Can the workers ever be wrong?
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Short review of Thompson's book here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/1960s/1968/no-772-december-1968/classic-history-book
Lets be very clear…the Enclosure Acts deprived the rural workers of a livlihood and drove them to seek work in the new factory sustem in the growing urban centres. There was no voluntary choice in the matter, our forefathers were driven into those satanic mills by necessity. The Poor House and related 'welfare" schemes ensured no tolerance of the idle. The Luddite and Captain Swing resistance movements can also be cited as evidence that it as not a "100%" free choice to lose the limited independence of being a small-holder. Bonded servitude is a red herring, YMS, and the weighmen was a response to already existing piece -rates system to control it, they did not initiate it. As for the work ethic, it was imposed upon the new proletariat. Pre-capitalism had a multitude of leisure days and as work was seasonal as well as dependant on weather, there was no 9 -5 work-days, 7 days weeks. Some will have heard of Holy Monday (and often Tuesdays). Factory discipline had to be enforced. It took a long struggle to reclaim what people had lost. SP was on the right track…or was Weber getting using the wrong title of the Protestant Work Ethic…something religion introduced or are we claiming too that religion has no ruling class element simply because its congregation happens to the poor. Rugby League and Rugby Union would be a more apt comparison. Some sport was indeed for those who could afford it ..(.anybody recall Alf Tupper character, Tough of the Track, of the Victor or was it the Hotspur)…hence the prevalance of university/private education participants in some of them. Again the beaters in the huntin'fishin'shootin country sports was the only aspect permitted to the poor or running after the Hunt s foot followers. Those country folk who "chose" to engage in such outdoor sports were classed as poachers and criminalised to be deported as bonded servants. For sure, there are those who adopted the principles of capitalism to get on …the American Dream is a working class construct , after all, and doing the pools or these days, the National Lotttery, believing in the idea it is all a matter of bit of luck to be rich, and not via working hard on the factory floor. But is capitalism, accepted by workers?…Certainly aspects has been accepted as facts of life…Has all the aspects of it always been accepted?…not always…One day "entrepeneurs" may be exalted (recall Steve Jobs being mourned by Occupy Wall St)…other days they are simply spivs on the make, seen as "job creators" one day, "job destroyers" on another…So just as capitlism is full of contradictions, it is to be expected so will the working class be…our task is to destroy false illusions, reveal the reality. Yes, to make socialists by shining a light on the side of class consiousness they have developed themselves and simply using our acquired collective knowledge as a socialist political party to educate, agitate and organise so that indeed, DPJ, the working class need not re-invent the wheel and go sit in the British Library (or sit at a computer scrolling through endless websites)for decades to gain an understanding of history and economic. We offer ourselves as a shortcut to understanding. But i am not saying we substitute ourselves as the intellectual elite…Dietzgen did say that if the task of the workers is self-liberation, then the other task is also self-education. SP is no way denying such a position by asking for evidence/source in a discussion.
SP, ISTR it ws you who introduced the term 'Work ethic' I didn't use those words, I'd categoprise what I was talking about under the rubric of 'dignity of labour' which is very much the workng class version.Alan,
Quote:Bonded servitude is a red herring, YMS, and the weighmen was a response to already existing piece -rates system to control it, they did not initiate it.But the struggle against bonded labour and the freedom to sell labour power at a market rate is at the very nub of the argument, when it was in the interests of workers to do so, they promoted and built market relations. Ruskin might have sighed about the cash nexus breaking down the relations between men, but for workers it was a liberation, of sorts. yes, in the context of enclosure there was a form of compulsion, but for the bst part of a century weavers were doing very nicely thank you. There was as much pull as push.The workers formed their own churches, and their own theology, hence the likes of William Blake (OK, technically an artisan, but the working class culture was very much driven by the artisans as much as the proletarians).
