Karl Marx in London: Owen Jones on Marxism
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You are trying to put words into my mouth. I have very little faith in workers whether they are university educated or not. I have this lack of faith because we are still living in Capitalism in 2013. Because workers still by and large fail to stand by one another. Because certain members of my class continue to police/intimidate, torture, maim and kill their fellow humans/workers/proletarians/99%/wage slaves in defence of our masters. Because my class continues to endorse Capitalism in elections and generally supports Capitalism whilst simultaneously having little or no idea what it is. The global Working class. The most intelligent and dynamic class in history. Best Educated? Best schooled more like. Whether in primary, secondary or tertiary education. The fruits of this education can be seen clearly on Channel 4's "Gogglebox". Have you watched this? It is like a sort of visual barometer of common attitudes and beliefs within a broad cross section of the "general public" (the term most in line with how the masters would like us to describe ourselves.) What comes across through the prism of a socialist lens (apart from the great humour) is the depressing ignorance, apathy and incomprehension of those involved whether they are the posh ones who are always pissed, the black ones who are always eating, the gay ones who are always camping it up or the old ones who never stop bickering! They are all in it together. Like one big happy family. Most travelled? According to this article… http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/1920287 60% of all Americans do not own a passport and what would the 1.5 Billion illiterate members of our class be doing with air travel when most of them are trying to survive on less than $5 a day?Least racist? I dont know if you read the latest John Pilger article about Aboriginal Apartheid as featured currently on SOYMB? White Australians turn a blind eye to this disgrace because they have benefitted from and sometime actively partaken in this ghettoisation. Don't mention the Australian attitudes to boatloads of desperate fellow workers turning up on Aussie shores. Look at the rise of Golden Dawn and the EDL, the treatment of the Roma people in France and over here. I watched the horrific aerial bombardments of Tamil workers by non Tamil workers in "The Sri Lankan Killing Fields" which was screened on CH4 Sunday night. Wish I hadn't watched it. It was terrifying and utterly horrible. Workers/proletarians are still racist because they continue to need to seek some group to blame their poverty on. This is due to our economic position in society. Why would I think its invalid to replace the term "Working Class" with "Proletariat" or vice versa? I don't treat the Lumpen as a separate class neither do I describe workers who are a bit better off as "Middle Class". I see them as constituent members of differing gradations within our class. Is it only "many" of the so called middle class who are proletarians? I would have thought all of them were insofar as their plight of forever having to prostitute their labour power in exchange for a wage like the lumpenites down the estate.It's not the thieves and drug dealing element of our class that I'm concerned with but rather the thieves and drug dealers of the Capitalist class. I don't necessarily view the lumpen element as being solely derived from the lowest earning section of our class. I regard anyone in the employ of the military or the police as being honorary lumpeners because they are not involved in direct production or wealth creation but are murderous and violent guardians of private property. Their minds are lumpen because they support Capitalism so much that they are willing to attack their fellow slaves or even give up their lives in defence of it. The Junkies, Chavs and single mothers in Jeremy Kyle land might become some of the most passionate class warriors in the end when they are flung into the maelstrom. They will have most to gain from the hurly burly of revolution.It's the workers involved in the "military industrial complex" who we need to convince the most. Nationalism and patriotism have warped their minds to the extent that they totally believe in the lie they are defending. I don't know why this has always worried me but it has. There it is. I just fear that revolution could create tumult within our class as well as enlightenment. It's the workers all over the world with their fingers on triggers and buttons that will be crucial lynchpins of a global tinderbox of change.
There have been periods when workers have been politically passive and on the surface there seemed to be very little happening but below the surface material changes were slowly changing workers perspectives. I think that we are in a similiar situation today where on the surface workers are being attacked through the cuts in wages, lowering welfare benefits, poor housing or unaffordable housing, unemployment, temporary contracts etc. Also the recent Grangemouth fiasco and todays announcements of job losses at Royal Navy shipyards all see workers however grudgingly accept these job losses as an unecessary fact of life. No wonder many Marxists and workers generally become dissillusened with the abilty of workers to effectively fight back.However I do think that beneath the surface there is a growing resentment especially amongst younger workers which could be turned into a socialist direction given the right type of work by socialists. Not by running willy nilly to the next demo or the next protest which is attended by ever fewer members of our class. No there has to be the method of addressing genuine problems and putting forward a socialist answer. This may and will take time but needs to be done for there will come a time when workers will go into action and the work done by socialists now will pay off or hopefully will pay off.
Ozy, if all you say is true, what is there to do?I think every member and sympathiser of the SPGB has at some low point in their lives expressed the same sentiments as yourself. But as Dave said there still remains a glimpse of light and a glimmer of hope that things can change for the better.What is the alternative? Joining in the dog-eat-dog society and turning upon one another? Most of us cannot be become a capitalist so the choice is to enrol as one of their lackeys and sycophants. Or perhaps hide away in some dark cubby-hole, fearing capitalism, too frightened to resist?Even if we ourselves do not live to enjoy socialism (and at my advancing years that is becoming more a reality), is the legacy we leave for our children and grand-children to be that we did not even try to fight for a better world? That we chose to be apathetic and desert the class war?Because at the moment we are so few, isolation can bring on despair. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement cannot ignore the social in our name and should provide solidarity and fellowship to one another. At times, we should encourage the partying.
"Because at the moment we are so few, isolation can bring on despair. The Socialist Party of Great Britain and the World Socialist Movement cannot ignore the social in our name and should provide solidarity and fellowship to one another. "I totally agree. Maybe the SPGB can provide this fellowship, to one who has spent his whole adult life, fighting, arguing and debating for an alternative world! That someone is me. Admit me back into the Party I have spents 32 years pushing the ideas of. I can fight the Socialist case outside the SPGB but inside, would give me, "collective credence". Or is that to much to ask? YFS,Stevie C.
