quote:

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Cueball: Ideas such a "class consciousness" border on quasi-spiritual conceptual terrain.

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quote:

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remind: I am aware and versed in the concept of class consciousness and I do not believe it exists, I believe it is a created mythos to foster peoples ego and for control over others.

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In reply to my comment that this was incoherent, Cueball remarked: "... Its not incoherent to say class conciousness does not exist. It's refutation of the idea, as functional in society." remind agreed.

Later, we had ...

quote:

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remind: Interests in common, do not a class system make.

---

remind then went on to conflate social class with marketing to different groups of people to sell a product. The product in remind's example was ... beer.

This is mixing up a subjective concept with an objective one. Social class is an objective concept. It can be clearly defined. Lenin's famous definition is worth repeating.

quote:

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Classes are large groups of people, he argued in A Great Beginning, differing from each other by the place they occupy in a historically determined system of social production by their relation...to the means of production, by their role in the social organization of labor, and, consequently, by the dimensions of the share of social wealth of which they dispose and the mode of acquiring it.

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What part of that is hard to understand? Is capitalism a particular socio-economic formation or not? Does society exist or not? Is there production that takes place or not? How is that production socially organized? This is ABC, or should be, for any social analysis.

Anyway, back to beer. Marketing beer to this or that group of people is all about the psychology of selling and what "works". It is about subjectivity, which is to say, it is about convincing people to purchase a product. It is about capitalist misdirection of class consciousness. it is about the manufacture of consent. It is not an accident.

Today's capitalism, take the North American example, has, as part of its system, a gigantic multi-trillion dollar marketing and advertising industry. It's a key capitalist industry. Period. In fact, there are well-respected political economists who point out that what is called "the sales effort" was a major contributing factor towards the post WW2 "boom" that began to come to an end with the oil crisis of the 1970's. The "sales effort" has kept capitalism going ... at least in part, during its run of unprecedented growth in the post WW2 period.

It's only now, after we acknowledge this gigantic assembly line for altering consciousness that we can begin to talk about class consciousness.

I would agree with remind that "Interests in common, do not a class system make". However, what we are going over here is interests in common that are antagonistic to other interests in society. Even capitalist labour law acknowledges this. To use the recent discussion here on babble about the CAW "initiative", I read the following:

quote:

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The bargaining process between employers and employees always implies, in addition to their common interest, some degree of conflict between the immediate economic interests of the bargainers – the payer and the receiver of wages. This conflict of interest will necessarily co-exist with their common interest in the welfare of the enterprise from which they both devive their income; and we do not mean to suggest that harmonious relations do not exist between employers and trade unions. But short-run conflicts of economic interest are inevitable, and if they are to be resolved through the process of collective bargaining, it is highly inappropriate for the agency which represents one party to the bargain, to be in any measure under the influence of the other. Collective bargaining by its very nature requires an arm’s length relationship between the bargaining parties, and there are a number of statutory provisions designed to ensure that this is the case."

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Inevitable. These groups of people, who have conflicting views, and whom I am calling here social classes, will inevitably come into conflict. This isn't Marxist jargon, or a "created mythos". (Quasi-spiritual? Anything cultural or social could said to be so. That doesn't shed any light.) It's the state and the summary of its own views of this issue.

http://www.canlii.org/en/on/onlrb/doc/2006/2006canlii18702/2006canlii18702.html

The problem of class consciousness is the problem for socialists in a very real sense. I don't deny that. But the lack of success in this regard shouldn't direct supporters of social justice to abandon the concept or support for efforts in this regard. That's just abandoning the field to the enemy. Capitalism is a freight train headed straight for a cliff of environmental, social, and political disaster. Its remedy is not to abandom the most powerful ideology to face it, whatever failures in this or that country.

quote:

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cueball: My understanding of class consciousness is that it is not something that it is created but that it is inherent in a class, so that what needs to be done in terms of creating a union is the "raising of class conciousness," -- it is already latent in the social relations. "Raise", not create, since it is already there. Class consciousness is a kind of binding universal experience shared by all members of a class inately, in the sense that we are all "of each other", so to speak, and in this I find a likeness to religious conceptions of an omnipresent godhead, even without a theological god.

---

Class consciousness "happens" when a social class is in motion in conflict with other social classes. It is not inherent at all. Perhaps that is where we are disagreeing here. The early history of working class "consciousness" was, in fact, doing the dirty work for the capitalist class against the enemies of the latter. The working class only LATER developed consciousness "for itself" and began to engage in struggle with its current adversary.

Trade unions aren't the be-all and end-all of class consciousness, of course. That is only economic class struggle. There is still ideological and political class struggle. The latter is decisive. Just to be clear, I don't agree with the whole "inevitability" of socialism argument which, I would acknowledge, is rather religious-like. Nor do I agree with the doctrine that the victory of socialism will suddenly lead to the end of class struggle. Its more complicate than that.

The categories of social being and social consciousness are, however, still useful. I quote a Marxist dictionary edited by Ivan Frolov from the 1980's:

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Social Being and Social Consciousness, two interconnected and interacting aspects, material and spiritual, of society's life. .... the direct deduction of S.C. from material relations leads to vulgarization and simplification. The diverse forms of S.C., for all their dependence on S.B., possess relative independence. .... changes in material relations cannot cause instantaneous automatic changes of the S.C. because people's spiritual concepts possess a considerable power of inertia, and only struggle between new and old concepts leads to the victory of those which are called into being by the main requirements of changed material life. At the same time it is necessary to understand and to consider the great role of S.C. and its influence on the development of S.B. itself.

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Dialectics, that hated word, pops its head up here and says "hello".

Look, there's no denying that social class is real. What the degree of class consciousness is, how it could be "raised", what inter-related factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, and so on, have on social life is a proper subject of discussion and debate. What I read from the remarks of cueball and remind is that the concept of class consciousness should best be jettisoned.

