not exist. No one person, or persons are an Island unto themselves, society cannot exist in any form without the disseparate components that maintain it. Thus everyone is actually equal, though some would like be "more" equal than others because of delusions of self-worth. How true realization, within the masses, of the truth of universal equality is going to eventually come about, I am no longer sure.

I refuse to buy into the notion of "others". So I do not, or try not to, frame anything within my mental construct that would contain a notion of "others". People, from what some would call the over class, which you call the bourgeois, have asked me and wondered why, I can relate to and have relationships with those they deem are people from the under classes to their and what they believed is my own class, and yet still relate to themselves and have a relationship with them. My response is that they see boundaries where there isn't any and thus they conduct themselves that way.

Indeed, in the over classes there is much thought given out that suggests that if one does have a relationship with those who are considered below, one is either participating below ones level of ability and social position and is thus hurting oneself, or that one wants to feel superior in a group of people who are less than themselves. And I call bull shit to either of those perspectives, there is just people, full stop.

A while back, Michelle noted an article and comments about magna cum laude, and summa cum laude, peoples, whereby the article noted the 2 cum laudes could not meet and have a relationship because there were too many differences between them. Which of course is a load of toxic crap. But this same false ideological belief is played out in every instance within our society. It is wrong and destructive, and it needs to stop before society and people can function in a positive manner for the good of ALL.

However, until that occurs, or is prompted to occur, there must be people who can bridge the social disparity lines, much like rural francesca does. And of course there are also many others, like those of whom perhaps you are viewing with a skeptical eye, but who are in fact are doing something to bring it about.

EDT for spelling and clarity

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Anyone have anything to say about actual unmistakable class conempt? IE, Heather Mallicks comment about white trash.

Its one thing for me to call myself white trash, or to make derisive comments about 'my ilk'... even if I genuingly mean it to be derisive rather than turning the label on its head.

Its another matter for people like Heather Mallick to use it and mean it. Who coincidentally [or not coincidentally] know little or nothing about the multi-dimensionality and richness of white trash.

ummmmmmmmmm....It's bad? 

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Takes more than combat gear to make a man Takes more than license for a gun Confront your enemies, avoid them when you can A gentleman will walk but never run -Sting, an englishman in new york

Anyway, remind, you totally misconstrued my comment. Not your fault - I hadn't yet elaborated. When I said "failure of leadership", I was not referring to some "leader", but rather to the entirety of the left-wing political parties and forces and trade unions in action at the time. They couldn't figure out how to unite, what platform to promote, and how to lead.

I don't blame workers for that failure, either in the 1930s or today. If workers don't show up at union meetings or political party functions, it's because they correctly see them as a total waste of time, directionless and rudderless. Workers will get into motion, and the situation will change. But it will change radically, with a lot of parties and unions and other movements biting the dust and re-forming as something else.

So, to get back to class contempt. I have this mindless sort of admiration for workers (not parties, not unions). I think they know what's what, and despite all the odds, they will get their act together. Lecturing them to not be apathetic is counter-productive. They are apathetic for very good reasons.

Parties and unions that abandon principle at the least sign of trouble - that campaign from the left and rule from the right - that make promises to attract support and then shamelessly break them when they think workers' support is wrapped up - that foster individual ambition in place of self-sacrifice - that get so tied up in the status quo that they forget their mission is to change it - anyway, if you need specific examples, refer to:

This resource.

When DID old Karl's concept, lumpenproletariat, fall out of fashion - and for what reason? Some of the above?

(And this question is honestly placed, u. , in the name of enlightenment.)

Encyclopedia Brittanica:

(German: “rabble proletariat”), according to Karl Marx in The Communist Manifesto, the lowest stratum of the industrial working class, including also such undesirables as tramps and criminals. The members of the Lumpenproletariat—this “social scum,” said Marx—are not only disinclined to participate in revolutionary activities with their “rightful brethren,” the proletariat, but also tend to act as the “bribed tools of reactionary intrigue.”

Unless Karl Marx has changed in the decades since I last read him, I don't recall him demonizing the very poor nor blaming workers' apathy for the slowness of social change. I do recall him meticulously dissecting what he viewed as unscientific theories of some ideologues who spoke in the name of the dispossessed but who didn't show them a path forward. I think those were the ones he blamed for perpetuation of the status quo - not the workers.

And by the way, remind, the same workers who don't participate in the activities and organizations that you and I may think are the right ones, don't just drink beer and fish and hunt. They are active in ways that to them appear more meaningful. But when the time comes for a fight, they are all there. I've seen some trade union officials whine about workers not attending meetings until the very moment when a strike or other struggle, authorized or wildcat, breaks out - and there they are. Often, in such moments, they will sweep away the old leadership which was not fit for the battle, but only for taking attendance and playing at Robert's or Bourinot's rules of order. And that same phenomenon will happen at the level of political parties as well. Our job is to ensure that when it happens, we can lead by being dedicated to the workers' needs - otherwise, they will seek or create other leaders, and that may be good or disastrous.