Part of the problem arose from too hasty decisions and actions being taken in the first place. Unfortunately, the party's problem is the opposite – procrastination.You will be aware of the EC invitation to members to comment on the requirements for membership . Despite my feelings of sympathy for you (and Vin), i await the outcome of those deliberations. After 32 years of activity for socialism inside the party, some more months of activity outside the party, is that too much to ask for right now, so that the democratic process of the party that we all value highly can take its course. (I have already submitted my recommendations)
Actually Alan, inside, or outside of the Party, I cannot be other than I am, a Socialist and do no other than I do, put the case for Socialism in speech, or the written word, experience of both, I have a multitude.That the EC has taken this "unprecedented step" is regretable, making a mountain out of a, non existent mole hill. Talk about creating a historical myth!I have gone over the posts and records of Oct, Nov, Dec 2012, Jan 2013 from both the forum and spintcom, guess what I found? just individual members who disagreed, sometimes passionately but nothing else. A face to face disagreement would have been sorted out quickly, an internet argument? proplonged and passing into legend!The whole episode is a Shakespearian farce. YFS Stevie C.
LBird wrote:What is the connection with the lumpen elements that causes you to have 'very little faith indeed' in the best educated, most travelled, least racist, proletariat ever?I agree that this is an accurate description of the modern working class in the broadest sense (all those obliged by economic necessity to sell their working skills for a wage or a salary). If it wasn't we might as well join the conspiracy theorists at the wailing wall, lamenting but doing nothing about it.As to the term "lumpenproletariat", when we had a discussion here and at our annual conference on last year's riots I thought there was general agreement that this was not a term socialists should apply to a section of the working class.
Dave wrote:However I do think that beneath the surface there is a growing resentment especially amongst younger workers which could be turned into a socialist direction given the right type of work by socialists. Not by running willy nilly to the next demo or the next protest which is attended by ever fewer members of our class. No there has to be the method of addressing genuine problems and putting forward a socialist answer. This may and will take time but needs to be done for there will come a time when workers will go into action and the work done by socialists now will pay off or hopefully will pay off.I agree. The politics of the left tend to concentrate on strikes, demos, riots etc. which are all parts of capitalism. Agitation for such things will not bring about revolution. What is needed is a shift of consiousness and understanding, followed by democratic organisation.The part membership tends to 'eb and flow' . It was relativey large in the 70s and 80s -the first time I was a member -but like many I thought I was banging my head off a brick wall. Something tells me that '.. the times they are a-changin' Lets hope they are, and we/they are heading for growth
Vin Maratty wrote:What is needed is a shift of consiousness and understanding, followed by democratic organisation.This just about sums up my personal belief of what the proletariat's strategy to produce a successful revolution has to be, Vin.The proletariat has to wake up (and to some extent this has to be a personal, individual awakening by workers who are sick of their experience of capitalism) and start asking questions, and following on from this there has to be democratic organisation by workers themselves.To my mind, all that any socialist/communist party can do is to promote the 'wakening-up' and to provide some questions to provoke workers' thought. The proletariat itself has to begin to form its own discussion groups, which will provide the model, method and ideology for democratic workers' organisations.Whilst any form of Leninist ideology has a hold on workers, we're all wasting our time.But the first step is a re-awakening in workers – and we can't make workers do that. We can't even make a worker do that. There has to be something in the experience of capitalism that causes initially some, and then eventually mass, critical thought to emerge, or Marx was wrong.
LBird wrote:The proletariat has to wake up (and to some extent this has to be a personal, individual awakening by workers who are sick of their experience of capitalism) and start asking questions, and following on from this there has to be democratic organisation by workers themselves.Spot on, LBird. Then perhaps the Marians will stop laughing at us. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BfRTC1rAR5g
But the first step is a re-awakening in workers" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rl4OIeGQlmI
The term lumpen proletariat is not applicable to our times. It is a very popular term around the left, but they do not know where it came from, and why it was mentioned on the Communist Manifesto. . Actually they are using the term lumpen bourgeois.
Regarding youtube videos and politics, my favourite from The Simpsons, 'worker and parasite':http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jR7m-4Vc3MUCrusty as critical philosopher!
Stevie C I have been a member of the World Socialist Movement for several years,( I should have joined the party 45 years ago ) and the place where I live I am the only member of the Socialist Party, and for now nobody is going to become an additional member either, I live in a society where 99% of the workers have been brainwashed or alienated by the ruling class, and most of the workers are anti-communists, or are against a wrong conception that they call communism, but I have never lost the hope that mankind can build a better society, and that workers can awake and become socialists. This society is totally different to the one that I experienced on my youngers years when we were looking for new ideas and for a better world, and our "heroes " were different kind of peoples, and we discovered a new world of ideas when we started to read and study communism, even that it was distorted by LeninismI have spent my whole life arguing, fighting, searching, reading, studying about socialism, and striking head to head with the left wingers on the internet, on public meeting, and they believe that we want to build an utopian society,( they call themselves socialists-communist but they do not know that Marx advocated for a stateless society ) but I believe that the stand of the Socialist Party has been totally correct since it emerges in 1903.
Agreed Marcos. But with advent of the internet and the near instant communication this has engendered, no Socialist is absolutely alone anymore.We are a diverse lot but we have more in common, than we have differences. Be well comrade and keep up the good work. More power to your class consciousness! Stevie C.
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