# Is it class?



## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

I was talking with an anarcho friend yesterday, and he said he’d be happy to  work with the SWP – and in fact would rather work with them than the Wombles.  This isn’t a position I’ve heard espoused by very many anarchists, so I was intrigued.  He went on to say that at least the SWP are genuinely a “working class organisation”, whereas the Wombles are not, in that (as they have said themselves) “most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work”.

So this discussion got me thinking – something that doesn’t happen very often tbh.  Can you be part of the class struggle if you are not actually working – or are you some kind of “professional” activist, parachuting in to save the workers?  Is it class, or is it about authority/power? And surely we are against work anyway?  

I’ll admit to not being the brightest spark, and I don’t have much theory ferreted away in my brain – but I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the subject, whatever your political persuasion.


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## Paul Marsh (Jan 6, 2005)

Did he say the SWP was a working class organisation with a straight face?


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## BAKU9 (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> I was talking with an anarcho friend yesterday, and he said he’d be happy to  work with the SWP – and in fact would rather work with them than the Wombles.



Your friend sounds like an idiot. Not from Colchester by any chance are they?


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## KeyboardJockey (Jan 6, 2005)

The SWP a Working Class org!!!  Don't make me laugh.  Round my way they only engage with the students at UEL and never ever engage with the residents (unless it is to wave an Asylum Seekers Welcome Here placard in peoples faces)


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## Old Stoic (Jan 6, 2005)

the SWP are less working clas than I am (and that's saying something)


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## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

Paul Marsh said:
			
		

> Did he say the SWP was a working class organisation with a straight face?


It was an online conversation, but I'm presuming the face was straight.




			
				BAKU9 said:
			
		

> Your friend sounds like an idiot. Not from Colchester by any chance are they?


What a spookily accurate guess - do you have inside knowledge perhaps?


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## BAKU9 (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> It was an online conversation, but I'm presuming the face was straight.
> 
> 
> What a spookily accurate guess - do you have inside knowledge perhaps?



No, just recognised the ludicrous Trot shite being spouted by supposed 'anarchists'.


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## Sorry. (Jan 6, 2005)

BAKU9 said:
			
		

> Your friend sounds like an idiot. Not from Colchester by any chance are they?



I've been denounced in a CAG internal document (well not personally, but by association ...)


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## FreddyB (Jan 6, 2005)

How about fucking off the class distinction idea and thinking in terms of people with a common idea of how people should live regardless of how they're living at the moment?


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## kropotkin (Jan 6, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I've been denounced in a CAG internal document (well not personally, but by association ...)


 Really?!!

hahahaha


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## Louis MacNeice (Jan 6, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> I've been denounced in a CAG internal document (well not personally, but by association ...)



Is that CAG as in Colchester Anarchist Group or CAG as in Communist Action Group...if the later then I too have been taken to task (and similarly by association rather than personally) in the pages of a CAG publication...the crime?...not being a proper marxist-leninist...not that any of this matters of course.

Cheers - Louis Mac


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## Louis MacNeice (Jan 6, 2005)

FreddyB said:
			
		

> How about fucking off the class distinction idea and thinking in terms of people with a common idea of how people should live regardless of how they're living at the moment?



That might work if the the class distinction idea were just that...an idea. Unfortunately class is all too real and unless the relationships which constitute class are addressed in the here and now, then any thoughts about how we could or should live which come into conflict with those relationships won't get very far.

Cheers - Louis Mac


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

FreddyB said:
			
		

> How about fucking off the class distinction idea and thinking in terms of people with a common idea of how people should live regardless of how they're living at the moment?



I'd second that...



> And surely we are against work anyway?



That sounds like primmy talk...or maybe you mean work in the future ought to be completely different from how it is now?


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## BAKU9 (Jan 6, 2005)

Louis MacNeice said:
			
		

> Is that CAG as in Colchester Anarchist Group or CAG as in Communist Action Group...if the later then I too have been taken to task (and similarly by association rather than personally) in the pages of a CAG publication...the crime?...not being a proper marxist-leninist...not that any of this matters of course.
> 
> Cheers - Louis Mac



Colchester Anarchist Group...a more bizarre lot you could never meet.


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## butchersapron (Jan 6, 2005)

Well, the other CAG were pretty out there themselves...


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## gawkrodger (Jan 6, 2005)

Louis MacNeice said:
			
		

> That might work if the the class distinction idea were just that...an idea. Unfortunately class is all too real and unless the relationships which constitute class are addressed in the here and now, then any thoughts about how we could or should live which come into conflict with those relationships won't get very far.
> 
> Cheers - Louis Mac



good reply there


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## FreddyB (Jan 6, 2005)

Louis MacNeice said:
			
		

> That might work if the the class distinction idea were just that...an idea. Unfortunately class is all too real and unless the relationships which constitute class are addressed in the here and now, then any thoughts about how we could or should live which come into conflict with those relationships won't get very far.
> 
> Cheers - Louis Mac




I don't dispute that class is real but in the context of  this thread if someones working to the same goal that someone else is going for the then how does it make sense to bring class into it?


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## rednblack (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> I was talking with an anarcho friend yesterday, and he said he’d be happy to  work with the SWP – and in fact would rather work with them than the Wombles.  This isn’t a position I’ve heard espoused by very many anarchists, so I was intrigued.  He went on to say that at least the SWP are genuinely a “working class organisation”, whereas the Wombles are not, in that (as they have said themselves) “most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work”.



first of all the swp are not a working class organisation - by any stretch of the imagination, although probably up until the early eighties they were afaik

the wombles are not class struggle it's true, they do have some uses however (more than the swp) and they are not damaging to the movement unlike the swp


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## Hoxtontwat (Jan 6, 2005)

BAKU9 said:
			
		

> Colchester Anarchist Group...a more bizarre lot you could never meet.



OI! There O.K. no weirder than any other anarcho's anyway.

 Whats wrong with them then?


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 6, 2005)

In the 80s there were over 5 million of us unemployed. No working class there, then?

And anyway "work" is not synonymous with being in paid employment. Ask any mother/housewife.


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## rednblack (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> So this discussion got me thinking – something that doesn’t happen very often tbh.  Can you be part of the class struggle if you are not actually working – or are you some kind of “professional” activist, parachuting in to save the workers?  Is it class, or is it about authority/power? And surely we are against work anyway?



i don't think professional activists can bring much to the class struggle, however the mere fact of not working is not enough to bar someone from the class struggle - after all unemployed working class people are still part of the class

professional activists have several problems in relating to the class - one is that they will find it harder to relate to working people, then if they do relate they are less likely to be taken seriously, finally if they are taken seriously through doing good work, they risk becomming seen as the people to get the job done rather than people seeing they can do stuff for themselves


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## Random (Jan 6, 2005)

Good post, R+B.  Even handed, sensible yet polite.

And it smells nice as well.


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## Louis MacNeice (Jan 6, 2005)

FreddyB said:
			
		

> I don't dispute that class is real but in the context of  this thread if someones working to the same goal that someone else is going for the then how does it make sense to bring class into it?



If you think that there is some sort of link between peoples' material conditions and their needs, then it makes sense to look for effective opposition to the current class state of affairs in those whose material conditions neccesitate opposition to that state of affairs: the working class.

This does not disqualify, middle class people (like myself securely employed in a university, on above average earnings, with an index linked pension and resposnibility for reproducing skilled labour) form involvement in pro-working class politics. But it does mean that any such involvement should be in a distinct minority; if it were to constitute a sizeable chunk of the leadership of any such organisation or movement (especially in the case of democratic centralist organisations), then alarm bells should start ringing...loudly and persistently.