I don't feel confident enough to just post my notes here .. and I don't want to provide cue and remind with far too easy a target. heh.

For those interested in more about social class, try the following:

Aspects of Class in the US: An Introduction (J B Foster)

I would be remiss if I did not mention the book by the former editor of MR. The book is "The Retreat from Class: A New "True" Socialism" by Ellen M. Wood. A google book search will net a few selections.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

In Canadian society, I think the concept of class is the elephant in the room. Everyone knows it is there, but everyone is in love with the idea that we are all equal, and that pretending it is so might just make it so.

But scratch below the surface, and it's there. Big time.

As a person who celebrates his working class status, would you like to know where I have felt class consciousness the most in my life?

When I was heavily involved in the NDP.

The word 'consciousness' is very important here, because one's self consciousness could be called one's 'identity'.

It ultimately depends on the amount of power and autonomy someone enjoys at work. There are some autoworkers that make as much as some lawyers and professors, but I would still put the latter in the middle class and the former in the working class.

ETA: Keep in mind that the gap between university-educated and those with less education has actually increased in the past few decades, even with the very real devaluing of a degree in relative terms. That's because the "blue collar aristocracy" is shrinking as is the percentage employed in manufacturing generally, and the service sector pays less.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

If I want to understand what classes a population is composed of, income and self-image may have some importance. But historically, how people make their living was always the more determining factor, and I think it still is today.

While it's not absolute, I think you can get a good picture of the classes in a society by looking at:

- what kinds of people live in the same neighbourhoods
- whom they go to school with
- whom they party and play sports and other recreations with
- whom they pair off with / marry (this is probably the most telling feature)
- what dialect of English they speak (or French in Québec)
- to a far lesser extent because of mass marketing etc., how they eat and dress and shop
- many more I'm sure we can think of.

quote:

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True, a lot of people who are "white collar" may make less than a highly skilled unionized blue collar worker. But while income is highly related to class, class isn't defined by income either.

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And... there are highly skilled professionals who don't make as much as low skilled blue collar workers too.

I might as well talk about my own example, which is what I'm getting at:

quote:

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
And... there are highly skilled professionals who don't make as much as low skilled blue collar workers too.

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These examples exist but the fact is this phenomenon is actually less common today than it was a generation ago. My objection was that you seemed to be suggesting that this is something new.

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:

A lot of white collar people with degrees may actually be working class if they lack the relative autonomy middle class people enjoy.

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Professionals are also caught in the middle of the cross fire in the principal class conflict between labor and capital. If we look at the experience over the last thirty years of professionals whose lives are closely intertwined with the working class—community college teachers, lawyers in public defender offices or with small general practices, doctors practicing in working-class neighborhoods, and public school teachers—their economic and social standing have deteriorated, along with the class they serve. But if we look at those whose lives are more fully involved in serving the capitalist class—corporate lawyers, financial service professionals, Big-Four CPAs, and doctors who practice beyond the reach of HMOs and insurance company oversight—these professionals have risen in fortune with the class they serve, albeit to a lesser extent, absolutely and proportionately.

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Class is a money thing too, there's no question about that part. And with "Big 3" CAW members with cottages and boats and all the trappings of the professional class, it gets confusing.

But, if I slip into another dialect for a moment, class also comes down to who you can fuck with, and who you can be fucked with by.

Working class people can't really fuck with too many people. None in fact, which is why some substitute racism or misogyny.

Being middle class means you get to fuck over a lot of people, because you're professional, and it's part of your job entitlement.

Being upper class means you get to fuck people over big time from a hiding spot.

Personally, I never understood the attraction to fucking people over for the sake of it. My interest in politics is to create a society where people don't fuck with each other.

Unfortunately, the very nature of politics attracts the very wrongest of people in that regard so I'm often feeling quite alone.

And, fucked over.

quote:

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:

Look, there's no denying that social class is real. What the degree of class consciousness is, how it could be "raised", what inter-related factors such as gender, race, ethnicity, and so on, have on social life is a proper subject of discussion and debate. What I read from the remarks of cueball and remind is that the concept of class consciousness should best be jettisoned.

Not to rude or anything ... but not a fucking chance, guys. I'm sticking with the union and the class to which I belong. And so are millions of others.

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Jettisoned?

I never said anything like that. I think you are just reacting to my supposition that the concept of class consciousness steps in for concepts of "universal belonging" often found in religion. Wether or not it was analyzed thus, or it was intended to have this connotation, I think in many instances it fed this "spirtual" need that people have for a linkage to a greater "consciousness", "cause', "being".

Is there something wrong with any of that? It seems sometimes people get overly edgy when we start moving away from the purely "rational" and start talking about fullfilling the emotional spiritual needs of the Ummah.

And Marx is hardly shy about this either, not only does he suggest that by taking control of the means of production, people (mankind) lose the need for a spirtual morality based in the a theological world view, more or less because they will no longer need an explanation of why it is beyond their control because they are now in control of it, and as such replace the theological with the material, but he asserts the spirtual aspect of this directly:

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As philosophy finds its material weapon in the proletariat, so the proletariat finds its spiritual weapon in philosophy. And once the lightning of thought has squarely struck this ingenuous soil of the people, the emancipation of the Germans into men will be accomplished.

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Introduction to A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right

But again, I am not at all suprised that Marx's world view, founded as it was in European Christian moral constructs, although divested of their theological authority, exhibit their liniage thus, Engel's is not shy about this:

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What morality is preached to us today? There is first Christian-feudal morality, inherited from earlier religious times; and this is divided, essentially, into a Catholic and a Protestant morality, each of which has no lack of subdivisions, from the Jesuit-Catholic and Orthodox-Protestant to loose "enlightened" moralities. Alongside these we find the modern-bourgeois morality and beside it also the proletarian morality of the future, so that in the most advanced European countries alone the past, present and future provide three great groups of moral theories which are in force simultaneously and alongside each other.

