Smashing The Poor: What Are The Prime Driving Factors?

[redsquirrel]

Depends on the detail. Are they actually strike breaking union members or are they currently non-unionised and ineligible to strike unless they do something? Because if the latter it's passively doing nothing.
Whereas to wind up in a landlord/tenant relationship, you inevitably have to do something, usually a significant action that involves some consideration. That's how I distinguish the two.

Sorry but that's exactly why I think your scope is flawed. They could have joined the union, they didn't and (some of them) will cross pickets lines next week that makes them scabs. And the idea that scabbing is passive is nonsense, they're actively choosing to fuck over your co-workers, and indeed all workers. Sadly most people no longer see it like that but that doesn't mean that's not what they're doing.

 

[mauvais]

Sorry but that's exactly why I think your scope is rubbish. They could have joined the union, they didn't and (some of them) will cross pickets lines next week that makes them scabs. And the idea that scabbing is passive is nonsense, you're actively choosing to fuck over your co-workers, and indeed all workers. Sadly most people no longer see it like that but that doesn't mean that's not what you're doing.

I know where you're coming from but I don't agree, at least not looking at it from a standing start of where we've ended up. Maybe it's just my own perspective but IME union membership is atypical and doing anything with it more so. I've been in one my entire working life and I think only this year have I worked somewhere that has any kind of recognition, and that's only because it's the public sector. AFAIK even most people there aren't members. Were non-members the outlier then I imagine I might look at it differently.

You can certainly blame people more broadly for failing to engage with the politics that encircles them but I feel that doing nothing, especially opposed to a complex alternative, is inevitably a different level of complicity than actively doing something negative, in this case turning up to work as normal versus employing your capital (and putting it at risk) to extract a profit from people's basic need for shelter.

In any case it's worth looking at the follow-on political views. For example flowing out of landlordism, there's a well-worn trope of landlord types who feel that their endeavours amount to hard work against which social housing is a subsidised competitor and housing benefit a handout rather than (amongst other things) a necessary product of & antidote to their actions.

This kind of thing I think is both self-reinforcing and contagious, and a significant part of what props up the Tories in the middle classes.

 

[campanula]

We are the unruly mob, the feckless unreliable proles who must be controlled, contained, bribed (in some cases) coerced (in many more). There are more of us than them...and they are, I think, entirely aware of the festering rage engendered by their relentless need to maintain their privileges. And will, therefore, double down on the usual narratives, folk devils and magical thinking, but with an increasing level of policing and oppression. With pivotal issues such as housing, it is a numbers game. Home ownership is edging towards the minority side of the graph...and will not be fixed without significant fall out. The threat of homelessness is potent and immediate - obvious to all and so very handy as another brutal stick to beat us with. I see it as entirely feasible that Tories are driven by sheer malice and contempt.. I certainly feel a visceral hatred of the callous greed and arrogance displayed by the capitalist class

 

[Yuwipi Woman]

Intentional. I think in the US, in about 1975, the upper class noticed that once people's basic survival needs were met, they wanted needs higher on Maslow's hierarchy of needs met. They wanted education, interesting work, equality, and worse yet, political power. The only way to end that challenge to their power, was to dismantle the policies that created the middle class, and force people back to tending to their more basic survival needs. If you keep people poor, they'll be so busy just surviving, that they won't challenge you. I've gone to too many public meetings, written too many letters, and talked directly to politicians to come to any other conclusion. They exist mainly to keep the larger populace quiet, while really representing the 1%.

 

[Streathamite]

No fear option => poll fail

I'm glad someone said it!
Deep down, in that ruling class, there is a well founded fear of what would happen if the shat on masses rose up as one - the journey from that to the entire ruling classes swinging from lamp posts would be very short.
So they have to keep beating them down. Keep them poor, hungry, weak and desperate, because the moment the strength of the masses is fully realised - game over

 

[Streathamite]

All three options could apply to Lambeth Labour.

Close libraries to make way for private enterprise? Tick
Smash a council estate to smithereens for private enterprise? Tick
Etc

All three options could apply to Lambeth Labour.

