Fate of the W/C

[slaar]

And I think it's worth asking "why?" about these two issues. What is it about the UK that ensures that normal laws of dialectics do not apply?

I've said before that the UK will be the last festering capitalist nation on Earth. I also suspect that were the rest of the planet to undergo revolution, the UK and US ruling classes would threaten to release the nukes unless the rest of the globe agreed to restore the capitalist yoke over themselves.

Well I wouldn't reduce the whole question of political outcomes to dialectics for a start.

But I'd say a good part of it is that since we were one of the first, and certainly the most successful early example of capitalist industrial revolutions, we've got a population that is rich enough in material goods to have a vested interest in defending the status quo.

Taking up arms against the state in your average African country sounds like a much better idea.

 

[Belushi]

Depressing but probably true.

I've often wondered if the lack of revolutionary fervour here is more due to society being more advanced down a particular ideological track than to any inherent forelock-tugging tendencies in the national character.

I think its easy to overstate the conservative character of British (or maybe English would be more accurate?) society - throughtout the 19th and the early part of the 20th century the authorities were terrified of revolution.

I think part of the reasons is that the British establishment has always been flexible enough to share at least part of the wealth with the workers, just enough to make them doubt whether a revolution is worth it.

 

[Belushi]

I don't think the BNP deserve credit for the rightward and confrontational shift in British politics, they are just along for the ride. They have adapted well to changed circumstances though; i.e. realising that they don't need to make the case any more as the govt and media will do it for them.

No, but they are much better at presentation nowadays, which is very important in modern politics.

 

[Fruitloop]

^ Definitely.

Good points from both Belushi and slaar.

'maybe English would be more accurate' - I was thinking exactly the same thing.

 

[slaar]

I think part of the reasons is that the British establishment has always been flexible enough to share at least part of the wealth with the workers, just enough to make them doubt whether a revolution is worth it.

This also emerges from the pattern of economic growth. In an industrial revolution you get a (tortured and slow) accumulation of wealth in a broader collection of hands than, say, if it's based on natural resource extraction where it's quite easy to keep a much higher share of the profits in a smaller amount of hands.

 

[slaar]

Incidentally, Hannah Arendt thought that any revolution brought about by the disenfranchised masses (as a claim on property) was doomed to failure (the French, for example descending into the terror), compared with revolutions that came about as a claim on freedom (like the American), because the 'social question' is much harder to solve in the immediate aftermath of revolution when most of your population is poor and desperate.

 

[poster342002]

This is all wandering off topic a bit - interesting though it alll is.

My main thought was what the western ruling classes were going to do with the vast numbers of surplus workers it now has.

 

[slaar]

This is all wandering off topic a bit - interesting though it alll is.

My main thought was what the western ruling classes were going to do with the vast numbers of surplus workers it now has.

Which reminds me of something a poster said on a thread a few months ago on postmodernism:

Modernity - "At last free from the shackles of nature. No more must we toil on the land. Science has triumphed."

Postmodernity - "Why am I working in a call centre?"

Which is about as insightful as I get at 5pm on a Friday.

 

[slaar]

This is all wandering off topic a bit - interesting though it alll is.

My main thought was what the western ruling classes were going to do with the vast numbers of surplus workers it now has.

It does also though depend on how you define 'surplus'. In a fair few pre-industrial societies today where subsistence agriculture - which up to 80 percent of the population is engaged in - is becoming unsustainable because of population growth you've got a shit load of mostly young people with not much to do but with capitalism not generating jobs and industry either. Call centres and manufactured consent, if you want to call it that, is a cakewalk in comparison.

 

[poster342002]

It does also though depend on how you define 'surplus'. In a fair few pre-industrial societies today where subsistence agriculture - which up to 80 percent of the population is engaged in - is becoming unsustainable because of population growth you've got a shit load of mostly young people with not much to do but with capitalism not generating jobs and industry either. Call centres and manufactured consent, if you want to call it that, is a cakewalk in comparison.

Perhaps this points towards majority-surplussness being a global phenomenon, then? If so, the question still remains: what is going to happen to all these people that the ruling classes have no use for?

 

[Darios]

Perhaps this points towards majority-surplussness being a global phenomenon, then? If so, the question still remains: what is going to happen to all these people that the ruling classes have no use for?

They either have to "re-skill" every 2-3 years to keep up with the "information,service and knowledge based economy" or they are forced into utterly shitty low end labour intensive jobs (including call centre work).

