[Edited Message Follows] [Reason: Changed a few small faults that could fuel the evidently much-desired flame war]
Let me clarify the point of this post. Briefly, I aimed to present three concrete examples of what in 21st century terms can be considered working-class occupations, but in very different objective circumstances. * In the first case, we see "classic" factory work--the person inside the machine, functioning mechanically--evidently under a cruelly limiting division of labor. * In the second instance we see a person represented as a "factory worker"--though possibly a kind of manager; one can't be entirely sure--who appears to do a great deal of actual labor, but under circumstances that clearly require an end-to-end grasp of the processes within which the work is embedded and which may allow input into the development of those processes. * In the third, we see the computer programmer--or programmer-analyst--whose work is extremely varied and who has far greater input to the definition, maintenance, and reproduction of the processes in which (in this case) he is involved. The spur to posting this was an exchange on Louis Proyect's blog quite some time ago between Proyect and a vulgar Graeberite who insisted that every job not belonging to Category 1 of my post--and just maybe Category 2--but certainly not Category 3, is a "bullshit job." Are the three examples truly working-class in a sense meaningful to the struggle today? If so, how? If not, why? Citing Marx's discussion of surplus value by itself settles nothing in terms of WITBD or the actual formations by which what is to be done can be done. In America, at present, apart from BLM, I suggest that the closest thing we have to a class-based mass movement is the peculiar aggregation of BLM "allies" that until recently seemed to be following in the footsteps of Occupy without any ability to transcend its severe limitations, and which--perhaps through no fault of the majority of Occupants--are unable to control the destructive shenanigans of their juvenile delinquent fringe and self-anointed "antifa" camp-followers. If this somnambulistic perpetuation of what ten years ago was a vital movement is, as may be suggested, merely a "petty bourgeois" nothingness, should it merely be purged and forgotten? Marx's theory of surplus value has not changed, but the world has changed around it, and a scientific outlook requires some input from facts from time to time, no matter how comfortably fart-infested one's academic dialectical armchair may have become. It seems clear that the Bidenites are all too willing to help erase the recent radical outpouring. Washington DC last year saw months of protests fueled in part by occupation and the structures of mutual aid that went along with it. This obviously will not be tolerated "going forward" as the Washington consultants like to say. Louis Proyect likes to make the point as vs. eg Adolph Reed, Jr., that the struggle against racism must be realized in demands that do not derive, at least immediately, from the class struggle, but that must be addressed independently and separately But the question of how the class struggle, once severed from BLM and its periphery of "allies" can be pursued is then another matter. That is a matter IMO worth discussing whether Marxist academics understand the question or not. I have spent the past forty years as a worker, if one allows (as I think one must) that technical communicators, programmers, and process analysts are workers. Thank you for offering to instruct me in the fundamentals of Marxism. I appreciate your vast--nay, Olympian--condescension and generosity in making this offer, but I do not require such instruction. Cheers, fkalosar -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=- Groups.io Links: You receive all messages sent to this group. View/Reply Online (#6050): https://groups.io/g/marxmail/message/6050 Mute This Topic: https://groups.io/mt/80241551/21656 -=-=- POSTING RULES & NOTES #1 YOU MUST clip all extraneous text when replying to a message. #2 This mail-list, like most, is publicly & permanently archived. #3 Subscribe and post under an alias if #2 is a concern. -=-=- Group Owner: [email protected] Unsubscribe: https://groups.io/g/marxmail/leave/8674936/1316126222/xyzzy [[email protected]] -=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-=-