Close libraries to make way for private enterprise? Tick
Smash a council estate to smithereens for private enterprise? Tick
Etc

Sadly v true, and that bunch are as bad as any Tories

 

[DotCommunist]

if you look at pre-ww1 conditions- go back even as far as the 'hungry 1840s' - you'll see the machine and the malice. They are not unrelated. When the likes of rees-mogg says he sees food banks as uplifting he's harking back to a 'oh they'll breed, they'll live, they'll work and they'll die young' line of thought. No suprise that in later years thoughts about how to get rid of the teeming masses appeared, those malthusians and all that.

 

[redsquirrel]

I know where you're coming from but I don't agree, at least not looking at it from a standing start of where we've ended up. Maybe it's just my own perspective but IME union membership is atypical and doing anything with it more so. I've been in one my entire working life and I think only this year have I worked somewhere that has any kind of recognition, and that's only because it's the public sector. AFAIK even most people there aren't members. Were non-members the outlier then I imagine I might look at it differently.

In what way does that make scabbing either neutral or passive? Or non-anti-social? When you scab you are actively taking part in an attack on every worker in the world.

You can certainly blame people more broadly for failing to engage with the politics that encircles them but I feel that doing nothing, especially opposed to a complex alternative, is inevitably a different level of complicity than actively doing something negative, in this case turning up to work as normal versus employing your capital (and putting it at risk) to extract a profit from people's basic need for shelter.

Yet you are will to "blame" people for being landlords so why place scabbing in a different box. I'm not really taking about blaming anybody for the 40 years of smashing of the welfare state/poor (though I maintain that scabbing is a disgusting anti-social act), that's my criticisms of your position, while it doesn't just blame "nasty" people it's still individualistic.

In any case it's worth looking at the follow-on political views. For example flowing out of landlordism, there's a well-worn trope of landlord types who feel that their endeavours amount to hard work against which social housing is a subsidised competitor and housing benefit a handout rather than (amongst other things) a necessary product of & antidote to their actions.

And plenty of liberals will come up with equivalent justifications for their scabbing (while at the same time praising the EU for defending workers rights).

This kind of thing I think is both self-reinforcing and contagious, and a significant part of what props up the Tories in the middle classes.

I'm sorry but this is why I think you're taking nonsense, the "smashing of the poor" is not just the preserve of the Tories or Conservatism, Liberalism is every bit as complicit.

Pickman's is clearly right when he says that it's not necessary for capitalism to "smash the poor" (at least in the way we've seen over the last 30 years or the early part of the 20th Century) but I do think that that t is the tendency. That the 30 years post-WWII were something of exception.

 

[ViolentPanda]

We are the unruly mob, the feckless unreliable proles who must be controlled, contained, bribed (in some cases) coerced (in many more). There are more of us than them...and they are, I think, entirely aware of the festering rage engendered by their relentless need to maintain their privileges. And will, therefore, double down on the usual narratives, folk devils and magical thinking, but with an increasing level of policing and oppression. With pivotal issues such as housing, it is a numbers game. Home ownership is edging towards the minority side of the graph...and will not be fixed without significant fall out. The threat of homelessness is potent and immediate - obvious to all and so very handy as another brutal stick to beat us with. I see it as entirely feasible that Tories are driven by sheer malice and contempt.. I certainly feel a visceral hatred of the callous greed and arrogance displayed by the capitalist class

I've always liked the term "we are the rascal multitude" myself.

 

[Dogsauce]

It's all about keeping anger pointing in the right direction, for them downwards, so they feel safe. It's been programmed into people for so long now, rage at the undeserving, benefit 'cheats', people who haven't 'paid in', people coming over here to 'put a strain our public services'. The erosion of solidarity has been a work decades long. Every piece of public spending seen through the prism of 'why should I pay for that, when I don't need to use it' - attacks on foreign aid, brexiters not wanting to pay for motorways in Poland or French farmers etc.

 

[Pickman's model]

It's all about keeping anger pointing in the right direction, for them downwards, so they feel safe. It's been programmed into people for so long now, rage at the undeserving, benefit 'cheats', people who haven't 'paid in', people coming over here to 'put a strain our public services'. The erosion of solidarity has been a work decades long. Every piece of public spending seen through the prism of 'why should I pay for that, when I don't need to use it' - attacks on foreign aid, brexiters not wanting to pay for motorways in Poland or French farmers etc.

or for food banks in this country