Class Contempt

Quote:

If a leader is failing, then the people who choose the leader are failing to make the leader hear their voices, or failing to make their leader act in accordance with larger organizational decisions, and thus they are failing themselves.

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.   

------------------------------ 

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

Unioniest wrote:

They are apathetic for very good reasons.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

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.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

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 .

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.

George Victor wrote:

And in the 2nd place?

In the 2nd place, it's "Britannica".

Quote:

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

Who says?  I don't believe that all people who disengage should be condemned but they shoudn't all be portrayed as virtuous either.  

----------------------------------------------

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.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

"Leaders good and noble, workers selfish and lazy!"

No one said this unionist, so you can stop puttng words in people's mouths.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

I was speaking of this thread unionist, as you well knew.

___________________________________________________________
"watching the tide roll away"

 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!

Quote:

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. 

----------------------------------------    

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

George Victor wrote:

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.

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"

Cueball wrote:

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 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"

___________________________________________________________
"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.

[quote] 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. [quote]

___________________________________________________________________________________________ From North of Manifest Destiny

Quote:

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)

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"

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

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

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.

Unionist wrote:

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]

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.

Lard Tunderin' Jeezus wrote:

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.

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.