Cheers - Louis Mac


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## blamblam (Jan 6, 2005)

The people in CAG afaik have a basically Marxist class view - there are 2 economic class: those who live off the labour of others (capitalists) and those who only have their labour power to sell (workers/proletarians) , with almost everyone being workers of course.

By that definition both the SWP and the Wombles could be termed "working class" cos they have almost entirely w/c memberships. However you could also say that about a trekkie fan club.

I think the CAG guy would've meant the SWP (at least sometimes in writing) orients itself towards the w/c and has a class analysis of society (albeit a shit one), whereas the Wombles don't.

I think if you don't have a class analysis of society you can't do anything remotely politically useful. But then I don't think the SWP can either cos they're a political party (although some of the members can be okay).


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## Random (Jan 6, 2005)

icepick said:
			
		

> I think if you don't have a class analysis of society you can't do anything remotely politically useful.



Well the wombles have a class analysis, just maybe not one you'd agree with, maybe (leaving aside the personal issues).  And they do orient themselves towards a perceived revolutionary class, it's just they believe that that class should stop working, and why not now, eh, eh?


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## kyser_soze (Jan 6, 2005)

So these never want to work, never will work cahracters...

How do they think things like food will be grown after the Glorious revolution? How will water be cleaned?

Indeed, who else on the revolutionary front thinks that work will cease to exists post-rev?

Lazy fucking cunts.


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## blamblam (Jan 6, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> So these never want to work, never will work cahracters...
> 
> How do they think things like food will be grown after the Glorious revolution? How will water be cleaned?
> 
> ...


What to do with people who won't work is another thread... I do think though it's possible to talk about the abolition of "work" as wage labour. Just not of all productive activity, obviously, but just as an alienated, often entirely useless task we're economically conscripted into performing most of our lives.

Random - I disagree with that. I don't think they have a class analysis no. Indeed I distinctly remember a certain *leading* Womble describing the greek anarchist movement to someone saying how great it was cos "they have none of that bullshit about class"...


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Indeed, who else on the revolutionary front thinks that work will cease to exists post-rev?


me.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

> No one should ever work.
> 
> Work is the source of nearly all the misery in the world. Almost any evil you'd care to name comes from working or from living in a world designed for work. In order to stop suffering, we have to stop working.
> 
> ...


the abolition of work


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 6, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> me.


  
Who are you going to get to do your share?
Toil will cease, not work.


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## sihhi (Jan 6, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> So these never want to work, never will work cahracters...
> 
> How do they think things like food will be grown after the Glorious revolution? How will water be cleaned?
> 
> ...



Define work first off. 

There's a large gap between work + things that need doing 
in today situation/society.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

reallyoldhippy said:
			
		

> Who are you going to get to do your share?
> Toil will cease, not work.


yes. my posting "the abolition of work" clearly passed you by.


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> I was talking with an anarcho friend yesterday, and he said he’d be happy to  work with the SWP – and in fact would rather work with them than the Wombles.  This isn’t a position I’ve heard espoused by very many anarchists, so I was intrigued.  He went on to say that at least the SWP are genuinely a “working class organisation”, whereas the Wombles are not, in that (as they have said themselves) “most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work”.
> 
> So this discussion got me thinking – something that doesn’t happen very often tbh.  Can you be part of the class struggle if you are not actually working – or are you some kind of “professional” activist, parachuting in to save the workers?  Is it class, or is it about authority/power? And surely we are against work anyway?
> 
> I’ll admit to not being the brightest spark, and I don’t have much theory ferreted away in my brain – but I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the subject, whatever your political persuasion.



Good question, having been born and bought up in the  east end, first in Bethnal Green, then in Leyton, I have to say that I don't know ONE kid from my school/family (who is working class,) who went on to be a Womble/ Swp'er, activist etc etc.
They are too busy buying their house/paying their rent and working hard to pay mortgages. etc etc. TRUE working classes don't have time for all this activist stuff IMO>Not the hardcore stuff anyway.


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 6, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> yes. my posting "the abolition of work" clearly passed you by.


yeah. I'm not a fast typist.

An anarchist group I was in republished Blacks essay as a pamphlet - kept us in funds for many a month.
 

As did "useful work v useless toil" by william morris. "Here, you see, are two kinds of work -- one good, the other bad; one not far removed from a blessing, a lightening of life; the other a mere curse, a burden to life.

What is the difference between them, then? This: one has hope in it, the other has not. It is manly to do the one kind of work, and manly also to refuse to do the other."


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## WasGeri (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> They are too busy buying their house/paying their rent and working hard to pay mortgages. etc etc. TRUE working classes don't have time for all this activist stuff IMO>Not the hardcore stuff anyway.



What rubbish. I've known loads of committed working class activists.


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## Maggot (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> So this discussion got me thinking – something that doesn’t happen very often tbh.  Can you be part of the class struggle if you are not actually working.


Why would anyone want to be part of something as pointless and outdated as the class struggle?


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## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Why would anyone want to be part of something as pointless and outdated as the class struggle?


Explain what you mean - in what way pointless and outdated?


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## Sorry. (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Why would anyone want to be part of something as pointless and outdated as the class struggle?



if a pity you think it's so outdated. I'll just go and tell the billions of people involved worldwide how pointless their problems are and that they should just do whatever the nice people in suits tell them to do.


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Why would anyone want to be part of something as pointless and outdated as the class struggle?





Hope you have a seriously flame proof suit...


I think of work as any activity undertaken where lesuire is not the prime motive (so with waged labour, a fair few people do it because of the wage rather than liking the job).

Maybe my definition is crap (probably is really  ) but I don't think a post-revolutionary society is therefore a hedonistic society...


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## sihhi (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> They are too busy buying their house/paying their rent and working hard to pay mortgages. etc etc. TRUE working classes don't have time for all this activist stuff IMO



And you'll be the one judging TRUE working classes no doubt?


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

I am talking about working, working classes, you know, the Chavs and Cockneys and Romford, Essex-man types. They don't do any of this stuff. 
I don't mean people like teachers, social workers, etc etc. I mean,people who,for instance would work in JJB Sports or Poundstretcher. Or Essex mummies who go to have nail extensions. They don't give jack shit for protests and stuff like that. All they want to do is to win the lottery and live in a big house In Chigwell.


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## Maggot (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> Explain what you mean - in what way pointless and outdated?


Pointless because it implies some sort of revolution - which ain't ever gonna happen. Outdated because it relies on defining people by class which is an outmoded way of doing things, especially in an age when many working class people earn more than middle class ones. I hate class divisions!



Edited to add: I rarely come into P&P, and I suspect I'm about to be reminded why.


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

Geri said:
			
		

> What rubbish. I've known loads of committed working class activists.



And I bet they are well-educated working class ones though. I am talking about a different type to the ones you know.


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## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> They don't give jack shit for protests and stuff like that. All they want to do is to win the lottery and live in a big house In Chigwell.


Some don't, some do - just as some middle class people get into activism and some don't.  There are plenty of people who grew up on council estates etc who went into radical politics/activism.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> And I bet they are well-educated working class ones though. I am talking about a different type to the ones you know.


what, chavs?


