"It was then that I realized that what I was looking at was actually a piece of hate mail. It wasn't directed at the usual suspects - racial, religious or ethnic minorities. Indeed, using a black or native face would have been counterproductive since it would have raised hackles about racism. Instead there was an implicit appeal to a prejudice that hardly ever gets noticed but is remarkably widespread - class contempt."
-- Stan Hister, " 'White Trash' aren't "
Maybe someone can post the link, and then tell me how to do it. I can't seem to figure it out on this new format yet.
While I agree with Hister, I think he doesn't go far enough in leveling criticism on the left, or in his term "liberals". The lack of regard, let alone respect for working people is a by product of class analysis being eclipsed years ago by identity politics.
While it should not surprise us that the Conservatives would be unabashed in their contempt for working people, or that capital "L" Liberals feel the same but keep it quiet to keep their "bait and switch" politics viable, it should surprise us that the field of representing working class issues has been dropped by the NDP and other supposedly more progressive elements.
And it should further surprise us that in being jilted by the NDP, working people who still bother to participate in politics participate in political parties like the Conservatives and Liberals who show, or can barely contain, their contempt for working people.
Tommy, just highlight the text, then click on the chain icon in the comment section and a box will pop up where you post the url in.
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).
Is this the article you wanted to link to?
http://www.portside.org/?q=showpost&i=5128
Maybe someone can post the link, and then tell me how to do it. I can't seem to figure it out on this new format yet.
http://rabble.ca/news/white-trash-arent [5]
And it should further surprise us that in being jilted by the NDP, working people who still bother to participate in politics participate in political parties like the Conservatives and Liberals who show, or can barely contain, their contempt for working people.
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.
So, it is extremely fucking funny to now see people carry on about how the NDP has dropped workers issues, without providing any evidence of course. What a set up, damned if you do and damned if you don't.
Thirdly, perhaps workers who join the CPC or Liberals have a great deal of self loathing because of class stigma and they want to believe, falsely, that they are part of the power play?!
Fourthly please do prove that the workers who have joined those who do not have their best interests at heart and who indeed may loath them, have been "jilted" by the NDP, just saying so, does not make it so!
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
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.
Stan Hister looks at a picture of "a man in his twenties, bearded and with unkempt hair. He was slouched on a couch, legs splayed apart, in an undershirt and with a beer in his hand," and he assumes this is a representation of a working-class man.
So whose stereotyping and class prejudice are we talking about here?
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)
Thank you, Francesca, for eloquently linking the two topics that were interleaving but not overlapping in this thread. The very poor and the working class do indeed share common interests. After all, there's a lot of migration between those two countries...
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.
"Class contempt" certainly exxists on the left. My own experience is that it tends to exist most strongly among those who are most critical of the democratic left. There are certainly those who are happy to stand in solidarity with the working class just so long as they don't have to stand near them.
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.
"My clients aren't bad people, they just have bad days."
I like that.
Although I think I have tended to think of it as "stupid days".
But how do you characterise it as bad/stupid days for the friends or family members who put a lot of deliberated planning into their stupidity.
Just another of life's mysteries I guess.
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.
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.
Some people clearly have no ethical standards about who they rob from, but there is a pretty pervasive ethical standard that asserts that certain kinds of crimes, such as shoplifting from Supermarkets, or big businessess amount to "victimless" crimes.
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.
It's interesting that one of the concrete measures Layton did suggest was minimum sentencing for car theft, which is a property crime, whose victims would be middle or upper class.
"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.
Thu 20 Sep 2007.
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
SEPTEMBER 20, 2007
NDP PRESSES CONSERVATIVES FOR ACTION ON CORPORATE CRIME
OTTAWA – Today NDP Finance Critic Judy Wasylycia-Leis sent a letter to Finance Minister Jim Flaherty urging the government to adopt an NDP initiative to take on corporate, ‘white-collar’ crime.
“Government inertia is standing between Canadians and the world-class investment protection they deserve,” said Wasylycia-Leis. “We’ve seen a government focus on a national securities regulator but no action on other urgently needed improvements. The new session is the perfect time for Parliament to tackle white-collar crime but we need government leadership now.”
Today’s letter follows up on the NDP’s call in May for the government to join in a major across-the-board offensive to fill legislative gaps to toughen corporate rules, strengthen enforcement and improve Canadian investor protection.
“Everyday families want corporate crime dealt with,” added Wasylycia-Leis. “It’s bad for investors and it’s bad for the economy. The NDP takes corporate crime seriously – it’s time this government did as well.”
http://judywl.ca/page/208
Party launches campaign to crack own on corporate criminals
Ottawa (25 May 2007) - The New Democratic Party is calling for a Canadian Securities Commission with clout to replace the toothless network of provincial securities commissions that now 'protects' private investors in Canada - including worker pension funds.