[Snippers]

But nevertheless there is great deal which the three moral theories mentioned above have in common — is this not at least a portion of a morality which is fixed once and for all? — These moral theories represent three different stages of the same historical development, have therefore a common historical background, and for that reason alone they necessarily have much in common.

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Morality and Law. Eternal Truths

In fact, I was saying that one of the reasons that marxist based socialism was able to pose itself as "the most powerful ideology to face" capitalism, is because it was a complete theory that also accomodated certain types of spiritual conceptions that enabled people to connect to it, not just intellectually, but also emoitionally.

More, later though, on where I think the conception of class consciousness fails to accurately reflect todays social relations, and why it seemed to do so in the past.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

When there is a flood and homes are abandoned, to what neighbourhoods are the police sent to protect against burglaries and looting?

In the case of the great blackout, what neighbourhoods, generally, had power restored first?

If you call the police, are you more likely to get a speedy response in Rosedale or Jamestown?

Class doesn't so much represent wealth as privilege although often the two go hand-in-hand.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

And you are probably right that what I am saying has nothing to do with what is "being said here" because what I was saying was not at all about what Beltov thought it was about, even though my quote is in the OP and serves as the launching pad for the discussion.

I certainly never said anything about jettisoning class conciousness, or there was no such thing as class.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:
This is a very interesting thread.

The word 'consciousness' is very important here, because one's self consciousness could be called one's 'identity'.

Maybe part of the reason why class consciousness isn't as popular a concept these days, is that identities have changed so much: we don't identify ourselves as workers so much any more as we identify by our styles, our musical tastes, our sexual orientation, our personal interests, etc.

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Cross posted again. I've never suggested you don't contribute, I never have to anyone except rightwing trolls, I was just wondering why you brought religion into it again but never mind. And no, I'll let you know if I have anything more to contribute myself to what's text book stuff. If someone could tell me how Marxist socialists explain the failure of society to divide into the predicted two oppositions, that might be interesting. Maynard Keynes again, the rise of trade unions and social programs, or underestimating the whole 'New World' of opportunties and space?

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Doug:

We have so many different sources of identity now that class can't help but be just one, and probably not even the most important one for most. The disadvantage of being able to build communities that are less bound by the limitations of geography or class than they once were is that it gets harder to get people's attention long enough to try to build one based on those.

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I agree entirely. The fact is that when Marx observes "class consciousness" in action in working class communitities, he was not just observing the actions of people who were bound by the fact that they worked in the same factory, or within the same class, but also lived geogrpahically in communities built around industrial centers, in which people intermarried, played, lived, went to the same social events, sang and wrote the songs together, observed the same religious traditions, and had more or less the same cultural heritage spoke the same language and otherwise engaged each other as a community on a whole number of different levels, where women played a fundamental role in maintaining the social networks and supportimg framework of production.

In other words peoples consciousness was not entirely defined by a persons class positioning, but a whole number of social relationships, beyond class. So for instance a woman in one of these 19th century working class communities would have a different sense of her self, in terms of her consciousness, and one defined by her station as a working class woman, specifically, not just as a member of the working class.

That said, I don't think that Marx envisioned that "class concsiousness" was "created" by activist intervention in working class communities, but felt it was a natural phenomena resulting fromt social relations that would be expressed by what we would today call activism.

The geographical factor I think, is hugely important here however, as communities are largely designed now to limit social interaction, while people are dispersed throughout our urban centers, and isolated very much from those others who share their place of work, and the same employer.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Cueball:

The geographical factor I think, is hugely important here however, as communities are largely designed now to limit social interaction, while people are dispersed throughout our urban centers, and isolated very much from those others who share their place of work, and the same employer.

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Not to cut in again but that is an interesting development of post-Fordist economies. The nature of 'globalization' is that newly minted urban 'proletariats' will also be much less likley to get together in larger numbers. Nationalism would be a bigger dividing factor among labour despite the internationalist image of capital. So supply may outstrip demand again but the chance for active resistence according to expectations is still diminished. More depoliticized individuals isolated from their immediate communties through more passive entertainment is already noticeable. Something few could have foreseen back then.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

quote:

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Cueball: That said, I don't think that Marx envisioned that "class consciousness" was "created" by activist intervention in working class communities, but felt it was a natural phenomena resulting from social relations that would be expressed by what we would today call activism.

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Clumsily expressed. I like what I wrote better. To re-iterate: Class consciousness "happens" when a social class is in motion in conflict with other social classes. It is not inherent at all.

My expression better reflects the dynamic nature of class, class consciousness, and relations between classes. I would also add that the great social and working class historian, E.P. Thompson, was in the habit of expressing matters relating to social class in this way. Thompson would have said that class is something that happens (or doesn't); it is not a "thing" at all.

Cueball compared ideas of class consciousness to religious notions. But that is quite wrong and is a misrepresentation of the Marxist understanding of class consciousness as well. So, OK, this isn't jettisoning the concept. That's a mis-characterization of Cueball's views as he's expressed them. But it is trivializing or changing it to something else. And, just to make things clear, I don't object to what Cue is doing by laying emphasis on the spiritual needs of people, their desires to belong to something (even gang members in Winnipeg feel that need), or the role of inherited spiritual values in practical Marxism. It's the characterization of Marxist notions of class consciousness as somehow akin to religious notions that I am objecting to.