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## Brainaddict (Jan 6, 2005)

FreddyB said:
			
		

> How about fucking off the class distinction idea and thinking in terms of people with a common idea of how people should live regardless of how they're living at the moment?


 yer a filthy running dog and no mistake


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> Some don't, some do - just as some middle class people get into activism and some don't.  There are plenty of people who grew up on council estates etc who went into radical politics/activism.



it's not run of the mill though is it? If there is this 'class struggle' why do I not see most of the kids I grew up with involved in it? I don't know any,  they all chose to join the rat race and get mortgages, many of themdoing very well for themselves as they wanted to get away from the poverty they endured as children. I am only speaking from experience, about what I have seen and people I know.
Maybe it's just an 'Eastenders' thing, I dunno.


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## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Pointless because it implies some sort of revolution - which ain't ever gonna happen. Outdated because it relies on defining people by class which is an outmoded way of doing things, especially in an age when many working class people earn more than middle class ones. I hate class divisions!


For me class essentially isn't about spurious distinctions based on accent/education/earnings etc - the important distinction is between the ruling class, those with power, and those without.


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Edited to add: I rarely come into P&P, and I suspect I'm about to be reminded why.




I think it's fucking hilarious, I might stick around!


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> For me class essentially isn't about spurious distinctions based on accent/education/earnings etc - the important distinction is between the ruling class, those with power, and those without.



LOL! So, a kid from an estate in Walthamstow isn't THAT much different to one from a gated development in Surrey?


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Pointless because it implies some sort of revolution - which ain't ever gonna happen. Outdated because it relies on defining people by class which is an outmoded way of doing things, especially in an age when many working class people earn more than middle class ones. I hate class divisions!
> 
> 
> 
> Edited to add: I rarely come into P&P, and I suspect I'm about to be reminded why.



So class analysis only has a point if a revolution happens? 

Democratic political ideas are obviously pointless then because we don't have their end goals either...in fact, your argument seems to imply all politics is useless because none have fulfilled their 'goal'!

Is there a correct way of defining people then? Or are all people equal in the current society...


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> LOL! So, a kid from an estate in Walthamstow isn't THAT much different to one from a gated development in Surrey?



You'd be surprised Stobart...


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

Brainaddict said:
			
		

> yer a filthy running dog and no mistake


that's my  line.


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> it's not run of the mill though is it? If there is this 'class struggle' why do I not see most of the kids I grew up with involved in it? I don't know any,  they all chose to join the rat race and get mortgages, many of themdoing very well for themselves as they wanted to get away from the poverty they endured as children. I am only speaking from experience, about what I have seen and people I know.
> Maybe it's just an 'Eastenders' thing, I dunno.



And a lot of people who try and get onto the rat race or those who did and failed...?

It's not exactly acceptably losses in my books when more people are failing than succeeding...


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 6, 2005)

the B said:
			
		

> You'd be surprised Stobart...



So, the one in Surrey has a chronic drug problem and has to rob a granny on his estate to get money for his crack?????? Surely daddy will give him enough allowance to cover it.

Got to go now, The Bill is on!


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## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> LOL! So, a kid from an estate in Walthamstow isn't THAT much different to one from a gated development in Surrey?


Essentially, anyone who has to sell their labour to survive, is not in control of their life is on the same "side".

Obviously there are differing degrees - between the the kid in Surrey and the kid in Walthamstow, or the kid in Walthamstow and the kid in Mozambique etc.


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## Maggot (Jan 6, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> For me class essentially isn't about spurious distinctions based on accent/education/earnings etc - the important distinction is between the ruling class, those with power, and those without.


Fair enough, but what is the aim of your class struggle?


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Fair enough, but what is the aim of your class struggle?


winning.


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## montevideo (Jan 6, 2005)

of course when people talk about class analysis they mean a marxian analysis of class. Which is used, especially today, as a comfortable crutch which demands nothing from us other than a 'belief' in The Working Class. 

If it was revealed that the purpose (& motivating factor) of The Working Class is to destroy itself as a class at the moment of its emancipation then all the marxian class strugglist would be out of a job.


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## ernestolynch (Jan 6, 2005)

There are some hilarious threads about class on enrager - lots of hoorays going on about 'connecting with the kids on the estates', but the best was some Tarquin/ette justifying the fact he/she went to a posh school by saying that 'anarhists should send their kids to private school to avoid STATE education'....


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## ernestolynch (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Fair enough, but what is the aim of your class struggle?



Equality of opportunity and education for all.


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Fair enough, but what is the aim of your class struggle?



Not going to answer for Thora but since it's a question that could be asked of anyone...

I'd say that much like the aim of all politics, the betterment of humanity - why it's crap now and therefore what to do vary...

If people all woke up tomorrow and we seamlessly slipped into a utopic society (which I think can only exist under what are lefty ideas) - it's not a revolution in the sense you are probably thinking of...


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## the B (Jan 6, 2005)

ernestolynch said:
			
		

> There are some hilarious threads about class on enrager - lots of hoorays going on about 'connecting with the kids on the estates', but the best was some Tarquin/ette justifying the fact he/she went to a posh school by saying that 'anarhists should send their kids to private school to avoid STATE education'....



To be fair, that is very funny


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## Thora_v1 (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Fair enough, but what is the aim of your class struggle?


Well a global classless, stateless society of course!


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## Pickman's model (Jan 6, 2005)

ernestolynch said:
			
		

> There are some hilarious threads about class on enrager - lots of hoorays going on about 'connecting with the kids on the estates', but the best was some Tarquin/ette justifying the fact he/she went to a posh school by saying that 'anarhists should send their kids to private school to avoid STATE education'....


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## sihhi (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> I am talking about working, working classes, you know, the Chavs and Cockneys and Romford, Essex-man types. They don't do any of this stuff.
> I don't mean people like teachers, social workers, etc etc. I mean,people who,for instance would work in JJB Sports or Poundstretcher. Or Essex mummies who go to have nail extensions. They don't give jack shit for protests and stuff like that. All they want to do is to win the lottery and live in a big house In Chigwell.



1. Most politics IMO doesn't actually involve protests at all. 
Last one I went to was back in October to lobby councillors + support Defend Council Housing's public petition. With DCH the majority aren't SWPers- it's one organisation they've not been able to take over and maybe it's something to do with the SWP's particular class interests.
2. I've only become more "educated" than otherwise as a result of politics.
3. I'm Tottenham and have never been to Romford or anywhere else in Essex. 
But it can't be the case that people from Essex all want to "live in a big house in Chigwell".


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 6, 2005)

ernestolynch said:
			
		

> 'anarhists should send their kids to private school to avoid STATE education'....


You're not saying ALL state education is better than ALL private education are you? Actually you probably are - limited horizons and all that.  

But tell me, who would you have most sympathy with: the parents who send their kid to the local (private) Steiner school for free in return for a few hours odd-jobbing; or the parents who pay half a million for a house in the catchment area of a "good" state grammar (or even comp)?


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## The Black Hand (Jan 6, 2005)

The working class has a rich history of not working. There was a million miners in 1947,  i think it was down to approx 300,000 by the early 1970s, and 185,000 by 1984. The old industrial regions, South Wales, Merseyside, Manchester, Birmingham, North east, Yorkshire, Scotland on the CLyde [- where's that?  ] have got a long history of unemployment and unemployed struggles. Steelworks and shipyards have closed etc. Every politico should know the history of the unemployed struggle (s) in the 1920s and 1930s too, from all around England, Scotland and Wales. 

By 1981 working in the informal economy was a common working class response, and this is something our class is very well accustomed too... SO, to answer the question, of course partial employment (not officially working) means you can be politically active. FULL EMPLOYMENT (and the trade union struggles this facilitates) is historically an exception, and confined to 'advanced' Western industrial countries in a short period after WW2.


