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Class
Jul 29, 2013 15:15:37 GMT
Post by dodger on Jul 29, 2013 15:15:37 GMT
A Problem of CLASSificationimarxman.wordpress.com/2013/04/04/a-problem-of-classification/Posted on April 4, 2013 by imarxman On 3rd April, 2013 the BBC announced a whole new class structure. It seems there are seven classes in Britain today according to research carried out by Mike Savage of London School of Economics and Fiona Devine of University of Manchester.
“We now have a much more complex class system” is the quote accompanying their conclusions, arrived at by, “…a new way of measuring class, which doesn’t define class just by the job that you do, but by the different kinds of economic, cultural and social resources or ‘capitals’ that people possess.”
The latter quotation is most revealing in that it employs class determinants that are, at best, difficult to define precisely. Cultural and social resources are nebulous concepts, weighted according to subjective factors: Do you go to the opera? Are your neighbours doctors or dockers?
This is confirmed when, in the BBC website report, the authors go on to state, “Sociologists think that your class is indicated by your cultural capital and social capital. Our analysis looked at the relationship between economic, cultural and social capital.”
The obviously begged question is, who are these sociologists? Is it all sociologists or only some, and do they all define culture and social factors in precisely the same way? Indeed, factor is a more accurate word here than the rather more misleading, in this context, capital.
Capital is in fact the product of social production relations in a definite historical setting, presently, capitalism. Economic, cultural and social are not separate capitals interacting in various ways to produce a range of classes, they are all of a piece in creating capital.
The definition of class, therefore, is through relationship to the means of production, the ownership of capital. This allows for only two, not seven classes: the capitalist class and the working class.
If a person’s principle means of livelihood depends on selling labour power then he or she is a worker. It matters not whether that remuneration is called a wage or a salary or comes in the form of benefits, or is paid weekly or monthly.
This does not mean every member of the working class lives virtually an identical life to all other workers. The working class is stratified according to economic, cultural and social factors, just as the capitalist class has its millionaires, billionaires and trillionaires.
It isn’t the size of the personal wealth that defines them as capitalists, it is their relation to capital; they own it.
The vast majority of people though own only their labour power, but that is vital for activating capital. Without it, ownership of the means of production is futile as production, and therefore value creation, only takes place through labour; be that hewing coal (a rare activity in Britain today) or writing the programme for the latest games machine.
Savage and Devine’s seven classes are (in reverse order):
Precariat – the most deprived whose lives are precarious.
Traditional Working Class – just outside the Precariat and with an average age above all other groups.
Emergent Service Workers – low economic means, high social and cultural factors.
New Affluent Workers – medium economic means, high social and cultural factors.
Technical Middle Class – High economic means, less socially and culturally engaged.
Established Middle Class – High levels of all three factors.
Elite – High amount of economic capital.
The first obvious observation is that three of these groups are already identified in this study as Workers, while the Precariat are just those workers who, throughout the existence of capitalism, have lived economically marginal lives. In the nineteenth century, the workhouse and the pauper’s grave was their destiny.
Two groups are referred to by the now common misnomer as being middle class. The middle class were the original capitalists in the early days of capitalism who were in the middle between the aristocracy and the working class.
It is used today to denote those workers whose professional occupations grant them the most comfortable lifestyles amongst the employed. But, employed they are, selling their labour just as the Precariat” has to, be it for rather different sizes of wage packet.
Nonetheless, when a member of the “Middle Class” (of either variety) is made redundant, the executive home becomes an unaffordable mortgage, the 4by4 a loan that can’t be repaid. They are but a few salary cheques away from penury, their livelihoods precarious due to the vagaries of capitalism.
As for the Elite? The Capitalist Class by another name is still the Capitalist Class and smells just as rotten.
Savage, Devine and the BBC are playing sociological games and, in doing so, sowing confusion. The old adage applies: United we stand, divided we fall. This appears to be a blatant attempt to further divide the working class against itself.
Six of these “classes” are really one class, the working class and unless and until that class becomes aware of its economic commonality in relation to capital, to the means of wealth generation, the “Elite”, the capitalist class, will continue to profit at their expense.
Britain is becoming, if it hasn’t already become, a Precariat country, its future precarious due to finance capitalism displacing wealth creating manufacturing, the loss of sovereignty to the EU, the potential of becoming divided into weakened regions via “independence” referendum.