The proposal is the centrepiece of a national campaign launched by the NDP on Thursday to put a brake on corporate crime in Canada.
“Since the Bre-X scandal ten years ago, there have been dozens of corporate swindles that have bilked average Canadians out of millions of dollars and no one is in jail because we don’t have the laws to put them there,” says Winnipeg MP Judy Wasylycia-Leis, the NDP finance critic.
“We must overhaul corporate accounting practices and insider trading laws, and introduce accountability provisions. We must demand better from our public companies. The ‘wild west’ of financial markets must find a new sheriff,” she says.
Canada lags behind the world
Canada is the only G8 countries that has not done anything in recent years to toughen its laws on corporate accountability.
“Germany, France and the U.K. all have new laws in the post-Enron era,” notes Wasylycia-Leis. “The United States and Australia introduced tough legislation on accounting and whistleblowers, both under conservative governments. We’re calling on victims of corporate crime to take the lead and join us in fighting for reform. That’s the only way this minister will act.”
The campaign coincides with the Conrad Black trial. The Toronto tycoon is currently in the midst of a multi-million-dollar trial in Chicago. At the heart of the case are tens of millions of dollars in tax-free "non-compete payments" that prosecutors allege were paid fraudulently to Black and his associates.
The Ontario Securities Commission - which sets the standard for other securities commissions in Canada - has distinguished itself by doing virtually nothing to call Black to account throughout his long and controversial corporate career.
Wasylycia-Leis said the NDP campaign has three key elements:
Protecting
Canadian Investors by:
• Establishing a Canada Securities
Commission to which all provincial securities commissions would have to
report;
• Creating new accounting oversight committees with independent
auditors;
• Forcing Canadian executives to face higher standards of
disclosure, and,
•
Ensuring that independent corporate board
members are truly independent.
Fighting for
Canadian workers by:
• Pushing for genuine whistleblower
protection, and,
•
Establishing new rules for corporate perks
and disclosure.
Policing the financial 'Wild West'
by:
•
adopting an expanded and independent mandate
for the RCMP's Integrated Market Enforcement Team (IMET);
• Raising
Canadian corporate accounting practices and laws to tougher international
standards, and,
•
adopting laws to prevent non-compete
payments.
The National Union of Public and General Employees (NUPGE) has long supported the concept of a national securities commission to assist in protecting Canadians from white-collar fraud and corporate wrong-doing. NUPGE
Web posted by NUPGE: 25 May 2007
http://www.nupge.ca/news_2007/n25my07b.htm [19]
"Today's letter follows up on the NDP's call in May for the governmentto join in a major across-the-board offensive to fill legislative gapso toughen corporate rules, strengthen enforcement and improve Canadian investor protection." [20]
The NDP have been calling for it loudly since 1997 and it was part of this elections campaign platform even.
http://www.ndp.ca/xfer/campaign2008/Platform_2008_EN.pdf [21]
http://www.nowpublic.com/tag/white+collar+crime/news [22]
Normal
0
"There is broad-based interest in Parliament on this
issue. Both the House of Commons and
Senate committees have expressed support for a common regulator.
Normal
0
As for the national media, this is what the Globe
and Mail had to say last week: "
“Instead of seeing the creation of a national
regulator as a capitulation, the provinces need to understand that a truly
national body is the only way to drag Canada’s antiquated securities market
into the 21st Century.” [23]
Moreover, it is not the NDP's fault the corporatist controlled media, part and parcle of the white collar criminal crowd, do not report on actions in this regard by the NDP. The NDP are driving it in the HoC as they have been since 1997.
Also from this campaign:
NDP Leader Jack Layton unveiled a platform Sunday aimed at helping Canadian
families, focusing largely on child care...
"Our plan does not include a corporate tax cut. Our priorities are those of
the kitchen table, of helping families make ends meet," Layton told a rally at
his riding of Toronto-Danforth.
"The plan includes promises of giving families a new baby bonus, ensuring
Canadians have better health care, and giving more financial help to First
Nations people and students. [24]"
___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"
"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.
Thanks Remind. As a mostly lurker here, I appreciate it when someone brings a note of reality to counter the usual "Let's attach Jack" posts.
"My clients aren't bad people, they just have bad days."
I like that.
Although I think I have tended to think of it as "stupid days".
But how do you characterise it as bad/stupid days for the friends or family members who put a lot of deliberated planning into their stupidity.
Just another of life's mysteries I guess.
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.