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## BAKU9 (Jan 6, 2005)

Hoxtontwat said:
			
		

> OI! There O.K. no weirder than any other anarcho's anyway.
> 
> Whats wrong with them then?



Er the sentiments of the original posters friend to begin with.....


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## WasGeri (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> And I bet they are well-educated working class ones though. I am talking about a different type to the ones you know.



No, not at all. None of them have been to university - they've worked since 16, as I have.

And really, you have no idea about the kind of people I know.


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## Sorry. (Jan 6, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Pointless because it implies some sort of revolution - which ain't ever gonna happen.



No it doesn't. It just implies that people of one class have interests which conflict with people of another class. An objection to revolutionary socialism and with class struggle in general aren't the same thing



> Outdated because it relies on defining people by class which is an outmoded way of doing things



Outmoded, as in it was once relevant? What's changed? 



> especially in an age when many working class people earn more than middle class ones.



Actually, your chances of changing your class position (social mobility) is going down.



> I hate class divisions!



Rather unfortunate that you live in a class society then ...



> Edited to add: I rarely come into P&P, and I suspect I'm about to be reminded why.



all things considered, they've been pretty fair really.


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## WasGeri (Jan 6, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> I am talking about working, working classes, you know, the Chavs and Cockneys and Romford, Essex-man types. They don't do any of this stuff.
> I don't mean people like teachers, social workers, etc etc. I mean,people who,for instance would work in JJB Sports or Poundstretcher. Or Essex mummies who go to have nail extensions. They don't give jack shit for protests and stuff like that. All they want to do is to win the lottery and live in a big house In Chigwell.



You seem to think that the working class are confined to Essex. The people you are talking about may be working class, but they are not the only working class people there are. I am 'working, working class' - I was bought up on a council estate, I went to comprehensive school, I left at 16 with 2 O levels and I have worked every single day of my life since then (admittedly not in JJB Sports or Poundstretcher). I've never had nail extensions and I have no desire to live in a big house in Chigwell. I was an activist for years (I'm not now).

Just because you have no experience of a certain type of person, who does not fit into your small stereotype, does not mean that they don't exist.


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## Taxamo Welf (Jan 7, 2005)

Geri said:
			
		

> You seem to think that the working class are confined to Essex. The people you are talking about may be working class, but they are not the only working class people there are. I am 'working, working class' - I was bought up on a council estate, I went to comprehensive school, I left at 16 with 2 O levels and I have worked every single day of my life since then (admittedly not in JJB Sports or Poundstretcher). I've never had nail extensions and I have no desire to live in a big house in Chigwell. I was an activist for years (I'm not now).
> 
> Just because you have no experience of a certain type of person, who does not fit into your small stereotype, does not mean that they don't exist.



AND, for fucks sake, its obvious you are stereotyping people you knew in a extreme and pretty disgusting manner. Essex boys, chavs.... These ppl ar working class because they fit your stereotype?! You are really fucking thick SS. And you're arrogant too - you've made a shit load of bullshit assumptions and come here thinking they are all right and that you can laugh at people for having political apsirations. Fuck off. Go watch The Bill. Perhaps you never met many w/c activists cos you chose to hang around with kids who would later grow up to marry policemen? Hmm?


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> No it doesn't. It just implies that people of one class have interests which conflict with people of another class. An objection to revolutionary socialism and with class struggle in general aren't the same thing





At last.  Most people have been going on as if the class struggle is some kind of project for lefties and (some) anarchists that it's possible to take or leave.  Instead of being the condition that automatically arises out of the capitalist system under which we all live.  If you work on a building site or in a factory, or in an office or in a shop, the owners of the firm and yourself are both involved in the class struggle - on opposite sides - like it or not.  Even if a worker has aspirations to one day be like the owner, he is still on the opposite side to him in reality. The owners and the workers have conflicting interests.  The owners are aware of this at all times and constantly act upon it; the bosses are inevitably far more aware of their own interests than the workers, for obvious reasons. 

The class struggle in itself has no direction.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

Taxamo Welf said:
			
		

> AND, for fucks sake, its obvious you are stereotyping people you knew in a extreme and pretty disgusting manner. Essex boys, chavs.... These ppl ar working class because they fit your stereotype?! You are really fucking thick SS. And you're arrogant too - you've made a shit load of bullshit assumptions and come here thinking they are all right and that you can laugh at people for having political apsirations. Fuck off. Go watch The Bill. Perhaps you never met many w/c activists cos you chose to hang around with kids who would later grow up to marry policemen? Hmm?




I don't think that Stobart Stopper's points can be so easily dismissed.  Speaking as somebody who as a young manual worker, from a manual working background, was for some years active in one of the Trot groups, I definitely stood out when it came to workmates, old school friends and family members.  Several of the latter had many years of trade union activism behind them, yet all but one had never tried to take their commitment any further than that. 

Sure enough, I met a minority of people on the left who had the same experiences as myself but, like me, they found that whenever they stepped back into their old lives people regarded them as a bit of a novelty. That is surely the experience of most working class activists on what used to be known as the revolutionary left. With the old reformist left the situation was a bit different. There, my experience was that probably a majority of the rank and file was working class. However, the level of commitment involved is considerably less;the Labour Party and the unions could hardly be considered activist organisations in the sense that's being talked about here. One reason that probably a majority of left- moving working class people plumped for the Bennite left in the 1980s was that going along to Labour Party meetings in most areas did not involve the minor culture shock of encountering the overbearing presence of the middle class graduates that dominated the far left (even if it might have done once they involved themselves in 'Bennism' proper), and it did not involve pretty much giving up your life outside of political activism, as most of the Leninist groups demanded. Plus, being a Labour Party member involved very little in the way of convincing people of your theoretical arguments. This kind of thing is, like spending most of your free time on demonstrations, pickets, paper sales and so on, definitely regarded as a bit eccentric by the vast majority of people, whether they are working class or middle class. Certainly many, many working class people passed through the ranks of the revolutionary left, but the atmosphere was so alien to the experience of the vast majority of us and so much demanded of members that inevitably resulted in little or no gain, that it took a tremendous effort of will to stay the course.

Even more so in these days of unprecedentedly low political consciousness than during the time I'm talking about, there are so many other, ostensibly more enjoyable things for the working class to do with their spare time than be politically active. This is not a reason, as some on this board obviously think, to sneer at the thick 'chav' working classes (the people who get labelled thus being no less politically aware than the vast majority of today's middle class students.) If the radical left, whatever that means today, is to ever regain anything approaching even the slight influence it had a couple of decades ago, it has to break with the habits of the past and be able to appeal to the working class as it actually is and not how the self-styled radicals would like it to be. As various campaigns that still attract working class people prove, members of the working class will take action when they can see that it is in their interests to do so.


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## haggy (Jan 7, 2005)

fuckin' A, LLETSA...


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## TeeJay (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> Good question, having been born and bought up in the  east end, first in Bethnal Green, then in Leyton, I have to say that I don't know ONE kid from my school/family (who is working class,) who went on to be a Womble/ Swp'er, activist etc etc.
> They are too busy buying their house/paying their rent and working hard to pay mortgages. etc etc. TRUE working classes don't have time for all this activist stuff IMO>Not the hardcore stuff anyway.


But what about getting involved in unions etc? Maybe even getting involved with (gasp!) (Old) Labour?