The one class that can rebuild Britain is the one working class struggling to realise its common purpose and not allowing itself to become divided according varying circumstances and interests.
Quotations taken from the BBC website.
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Class
Jul 29, 2013 15:52:02 GMT
Post by dodger on Jul 29, 2013 15:52:02 GMT
Society and the Working Class
WORKERS, JAN 2012 ISSUE
Human life is utterly dependent on social organisation and activity. As the poet John Donne observed, “No man is an island entire of itself.” Yet addicts of the free market declare that there is no such thing as society. We should interpret their odd claim as a call to arms of a ruling class determined to stop its rival leading a dignified life. Capitalism’s innate urge is to dragoon working class existence inside purely economic parameters, within exclusively market constraints, free from other civilising influences.
Left to itself, capitalism operates a system where the only connecting mechanism, the only functioning link between classes and people is the cash nexus of the profit drive. Capitalism is obsessed by maximising profits and keeping costs – particularly those of labour – down. It is not concerned by workers’ working conditions or quality of life (unless these factors happen to hamper their ability to maximise profits). Accordingly, in recent decades it has set about dismantling and undermining those enhancing aspects of society that support or benefit workers, spawning a stark age ever more bereft of professionally delivered social provision, churning out privatised profit-grabbing organisations as alternatives. As wealth accumulation for capitalists soars, workers plummet into deprivation and suffering.
Society does exist, but today it only finds expression, it only has a source, within the working class. The capitalists, acting as if they are beyond and outside of society, want to remove the protections and enhancements of society from workers. Two opposing perspectives are clashing. Workers, propelled by the nature of their economic position, are having to combine to press their class interests, to counter the incessant exploitation and degradation stemming from the market. Letting the barbarism of profit be the supreme arbiter of human existence would otherwise cripple us.
If we want to survive we must sweep capitalism aside. Civilisation means meeting collective need and fostering the blossoming of social organisation and activity. Nowadays there is society only when workers act together to pursue and enforce common interests.
While denying and hemming in society, the capitalists shamelessly wield power in their favour through the mechanism of an increasingly corporate state. So we live in a paradox where the working class majority are without the trappings of power whilst the ruling class minority selfishly dictate the direction of life. But who pays for the state? Workers do, via a range of taxes. The state must not bulldoze society. Nor should we be reduced to mere individuals or families at the beck and call of callous market forces. Rather we must grow into a class wanting to exercise power as a mutually supporting society.
www.workers.org.uk/thinking/society.html
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Class
Jul 29, 2013 16:02:32 GMT
Post by dodger on Jul 29, 2013 16:02:32 GMT
Basic Marx: The Working Class and the Capitalist Class
Posted on August 30, 2012 by imarxman
Introduction
The following is no more than a basic introduction to how a person’s class is determined and the wider implications of this economic and social arrangement. Marx analysed capitalism in great depth, so the 10 points below are intended as merely generalised starting points. If you find yourself in agreement with these 10 points then you are a Marxist even if you didn’t realise this previously.
1) There are only two classes in contempory society; the working class, who are the great majority, and the capitalist class.
2) It is the ownership of the means of production that determines which class a person belongs to.
3) While the working class have personal possessions, they do not own the means of production. They depend for their livelihoods on working for wages/salaries.
4) The capitalist class do own the means of production, enabling it to profit from the work of the working class.
5) All wealth (value) is produced by work (labour). Part of the wealth produced by workers goes to them as wages/salaries. The rest of the wealth produced by workers, surplus value, is taken by the capitalist class.
6) Through owning the means of production, the land, the factories, the technology and the financial institutions such as banks, the capitalist class also controls political power.
7) Parliaments, no matter how democratic they appear, must serve the interests of capitalism as the society’s source of wealth. If capitalists lose confidence in a country they’ll withdraw finacially and the country then becomes bankrupt.
8) The working class, as the producers of wealth, are being exploited and must continue to be so while capitalism exists. Without exploiting workers capitalists would have no surplus value to draw their profits from.
9) Therefore, the working class and capitalist class have opposing interests. Whatever politicians claim or the media portray, there must be a fundamental conflict between workers and capitalists.