Mine wasn't really a serious comment Cueball- or at least not in direct relation to what you said.
Even if it isn't a line you can rigorously apply, there's a difference between 'the criminalized' who commit petty crimes. And then like you said there are those what are essentially 'career criminals'- where the label fits even if that isn't all they do to get by in life.
I happen to be blessed with both among friends and family.
Anyway- I knew who the lawyers comment was directed at. And I agree how apt it is, and that the clients are the bulk of who the justice system is 'processing'. In fact, the career criminals very often come off no worse in the system, even if they are also legal aid clients.
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.
Mine wasn't really a serious comment Cueball- or at least not in direct relation to what you said.
Even if it isn't a line you can rigorously apply, there's a difference between 'the criminalized' who commit petty crimes. And then like you said there are those what are essentially 'career criminals'- where the label fits even if that isn't all they do to get by in life.
I happen to be blessed with both among friends and family.
Anyway- I knew who the lawyers comment was directed at. And I agree how apt it is, and that the clients are the bulk of who the justice system is 'processing'. In fact, the career criminals very often come off no worse in the system, even if they are also legal aid clients.
Right, the system basically works to criminalize the class entirely. No worse no better. The legal aid system assures the same treatment regardless of the actual misdeeds.
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?
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
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?
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
Stockwell Day?
What are you talking about cue? Other than your usual nothings of course..
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
The discovery that you aren't really that "left wing". I have been cofused for some time, and now I understand. The "blaming others, and pretending to be victims" meme attached to some rant about being "coddled by the parent state", in the context of a discussion about poverty, criminality and the state, is something I am more used to seeing from the likes of Anne Coulter, than Emma Goldman.
"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.
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.
What is this - comedy hour?
Pretty contemptuous if you ask me.
I wouldn't extrapolate that Remind is saying "people should pull themselves up by their own bootstraps".
I am of the opinion that if I am correct that working class people and the poor have withdrawn from politics because the system is so skewn against them, and that there is no political party that represents their interests, then they are more than justified in believing it becomes necessary for one people to dissolve the political bands which have connected them with another, and to assume among the powers of the earth, the separate and equal station to which the laws of nature and of nature's God entitle them, a decent respect to the opinions of mankind requires that they should declare the causes which impel them to the separation.We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable rights, that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.
That to secure these rights, governments are instituted among men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed. That whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the right of the people to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their safety and happiness.
As someone once said.
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.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
No I am not, as a matter of fact, but no worries I understand that my 2 favorite detractors would love to detract and give inferences that were not there.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
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".
My partner and I are both union members, BCGEU and PPWC respectively, though you know this, I thought I would indicate it again, as I am NOT union bashing. I am apathy and self-imposed ignorance bashing. And I was a shop steward for many years and my partner was too, until laid off last year. And we have both seen the apathy, that you so readily deny it, is amazing, to say the least.
Calling out apathy and stating that some need to take responsibility for this action, is not bashing the efforts of those who came before and fought for what we have. Nor indeed of the efforts of union and non-union workers that keep society running. However, I believe the apathy/negligence of the union and electoral processes is the greatest disrespect there is.
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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
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No I am not, as a matter of fact, but no worries I understand that my 2 favorite detractors would love to detract and give inferences that were not there.
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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.
Stop putting words in my mouth cue, just as you do with everyone else!
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....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
Stop putting words in my mouth cue, just as you do with everyone else!
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
We are definitely not talking about fairly well satisfied workers with above average wages, working conditions and protections, but those who are extremely exploited and impoverished to the point where they engage in crime to supplement their income. They are not busy "Trout fishing" while you are getting free coffee and donuts in a union hall, they may be waiting for bail, talking to lawyers, or any one of a number of things.
All you have to offer is your contemptuous arrogant civics lecture about their "ignorance" as an "invitation" to political action, blaming them for a corrupt courts system, and manifetly undemocratic electoral system, as if it is their fault for defending themselves directly rather than spending time at NDP meetings, or reading your pearls of wisdom here at this web site.
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
Hey. I have worked in those union towns in rural Canada, and I know what you guys are talking about, there. But what may not be evident there, watching those bully boys driving around with there giant sized Tonka Toy trucks with their 4 wheelers or Ski-doos in tow, is that something very different is going on in urban Canada. The dispossessed are being marginalized and criminalized as a class.
I know people who have thousands of dollars in unpaid fines for begging. What could be more bizarre than having the police, and the courts intervene in order to demand money from beggars?
No longer is it the case that the people we see begging on the streets are the volunteer homeless, or kids out for the "experience", but in fact quite normal people, who otherwise would be working, had they the chance, and who only really look dishevelled and stressed because abject poverty makes you that way.