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## TeeJay (Jan 7, 2005)

Sorry. said:
			
		

> if a pity you think it's so outdated. I'll just go and tell the billions of people involved worldwide how pointless their problems are and that they should just do whatever the nice people in suits tell them to do.


It's nice that someone is broadening the debate out into a global context. I don't think that the vast bulk of the world's population have much in common with 99% of the UK population, in terms of being in the same "class". Almost all the UK's 60 odd million people are in the top 10% of the richest people on the planet. I don't see many people really doing stuff to build up real solidarity and cooperation with the vast bulk of poor people on the planet, nor does most UK marxist or anarchist rhetoric or campaigning seem to link in any real way to a truely global context in any detail beyond very vague slogans IMO.


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## TeeJay (Jan 7, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> For me class essentially isn't about spurious distinctions based on accent/education/earnings etc - the important distinction is between the ruling class, those with power, and those without.


So what if the power all lies within a system, not with any individuals? What if individuals come and go, never can make any choices other than those dictated by the logic of the system? In this case there is only one class (or to put it another way - no classes at all) - and everyone is a slave to the system (albeit some more comfortable than others)?


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## TeeJay (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> I think it's fucking hilarious, I might stick around!


I think you might just inject a much needed dose of reality into P&P. However - about this Surrey thing; you starting something then!


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## nicedream (Jan 7, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> I was talking with an anarcho friend yesterday, and he said he’d be happy to  work with the SWP – and in fact would rather work with them than the Wombles.  This isn’t a position I’ve heard espoused by very many anarchists, so I was intrigued.  He went on to say that at least the SWP are genuinely a “working class organisation”, whereas the Wombles are not, in that (as they have said themselves) “most people in WOMBLES don't work, and hopefully will never work”.
> 
> So this discussion got me thinking – something that doesn’t happen very often tbh.  Can you be part of the class struggle if you are not actually working – or are you some kind of “professional” activist, parachuting in to save the workers?  Is it class, or is it about authority/power? And surely we are against work anyway?
> 
> I’ll admit to not being the brightest spark, and I don’t have much theory ferreted away in my brain – but I'd be interested to hear anyone's thoughts on the subject, whatever your political persuasion.




i became (briefly) involved with the swp in my first year of my degree.  i found them to be middle class, and actually quite snobbish.  saying that the working classes need to be educated about socialism for their own good, while spouting stuff that your average working person wouldnt care about or understand.


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## TeeJay (Jan 7, 2005)

LLETSA said:
			
		

> ...If you work on a building site or in a factory, or in an office or in a shop, the owners of the firm and yourself are both involved in the class struggle - on opposite sides - like it or not...


Most of the economy is owned by plcs. They don't have individual owners - the money comes from pension and insurance funds, paid into by millions of people, the bulk of whem are workers. Secondly, "owners" - of small business and shops for example - may well earn far less than "workers" who are employed by large compnaies (for example chief executives etc). For both these reasons your entire "class analysis" is a nonsense, and can't form the basis of any kind of social or political movement. The only people who buy into it are hopeless utopians who want the world to be rendered in black and white terms, want a ideology that chimes with their own sense of alienation and ennuie, and who want something akin to a religious faith as a crutch to hold onto. It certainly doesn't apply in its old-fashioned form to a modern globalised mixed economy. The nearest it comes to being even vaguely true is in certain places at certain times - typically in very poor countries where 1% of the population really does own 90% of the land and businesses etc, and where there is no kind of redistribution or democracy.

I'd love it if all the disciples of Marx would actually try to re-think their whole analysis from first principles, rather like he did all that time ago, but this time round use all the information and analysis that has been learnt in the mean time. I am not against radical political ideas aiming at massive change in the world, but marxist and/or revolutionary socialism isn't it. Most people can see this which is why it is marginal. There is an ideological "gap in the market" waiting to be filled. Maybe something along the lines of the concept of a "global citizenship".


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## WasGeri (Jan 7, 2005)

LLETSA said:
			
		

> I don't think that Stobart Stopper's points can be so easily dismissed.



She is saying that working class people don't become activists as they are too busy with other commitments - this is true of the population as a whole and not specifically limited to the working class.


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## WasGeri (Jan 7, 2005)

TeeJay said:
			
		

> I think you might just inject a much needed dose of reality into P&P.



Right - so Stobart Stopper is the only person who is 'real'. I suppose I'm a fucking figment of my own imagination, am I?


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 7, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> Well a global classless, stateless society of course!



Well, I don't think it will happen-ever.
You see, people, deep down, they all want a bigger piece of the cake. I guarantee you that most 'anarkids' who happen to come into a large amount of money will not, as previously thought, donate it to 'the cause'- they will  be sucked in to the belief that if you have the money, you might as well enjoy it.
People are essentially selfish, it's human nature, a basic survival instinct. Look after number one. If my child was starving I would take food from another child to feed him to keep him alive.


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## BAKU9 (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> Well, I don't think it will happen-ever.
> You see, people, deep down, they all want a bigger piece of the cake. I guarantee you that most 'anarkids' who happen to come into a large amount of money will not, as previously thought, donate it to 'the cause'- they will  be sucked in to the belief that if you have the money, you might as well enjoy it.
> People are essentially selfish, it's human nature, a basic survival instinct. Look after number one. If my child was starving I would take food from another child to feed him to keep him alive.



Thats because you are a fucking self centered dickhead.


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## davgraham (Jan 7, 2005)

the B said:
			
		

> So class analysis only has a point if a revolution happens?
> 
> ..




Actually . . .  that is probably the only way of scientifically validating class as a concept


gra


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 7, 2005)

BAKU9 said:
			
		

> Thats because you are a fucking self centered dickhead.



(LOL! Your reply is a prime example of why many posters avoid this forum. Isn't it about time you left for school, love? ) 



No, it's not, it's because most parents would do the same. I am trying to use that example to illustrate how human nature is. Do you seriously think that any parent caught up in the Asian tsunami would sacrifice saving their own kid to save someone else's? Get real.


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## BAKU9 (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> (LOL! Your reply is a prime example of why many posters avoid this forum. Isn't it about time you left for school, love? )
> 
> 
> 
> No, it's not, it's because most parents would do the same. I am trying to use that example to illustrate how human nature is. Do you seriously think that any parent caught up in the Asian tsunami would sacrifice saving their own kid to save someone else's? Get real.




No I left school in 1980 and have 4 kids.

Trust you to use the most recent and terrible tragedy to highlight your nonsense.

If you want to use this as an example you dont have to look far to check out how parents really reacted and helped others after loosing their own. The media is swamped with stories of just that happening. Are you blind??

Fool.


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## past caring (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> No, it's not, it's because most parents would do the same. I am trying to use that example to illustrate how human nature is. Do you seriously think that any parent caught up in the Asian tsunami would sacrifice saving their own kid to save someone else's? Get real.



It's a poor "example"  - and one that does little to support your argument, in reality. 

What of the countless examples of self-sacrifice of those caught up in the disaster who helped others? What of the huge amounted donated by ordinary people (donated by people, who, if this latest crisis follows all previous trends in charity donations, will be overwhelmingly working class) by way of donations to aid organisations? Are these also examples of the fundamental selfishness of "human nature"?


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 7, 2005)

I am well aware that hundreds of people did just that, I am using that as an example. What I am saying is this: For most, faced with a situation of allowing YOUR kid to die and saving another, you will do everything in your power to save your own first. Any parent who disputes this is a liar or just very weird.
That's my opinion, your's is your choice and your's alone.