 

[durruti02]

The globalisation project would appear to be aimed at dividing the world in two between countries that produce things and countries that consume them.

What that means for the working classes in the developed world is, in the long term, the only employment will be in the service industries: food, drink, transport, cleaning etc. These will cater to a smaller upper class which revolves around financial services.

Everything of any value, the things which Marx wrote about the production of, will be 'contracted out' to low wage economies with shite labour standards.

That is their future for the private sector under globalisation. A country of hedge funders and coffee shop workers.

good post but add 'and an army of service workers .. and an army of reserve labour' .. i think it is always important to see how things have panned out in the USA

i think also we ideologically have lost dramatically. Money has replaced church family and class .. this is why i believe the community struggle is crucial.

actually though there are still millionsof w/c people in this country and many of them are only in keepin their heads above water thru debt ..

noted the other day ( sorry can not remember ref) that NuLab are actively trying to transfer economy to high level on theasis we can not compete with far east on low level economy. Actually i do not believe this entirely and tend to agree with Cruddas that 'they' are trying to converrt massive parts of the economy into a low wage north american model.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Possibly, but the British are a very conservative nation, we haven't had a revolution for 350 years so it would take a lot.

true, but I'm sure that many of the people on this thread can recall from their secondary school history lessons, several instances of near-revolution in the last 350 years. That doesn't necessarily mean that "the people" are supine or conservative, it could mean that the state has had the ability and will to use the military and police as the ultimate enforcers of state policy when they believe it has been called for to protect their interests.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Gotta take into account how much the BNP have toned down as well, though. Publically at least.

They've certainly learned to be more circumspect about their agenda, and to dress up their pronouncements in "nuLabour"-esque jargon.
It doesn't, of course, help when cunts like Margaret Hodge validate their rhetoric by co-opting slices of it.

 

[poster342002]

They either have to "re-skill" every 2-3 years to keep up with the "information,service and knowledge based economy" or they are forced into utterly shitty low end labour intensive jobs (including call centre work).

I imagine a lot of people will have real difficulty doing either. Re-skilling is not as easy as some may say, and there isn't an unlimited number of call entres jobs - a lot of which are outsourced abroad anyway.

 

[dash_two]

This ain't gonna be a popular thread...

I'm starting to wonder if the game plan of the ruling classes throughout the post-industrialsed world is to divest itself of it's working classes by stealth.

Don't really know what to think about this, but I note that you use the expression 'working classes' ie the plural, rather than the singular 'working class'.

This is how classes were generally described in Victorian times (or so Eric Hobsbawm says) before the rise of mass working-class political movements, and for obvious reasons it makes sense again today.

Curious factoid: Saw results from a poll commissioned by a building society last year. Around 30% of bank managers described themselves as 'working class', a surprisingly large proportion imo. Be hard to imagine that in bygone days when the bank manager was someone of local importance, pillar of the Rotary Club etc.

 

[brasicritique]

Almost 9%, and in a constituency with (IIRC) about a 10% BME population.
What worries me is that this is happening without the input of idealogues of Mosley's stripe, but through the propagation of myths about people being deprived of their "entitlements". At least when I was getting in fights back in the Thatcher era, it was because someone was propagating an ideology of hate, now it seems as though there's little coherent to fight against.

Sadly the chickens look like they are slowly coming home to roost. As to why you only have to llok at some of the so called left wing posters on these boards , who i would argue only use marx and socialism as a means of keeping their dominant socio-economic position within society

 

[ViolentPanda]

Sadly the chickens look like they are slowly coming home to roost.

As I said before, it's like people are so concerned about "getting their dues" (rather than paying their dues) and exercising their "rights" (but hardly ever their responsibilities) that they no longer care if their behaviour has the knock-on effect of allowing scum like the BNP to wheedle their way toward power. Too much self-interest and not enough class interest.

As to why you only have to llok at some of the so called left wing posters on these boards , who i would argue only use marx and socialism as a means of keeping their dominant socio-economic position within society

The problem seems to centre around the many and varied definitions of "socialism". The word has become so bastardised over the last 100 years that it's been used to represent just about every degree of the political spectrum. People call themselves "socialists" without feeling the need to define what they actually mean.
As for Marx and Marxism, fine and dandy as measures to gauge where we are socially and economically, but they're not scripture, and I'm depressed that so many people still use them as if they were.