10) As the producers of wealth, the working class have it within their power to move beyond capitalism and its parliamentary democracy. By taking direct political power into its own hands the working class can also take control of the means of production. Then, all wealth (value) produced can be used for the mutual benefit of all, rather than the private profit of the few.
Conclusion
These 10 points are no more than a brief summary indicating why society is as it is. The next step is to begin developing a rather more in-depth understanding and looking for ways to use such knowledge to bring about change. Society will only change when enough workers have developed a consciousness of their class and the potential they have to act on their own behalf. This will be true democracy, the voice of the people carried into actions, in ways voting for any of the present parties every few years can never do.
imarxman.wordpress.com/2012/08/30/basic-marx-the-working-class-and-the-capitalist-class/
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Class
Jul 30, 2013 13:18:49 GMT
Post by dodger on Jul 30, 2013 13:18:49 GMT
Origins of our class
WORKERS, JUNE 2010 ISSUE
What were our origins as a working class? The British working class was the first in the world to emerge out of the land, the first to become an overwhelming majority. Feudal obligations and relationships on the land had already broken down and been rejected by the peasants of Britain by the end of the Black Death in the fifteenth century (far earlier than elsewhere in the world) to be replaced by wage labour and capitalist relationships.
As they were first, they had no other experience to rely on or copy, so they had to work things out for themselves, devising their own philosophy of defence against the ravages of early capitalism to prevent the capitalist parasite devouring the working class host.
Workers’ organisations, trade unions, began locally, in parish, village, mine, and town, enjoying strong commitment and loyalty. They were not imposed from outside but forged by the people themselves and grew organically. Not created by external political organisations or religious groups, they were usually based on a common trade or a skill, which brought the strength and identity of a common culture. Because capitalism feared trade unions, it tried to destroy them, notably with the Combination Acts of 1799 and 1800, and the unions were often born in conspiracy, against the law.
British workers in the 18th and 19th centuries proved they could be self-reliant, able to think, speak and act for themselves, capable of changing their conditions and improving their dignity. Instead of being merely passive or submissive they combined against the exploitation and oppression of employers and their governments.
When they had to grow nationally to better combat the opposing class, there was an absolute suspicion of those who did not work at the trade, best illustrated by the leading craft union, the Amalgamated Society of Engineers (ASE), whose rules insisted that workers would control and run the union. Later, when Lenin came to fashion the democratic centralism of the Bolshevik party, he studied the ASE’s structure.
Eventually the most retrograde thing that the trade unions did was to form the Labour Party in 1900, which represented a turning away from their origins, a denial that working people would be the deciding force.
Today with capitalism in absolute decline, with misery and exploitation again threatening to devour us, our class needs to revive itself by rebuilding our unions around skill and trade, in workplace and in regions; exercising control over structures through the vigilance of those at work. We will learn, incidentally, that we not only have the ability to defend to better effect but also have the capacity to fashion our own society and power, free of capitalists or politicians: the dictatorship of the proletariat. The host will eject the parasite.
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Class
Jul 30, 2013 16:07:30 GMT
Post by dodger on Jul 30, 2013 16:07:30 GMT
The rationality of the British worker: a bulwark against terrorism and racism
Jun
01
2013
The killing of drummer Lee Rigby has again shown the wish of terrorists and racist extremists to create tension and hatred between the white population and other communities of our nation, particularly the Muslims. The terrorists see themselves already at war with anyone who does not share their views and religious interpretation. Extremists like the EDL and BNP use the murder to create animosity and division.
Fortunately a long history of trade unionism and the legacy of industry and its roots in science and the enlightenment have left a culture among workers which is too rational, humane and sceptical to fall into the trap of hatred for fellow citizens who look different or have another religion. The period of history when Protestants fought Catholics has also resulted in a love of tolerance. Britons did not follow Mosley when tragically many in Europe fell prey to fascist propaganda.
The security of our nation depends more on our inclusive, rational culture than any other measure. We must defend it and nurture it.
www.theworker.org.uk/blog/?p=649
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Class
Jul 31, 2013 6:26:27 GMT
Post by dodger on Jul 31, 2013 6:26:27 GMT
Two Classes in Britain
WORKERS, FEB 2011 ISSUE
In Britain, there are only two classes – those who sell their labour power and those who exploit the labour of others, in other words workers and capitalists. Over the course of many centuries, capitalism has simplified class antagonisms. And in this respect, Britain has travelled furthest simply because of its long, thoroughgoing experience of capital – with its first appearance on the land, then in commercial activities, latterly in industry and finance.