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## Sorry. (Jan 7, 2005)

but what exactly is the meaning of your example? 

People will do things for people they are connected to that they wouldn't do for strangers. Why does that suggest that human nature is selfish? Why is it a more compelling example of human nature than (for example) the fact that virtually every country in the world has millions of people in trade unions (which would suggest that organising along class lines is pretty much 'human nature').


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## Louis MacNeice (Jan 7, 2005)

To Stobart - if you want to provide an example of the basic selfishness of human nature what you really need are examples of parents who put their own safety before that of their children; they exist but they aren't common and they tend to produce feelings ranging from resigned disappointment through to profound disgust. The argument about which children parents seek to prioritise in life and eath situations isn't one about selfishness, but about our social natures; saving your own children speaks volumes of the social bonds built up within some families and is a great example of our capacity for selfless behaviour...all of which runs directly counter to your prposotion.

Cheers - Louis Mac (father of two)


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## past caring (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> I am well aware that hundreds of people did just that, I am using that as an example. What I am saying is this: For most, faced with a situation of allowing YOUR kid to die and saving another, you will do everything in your power to save your own first. Any parent who disputes this is a liar or just very weird.
> That's my opinion, your's is your choice and your's alone.



But it's hardly a choice faced by humanity with any real degree of frequency, is it? It's therefore somewhat ridiculous to use it as an example of selfishness somehow being fundamental to our being.

If I were faced with a situation of someone trying to do serious violence to my girlfriend, I might kill them, if that's what it took to stop them. Can you extrapolate from that that we all, fundamentally, have an urge to kill?


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> That's my opinion, your's is your choice and your's alone.


Do you think we got to where we are today (NHS, education, libraries, parks, restrictions on the working week, etc) by people following your logic or ours? Even if you think these things weren't won after years of struggle by the working class, but by philanthropists handing over power and money voluntarily, it still involved people thinking of others and acting accordingly. You may hanker after "the law of the jungle" but you have benefitted immensely from the fact that others don't.


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## Louis MacNeice (Jan 7, 2005)

past caring said:
			
		

> But it's hardly a choice faced by humanity with any real degree of frequency, is it? It's therefore somewhat ridiculous to use it as an example of selfishness somehow being fundamental to our being.
> 
> If I were faced with a situation of someone trying to do serious violence to my girlfriend, I might kill them, if that's what it took to stop them. Can you extrapolate from that that we all, fundamentally, have an urge to kill?



And it would still be an example of selfless behaviour in that presumably you'd be willing to putyourself in harms way to protect another?

Cheers - Louis Mac


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## past caring (Jan 7, 2005)

Quite.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

Coupla things:

1. Pickman's model, on the abolition of work.
You might get rid of wage labour, but you won't get rid of work. Who in your anarchist paradise is going to make sure we still have power, clean water, food, a working communications network, building repairs. 
It might not be 'waged labour' but you'll still need people to get up at 3 in the morning to till the soil, to make sure the power keeps running. So you'll still have to work, you'll just be doing it for another boss - the general public - instead.

Anyone here worked on a farm? There is no way in hell you coul ever describe farm work as 'play'.

On Stobart...SS has used some pretty crappy examples, but the nugget of her point is there - how many of you on here have been out to towns like Chatham, Medway, Romford, Chelmsford and so on and talked to the local w/c communities? How many of you have camped outside Lakeside or Bluewater and tried to raise awareness for your protests among the w/c in the home counties? The chavs and townies and Rommos and Essex Girls and Boys on the Southend cruise; all the hard cases from the Medway valley; all the call centre workers in Newcastle, Leeds and the North...ultimately they're the ones you need to convince are oppressed and need saving.
SS made a bad point on human nature being entirely selfish (as ever, it's a balance between selfish self-interest and enlightened self-interest) cos it isn't, but at the same time we aren't 'naturally' altruistic either.


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## Sorry. (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> On Stobart...SS has used some pretty crappy examples, but the nugget of her point is there - how many of you on here have been out to towns like Chatham, Medway, Romford, Chelmsford and so on and talked to the local w/c communities? How many of you have camped outside Lakeside or Bluewater and tried to raise awareness for your protests among the w/c in the home counties? The chavs and townies and Rommos and Essex Girls and Boys on the Southend cruise; all the hard cases from the Medway valley; all the call centre workers in Newcastle, Leeds and the North...ultimately they're the ones you need to convince are oppressed and need saving.
> SS made a bad point on human nature being entirely selfish (as ever, it's a balance between selfish self-interest and enlightened self-interest) cos it isn't, but at the same time we aren't 'naturally' altruistic either.



I think one of the points I was trying to make on this thread was that it was never activists who brought ideas/methods of class struggle (even when such ideas/methods were more obviously present) to the working class, it was the experience of captialism. I don't think anyone with their head screwed on thinks that it's worthwhile convincing people of how oppressed they are, which I why I think a few were questioning the role of the professional activist. As far as I'm concerned altruism isn't central to class struggle, just a recognition of common problems and interests. 

I think for the most part where 'professional' activism is relatively more successful it's because they've absorbed good ideas from those engaged in class struggle, rather than because they've suddenly struck a chord with the people they think need saving.


----------



## Taxamo Welf (Jan 7, 2005)

LLETSA said:
			
		

> I don't think that Stobart Stopper's points can be so easily dismissed.  Speaking as somebody who as a young manual worker, from a manual working background, was for some years active in one of the Trot groups, I definitely stood out when it came to workmates, old school friends and family members.  Several of the latter had many years of trade union activism behind them, yet all but one had never tried to take their commitment any further than that.
> 
> Sure enough, I met a minority of people on the left who had the same experiences as myself but, like me, they found that whenever they stepped back into their old lives people regarded them as a bit of a novelty. That is surely the experience of most working class activists on what used to be known as the revolutionary left. With the old reformist left the situation was a bit different. There, my experience was that probably a majority of the rank and file was working class. However, the level of commitment involved is considerably less;the Labour Party and the unions could hardly be considered activist organisations in the sense that's being talked about here. One reason that probably a majority of left- moving working class people plumped for the Bennite left in the 1980s was that going along to Labour Party meetings in most areas did not involve the minor culture shock of encountering the overbearing presence of the middle class graduates that dominated the far left (even if it might have done once they involved themselves in 'Bennism' proper), and it did not involve pretty much giving up your life outside of political activism, as most of the Leninist groups demanded. Plus, being a Labour Party member involved very little in the way of convincing people of your theoretical arguments. This kind of thing is, like spending most of your free time on demonstrations, pickets, paper sales and so on, definitely regarded as a bit eccentric by the vast majority of people, whether they are working class or middle class. Certainly many, many working class people passed through the ranks of the revolutionary left, but the atmosphere was so alien to the experience of the vast majority of us and so much demanded of members that inevitably resulted in little or no gain, that it took a tremendous effort of will to stay the course.
> 
> Even more so in these days of unprecedentedly low political consciousness than during the time I'm talking about, there are so many other, ostensibly more enjoyable things for the working class to do with their spare time than be politically active. This is not a reason, as some on this board obviously think, to sneer at the thick 'chav' working classes (the people who get labelled thus being no less politically aware than the vast majority of today's middle class students.) If the radical left, whatever that means today, is to ever regain anything approaching even the slight influence it had a couple of decades ago, it has to break with the habits of the past and be able to appeal to the working class as it actually is and not how the self-styled radicals would like it to be. As various campaigns that still attract working class people prove, members of the working class will take action when they can see that it is in their interests to do so.


an excellent post 

But i don't think SS deserves this much, she obviously wasn't asking or discussing, but trying to tell us what was what.