The dispossessed will not be convinced that supporitng minimum sentences for car theft, alledgedly as a measure to prevent "gang violence" is an indication that the NDP understand and is on their side, nor will it convince them to vote for it. Criminal activity, more often that not, is not a moral dysfunction but an economic one -- that is the left wing line.
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.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"That is sufficient explanation of what was a strongly off-colour comment, in the context of this thread, I guess.
"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.
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.
Canadian labour history is actually not that simple, as this excerpt from the Canadian Encyclopedia describes:
The WUL, like the IWW and the OBU, failed to build a stable membership of more than a fraction of TLC affiliates, but it mobilized over 50 000 workers in strikes; accounting for 50% of all strikes and strikers in Canada in 1933-34. The WUL's penetration of southern Ontario's factory belt in those years was a new departure in the history of revolutionary unionism in Canada, and a signal of a force in Canadian industrial life that gained major momentum in 1937. The WUL's high point was 1934 when its militants led no less than 109 strikes. Three WUL-led coal miners were killed at Estevan, Saskatchewan in 1931; army machine-gun carriers were called to fight the WUL in Stratford, Ontario in 1933; brass knuckles and police cavalry were used against an allied oraganization on the Vancouver docks in 1935. The WUL fought for immediate demands, such as the "work and wages" sought by the 1935 ON TO OTTAWA [59] trekkers. Its practical politics were not "revolutionary". An entire slate of WUL supporters was elected to town council in Blairmore, Alta, in 1933; typically recolouring old designs, they spruced up the main street and dubbed it Tim BUCK [60] boulevard.
Revolutionary industrial unionism in North America did not really die during the Depression; rather, its advocates were co-opted into the orthodox political left or into the pragmatic CIO (Committee for Industrial Organization/Congress of Industrial Organizations). Most WUL militants merged with the US-based CIO unions in 1936. Fate was not kind to the revolutionary unionists in Canada, but the situation can be favourably contrasted with that in Europe, the movement's birthplace, where by 1940 their comrades in France, Italy, Germany, Spain and the USSR were behind the barbed wire of the dictators. The "revolutionary" side of the movement proved a chimaera. Its practical side was an effective program for labour, by which "we mean all those who by useful work of hand or brain, feed, clothe or shelter; or contribute towards the health, comfort and education of the human race" (OBU General Executive Board, Vancouver Bulletin No 1).
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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Remind provides many explanations for the failure of workers to take action. The only one missing is failure of leadership.
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.
We saw this anti-progressive leader action play out in the last election where it became all about the leader, in each of the parties, when indeed we have a political party system for very good reasons. This false notion of a "leader" being the be all and end all, is buying into right wing or patriarchial philosophy, or conceptual framework, and it should be rejected everytime it rears it's ugly false head. It is divisive and disempowering to those that comprise the whole of the party, and indeed the whole of society.
I have had a good many tussels with so called "leaders" of things I was involved in, and upon occasion I completely discounted their "leadership" position as not being pertinent. Mostly over things pertinent to my sphere of actions and deliberations, and sometimes others than my own, whereas the leader was working for/from their own self-interest at the time and not for the good of the many, and thus refused action. And hell ya, I undercut their actions pertaining to what I/others were trying to acheive. But I did not undercut their broader leadership, as there needs to be someone who can be the voice of the many, and who can communicate effectively the message, unless of course their leadership is/was completely flawed.
Take for example hockey, where the team players nominate a team captain. In no way does this position mean that the puck must be passed always to the captain and never carried alone, or passed to another. But still the captain speaks for the team and thus is their leader in differing venues.
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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
But remind, not everyone has the time to plug away at these issues. Because of this we need leaders who we can trust, not ones who need to be constantly nannied by the membership.
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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.
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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.
I do not believe that is a good enough reason to get apathetic, I believe it is good a reason to get active. People decide to get apathetic, it is not a naturally occuring phenomena, and they can just as easily decide not to.
You can wallow all day in long past recriminations, and play the blame game, and not a damn thing gets changed. You can decide to see everything cynically, and not a damn thing gets done. You can hold grudges and not a damn thing gets done. You can keep on fighting over trivial shit and not a damn thing gets done. All that is getting done is a whole helleva lot of nothing, other than taking 3 steps back.
Of course everything needs renewal, and status quo, is another occurance not naturally found for any great length of time. Renewal should be recognized as something that is not something to be warded against, but necessary. However, people are resistent to change, even though change would be in their best interests. I have yet to decide if this is operant conditioning, or a fact of nature, or indeed an axiety disorder. Or even a combination of all the above.