Wikipedia also says Marx used it early on:

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Lumpenproletariat (a German word meaning "raggedy proletariat") is a term first defined by Karl Marx and Friedrich Engels in The German Ideology (1845) and later elaborated on in works by Marx.

In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon (1852), Marx refers to the lumpenproletariat as the 'refuse of all classes,' including 'swindlers, confidence tricksters, brothel-keepers, rag-and-bone merchants, beggars, and other flotsam of society.' In the Eighteenth Brumaire, Marx describes the lumpenproletariat as a 'class fraction' that constituted the political power base for Louis Bonaparte of France in 1848. In this sense, Marx argued that Bonaparte was able to place himself above the two main classes, the proletariat and bourgeoisie, by resorting to the 'lumpenproletariat' as an apparently independent base of power, while in fact advancing the material interests of the bourgeoisie.

Not a believer in and not a follower of Marx, unionist, at least as how it is perceived and used  today and in recent history. IMV, he was an ideologue in as much as the "other" ideologues, to which he took exception to.

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"

Me neither. I only responded to George's appeal to "authority". Although I must say, Marx wrote better and was a lot more perceptive (brilliant) than most of those who swore by his name afterwards... I definitely plan to read him again one day.

I did find it astonishing, at a young age, to see such a man of letters place the working class on a pedestal and attribute to it the role of leadership in moving history forward. I had been brought up to believe that people (like my parents) were workers because they were failures. There's still a fair bit of that around.

Many many many people have said it, remind. Hence this thread.

Now that we've clarified that point, remind, what did you think of my comments about my experience that workers are in fact very active, though not always within the structures that society tells them to use?

I could be wrong, jan, but I believe the chief concern in this thread is for the politics/apathy of the working well to do, more than the poor.

Been wondering along those lines since a newspaper strike in 1968 got a good student turnout but only a handful of UE stalwarts. The talk among the students was of revolution in Paris and its advance with a New Left in North America. The talk among the UE stalwarts, who were themselves trying to hold together a shrinking bargaining unit containing workers from assemblers to draughtsmen, machinists to switchgear wiring electricians, were satisfied to see an attempt at a solid line of pickets in an attempt to shut down production.

The centre did not hold. Students were arrested, and when a cop pulled my wife backwards to land on a pavement, I was lining up a punch on the fella's nose when another cop hoisted me out of the fray (I was lighter, then) and, calling his old classmate and huntin'/fishin' buddy a silly bastard, he saved me from the students' fate. 

A couple of years later I yearned to go to Chile where there was obviously less disconnect between social class and political consciousness - and was saved again by acceptance into a graduate program at U of T.

I've been waiting for someone to point to the changing economic situation for the worker, their co-optation into the system of production and distribution, to explain today's situation. Including the union's very "success" in getting company pensions - we all know you can't survive on government pensions. 

You can see the evolution of (let's call it "quietism" in the ranks) in reading Richard Parker's bio on John Kenneth Galbraith, or Robrt Reich's Supercapitalism. 

And now, with the apparent collapse of that "Supercapitalism", opportunity strikes.  However, as an earlier thread demonstrated, it would be nice not to have to appeal to "any economist out there" to tell us what might be allowed to fly in this brave new world. Or to wonder just what we might manufacture and where it might sell and ....

Now for the invective from the stands...

No, its actually been a thread about the disenfranchised criminal "element" not unionized workers, and the state criminal justice system as the primary tool of class warfare. That was the take off point for Reminds incautious remarks.

Not at all Remind, that was your intervention that sparked this line of discussion. The thread is about contempt for the"working class" in total, not just one segment (unionized workers) of it. You are playing word games with my use of the word dispossessed, even if we exclude those we might call the "dispossessed" from the equation, most Canadian workers are not unionized. Many are of the kind who Mallick might deem to be "white trash."

I also feel that Pastor Niemoller evocative poem is somewhat fitting, to express the idea you want to express, but also vaguely patronizing. It very much evokes the image of the coddling Christians (presumably in the Union movement) knowing and doing what is best for the underclass, who can not be "expected" to do anything for themselves.

All I said was that though I appreciated the point you were making with the Pastor Neimoller reference, that I also found it subtly condecending, as if social movements can't and don't exist among anyone but the well-to-do, working or otherwise: "No one can expect the dispossessed, and the frantic working poor to be able to greatly get involved."

To Unionists point, they are involved, everyday. Leadership that expressess their interests would also be helpful.

I also pointed out that this thread has not been: "All to do with the working well to do!" I pointed out that it was you who introduced this subject. Nothing wrong with that, but that has been a sidebar to the main issues that the thread begins with.

___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"