Has anyone on the thread declined to accept that "free labour" was an advance on chattel slavery or feudal restrictions ? One reason why workers should support migrant workers exercising their right of mobility of labour.Worth a read from the blog on some worker history, some bits probably from EP Thompson http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/01/blood-for-blood-says-general-lud.html#more
Quote:Traditional craftsmen, such as wainwrights and blacksmiths, were their own masters, able to work whatever hours they wanted as long as they delivered their products on time. Industrialization reduced their crafts to menial labor that could often be performed by unskilled workers. If the artisans tried to make the transition, they were faced with lower wages and fixed working hours — something referred to as "wage-slavery".Also this http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/10/dont-like-mondays.html
Quote:"Piece work" was often the norm with workers adapting their skills to operate on flexible working periods. If they missed Monday they could make it up by working extra hard at the end of the week in order to have more free time.So that places peice work in context, scarcely exalting work but as a means of creating leisure…As capitalism grew it placed this in the clocking in and out context of factory discipline, depriving workers of this flexi-time…something that again was re-introduced through the unions in the latter-half of the 20th c.. Was it really a work ethic or a thrift movement with savings banks and buiding societies and mutual insurance associations springing up everywhere (after all the trade unions started off not from the guilds but insurance schemes in many cases), as well as co-opertives. Would Robin C accept that LETS and Credit Unions and such like is the acceptance of capitalism…or a rejection of a particular brand of it?We can surely say that the nub of the issue isn't voluntarism when peasantry are driven from the land unable to compete with the world market and international trade agreements and seek work in the slums of cities and become proletarianised in the sweatshops which may well be a step up from starvation. Surely it isn't a work ethic that is the force that is initiating this rural to urban migration but desperation.Perhaps the churches have been at times begun by workers…the Welsh chapel…the Methodists…the Wee Frees…but were they not also a form of policing supported by local employers who themselves may not have been actual members of the same church…Much the same as freemasonry and the orange lodges had separate hierarchies.
Even the demand for the "Abolition of the Wages System" was first raised by artisans who had previously worked for themselves and were protesting against being reduced to working for an employer. It emerged again at the turn of the 20th century when miners in the western US found themselves forced into the same situation — and the Western Federation of Miners was the main force behind the IWW which made this slogan well-known.In other words, it wasn't raised by propertyless proletarians but by people who knew what it meant not to be a wage slave. Generations of workers since have got so used to the wages system they do not understand what the slogan means, even though we like it.
Young Master Smeet wrote:SP, ISTR it ws you who introduced the term 'Work ethic' I didn't use those words, I'd categoprise what I was talking about under the rubric of 'dignity of labour' which is very much the workng class version.YMSI specificaly mentioned the "work ethic" because in the paragraph below it looked a lot like you were pointing to the notion that the idea of believing in work, that work in itself has intrinsic value over and above necessity, was a product of our class that the ruling class have taken advantage of.
Young Master Smeet wrote:A further point, there is plenty of socialisation going on, but much of that is the working class socialising it's memebrs in it's interest. yes, the ruling ideas are those of the ruling class, but they're not the only ideas. A lot of working people dislike scroungers, and believe in work: the ruling class home in on such views, but they are not alien viws to the class.SocialistPunk wrote:However your example of our class "socialising it's members in its interests" regarding the idea of believing in work and disliking "scroungers", is the old chestnut of the "work ethic" and I do believe the last time I checked it wasn't an invention of our class, as you seem to suggest.When I pressed you to clarify your position, you didn't shy away from the point.
Young Master Smeet wrote:The work ethic was very much developed by our class and is part of the way the working class built capitalism.However I continued to press the issue and ask for proof of the "work ethic" being conceived by our class.
SocialistPunk wrote:If I've been wrong all these years, then I'm happy to ditch my socialist education in favour of another theory, but understandably I'm gonna need a bit of proof.and: If there is something definitive in that book or any other book, that proves beyond doubt that the "work ethic" was conceived by our class then a few quotes would work wonders in educating this forum.Since we started on this merry dance, Steve and Alan have both disagreed with your position and I have asked you to provide evidence that proves the "work ethic" was conceived by our class. Faced with an open invitation to provide proof and other members also disagreeing with your position, you now move the goal posts, claiming you were talking about "dignity of labour".I have already openly stated that faced with proof, I am willing to accept that I am wrong.
Well, first off, after due consideration I decided to clarify that "work ethic" was your term, that I shouldn't have let pass in the first instance. Providing proof would be difficult, since it involves going back to a time when the nascent working class and the bourgoisie both spent a lot of time attacking the aristocracy. I have given examples in which the elevation to free labourer from bondsman was part of the class struggle to realise its freedom. I could produce "When adam delved and eve span" except that goes all the way back to the peasants revolt, so it's not autochthonous to the working class. I've already produced the protestant sectaries who would have had a strong working class presence (even without having a local capitalist also as a member). Add the Miners, and I think there's enough for my purposes.Lets remember that the eary working class would have been in the same guilds as their employers: they were apprentices to master, so they would necessarilly have shared a lot of views (the masters go on to be industrialists, the apprentices waged workers).