And refering me to babble forum topics is such a brilliant strategy unionist.
As for principles, that is a whole other topic direction.
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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.)
In the first place, I don't think Karl ever elaborated it with any pretense of rigour. So I'd say it was never more than an ad hoc descriptive label .
Encyclopedia Brittanica:
(German: “rabble proletariat”), according to Karl Marx [74] 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.”
----------------------------------------------------------------------------Dopuble D..... post.
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And in the 2nd place?
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.
And in the 2nd place?
In the 2nd place, it's "Britannica".
Wikipedia also says Marx used it early on:
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopediaJump to: navigation, search
Lumpenproletariat (a German [79] word meaning "raggedy proletariat") is a term first defined by Karl Marx [80] and Friedrich Engels [81] in The German Ideology [82] (1845 [83]) and later elaborated on in works by Marx.
In The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Napoleon [84] (1852 [85]), Marx refers to the lumpenproletariat as the 'refuse of all classes,' including 'swindlers, confidence tricksters [86], brothel-keepers [87], rag-and-bone merchants [88], beggars [89], 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 [90] of France in 1848 [91]. In this sense, Marx argued that Bonaparte was able to place himself above the two main classes, the proletariat [92] and bourgeoisie [93], by resorting to the 'lumpenproletariat' as an apparently independent base of power, while in fact advancing the material interests of the bourgeoisie.
Who says? I don't believe that all people who disengage should be condemned but they shoudn't all be portrayed as virtuous either.
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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
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.
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Who says? I don't believe that all people who disengage should be condemned but they shoudn't all be portrayed as virtuous either.
Well, I don't know all workers in the world individually. I was trying to make a general point. Let me make it in plainer terms:
"Leaders good and noble, workers selfish and lazy!"
... does not accord with my life experience, whether in the union movement, the peace movement, the women's movement (as an ally), or in various political parties, primarily the NDP.
Hopefully that makes my point clearer.
Do you agree, CMOT?
Not a believer in and not a follower of Marx, unionist.
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.
"Leaders good and noble, workers selfish and lazy!"
No one said this unionist, so you can stop puttng words in people's mouths.
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Many many many people have said it, remind. Hence this thread.
I was speaking of this thread unionist, as you well knew.
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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 think that most working poor folks are so busy surviving day to day, week to week, that there is no time to get involved in politics. Working 2 or 3 crappy jobs, getting there, trying to put food on the table and roof over one's head and over one's kids heads, is enough.
And the poor bureacracy doesn't help by putting constant demands on them to "jump through." I think that as they struggle, the best the rest of us can do, is help them out, and lift some of the load off.
I think a kind word, a helping hand, and also asking for their help is also a good way to help people be a part of a movement and politics. I think of the work of OCAP in Ontario and the National Poverty Coalition.
I think of fighting for more than 10 bucks an hour and higher is concrete. They need more money to live and feel like it is not their fault. And we all make dumb choices sometimes. The difference is that we have a wider margin of error.
Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!
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...
Well, I don't know all workers in the world individually. I was trying to make a general point. Let me make it in plainer terms:
"Leaders good and noble, workers selfish and lazy!"
... does not accord with my life experience, whether in the union movement, the peace movement, the women's movement (as an ally), or in various political parties, primarily the NDP.
Hopefully that makes my point clearer.
Do you agree, CMOT?
Well, you're putting me in a hell of a spot, but...
There are a lot of good workers out there, people who are kind and decent, and need to be payed much more, but there are also workers who aren't. I had an aide in highschool who didn't like unions, voted reform and yet was not above exploiting the contract when it suited her.
The problem is that unions have made workers so prosperous, that they don't feel a need for them anymore. This was certainly the case with this person, whose husband was an engineer at one of the mines in the valley.
My bus driver for the last couple of years of my public education told me once "if your going to work, work, don't hide behind the damn union."
This was a man who had serious back problems, and who, if the union hadn't been backing him, wouldve been out on his ass, but he still treated it with contempt.
Now, I relize that union leaders can be dippshits and that the system is flawed, but I would also like people to acknowledge that a strong union movement is essential.
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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
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.
[SNIP]
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.
All to do with the working well to do! No one can expect the dispossessed, and the frantic working poor to be able to greatly get involved, they have already been taken out of the equation, and it becomes necessiity that the working well to do, get more involved than what they are to protect those already marginalized and to protect themselves.
First they come for.....
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
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.
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.
I see you added to your intial post in the length of time it took me to quote your response to address it. Good idea, lest one point out you were partaking in an action you often decry in others, comments addressing the person posting as opposed to the topic.