As far back as late medieval times following the onset of the Black Death, Britain’s peasantry was abolished and transformed into agricultural wage-labourers. Then in subsequent centuries the march of industrial and financial capital greatly expanded the ranks of the working class. In 1848 Marx and Engels presciently observed in The Communist Manifesto that “The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honoured and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-labourers.” Now the vast majority of British people are workers who are selling their labour power, ranged against a tiny minority of capitalists who are exploiting the labour of others. We are many; they are few. And in the world beyond Britain, likewise there has been a massive, rapid growth of the proletariat during the last two hundred and fifty years. Essentially, the world is dividing into the two classes as well, with the peasantry dwindling.
Recognising which class you belong to helps you find your way through life’s problems. You understand your place in society, history and development. On the other hand, rejection of class encourages political confusion and fosters a headlong flight from reality.
Although there are only two classes in Britain, not everyone in the working class admits (or welcomes) their class position. Many cling to illusions and fantasies that they are middle class, or professionals or special individuals somehow outside the working class, though in truth there is scarcely a worker who is more than one wage-packet away from extreme destitution, a fact reinforced starkly by the recent economic depression and public service expenditure cuts. These illusions weaken people’s ability to collectively defend and organise. And why the reticence? Surely being a worker, either making or growing things, or providing services, is better than, say, being a banker (as distinct from a bank worker) producing nothing for the betterment of society.
In modern times, groups (colour, religion, gender etc) that are divisive and exclusive are elevated, whereas class, which is unifying and inclusive, is downgraded.
Class is fundamental to everything. Without clarity on it, we do not know who we are, nor can we easily fathom who are our friends or our enemies. In order to interpret and negotiate life confidently, you need to know who you are.
www.workers.org.uk/thinking/classes.html
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Class
Aug 4, 2013 15:47:34 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 4, 2013 15:47:34 GMT
Good intro to how capitalism works (or not), 8 Dec 2009
This William Podmore review is from: Economics for Everyone: A Short Guide to the Economics of Capitalism (Paperback)
www.amazon.co.uk/Economics-Everyone-Short-Guide-Capitalism/dp/0745327508/ref=cm_aya_orig_subj
Jim Stanford, who is economist for the Canadian Auto Workers union, has produced a useful introduction to the economics of capitalism. He shows us capitalism's basics: work, tools and profit; how it works (or doesn't) as a system; its complexity; and various challenges to capitalism. He shows up capitalism's inherent failings and proposes policies that would be in the interests of the working class, the vast majority of the population in industrial countries.
He points out, "Most modern jobs and careers fall into the category of wage labour - whether they are in private companies or public agencies, blue-collar or white-collar. The stereotype of a `worker' as someone who performs menial tasks on an assembly line is badly outdated. Workers today perform a wide variety of functions, many of them requiring advanced skills. But they are still workers, so long as they perform that work for somebody else, in return for a wage or salary. Scientists in a research laboratory; surgeons in a large hospital; engineers in a construction firm - these are all workers (although culturally, they may not like to define themselves as such). They perform their labour in return for a salary, and they do not own or significantly control the organization which they work for."
He shows that the capitalist class is just two per cent of the population, and note, "Many of these rich individuals work; but the key distinction here is that they don't have to work, since they own enough business wealth to support themselves very comfortably without working."
He praises Cuba: "Socialist Cuba - where average health outcomes are superior to those in the US - manages to do more, given its GDP, to improve human welfare than any other country in the world. ... Cuba's admirable social achievements (its education, health, and cultural indicators outrank most developing countries, and even many developed countries) demonstrate the potential of socialism to leverage the maximum possible well-being from a given amount of material production."
He also points out how employers gain from the free movement of labour: "employers are permitted to re-create abundant supplies of cheap, desperate labour by exploiting vulnerable immigrants ... Capitalists may encourage these migrations when they face uncomfortably tight labour market conditions in particular countries (in which case immigration is a convenient way to keep a lid on wages)."
As he observes, "Migrants are treated as temporary, second-class citizens, often forced to return to their country of origin when their jobs are finished, and subjected to social and legal abuses in the interim. Their migration can also harm the country in the world.