Young Master Smeet wrote:Well, first off, after due consideration I decided to clarify that "work ethic" was your term, that I shouldn't have let pass in the first instance.Not good enough YMS. You came up with a theme, I clarified the theme and you ran with it. Now you change the goal posts and offer no proof.I expect more from a socialist than to try and wriggle out of a discussion in such a way. Establishment politicians are usually the ones caught saying things like "What I meant was…and I regret I didn't clear the misunderstsnding up sooner".By the way, "dignity of labour" is still the "work ethic" using different words, the same as Arbeit Macht Frei.
Young Master Smeet wrote:The work ethic was very much developed by our class and is part of the way the working class built capitalism.and:SP, ISTR it ws you who introduced the term 'Work ethic' I didn't use those words,Keep on wriggling YMS, keep on wriggling.
As I said, you introduced the term, not me. Having realised my mistake in not making that correction, I now have. I should pay more attention.Dignity of labour has indeed been used by the ruling class, in an attempt to hijack the term.I have, incidentally, provided examples for which you have provided no rebuttal of the development of working class notions of the value of work, including contribution to protestant notions. I think there is some onus on yourself to explain why you think the working class have brought nothing to the intellectual party, and seem only to enter history bearing the thumb prints of other classes (by your account).I'll also throw in the history of the friendly societies (which Frank Field has tried to raise in his attacks on the welfare state) as a vector for the working class values:http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Friendly_society
alanjjohnstone wrote:Lets be very clear…the Enclosure Acts deprived the rural workers of a livlihood and drove them to seek work in the new factory sustem in the growing urban centres.It's not quite that simple. Yes those things did happen but that is not till quite late on and wasn't the only process whereby the formation of capitalism took place, eclosure laws where pretty much one of the last pieces of the jigsaw. See my article here:http://www.worldsocialism.org/spgb/socialist-standard/2010s/2011/no-1284-august-2011/rise-capitalism
YMSI accept I am not as well read as yourself, and could not out quote you from a multitude of books, but the fact is you made a statement about our class and the notion of the moral value of work being the invention of our class. I just put a name to it.Despite all your familiarity with books and works of various academics and intellectuals, you still can't provide proof to back up your statement that our class conceived the "work ethic" or as you put it "dignity of work".I have never denied the contributions our class/workers have made to the changes that have taken place over the ages. The change from feudalism to capitalism, as we all know was a not a simple one, it was a complicated interwoven web of change for many, both physical, intellectual and as with this issue, spiritual.Unfortunately the idea of the "work ethic" "dignity of labour" whatever term anyone wishes to use to describe the change in religious ideas of work throught the ages, as a response to the changing social economic circumstances, come from…. religions.No matter how you try to cut it religions are essentially a tool of the ruling class, and any notions of a religious slant to human activity have their origins in the elite of various religious doctrines. Are we done on this one? Because our original discussion about the millions of workers conciously rejecting socialism in favour of capitalism, that has also been touched upon on the William Morris thread, is still waiting.
YMS, the idea of the "work ethic" in no wit comes from workers? It is only credible as way for our betters to hornswaggle us into a mindset which suits "their" class interests, one of exploitation of the majority.When the workers took on board this idea it had another and equally significant impact, that of turning workers against each other. Employed workers were encouraged to view non-working members of their own class as idle, feckless scroungers. As we can all see today. For 15/20 years, this has been the narrative, as I said in an earlier post and has proved so successful in action, that workers themselves have run with it. It took some time, but the effects are all around us. Not only has it taken some time, but effort as well, effort carried on by all of the propaganda means at the disposal of the master class.Quote:A brief perusal of the case for Socialism, is the most that can be given to the claim of the, "heard and rejecting our case".And most people stop there So YMS, you consider a brief perusal as sufficient to both understand, then reject, the case for Socialism! Well I don't. Going back to the topic of the "work ethic", as I'm sure you'll agree, it isn't, strictly speaking, a work ethic. It is an employment ethic Which terms, work/employment can be, and usually are, mutually exclusive. Moreover, if these supposed millions are as "clued up" as you suggest, at least to the extent of rejecting Socialism and consciously supporting Capitalism, they would know and see, the difference and contradictions implicit there. There is no evidence to support this.
SP,Considering I never said "our class conceived" I said it was not an idea imposed upon our class or alien to it, and I pointed to artisans and labourers from the puritain and protestant movement as demonstration that the workign class was there when the idea was born. I would also dispute that religion is always a tool of the ruling class. Many working class revolutionaries conceived their ideas as adaptations of religious thought: the muggletonians, the diggers, the levellers. EP Thompson's 'Witness against the beast' is a wonderful journey through the religious fringes of eighteenth century artisan london.No idea belongs wholly to one person or one class, its terms are contested and layered with different meanings. The dignity of labour, the freedom from the oppression of the guildmaster and the idea that your employer leaves charge of you at the work door were gains for our class, freed from the structured hieracrhies of feudal life. My pay packet is mine, I earned it, I spend it how I want, and I keep myself independently. Those are powerful working class ideas.