But now you are simply putting in words and twisting inferences that you have created, but still only in order to do exactly what you decry others as doing to you.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
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.
From CMOT:
The problem is that unions have made workers so prosperous, that they don't feel a need for them anymore. This was certainly the case with this person, whose husband was an engineer at one of the mines in the valley.
My bus driver for the last couple of years of my public education told me once "if your going to work, work, don't hide behind the damn union."
This was a man who had serious back problems, and who, if the union hadn't been backing him, wouldve been out on his ass, but he still treated it with contempt.
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That sounds like a situation right out of Appalachia, mate. Or have the hills of Alberta/B.C. taken on that hue?
Anyway, hope we can get past the invective. Don't think egos can be too badly battered here.
Clearly, the "too successful" union is not a general situation (and certainly not in the U.S. where it's been nearly wiped out).
I'm showing flu symptoms right now or I'd delve into those tomes that give us an understanding of the historical forces at work. Have to beg off.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
I am glad to see Cueball that you have come to the conclusion that the current generation of homeless on the streets are deserving poor although I can't quite understand your view that the last generation was not. I listened to your kind of bullshit back 40 years ago when I was on the streets and self righteous people looked at me and told me to go home to suburbia. Then as now most of the people on the streets have stories to tell about things like abuse and I was astounded that you would shit on homeless people with such comments.
I would love to have the money to do a research project on attitudes about unions between two groups of HEU workers. In the HEU when Campbell privatized a whole bunch of jobs and illegally removed the workers rights the HEU surprised them because unlike in Britain the HEU did not call the new workers scabs and vilify them for taking the contracted out jobs instead that union set about reorganizing the positions. I suspect that there would be a big difference in the attitudes about unions and class politics with the newly organized workers and many of their coworkers.
This whole society we live in has changed in who it respects. The fast buck artist, the baseball player, the lottery winner are the heroes of MSM. There are very few illustrations of the power of cooperation amongst people showing the sum of the people is always greater than the individuals themselves.
___________________________________________________________________________________________ From North of Manifest Destiny
"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."
(chuckle) I know you didn't mean it that way, that's what made me laugh. On a message board where people seem to delight in taking things the worst possible way in order to provide for themselves a venting of vesuvian preportions, I thought the way you said that was, well, hillarious. And no, I didn't take it personally.
A couple of Unionists posts point to something that occurred to me a long time ago, and that is that working class people have been deluded into thinking that there is nothing to be proud of in what they do. And it's a subtle thing. Amazing, really, that the segment of society that actually adds value to the economy is made to feel ashamed of what they do, that their wages are ill gotten gains, even. (until such ill gotten gains are spent, then they become someone else's divine right to profits)
That's why I really didn't, and won't besides this, give much thought or discussion to Mallicks's use of the term "white trash". It may be wrong, but there are much larger fish to fry on this subject than a fillet 0' Mallick.
Just like the move to shit on trades people as being less than, as opposed to getting and having a degree, or several. Now we have a shortage of trades people, and a whacking bunch of people have partial degrees, or low grade degrees and they now have massive student debt and cannot go back to school to get into something that suits them.
BTW, CBC had a whole segment on last night's late news in respect to the NDP's initiative on getting active against white collar crime. I didn't watch it, but my partner called from out of town, woke me up and and told me that he was watching it. I went back to sleep. :D
This whole white collar is good, blue collar is bad, in all of it facets, has gone on long enough. It is a phoney bill of goods that has been allowed to stand for way too long. The trick becomes how to change it.
___________________________________________________________ "watching the tide roll away"
There's one of the problems, with the term "working class". Perhaps a long time ago, it might have had a clearly seen deffinition. Today, not so much.
When I say "working class" I mean anyone who works at farming, manufacturing or resource, and I would exclude professionals. However, nurses surely work hard, and are professionals, and I'd consider them "working class". Even if they may not.
Is it wage level? What you do?
I could win a million dollars this wednesday, never work another day in y life, and yet I'd still be "working class", as my mother and father were before me, and their mothers and fathers before them, and their.... well, you get the pattern.
It's not just wages, or what you do-- it's also culture. And there's little pride to be found on that account, is there?
And, point taken on the CBC/NDP/white collar crime feature.
And TP (I couldn't resist using your initials) that is the real problem with grasping for terms and trying to define people. Pretty much the only people I know who don't self identify as middle class are people in the labour movement and many of them are BA's etc and frankly they are middle class although their roots are often working class.
But class is something that the right wing has purposefully expunged from our civil discourse because it has such powerful potential to unite the very people that our elite in the media and in politics are trying to control. But I know when you start to talk about the working class most Canadians get offended because they have been trained for at least 30 years if not 50 years that class is irrelevant and our society has gone beyond class. I don't know that I have any answers other than winning a very very very large lottery and buying some media.