Let me quote Ellen M. Wood in regard to this issue, from her book, The Retreat from Class. This quote has to do with why some socialists place the working class at the heart of the struggle for socialism and why this is a solidly materialist understanding of struggle and not just some metaphysical, much less religious conception. So it is not the identical issue we are discussing here ... but it is a useful quotation nevertheless.

quote:

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Wood: Revolutionary socialism has traditionally placed the working class and its struggles at the heart of social transformation and the building of socialism, not simply as an act of faith but as a conclusion based upon a comprehensive analysis of social relations and power. In the first place, this conclusion is based on the historical/materialist principle which places the relations of production at the centre of social life and regards their exploitative character as the root of social and political oppression. The proposition that the working class is potentially the revolutionary class is not some metaphysical abstraction but an extension of these materialist principles, suggesting that, given the centrality of production and exploitation in human social life, and given the particular nature of production and exploitation in capitalist society, certain other propositions follow: 1) the working class is the social group with the most direct objective interest in bringing about the transition to socialism; 2) the working class, as the direct object of the most fundamental and determinative - though certainly not the only - form of oppression, and the one class whose interests do not rest on the oppression of other classes, can create the conditions for liberating all human beings in the struggle to liberate itself; 3) given the fundamental and ultimately unresolvable opposition between exploiting and exploited classes which lies at the heart of the structure of oppression, class struggle must be the principal motor of this emancipatory transformation; and 4) the working class is the one social force that has a strategic social power sufficient to permit its development into a revolutionary force. Underlying this analysis is an emancipatory vision which looks forward to the disalienation of power at every level of human endeavour, from the creative power of labour to the political power of the state.

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ETA: Not trying to bring it back to religion again, but just wondering about the ambiguity there. It has more than one implication certainly.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Erik Redburn:
Beltov, when the 'opiate of the masses' was coined, wouldn't you say that could just as easily be a description of the role of traditional religion as it WAs, rather than necesarily how it must be in any form?

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Nah. Marx had it figured out, and it's fairly unambiguous (though deliciously subtle):

quote:

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The foundation of irreligious criticism is: Man makes religion, religion does not make man. Religion is, indeed, the self-consciousness and self-esteem of man who has either not yet won through to himself, or has already lost himself again. But man is no abstract being squatting outside the world. Man is the world of man – state, society. This state and this society produce religion, which is an inverted consciousness of the world, because they are an inverted world. Religion is the general theory of this world, its encyclopaedic compendium, its logic in popular form, its spiritual point d’honneur, its enthusiasm, its moral sanction, its solemn complement, and its universal basis of consolation and justification. It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality. The struggle against religion is, therefore, indirectly the struggle against that world whose spiritual aroma is religion.

Religious suffering is, at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people.

The abolition of religion as the illusory happiness of the people is the demand for their real happiness. To call on them to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions. The criticism of religion is, therefore, in embryo, the criticism of that vale of tears of which religion is the halo.

---

A Contribution to the Critique of Hegel's Philosophy of Right

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

quote:

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Originally posted by Erik Redburn:
I suspect religion, as a personal need rather than order, began with our unusual awareness of our mortality (fear) and the desire for justice amnd healing the world rarely provides, more than a need for control or order, but that's just speculation on its onetime universality, before there were states.

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Well, I presume when Marx writes: "This state and this society produce religion", he means religion in the particular forms in which it manifests itself when he was writing. I don't believe he is saying religion was born in 19th century Germany. Nor yet is he saying that religion could not have preceded the state (although I can't imagine how it could have preceded "society", unless by "religion" you mean the kind of thing that makes a cat's skin twitch when it's dreaming...). When he says, "It is the fantastic realization of the human essence since the human essence has not acquired any true reality," I think his formulation is intended to be timeless.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

ETA: Not before "society" no, but that goes back a ways before states too, in the more general sense. But enough thread drift on this, question asked and answered, more is just speculation.

And no, I don't see it as 'necessary' for much if anything, only those who are raised to it feel they "need it" later in my experience, not what I was looking for either Beltov. Perhaps just an allowance for the common impulse, but whatever. Carry on.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

This is an interesting discussion but it's not why I started the thread. So forgive me if I mainly focus on replies by Cueball and/or remind and on the subject of classes and class consciousness.

I think it's fair to say that the theory relating to classes, including class consciousness, is underdeveloped in social science. One of the authors in that special issue of Monthly Review says as much:

quote:

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At present there is no well-developed theory of class in all of its aspects, which remains perhaps the single biggest challenge facing the social sciences. Indeed, failure to advance in this area can be seen as symptomatic of the general stagnation of the social sciences over much of the twentieth century.

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quote:

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
So forgive me if I mainly focus on replies by Cueball and/or remind and on the subject of classes and class consciousness.

---

Sorry, Beltov, this is a public thread, so you may have to tolerate other opinions than merely the spiritualist and the nihilist.

My view:

Social classes exist, in the admittedly pretty amateurish sense I described above - groupings of people who make their living in similar ways and who associate with and reside near each other - intermarriage is the exception rather than the rule - boundaries are fluid.

[ 08 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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I think it's fair to say that the theory relating to classes, including class consciousness, is underdeveloped in social science. One of the authors in that special issue of Monthly Review says as much:

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And likely to remain so, as it does not serve the interests of professors or post grads to look at things in this light. It serves their interest to play along and insist that the Emperor's New Clothes are just peachy keen.

If there is a connection between class consciousness and religion, it is the zealous disregard of fact in preference for fantasy.

ack. I have further thoughts on this, but being working class, I have to go off to work. In fact should have left about five minutes ago.

See you on the flip side of the work day.

quote:

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Originally posted by N.Beltov:
Clumsily expressed. I like what I wrote better. To re-iterate: Class consciousness "happens" when a social class is in motion in conflict with other social classes. It is not inherent at all.