YMSNowhere have I said our class are meek creatures being knocked about as the movers and shakers formed society from their intellect. I don't hold to that view of society. I've already alluded to the complexity of change that was taking place during the evolution from feudalism to capitalism.Though previously I never said religion is always a tool of the ruling class, I will say it now. That splinter religious bodies appear all over the place does not mean that the overall religious ideology does not reflect the ruling ideas. And you generally find religious splinter groups hold to some form of hierarchical system of thinking.If religion was neutral and just a nice philosophy, us socialists wouldn't give it a moments thought. But we do, and we do because on the whole it is used as a tool to distract our class from critical free thinking.As a final note to this issue of morality and work. Why, when I asked you to provide proof that it originated with our class, did you not simply say. "I don't have any proof.", I don't understand the reluctance to be open in admitting you don't have all the answers. All we've been doing back and forth is talking at each other, I don't think we've been listening properly and we've achieved nothing constructive. Well that's not quite true, you have provided some interesting points and I've read DJPs interesting article he provided the link for, that I wouldn't be aware of otherwise.
DJP, nobody thinks it is simple, neither a sentence or two from myself, or an article or two by yourself, can give the topic full justice. The transformation of mercantile capitalism and the development of banking over the centuries into what we have now are subjects on their own can fill volumes. Factories themselves had to evolve from simple mills and work-shops to vast sheds of billowing smoke stacks. The thread, however, and my contribution, was a limited one to the specific claims that some sort of work ethic possessed the working class and created an acceptance of capitalist values. I was not endeavouring to explain the rise of capitalist society in all its aspects, just suggesting that there maybe some forcing of the wrong jigsaw piece into the space.But as always we have present day examples to go by…there is no need to look back into distant history. We have the land-grab politics going on today and communal lands privatised, forcing people into landless propertarians, and i did offer it an example that it is not a work ethic that is the driver of this. As you noted in your article with the Ketts rebellion the peasants and particularly the more skilled artisans and craftsmen did not go go willingly into the arms of a waiting factory owners. There were a series of uprising, remembered mostly these days by local history societies. I tried on the blog to give brief accounts of those starting with the more well known one but also lesser knownhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/05/revolting-peasants.html http://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2014/06/remembering-wat-tyler.htmlhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/06/flame-of-freedom.htmlhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/06/john-mend-alls-rebellion.htmlhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/06/the-jacquerie.htmlThe Enclosureshttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2012/05/enclosures-thieving-of-land.htmlAlso included are the religious undertones of those rebellionshttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/05/sunday-sermon-taborites.htmlhttp://socialismoryourmoneyback.blogspot.com/2013/03/omnia-sunt-communia.html But to return to the thread, You and YMS know the song"In Cokaygne we drink and eatFreely without care or sweatThe food is choice and clear the wineAt fourses and at supper time,I say again, and I dare swear,Under heaven no land like this,Of such joy and endless bliss."In Cockaygne,"All is day, there is no night,There is no quarrelling nor strife,There is no death, but endless life,There is no lack of food or cloth,There is no man or woman wroth."It is in Cockaygne"That geese fly roasted on the spit,As God's my witness to that spot,Crying out, "Geese, all hot, all hot!"Every goose in garlic drest,Of all the food the seemliest."Hmmm…not too much of the puritanical work ethic in those lines of verse and it continues into the 20th c with Big Rock Candy Mountain, those American hoboes (again many being landless share-croppers by default on mortages to the banks) in search of work but certainly not in thrall to the idea of wage-labour In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,There's a land that's fair and bright,Where the handouts grow on bushesAnd you sleep out every night.Where the boxcars all are emptyAnd the sun shines every dayAnd the birds and the beesAnd the cigarette treesThe lemonade springsWhere the bluebird singsIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains……In the Big Rock Candy Mountains,The jails are made of tin.And you can walk right out again,As soon as you are in.There ain't no short-handled shovels,No axes, saws nor picks,I'm bound to stayWhere you sleep all day,Where they hung the jerkThat invented workIn the Big Rock Candy Mountains…Socialists may agree with the concept of the dignity of labour and its essential psychological positive aspects of sharing work with others but should we promote a work ethic tht too often is a mere echo of capitalism's wage-slavery?
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