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Class
Aug 4, 2013 17:25:33 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 4, 2013 17:25:33 GMT
Communist Party of Britain (Marxist-Leninist)
White Collar – a myth destroyed, a class made stronger
www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.secondwave/cpbwhitecollar.htm
Preface
As members of the working class, white-collar workers are part of the most progressive force in history. This class, armed with its own ideology and Party, its vision of a new society without the ravages of capitalism, is destined to destroy the system of exploitation which created it.
It is the task of our Party to enhance the ideological understanding, to work for the conscious unity of this class; to bring the class and the Party born from it to the strength and maturity necessary for the final conquest of state power.
In Britain, all the struggles currently being waged by both industrial and non-industrial workers are assuming enormous political significance as the ruling class imposes Corporate State measures to reduce our standards of living. It is no time for us to stumble or to waver. Each day makes it ever more imperative that these struggles be fired with the clarity and insight which comes from, and only from, the line of the Party – a strategy based on an understanding of the real balance of forces in our society and the protracted nature of the struggle between them; a programme for action derived from the concrete practice of our class in day-to-day conflict with the bourgeoisie.
If progress is to be made, therefore, it is time to dispense once and for all with all ideas which force a wedge between one worker and another, which attempt to obscure the basis for our unity. It is clearer today than ever before that for the white-collar worker the class struggle is no spectator sport. No longer can we merely watch the distant gladiators in daily battles against unemployment and a plummeting standard of living, against the degradation of our skills and the destruction of the resources of our country. In the working class there are ultimately no privileged sections. We are all in the arena.
1973 has seen the stirring, of dormant forces in class struggle in Britain. Throughout the country the actions of white-collar workers give the lie to those who see them as the last hope of the ruling class. Our fellow workers in professional, administrative and clerical sectors, in hospitals and schools, shops, industry, and the civil service – many with little or no history of struggle – have engaged in actions of great courage and fortitude, often against almost impossible odds. For many it has been a question not merely of taking on an individual employer, but of facing the State. While elsewhere, other white-collar workers are organising at a rate faster than ever before – recognition that in the end there is no alternative but to unite and to learn from the collective experience of our class.
************************************************************************************************
The preface and link to the rest of the pamphlet above sets out a view of class that caused discomfort to many. That was '73 or thereabouts.
First Published: n.d. [1973?]
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Sam Richards and Paul Saba
Copyright: This work is in the Public Domain under the Creative Commons Common Deed. You can freely copy, distribute and display this work; as well as make derivative and commercial works. Please credit the Encyclopedia of Anti-Revisionism On-Line as your source, include the url to this work, and note any of the transcribers, editors & proofreaders above.
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Class
Aug 6, 2013 15:43:34 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 6, 2013 15:43:34 GMT
The Definitive Statement on the Internal Polemic, 1972-1974
CLASS, POLITICS AND REVOLUTION
Of all the classes that stand face to face with the bourgeoisie today, the proletariat alone is a really revolutionary class. Communist Manifesto.
The words are those of Marx. If we examine them closely, we see that they raise certain questions. Firstly, “ of all the classes ...” to clear this one up, we have already come to the conclusion that now in this country there is only one other class apart from the bourgeoisie.
Next, “a really revolutionary class”. What does this mean? Are all proletarians revolutionaries? Obviously not. We are not discussing a question of ideology, but of class nature. The proletariat exists to be exploited. As it struggles to defend or improve its position it is in constant conflict with its exploiter. Oppression must increase either when the demands of the working class become more insistent or when the problems of the bourgeoisie become more acute. This is happening now on the legal-political-economic front. There is no possibility of ending this exploitation and oppression except by the overthrow of the bourgeoisie. The proletariat can do without the bourgeoisie; can create conditions for the ending of oppression and exploitation. The bourgeoisie by its very nature of existence is incapable of doing this.
And yet the proletariat has not made a revolution. It has fought endlessly, but it has not made revolution. This raises the question of ideology. The working class has no choice but constant struggle – and yet the struggle is all in bits and pieces, basically defensive, based in part on an attitude of subjugation, and in part on the belief that fighting the employer to get a bit more is enough. This lends itself easily to social-democracy, and yet is not itself social-democracy. It is the action of men and women who know that they cannot live at peace with the bourgeoisie, and yet do not want to see or accept the necessity for revolution.