---

Yeah. Except history is a history of class struggle as the theory goes, ergo, class consciousness is inherently present in the social relations themseleves, of which class is an also expression, and class consciousness and inserperable part, for one thing because the conflice between classes is part of what defines class.

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

Conversly a small store owner scraping by at the poverty line, is not a member of the proletariat either, simply because he or she is poor.

Also I am not in the NDP.

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

quote:

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Class consciousness "happens" when a social class is in motion in conflict with other social classes

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So when capitalists, bourgeois, whatever, think they understand the forces of history, they are in fact duped. Rather than "class consciousness," they have developed "false consciousness" (I'm still cribbing from Lukács here). The "use-value" of class consciousness has been disguised and reformed as "exchange-value." True consciousness remains abstracted, inaccessible. Indeed, Beltov admits this possibility as well:

quote:

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The early history of working class "consciousness" was, in fact, doing the dirty work for the capitalist class against the enemies of the latter. The working class only LATER developed consciousness "for itself" and began to engage in struggle with its current adversary.

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Unfortunately, Beltov makes the same error as Lukács, who claims that only that devilish spectre, the proletariat, can achieve "true" class consciousness. Of course, not the old proletariats, or those damned lumpens, but the ones we have now--the ones who really get it. Lukács makes the fatal mistake that history, that non-narrative, non-representational necessity is accessible. He constructs a totality of class relations and positions himself outside of that totality, looking in. Such an arrangement is impossible. Rather, as Beltov suggests, there is a dialectic at work, and class consciousness occupies one pole.

quote:

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
Lots of talk here about the "working class", unions and Marx but not much mention of the proletariat, the bottom 25%. In Canada these are people that earn $8 to $12 an hour, have families and few human resources. The are insecurily employed often and have little economic power. This lack of regard for the proletariat is on par with the NDP.

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Oh bullshit. 25% of Canadian workers don't earn $10 dollars an hour. And the NDP has been pushing for a $10 dollar an hour minimum wage at the federal and provincial levels in recent months. And that's just one approach to eliminating poverty that the NDP is proposing. Social democratic governments in Nordic countries have virtually eliminated child and adult poverty. Canada's social democrats know that it takes political will to do it. Liberal Ontario is home to 44%(about a half a million children and 1.2 million Ontarians altogether) of Canada's children living anywhere below Canada's loosely defined poverty line(LICOS). And Liberal B.C. has the highest rate of child poverty.

quote:

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Prior to 2002, the wages for the unionized hospital workers like Mojica were in the range of $18 to $19 an hour, with benefits. Then ]the B.C. Liberal government took away the collective bargaining rights of Hospital Employees' Union members in the housekeeping and food services departments. Their work was contracted out to giant multinational companies such as Sodexho, Aramark and Compass, and the new, non-union wages were drastically lower.

When Mojica was hired by Sodexho in June 2004, she was paid a wage of $10.15 an hour and received only 16 to 20 hours of work a week. A low wage and few hours are a clear illustration of why so many employed people are found among a community's

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Class itself first.

The kind of understanding of class they would be talking about in Monthly Review is not just ‘underdeveloped’… the search itself is doomed.

No doubt parsing and re-parsing the labour theory of value and discussions of where classes are ‘located’ will keep a shrinking number of professors busy until their retirement, but that quest is going nowhere useful to the rest of us.

Academic discussions focusing on class consciousness died out because they din’t offer the same opportunities of formulaic hair splitting.

But the fact the discussion of class consciousness is so inherently subjective, I wouldn’t go so far as unionist to say it doesn’t exist.

The rigour people see in discussions of class itself owes a lot to fantasies induced by isolation and stimulus deprivation. When you strip discussions of class down to what is useful it doesn’t look substantially different than literary discussions of allegory and metaphor.

Marx didn’t talk about class consciousness much. He simply understood that there would be a lag between the conditions people lived in- and how they perceived those conditions. He assumed that the increased size and immiseration of the proletariat would close that gap. A very understandable surmise on his part. But we of course know it’s not quite like that.

Discussions of class consciousness were popular in the Seventies. When we were looking to texts for reasons that the revolution wasn’t here yet.

But I digress.

Given that we only really know that class exists, classes tend to reproduce themselves, etc… and nothing more rigorous than that, I don’t see why discussion of class consciousness should be singled out as too inherently muddle headed to pursue.

Especially if it is reformulated as consciousness of class. The fact that persistently so many people deny it exists- including a great many who have no apparent vested interest to protect- that’s of practical interest to all of us.

It’s nice- and refreshing these days- when people are explicitly conscious of being working class. But looking for that manifestation of class consciousness is chasing after old dreams.

If we’re looking for a resurgence of old style working class consciousness we’re just waiting for a bus everyone else knows is not coming.

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Originally posted by KenS:

Given that we only really know that class exists, classes tend to reproduce themselves, etc… and nothing more rigorous than that, I don’t see why discussion of class consciousness should be singled out as too inherently muddle headed to pursue.

Especially if it is reformulated as consciousness of class. [...]

If we’re looking for a resurgence of old style working class consciousness we’re just waiting for a bus everyone else knows is not coming.

On the other hand, looking at whether people might be more attuned to the existence of class- among other social awarenesses- is something we can aspire to effect.

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That's what I was trying to say - although in my typically blunt style I overcompensated by saying "no such thing". I agree with KenS on this. As for the labour theory of value, I'm not an economist, and I guess I should pick up Marx again and see how he reads since the last time (about 25 years ago now...), but the labour theory made sense to me and no other has since.

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: unionist ]

The labour theory of value makes trmendous intuitive sense.

But attempting to apply it is another story. Spare yourself the attempts of the last few decades- the sad spectacle of the lumpen professariat trying to demonstrate how the LTV really does work.

In my life I get huge practical benefit out of a number of allegories and metephors. And the very nature of them you look to how they apply in, well, allegorical situations.