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> how many of you on here have been out to towns like Chatham, Medway, Romford, Chelmsford and so on and talked to the local w/c communities?


  Well, funny you should say that. I've just come back from 10 days with my mum in Strood, Medway (more downmarket than Chatham) and spent an enjoyable time with my brothers in their local w/c communities. A major part of my life has been with more northern mining communities. I've never had any problem in finding people active in local politics, campaigns and action. Perhaps it's you who ought to talk to the local w/c communities?


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> On Stobart...SS has used some pretty crappy examples, but the nugget of her point is there - how many of you on here have been out to towns like Chatham, Medway, Romford, Chelmsford and so on and talked to the local w/c communities? How many of you have camped outside Lakeside or Bluewater and tried to raise awareness for your protests among the w/c in the home counties? The chavs and townies and Rommos and Essex Girls and Boys on the Southend cruise; all the hard cases from the Medway valley; all the call centre workers in Newcastle, Leeds and the North...ultimately they're the ones you need to convince are oppressed and need saving.
> SS made a bad point on human nature being entirely selfish (as ever, it's a balance between selfish self-interest and enlightened self-interest) cos it isn't, but at the same time we aren't 'naturally' altruistic either.


 Many of us _live_ in these communities K_s and always have done. We don't need educating on what the TRUE working class thinks. Especially by someone whose ideas bear no relation to our own persoanl experience of working class life.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

Funny that, cos they bear an awful lot of relation to MY experience of w/c life growing up in Essex and every time I go back there.


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## Taxamo Welf (Jan 7, 2005)

reallyoldhippy said:
			
		

> Do you think we got to where we are today (NHS, education, libraries, parks, restrictions on the working week, etc) by people following your logic or ours? Even if you think these things weren't won after years of struggle by the working class, but by philanthropists handing over power and money voluntarily, it still involved people thinking of others and acting accordingly. You may hanker after "the law of the jungle" but you have benefitted immensely from the fact that others don't.


An excellent response again 

...and coincidentally, this is why, despite the fact i'm middle class and part of the problem 90% of the time on the left (see this thread for example ), i still accept class struggle and will try to involve myself in it. Because despite the fact groups like Greenpeace or Oxfam have an easy place for me to 'try and save the world', historically its only the working class who have achieved anything lasting a good through their struggle; and its the welfare ste (specifically the state education system) that gave my parents the opportunities that made their kids middle class.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Funny that, cos they bear an awful lot of relation to MY experience of w/c life growing up in Essex and every time I go back there.


 Fine, no problem with that - just don't try and insist as SS did that this is _the entirety_ of working class life/aspirations/desires in the UK. And then extend that to _the whole of human nature_ as an afterthought.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Fine, no problem with that - just don't try and insist as SS did that this is the entirety of working class life/aspirations/desires in the UK.



Ah right, well no I wouldn't cos I knew a good few people who were locally active but IME then and now, the majority simply aren't interested.


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## Taxamo Welf (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Ah right, well no I wouldn't cos I knew a good few people who were locally active but IME then and now, the majority simply aren't interested.


...and probably won't be until the left starts making progress/capitalism crashes in a big way (as it often does).

We know this.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

But that in itself is no reason to then draw the comically crude stereotypes that SS did. If i made the same type of crass generalisations about m/c people i'm sure you (and others) would have a few choice things to say to me.


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## Epicurus (Jan 7, 2005)

Is it the people you work with or the objective you all want to achieve that is important?

I have worked with Socialists (be they nationalist, state or revolutionaries) on anti-imperialist campaigns and had some success, the reason we had some success was that we kept the objective in mind and pushed our personal political differences to the back.

I find it amazing that people put their personal political beliefs ahead of the objective, after all most Anarchist I know don't put their personal beliefs ahead of the greater good for others.

It is easy really you just need to decide if you agree with the objective, if you don't, don't get involved if you do get involved and do what it needed.

If the political left (and I include anarchist in that group) looked more at what joined them instead of concentrating on the differences; things would/could be a lot further forward.

My personal view is it isn't up to "ME" what comes out of the class struggle, but it is my duty to do whatever I can to help start the class struggle, who are we to be telling the working class "what is good for them", surely it is our duty to help the working class to fight the forces of the state and let then determine their own destiny.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

> surely it is our duty to help the working class to fight the forces of the state and let then determine their own destiny.



'Our' duty? 

'Them'?


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## Stobart Stopper (Jan 7, 2005)

Epicurus said:
			
		

> surely it is our duty to help the working class to fight the forces of the state and let then determine their own destiny.



This is where activists etc get it so wrong, in my experience, the working class people I know are fighting.......fighting to do better for their families and have a better house/car lifestyle than their parents were abel to give them.
They are not fighting for helping the hard-done-by, they are not fighting the system. They don't want to. They want out of the poverty their parents or grandparents had to endure.And once they are out, they want to stay out.


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## Epicurus (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> 'Our' duty?
> 
> 'Them'?



Picking at my poor English isn't really the answer is it, I think it shows your arrogance in assuming everyone who posts here is English, A very English problem, do you have a problem with the content of my post or is Grammar your only concern.

I bet you claim to be fighting the class struggle yet your only interest appears to be peoples use of the English language


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## treelover (Jan 7, 2005)

I agree with S/S to a certain extent about the priorities of most people, the majority of w/c people I grew up with up had no time or interest in politics and even less for 'activism', except for the occasional anti-fascist gig.  I wonder if this is a British thing, even Orwell wrote about the working class obsession with such ‘distractions’ as the Pools and this was during the great depression and the rise of fascism!. However, although many of my peers had no interests in politics as young people, I know a few who have since been involved in campaigns, strikes, and some wider activism.
There does some seem to be be ‘spikes' of working class activism and solidarity such as the T.U militantcy of the 70’s the miners strike and the poll tax, but a lack of sustainable consistent activity. To a large extent I agree with TJ that there is an ideological gap to be filled, probably on a global level, which I personally hope will be filled (but not dominated ) by the emerging social forum movement. But I doubt if it will be class based and thankfully Marxist ideology and influence is now passing everywhere. I do  think we have lost our folk memory and our connections with the past, which often fuels social change , when I was growing up I would hear pensioners talk regularly in  the street about the great depression and its deprivations, still probably voted Tory though..

Btw, good thread with some migrants from general, etc, lets not attack the new posters in p/p and have civilised debate.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

Epicurus said:
			
		

> Picking at my poor English isn't really the answer is it, I think it shows your arrogance in assuming everyone who posts here is English, A very English problem, do you have a problem with the content of my post or is Grammar your only concern.
> 
> I bet you claim to be fighting the class struggle yet your only interest appears to be peoples use of the English language



I was just being incredulous at what appears to be an amazingly partonising post

'our duty' to help 'them'...Stobes has commented enough on that.

Fight the class struggle? As if.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

> even Orwell wrote about the working class obsession with such ‘distractions’ as the Pools



This is making me thing about Nosos' thread on 'false consiuousness'...


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## treelover (Jan 7, 2005)

'I bet you claim to be fighting the class struggle yet your only interest appears to be peoples use of the English language'


The only struggle KS has is making sure he get his petit poirs, rocket,etc, before waitrose shuts.