In this context our task is three-fold:
a) to fight the alternative ideology, social-democracy, whether in the form of the Labour Party, the “ultra-left”, the Tories or whoever.
b) to join in the existing class struggle of exploited against exploiters.
c) to provide the perspective of revolution in all our work in the class struggle, especially the building of the Party.
We have a mighty opponent. Speaking of the great power of imperialism, Stalin said:
In the fight against this omnipotence, the customary methods of the working class – trades unions and co-operatives, parliamentary parties and parliamentary struggle – have proved to be totally inadequate. Foundations of Leninism.
He goes on to say that the working class has to adopt a new weapon, and finishes by saying,
Imperialism brings the working class to revolution.
In this country this Party must be the new weapon in the hands of the working class – enabling it to evade the nets of social-democracy and overthrow the exploiters.
The proletariat struggled from its inception against the bourgeoisie, without the benefit of either Marx or organisation. Unionisation was a great step forward in class organisation, and has sustained the working class for almost two centuries. But the highest form of class organisation for the proletariat is the proletarian party. With no interests separate and apart from those of the proletariat as a whole, we are the advanced detachment of the working class, the political leader, the general staff, the organised detachment. None of those words are original, but two points must be stressed. Firstly, as an organised and ideological section we are a separate and distinct entity within the working class, and so detached in that sense. Secondly, however, we are the working class, with no separate interest, and in that sense must never be detached from it, except at all our perils.
Classes in Britain cannot be treated without considering the Party. We are not a third force wandering with our banners in the no-mans-land between the Proletariat and Bourgeoisie, to be ignored by the one and picked off by the other. We are of and in the proletariat, and our task is to guide the revolutionary class in revolution.
www.marxists.org/history/erol/uk.secondwave/cpbdefinitive.htm
The above link will allow you to read the 'Internal Polemic' in its entirety. Undoubtedly a basic topic. 'Class', always an inclusive term. Yet some should wish to be excluded, others still would exclude others from the working class. Snobbery, hell no, not even reverse snobbery. Simply subjectivism given free reign.The list of excluded then becomes endless. Reading the pamphlet at the time it was published, it ticked all my boxes. Reinforced strongly held opinions. Surviving 3 recessions and working cheek by jowl in an industry with all grades of workers, only compounded my views. Who I was, who my friends might be and where my interests might lie. An aid to navigation then. Get 'class' wrong....yer ain't goin' anywhere.
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Class
Aug 10, 2013 10:53:23 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 10, 2013 10:53:23 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/thinking/class.htmlClass and CapitalismWORKERS, JANUARY 2009 ISSUE
The only way to understand history and the current situation in Britain and the world is to understand class. Marx realised that all history is the story of the struggle between classes.
Class is a scientific, economic idea. Your class is defined by your role in the economic life of society. In Britain, there are only really two classes – a capitalist class, made up of those who own the means of making wealth and exploit the work of others, and the working class, who have to sell their ability to create value, for wages, in order to survive. Workers are paid for their ability to create value, not for the value they actually create – the difference between these two creates profits for the capitalist.
Under capitalism, the capitalist class controls the means of production – in Britain today this means the banks and finance houses, the land and property, and what is left of industry, agriculture and business. This control leads to political power – they decide how the country is run, and they make sure the state is run in their interests. This could hardly be clearer in the current crisis, where a Labour government pours our money into the banks.
Although the capitalist class holds the political power, it is tiny in comparison with the working class, the vast majority. Being working class has nothing to do with your educational level, where you live, whether you work with your hands or your brain (actually, everyone does both in some way) or even your income level. All who work for a living are rarely more than a wage packet or two away from disaster. The myth of a “middle class” is blown when you lose your job and can no longer pay the mortgage or rent.
While the capitalist class holds power this will never change. So all workers have the same basic interest – to take power away from the opposing class and run society in their own interest, for the vast majority, by putting an end to capitalist exploitation of workers and the domination of profit and greed.
The capitalist class will never give up their power willingly – why would they, when this will mean their destruction? So the working class must seize power for itself – a revolutionary change. Doing it won’t be difficult – it’s the change in thinking which is hard.
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Class
Aug 11, 2013 11:01:19 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 11, 2013 11:01:19 GMT
In defence of the British working class.