In my life I've known very few of said animal. There are a number more of intellectuals from the working class, and who retain that identity... but it's not quite the same thing. [Maybe. I'll return to that.]

At any rate- I'd just like to explicitly make note of that. Not that I know what to make of it.

But then, I've never known what to make of what importance, if any, 'organic working class intellectuals' have.

I definitely saw value in people staying in the class rather than being of and about it. [Even though I can't say my being still here is a product of deliberate and fully concious choices.]

At any rate, 25 years ago- or maybe more like 35 or 40- I definitely attatched some importance to there being organic working class intellectuals... even though I could not have told you what exactly we'd be useful for. [The only thing obvious that came to mind was writing novels- which I never had any inclination to try.]

So here I am. 56 now. Some decades to go yet- so the jury's not in yet for my own case study as to what this very small species can accomplish, even by very modest dint of example.

But based on the evidence I've seen, I don't see that we have anything special at all to offer. Just another interesting thing in the world.

But in posting I wasn't aiming for deep reflection. Mostly, I wanted to make that observation.

That and the hope someone else will have something illuminating to say.

========

Nor do I want to inadvertently sidetrack the existing discussion... which I would encourage to continue regardless.

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: KenS ]

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Cueball: Yeah. Except history is a history of class struggle as the theory goes, ergo, class consciousness is inherently present in the social relations themselves, of which class is an also expression, and class consciousness and inseperable part, for one thing because the conflice between classes is part of what defines class.

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Ellen Wood gets into this in her book to some degree. She points out

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Class struggle is the nucleus of Marxism. This is so in two inseparable senses; it is class struggle that for Marxism explains the dynamic of history, and it is class struggle that for Marxism explains the dynamic of history, and it is the abolition of classes, the obverse or end-product of class struggle, that is the ultimate objective of the revolutionary process. The particular importance for Marxism of the working class in capitalist society is that this is the only class whose own class interests require, and whose own conditions make possible, the abolition of class itself. The inseparable unity of this view of history and this revolutionary objective is what above all distinguishes Marxism from other conceptions of social transformation, and without it there is no Marxism. These propositions may seem so obvious as to be trivial; yet it can be argued that the history of Marxism in the 20th century has been marked by a gradual shift away from these principles. The perspectives of Marxism have increasingly come to be dominated by the struggle for power.

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The Retreat from Class: A New 'True' Socialism, page 12

This addresses Catchfire's remark: "Unfortunately, Beltov makes the same error as Lukács, who claims that only that devilish spectre, the proletariat, can achieve "true" class consciousness." There is actually a defensibile reason why such a point of view of putting the working class at the heart of the struggle for socialism is taken.

Don't forget, as well, that social classes can be involved in class struggle at the behest of another social class. The early years of the making and formation of the working class involved that class acting on behalf of the bourgeoisie against the enemies of the latter. Marx wrote about this phenonmenon. It was only later, in maturity, that the working class began to fight, in a conscious way, for its own interests. Much of politics is, in fact, can be viewed as an attempt to mis-direct working people into carrying out social tasks that benefit the capitalist class. To take a single and extremely important example: workers are made to fight each other in wars around the world and slaughter each other. In whose interest are they doing that for? Their own? I think not. Fascism is, in this view, simply an extreme defence mechanism to "save" capitalism from a socialist transformation. And so on.

Class theory is horribly underdeveloped. Just compare the ideological and psychological efforts that have been, and are being, put into selling the victims of capitalism all of its useless, not to say harmful, junk. We now talk of the manufacture of consent thanks to a brilliant linguist reaching into fields that were not his specialty. Marketing and advertising in North America is a multi-trillion dollar industry and one of the big 5 or 6 mega-industries alongside auto, military production, media, and the financial sector. The efforts of Marxists to develop their theory is a wet piss stain in the corner in comparison. We can thank the Stalinists, in part, for replacing dynamic and dialectical understanding of social class with wooden and schoolboy caricatures of social life.

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

Class today has little to do with the relationship to capital.

It's all about power, or as I said above, the extent to which you can fuck with or be fucked by, other people.

We see that reflected in our political system, obviously. We see it reflected in our courts. Certain people get investigated, certain people don't. Certain people get charged, others don't. And it doesn't matter what the offense might be. And we see it reflected in our economic system. Certain people pay for their mistakes-- others don't. Unless you want to convince me that the homeless people I see on the streets are former "risk takers" who lost on the stock market-- or fired stock brokers who made bad investments. Or hell, former business people that went to jail for white collar crimes. ( guffaw )

But man, don't you take a dollar extra from welfare!!

In talking to my friends and co workers, they'll never buy into the philosophical arguments, nor is there enough patience in even the most zealous of idealogues to illustrate the detailed rip offs of our economic system. And they've totally written off politics.

But boy howdy. Put class consciousness in terms of others fucking them over for the sake of being able to fuck them over, and they get it in a New York second.

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Which only means that there is something in theory which is incapable of preventing the evolution of new power structures.

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[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: Frustrated Mess ]

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I think a big part of the problem is that the people who might talk about class today do so from a faulty starting point. Which is why it doesn't resonate with the working class.

Class today has little to do with the relationship to capital.

It's all about power, or as I said above, the extent to which you can fuck with or be fucked by, other people.

We see that reflected in our political system, obviously. We see it reflected in our courts. Certain people get investigated, certain people don't. Certain people get charged, others don't. And it doesn't matter what the offense might be. And we see it reflected in our economic system. Certain people pay for their mistakes-- others don't. Unless you want to convince me that the homeless people I see on the streets are former "risk takers" who lost on the stock market-- or fired stock brokers who made bad investments. Or hell, former business people that went to jail for white collar crimes. ( guffaw )

But man, don't you take a dollar extra from welfare!!