___________________________________________________________________________________________ From North of Manifest Destiny
Is it just the right wing that has expunged it from our discourse?
No they have also convinced other people and movements to do the same. I think they are the only group that has deliberately tried to expunge it. Others like the NDP have expunged it as more and more people told them that they don't identify with the term and that it turns them off the message. We need to make the discourse about class again and maybe the brain trust in the NDP will follow suit. They after all do tend to try and follow the polling data.
___________________________________________________________________________________________ From North of Manifest Destiny
Double post
I confess to not understanding some of the last posts. My sisters and brothers have no problem identifying with the working class. They are workers, and call themselves workers. Is this a cultural/regional issue? Do Ontario manufacturing workers call themselves "middle class?" I've honestly never heard worker here use that term.
There's one of the problems, with the term "working class". Perhaps a long time ago, it might have had a clearly seen deffinition. Today, not so much.
When I say "working class" I mean anyone who works at farming, manufacturing or resource, and I would exclude professionals. However, nurses surely work hard, and are professionals, and I'd consider them "working class". Even if they may not.
Is it wage level? What you do?
Middle class is between lower class and upper class - a classification system based on wealth. The lower class are the poor, the upper class are the rich, and the middle class are everyone else.
Working class is a category based on a relationship to the system of capitalist production, rather than on wealth or income per se. The working class comprises those who derive their income primarily from the sale of their labour power to an employer, who in turn appropriates the fruits of that labour power and either enjoys it directly or sells it at a profit to others. Those employers, as well as the much larger number of people who are self-employed, are technically not part of the working class, though many self-employed persons identify as working class in their orientation and do the same work that many workers do for their employers.*
There is no reason in principle why a salaried "professional" cannot be a part of the working class.
The working class thus comprises a wide range of income levels, from the "working poor" to the highly skilled technical or professional workers.
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* Conversely, some people who work for a salary are not in any real sense working class, because their orientation and their function in the economy is to support and advance the interests of the capitalist class, which derives its income primarily from "investment" in the purchase of labour power and its utilization to earn a profit for the owner of capital. Obvious examples of such salaried people would be "business executives" and other managerial staff whose main purpose is to ensure the continued smooth functioning of the capitalist enterprise and maximize profit for the owners at the expense of the employed workers.
I confess to not understanding some of the last posts. My sisters and brothers have no problem identifying with the working class. They are workers, and call themselves workers. Is this a cultural/regional issue? Do Ontario manufacturing workers call themselves "middle class?" I've honestly never heard worker here use that term.
There are a lot more dimensions to it than that unionist.
Calling yourself a worker does not equal having no problem identifying with the working class. Many who call themselves workers, or agree to the label, are among those who do not like the term 'working class'.
Not to mention that thinking of oneself as a worker is far more common among unionized workers- where people are used to the term. But unionized workers are not the working class.
And: a great many of the same people who are comfortable with the term 'worker' [let alone those workers who do not identify with it] will also identify themselves as 'middle class' rather than working class.
That in turn is a reflection of two things. First: as Spector pointed out, common usage of 'middle class' has become everyone who is not either wealthy or poor. But as well is the lack of affinity with the term 'working class'.
Plus of course the very ambivalent attitude towards the term 'class' period. Where on the one hand people freely identify all sorts of 'them and us' divides, but show a distaste for the term 'class'. And one of the reasons for that is because they have a strong attachment to all the meritocratic notions even at the same time they know its not a level playing field. "I still can." [with subtext: 'class' makes it sound impossible, therefore the visceral dislike for it]
Fundamentally the distinctions are derived from two economic models, the Marxist model, which Spector points out has to do with a persons relationship to the means of production, and the latter day liberal-capitalist model, with lower, middle and upper class, based on wealth. The latters serves as a way of talking about social relations without actually having to engage the Marxist model, something that is very useful ideologically speaking for the adherents of the Keynsian and neo-liberal models.
The Marxist model diretly challenges the idea that members of the working class, can in fact, become members of the elite because their relationship to the means of production gives them a distinct place in the economic order, regardless of how much wealth they accumulate. All members of the working class are similarlly vulenerable to the same processes that effect others of their class regardless of how wealthy they are. The capitalist modes of understanding class allows for members of what Marxists would call the working class to identify themselves with the elite, exactly what we can see happening in the Union movement.