WORKERS, SEPT 2009 ISSUE
Capitalism’s fifth column in Britain – the ultra left – along with their allies in the liberal bourgeois establishment, have done their best to destroy any concept of a working class in this country. Their obsession with race, gender and sexuality has led to a situation where raising the issue of a British working class itself is dismissed by these bigots as racist, sexist or homophobic.
Now even Harriet Harman, during the week when she “ran” the country, can get away with saying that if the failed US bank Lehmann Brothers had in fact been “Lehmann Sisters”, we may not have a crisis of capitalism!
As the TUC Conference is riddled with this same claptrap, perhaps it is time to remind those delegates of the simple nature of class in this country.
Firstly, let’s nail the race issue. There is only one race – the Human Race. Secondly, if we work, then we are workers. Whatever kind of work we do, if we sell our labour power in order to live, we are workers. Thirdly, if we live permanently in Britain, irrespective of our origins, we are British.
Consequently if we sell our labour power to an employer in order to survive and we live here permanently, we are British workers and along with all the others who work and live similarly, we constitute the British working class. It’s not rocket science. But we need to recognise this so we can we begin to act and organise to defend and advance our class, as a class.
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Class
Aug 14, 2013 15:29:34 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 14, 2013 15:29:34 GMT
HUgely enjoyable survey of workers' culture, Jun 17 2002
This Will Podmore review is from: The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes (Hardcover)
Jonathan Rose has written a most enjoyable book looking at what British workers thought about the world, their schools, science, history, geography, literature, papers, films, plays, radio and music. He covers the period from the late 18th century to the mid-20th, using their memoirs, and also surveys, opinion polls, school records and library registers.
A vast popular movement of voluntary collectivism created a hugely impressive working class culture - mutual improvement societies, Sunday schools, adult schools, libraries, reading circles, drama societies, musical groups, friendly societies, trade unions and mechanics' institutes. The London Corresponding Society, the world's first working class political organisation, met weekly; readings aloud provoked democratic discussion.
Education's purpose is to teach us to think for ourselves. The working class's self-improving culture encouraged them to ask questions and voice their thoughts and feelings. The great classics, Shakespeare (often described as the first Marxist), Handel's operas and Scott's novels, all stimulated thought, imagination and independence of mind.
Rose writes well about Marxists' problem of relating to workers. The class described in these pages, complex, thoughtful, independent-minded, savvy, resent being told what to think or what it thinks. This alone explains why there is, as yet, no mass British Marxism, not external influences, or the efficacy of ruling class institutions, or, the ultra-left dogma, misleadership - get the right cutting-edge vanguard and the dim masses will at last play follow the leader.
As Rose writes, "The trouble with Marx was Marxists, whom British workers generally found to be dogmatic, selfish, and antiliterary." They dismissed the workers' hard-earned culture as bourgeois, and "they treated workers as unthinking objects." Do we, now, tell them what to think? MPs and employers believe, "Ah'm paid ter do t'thinkin' 'ere." 'Marxists' who repeat that approach will, rightly, get nowhere.
Ruskin wrote of those "whom the world has not thought of, far less heard of, who are yet doing most of its work, and of whom we can best learn how it can best be done." The working class will stick with capitalism until Marxists start to learn from them how the world's work 'can best be done'.
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Class
Aug 15, 2013 12:57:11 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 15, 2013 12:57:11 GMT
ht.ly/nWXp7The number of workers who are self-employed in their main job rose 367,000 between 2008, the start of the economic downturn, and 2012, a new report from ONS shows today.
This rise has mainly been since 2011: of the 367,000 increase in self-employment, 219,000, or 60%, was between 2011 and 2012. By contrast, the number of employees, which fell 434,000 between 2008 and 2012, dropped mainly at the beginning of the period, with a drop of 600,000 between 2008 and 2009, with a partial recovery since 2010. The increase in self-employment took place across all parts of the UK, with the exception of Northern Ireland, where the number of self-employed workers decreased. There was an increase of 431,000 over that period in the number of self-employed people who worked on their own or with a partner, but a drop of 66,000 in the number of self-employed workers who had employees working for them.