In talking to my friends and co workers, they'll never buy into the philosophical arguments, nor is there enough patience in even the most zealous of idealogues to illustrate the detailed rip offs of our economic system. And they've totally written off politics.

But boy howdy. Put class consciousness in terms of others fucking them over for the sake of being able to fuck them over, and they get it in a New York second.

'Cause it's true.

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So, because workers in a union are protected, then they're less part of the working-class than stockbrokers working on commission ?

Is it an either/or thing, or a question of degree ?

What about teachers ? They're unionized AND they own a fat pension plan that owns major corporations that exploit....

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oh... my head hurts...

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Finally, I screwed with someone! Does this make me middle class?

That means I'll have to go to Merriam Webster on line every time I want to describe my social position.

ACK! and a sex change, apparently!

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: Tommy_Paine ]

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Originally posted by Cueball:
The definition of Proletariat, as defined by Marx is not a social relation expressed in relative wealth aquisition, but an expression of a persons relationship to the means of production. So therefore, a deep sea welder working on sea rigs pulling in $120 an hour is still a wage labourer, and therefore a member of the proletariat, according to Marx.

Conversly a small store owner scraping by at the poverty line, is not a member of the proletariat either, simply because he or she is poor.

Also I am not in the NDP.

[ 09 November 2007: Message edited by: Cueball ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

This is a little bizarre. According to this definition there are owners and workers, the workers being a large majority. And any way, mostly everyone uses the term class to mean the amount of money you earn or have and the term proletariat to mean the bottom 25%.

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yep. workers are the large majority! I know most people in our society use the word "class" to indicate a person's income and (I would add) education. But I think this usage is definitely in the interest of the owning class, since it obscures a very crucial point: the relationship between "owners" and "workers".

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

This is a little bizarre. According to this definition there are owners and workers, the workers being a large majority. And any way, mostly everyone uses the term class to mean the amount of money you earn or have and the term proletariat to mean the bottom 25%.

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I don't think its bizzarre, for in fact Marx was most interested in social processes, not the fact that a very few people were rich and a great majority poor. He wanted to explain the process not merely muse on the results, which are plain and evident to anyone, who is even mildly empathetic.

So his analysis examined as RosaL said, the manner in which people interacted with the means of production, to look at the way people ended up poor. His observation was that the most vulenerable class was the class that was employed through wages, and this remains true today, even though there is a select group of very high risk jobs that are basicly wage labour jobs but still have the same relationship to the means of prodcuction.

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Originally posted by Michael Hardner:

And... there are highly skilled professionals who don't make as much as low skilled blue collar workers too.

I might as well talk about my own example, which is what I'm getting at:

Three chums go to high school. One drops out, one goes to community college, one goes to a highly technical university programme. The drop out ends up earning the most, as a unionized painter working for the government. The university professional goes into IT and ends up making the least because his skillset is globalized.

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Your comments reek of middle class prejudices, the belief that somehow "professionals" deserve more money and prestige because they're oh so smart, and resent the idea of plumbers and autoworkers making more money than they do.

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Originally posted by Max Bialystock:
We also agree on who the real enemy is - not some highly paid blue collar worker without a degree, not "the rich" but the corporate elite that dominates our economy and society.

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That's about 20 years out of date. Long ago people thought the capitalistic system was the problem and voted for more and more government programs but around about the early 1980s they got more serious and opinioned that big corporations were good, they provided safe, high paid jobs with pensions which is what matters to family. This was as people were increasingly depending on and living with the cockroach sector of the economy which offers insecure, poorly paid employment. Corporations are the Canadian version of the Chinese "Iron Rice Bowl".

[ 13 November 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

[ 13 November 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Your comments reek of middle class prejudices, the belief that somehow "professionals" deserve more money and prestige because they're oh so smart, and resent the idea of plumbers and autoworkers making more money than they do.

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Not at all.

But the myth of class seems to include the idea that workers make less than managers. I'm just pointing out that it's not always true.

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I too am in a sense socially middle class but economically more working class. I have a master's degree and work as a substitute teacher. One of my oldest and closest friends is an Italian Canadian who recently retired. He worked in construction and made more money than I do. He has some community college courses. Do I resent that? No. His job is a lot more strenous than mine and he can't work for as many years. We also agree on who the real enemy is - not some highly paid blue collar worker without a degree, not "the rich" but the corporate elite that dominates our economy and society.

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If you think that the idea of working class meaning industrial workers is problematic and simplistic I agree...but I don't think anyone argues that. The working class is just as big as it ever was, but it's challenged in qualitative terms.

[ 14 November 2007: Message edited by: Lord Palmerston ]

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If you think that the idea of working class meaning industrial workers is problematic and simplistic I agree...but I don't think anyone argues that. The working class is just as big as it ever was, but it's challenged in qualitative terms.

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I think one of the things that I find hard to get my head around is that people are killing themselves with extra work, to buy things that they absolutely don't need - that they can't use because they're working so much.

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
So in other words the corporate elite and the poorly-paid non-unionized workers are on side, and the unionized workers are on the other.

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Those who noisily draw attention to the underdeveloped state of class consciousness in North American (particularly Canadian and USian) society are often the the same people who trivialize the horrific effects of market totalitarianism. In the article linked to here, Dawson points out the capitalist connection to the obesity epidemic in North America.

Apparently, the epidemic is such a problem that the folks over at Disneyland are having to alter their rides. Seems too many mini-boats are bottoming out.

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As I explain in my book The Consumer Trap, as the system churns on, its normal operation compels all big businesses to extend and refine their marketing operations, which are neither more nor less than history's most detailed and expensive behavioral-control campaigns.

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Market totalitarianism. A two word description of capitalism ... and a very important context of any discussion of class consciousness in light of this multi-trillion dollar industry.