Hervé Kempf points out that people do primarily self-identify by economic standing, rather than by Marxist taxonomy. And all aspire to the next level of economic class, whatever that may be. I read somewhere that there is an amazing corollary when people are asked how much money they would need to be happy. With remarkably high consistancy, people respond that they would need double their current household earnings - whether they make $30K, or $300K.
I didn't mean he would lose his home, I just mean that without union protection he would probably be unemployed. The market, when left to it's own devices discards the disabled. As for the elkvalley being Appalachia it's not quite that bad, but their are a lot of right wingers here.
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
Hervé Kempf points out that people do primarily self-identify by economic standing, rather than by Marxist taxonomy. And all aspire to the next level of economic class, whatever that may be. I read somewhere that there is an amazing corollary when people are asked how much money they would need to be happy. With remarkably high consistancy, people respond that they would need double their current household earnings - whether they make $30K, or $300K.
This kind of thing is a bit of a self-fulfilling prophesy, don't you think? This, since the reigning ideology gives people the tools to express their understanding of how the world works. There are no full courses in Marx in any high school course in North America, nor is it discussed in any depth in the media, and is easily avoidable even in University. The mainstream ideology is well covered in high school economics and sociology courses, and the latter is often a requirement in humanities in university.
You really can't expect people to miraculously devine a Marxist class analysis from life experience alone.
On the level of intutive connection, I find that unionized construction workers, and non-unionized construction workers, have much more in common with each other than they do with stockbrokers, regardless of economic disparity, so at least in that regard, the Marxist paradigm reflects some important truths.
Sorry; I wasn't very clear. The challenge is to engage the 'middle class' without having to re-educate them. How does one make them understand their own interests are not those of the class above; the class with which they identify and to which they aspire?
I don't think you can. I think you have to give them different tools to look at their circumstances. I also think that circumstances change peoples world outlook, and all things come in their time. Socialism has a lot to answer for, as well.
Probably the concept "false consciousness" was never expected to be applied in a consumer society. But one can only hope that it will regain use as social conditions change, and the importance of "the worker" is again recognized. Should not be too far away, methinks.
Where does the term "false consciousness" appear in Marx? As far as I know the terms was evolved later and is expressly derived from some concepts that Marx did talk about, such as "commodity fetishism". As far as I can tell, this entire conceptual theme is largely about "consumer society."
A quick google :"Marx on false consciousness" turns up a host of references.
I'll chase down a couple a see.
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Yep, wikipedia says it is of Engleist , not Marxist, origin.
Hope that does not negate its usefulness.
You mean like this one: False consciousness
That's it.
Had thought I might see it appear in this thread sometime before this.
And if he related it to "commodity fetishism", I guess there is truly "nothing new under the sun ." Can't imagine why that escapes me, from time to time. FProbably something to do with memory
Can't imagine why that escapes me, from time to time. FProbably something to do with memory
Or false consciousness?
Anything is possible in connection with the agin' process. It certainly isn't related to commodity fetishism. Can't get more parsimonious than m'self at the moment.
I think as some others suggested, that some "self-employed persons" do fall in this category. Public agencies, organizations and so on saw a way to provide social welfare related services "cheaper" by not only creating contract work, but also contracting out "piece work." So one is paid for labour performed on a job (unit or piece) to job bases and thus self-employed. One is not paid by the hour but in completing the creation of the product. The example I am thinking of is Children's Aid Societies who have independent trained social workers complete home studies for potential foster, adoptive, or kinship homes. It's piece work where upon the completion of the homestudy one gets a "flat rate" for "services rendered". The agency will pay mileage, and other perscribed expenses related to completing the job, such as long distance calls. So the faster one can complete the home study (must meet family 3 times but could require more visits), and write the homestudy to perscribed format template, the time is money concept plays out. If one actually figured out in hours the rate, guess what, one is actually working below minimum wage. Make no mistake it is cheap labour based on "just in time production" and the self-employed worker is no uncertain terms a part of the working class with "professional" used as the cover.
Our kids live together and play together in their communities, let's have them learn together too!
Closing for length.
Links:
[1] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-962828
[2] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-962841
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[109] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963347
[110] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963352
[111] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963353
[112] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963379
[113] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963389
[114] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963397
[115] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963401
[116] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963412
[117] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963423
[118] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963425
[119] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963426
[120] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963472
[121] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963474
[122] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963497
[123] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963557
[124] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963565
[125] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963604
[126] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963628
[127] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963637
[128] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963640
[129] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963666
[130] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963677
[131] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963697
[132] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963698
[133] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963700
[134] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963710
[135] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963714
[136] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963963
[137] http://rabble.ca/print/babble/rabble-news-features/class-contempt#comment-963971
[138] http://rabble.ca/user
[139] http://rabble.ca/user/register