Today’s report shows that self-employed people work longer hours than employees – on average 38 hours a week compared with 36 for employees. Self-employed workers tend to be older than employees and are more likely to be male – in 2012 the average age of the 4.2 million self-employed was 47, and 70% of them were men, while the average age of the 25.0 million employees was 40 and only 51% of them were men.
The four most common occupations for self-employment were taxi or cab drivers (166,000), ‘other construction trades’ (161,000), carpenters and joiners (140,000) and farmers (123,000). Some 58% of self-employed people used their home for work purposes to some extent, either working there (15%), using it as a base (38%) or working on the same grounds or building as their home (5%).
The proportion of workers who were self-employed was highest in London (18%), followed by the South West (16%), while the lowest proportion was in the North East (11%), followed by Scotland and Yorkshire and the Humber (both 12%).
A podcast giving more background on this analysis in available on the ONS Youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/onsstats
Background notes
There is a summary report at www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/lmac/self-employed-workers-in-the-uk/february-2013/rpt-self-employed-workers.html
Data refer to the April-June period of each year.
The occupation ‘other construction workers’ is a general category for construction workers who do not fall into the other main skill groups, such as carpenters or plumbers. They undertake a variety of tasks in the construction, alteration, maintenance and repair of buildings and other structures.
This report is part of a series of work on the labour market and economy to help in understanding the productivity conundrum. A detailed preliminary report was published on 16 October 2012 at www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/elmr/the-productivity-conundrum/explanations-and-preliminary-analysis/art-explanations-and-preliminary-analysis.html
Follow us on www.twitter.com/statisticsONS and on the ONS Youtube channel at www.youtube.com/user/onsstats
Details of the policy governing the release of new data are available from the media relations office
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Class
Aug 17, 2013 16:58:45 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 17, 2013 16:58:45 GMT
As long ago as 1854, Marx wrote:
“There exist here no longer, as in continental countries, large classes of peasants and artisans almost wholly dependent on their own property and their own labour. A complete divorce of property from labour has been effected in Great Britain. In no other country, therefore, has the war between the two classes that constitute modern society assumed such colossal dimensions and features so distinct and palpable”. (Writing in ’The people’s Paper’)
No new classes have emerged in Britain since that time.
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Class
Aug 22, 2013 21:15:01 GMT
Post by dodger on Aug 22, 2013 21:15:01 GMT
www.workers.org.uk/thinking/revolutionary_force.htmlThe Force for Revolution
WORKERS, FEB 2011 ISSUE
How do we counter capitalism’s relentless and absolute decline? How do we gather together our power (recently often left dormant) and commence our absolute rise?
Though our class has considerably less material strength than it used to have, we should not doubt its role or underestimate its potential. The only force capable of challenging and removing capitalism is the working class. The fact that so far it has chosen not to go down that revolutionary route does not negate the stark truth: whilst capitalism cannot do without workers, a working class can live without capitalists.
Experience over centuries has proved that there will be no salvation for workers by pledging allegiance to bourgeois parties or placing faith in bourgeois institutions, both of which are utterly wedded to the ways of capitalism.
Only by re-building our class strength, by regenerating our networks of class power, can we challenge capitalist decline and fashion our own agenda. Our starting point must always be – how do we create a collective response to the issues and problems facing us? How do we unite the many against the few? How do we assert and press our needs? Gradually, in this way, we can change the balance of forces between the exploiting and exploited classes in our favour and transform Britain into a nation fit for workers.
Yet inside too many of our trade union structures there prevail many trendy, harmful notions that are completely at odds with this necessary approach.
The most pernicious is the assertion that activists are essential to conduct and mobilise “campaigns”. This arrogant “elite” impedes natural class organisation. All that is needed is the mass involvement of members in their unions pursuing their class interests and out of struggle will be thrown up their leaders as well as appropriate forms of organisation.
Another debilitating obsession is the pathetic squabble over the “left” dominating the “right” (and vice versa) instead of a desire to unite the class wherever it may be. Everyone knows that the “left” can’t agree on who is its “best representative” and spends most of its time in unproductive bickering while Rome burns.
It needs the whole range of the working class, not an introspective sect, to develop correct thinking, distilled and refined in action and through dialogue. Once a particular section of the class truly gets involved in their trade union, then these diversions of left and right reliably disappear, replaced by a true preoccupation on the things that actually matter. There is a working class discipline.
We are of and for the supremacy of the working class.
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