Dawson article

As the author points out, the simple difference between the massive amounts of sugarized and caffeinated soda drinks that USians drink versus what the French drink, for example, goes a long way towards explaining the difference in the obeseity problem in the two countries.

[ 14 November 2007: Message edited by: N.Beltov ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:

Lots of militant unionists on this forum. In fact there's been labour peace in Canada for 15 years now, since the deep recession of 1990-1991. Unions have been accepting less than inflation settlements and taking the lower interest rates and better for the family economy that comes with it. Just saying.

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I can't believe this isn't being challenged on this "militant" board. How is less than inflation settlements better for the family? And how were unions ever responsible for inflation, except perhaps as a tertiary multiplier effect thirty or so years ago.

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Long ago people thought the capitalistic system was the problem and voted for more and more government programs but around about the early 1980s they got more serious and opinioned that big corporations were good, they provided safe, high paid jobs with pensions which is what matters to family. This was as people were increasingly depending on and living with the cockroach sector of the economy which offers insecure, poorly paid employment. Corporations are the Canadian version of the Chinese "Iron Rice Bowl".

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quote:

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Originally posted by Lord Palmerston:
Yes it's changed immensely...notably the shrinkage of the so-called "blue collar aristocracy" as a percentage of the workforce and the "proletarianization" of white collar jobs.

If you think that the idea of working class meaning industrial workers is problematic and simplistic I agree...but I don't think anyone argues that. The working class is just as big as it ever was, but it's challenged in qualitative terms.

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This I think is a more accurate description. The complications arise from the fact that most hands-on industrial work has moved offshore and out of sight, while we've moved to a money cycling "service" economy. A lot more women entered the "professional" workforce fulltime but ended back in "pink collar" clerical ghettos instead, while a lot of the white male semi-skilled labour has been totally marginilized/lumpenized, with some doing ok as independent tradesmen or small shop and land owners. Alot of what we think of as "working class" now are more residual differences in sub-cultures. Biggest shift I think is the growth of publically traded corporations, splitting what used to be owner-operators into managers and shareholders (with some overlap) and a lot of well paid consultants and specialists servicing them. Which apparently has only made the disconnects worse.

Maybe "class" could also be broken up into more than one angle or lens for re-analysis, then resynthesized in relationship to issues, or maybe the analysis of different social strata is no longer important at all. Might be easier to just look at how much support each issue has or could have, which interest groups are likley to oppose or possibly support any reform, and which people are most likley to man the barricades. Those making a hundred Gs a year or more are still the least likely, regardless of whether they prefer beer or wine.

[ 15 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

And Canada still doesn't rank in the top ten for global economic competitive growth index and probably never will at this rate.

In our society the big divide is between skilled workers and unskilled. Skilled workers are part of our meritocracy that rewards people for diligence and provides world scale competitiveness. Unskilled workers look at their responsibilities of parents as a moral basis to be paid better, say in unions.

In modern days this becomes complex. Even within a nuclear family there’ll be high paid and low paid persons.

If you include friends and family in your definition of enlightened self interest pretty you have society. That’d be a nuclear family with close relatives and their families but also close friends and their kids.

A more recent sage than Karl Marx is Mick Jagger. He captures the point with a riff about “My side”. Most people live in complex situations but they do have a “My side”.

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
The deep recessions of 1983 and 1990 depressed people and were awful. I personally was unemployed about eight years in total. So this is something new and very positive.

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Strange contradictions you got going there but not at all, not for those who are still unemployed or under-emplyed and all the communities that have been freshly re-ghettoized.

And I have news for you all -we're all headed right for another recession, perhaps the worst one yet since we turned back on more balanced taxation, regulation and financial policies. Older industrial class divisions may start to become a more discernable pattern to more people again, as the middleclass shrinks in significance again.

But sorry to others for another digression, this one was reminding me of Babble threads of yore. The better ones.

[ 15 November 2007: Message edited by: Erik Redburn ]

Factory utilization is high, above 80%, and this could cause the Bank to bring on a recession as well. However, it's been high for some time without causing inflation so this needs watching, not increased interest rates.

I call myself a jobs activist and amateur economist. I have talked to 1000s of people about political-economy. The concern about class divisions is more a concern that wages at the very bottom are unfair. This is almost universal. What motivates this isn't just a concern for the other guy but the reality it may affect friends and family. It'd be politcally possible to raise minimum wage to $12.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: bruce_the_vii ]

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Originally posted by bruce_the_vii:
I've read several times now that wages are increasing at 4% which is inflationary

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If inflation is a problem, it's not caused by Ontario's anemic growth rates and manufacturing recession in what is Canada's largest labour market. A job boom was happening in Alberta's energy sector. Our central bank has been threatening to use interest rates alone to curb inflation across Canada no matter which province is experiencing a bit of prosperity. It's like using a sledge hammer to set a finishing nail.

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I've read several times now that wages are increasing at 4% which is inflationary. I simply don't believe that there are general shortages of skilled workers. I would think wider attention, better information, to this problem would help

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I don't see where "factory utilization is high", and why 80%? According to Canadian Labour Congress, Canada has lost 288, 300 good-paying manufacturing jobs since 2002, and most of the new jobs created since then are lower paying service sector, part-time, seasonal, and "self-employment." I think if it wasn't for public sector job growth propping things up from that end, economic depression on a 1930's scale would be realistic.

And I believe there really are shortages of skilled workers across Canada. Industry says it's true, and so have Paul Martin and Dalton McGuinty admitted as much. They simply haven't been investing in people or infrastructure since the Liberals became obssessed with debt reduction in the 1990's. These human resource deficits and infrastructure deficits are self-induced and contributing to Canada's overall lack of economic competitiveness.

[ 16 November 2007: Message edited by: Fidel ]