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## catch (Jan 7, 2005)

Kyser, you know Clacton-On-Sea? grew up there.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

Clacton? Don't 'know' it know it, but yeah, used to go to Destiny/The Cream and Oscars  on the pier. Spent many a happy day on the beach there when growing up.

I grew up in Witham, just down the road. Mum worked (when she wasn't suffering from chronic rheumatic pain) at EEV. no dad. Nan worked alternately as a cleaner and a packer at Bargets self assembly furniture packing place. Both spent a few years unemployed on and off during the early-mid 80s. I went to the local state schools, was bullied constantly between the ages of 4 and 11 for doing things like taking violin lessons, visiting musuems during the holidays and generally demonstrating intelligence and a love of learning. Once in post 11 education I started to mix with a lot more kids who felt the same way I did and guess what?  Most were from affluent families (not all m/c, most were affluent w/c) who' parents felt the way my mum did about education being key to improving their kids lives. 



> The only struggle KS has is making sure he get his petit poirs, rocket,etc, before waitrose shuts.



 very good. Altho it's usually Brixton market that I have to rush back to before it shuts. And it's _petit pois_ dear boy.


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> They want out of the poverty their parents or grandparents had to endure.And once they are out, they want to stay out.


And you think "activists" don't want that?  Your Tory brain might think that the rise from poverty may come from individual effort. But I KNOW it has come from collective action. Try to do it on your own and you'll always be looking over your shoulder to see who's sneaking up behind you. And why shouldn't people steal what's yours if self-interest is the only morality?


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

And on top of all that it's just a bollocks point - in my area alone i can think of many w/c led intitiatives to improve people's _collective_ conditions - fights against mobile phone masts, a campaign to turn an empty church hall into a community creche, a long running boycott of a local shop, a campaign for a zebra crossing outside the local school, for ths school to dsaty open after hours as a commuity centre, for better bus services into town, for Doctors to be prepared to do more home visits, for a train-track running through a residential area to be shut down at night, all sorts - and that's just in one small area of one small town.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

reallyoldhippy said:
			
		

> And you think "activists" don't want that?  Your Tory brain might think that the rise from poverty may come from individual effort. But I KNOW it has come from collective action. Try to do it on your own and you'll always be looking over your shoulder to see who's sneaking up behind you. And why shouldn't people steal what's yours if self-interest is the only morality?



The point to be made ROH is that in my case, and probably in SS case, our success has come from individual effort, not 'collective action' which for me achieves the better part of fuck all (miners strike, Print strike, antoi-war march) Maybe collective effort CAN work, but I'm not going to stay poor trying to make it happen.

And no, I don't spend my time looking over my shoulder at who is 'coming up behind me'. Why would you think that's the case?

And Butchers - all those examples of collective action happen in places regardless of the class make up of an area. These things aren't unique to w/c communities, just communities that have identified something that serves the self interest of the group by, ultimately, serving the interests of the individuals concerned.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

No, the set of conditions that enabled you to get ahead where only there as the direct result of collective struggle by the working class before you were even born.


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## catch (Jan 7, 2005)

> Once in post 11 education



CRGS? It was the experience of going there that radicalised my politics, being a year younger than everyone (bar two others) in my year, and having to deal with public school wannabees (with names like Etienne Smith!) all the time. 

Oscar's is now a ghost train ride unfortunately, I used to go to the rocking horse before it moved/I turned 17, can't remember which was first.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

Was it all collective? Was it all based around a huge movement? No. Much of it depended on massively influential external conditions and the threat of a possible revolution. Some of it was caused through the actions of individuals. 

To say that the society and conditions arrived at in 1973 when I was born was only the result of collective action is wrong, because it wasn't. Collectivism played a very important role in it, one of the prime movers, but it wasn't the only reason, and nor was it the only way that society could have got to the same place.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

catch said:
			
		

> CRGS? It was the experience of going there that radicalised my politics, being a year younger than everyone (bar two others) in my year, and having to deal with public school wannabees (with names like Etienne Smith!) all the time.
> 
> Oscar's is now a ghost train ride unfortunately, I used to go to the rocking horse before it moved/I turned 17, can't remember which was first.



Nah, failed my 11+ - my choice would've been KEGS in Chelmsford anyway.

So you were a purple pervert then?


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## Epicurus (Jan 7, 2005)

Stobart Stopper said:
			
		

> This is where activists etc get it so wrong, in my experience, the working class people I know are fighting.......fighting to do better for their families and have a better house/car lifestyle than their parents were abel to give them.
> They are not fighting for helping the hard-done-by, they are not fighting the system. They don't want to. They want out of the poverty their parents or grandparents had to endure.And once they are out, they want to stay out.


Is this BBs for the exclusive use of English people and about the English working class only or are people here talking in a world context.

It seems to me that most people only look as far as the coastline of the UK and the world ends there.

If you are only talking about in England then from the English History I have read and pointing to the Miners strike as an example I would agree with some of what you have said, but English working class have a far better standard of living than most of the working class in the world.

Try looking a little further than your own country and you might have a different view.

I now live in an area of urban depravation in South London (as defined by the EC) and I can tell you that the working class in that area seen to have many many things that workers in other countries don't have and could never afford, if you are using the working class of the UK as your judge of working class then I think you'll get a big shock if you ever travel to the developing world


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

No it's not, but generally speaking these kind of class discussions do relate to the w/c in the UK. Partly cos it's one we're familiar with (as you point out) but also because as you also point out (and I have at points in the past) the W/C in the West generally have fuck all to complain about compared to the developing world. 

S'all relative.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Was it all collective? Was it all based around a huge movement? No. Much of it depended on massively influential external conditions and the threat of a possible revolution. Some of it was caused through the actions of individuals.
> 
> To say that the society and conditions arrived at in 1973 when I was born was only the result of collective action is wrong, because it wasn't. Collectivism played a very important role in it, one of the prime movers, but it wasn't the only reason, and nor was it the only way that society could have got to the same place.



Yes it was. What on earth do you suppose _caused_ those external conditions and suggested the possible answers to them - collective struggle, not a few individuals stroking their chins deciding history for us.

I've not said that the conditions that enabled you to get ahead were the _sole_ result of collective struggle, but they pretty clearly were a majopr part of the developement of social housing, free-ish health care and universal education - not to mention other aspects of societies infra-structure. The infra-structure that was a pre-conditon for your individual progress.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

When I was referring to external conditions I was thinking of things like WW1, the Depression and WW2.


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Was it all collective? Was it all based around a huge movement? No. Much of it depended on massively influential external conditions and the threat of a possible revolution. Some of it was caused through the actions of individuals.


Of course it wasn't ALL collective. Just most of it. And what could be more collective than "the threat of a possible revolution"? 

And as I said before, if it wasn't collective it was altruism - looking after others. SS has been arguing that people only look after themselves.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> When I was referring to external conditions I was thinking of things like WW1, the Depression and WW2.


 Yep, all largely the results of collective struggle from the w/c.


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> the W/C in the West generally have fuck all to complain about compared to the developing world.


And its because there's not enough internationalism that xenophobia and racism creep in - Britons looking anxiously over their shoulder to see what johnny foreigner is after.


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## Sorry. (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> When I was referring to external conditions I was thinking of things like WW1, the Depression and WW2.



that would be the same WW1 that was ended by collective working class action?


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Yep, all largely the results of collective struggle from the w/c.



Eh? I thought that those events were the result of the r/c fucking up that the w/c ended up suffering for...


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## Epicurus (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> No it's not, but generally speaking these kind of class discussions do relate to the w/c in the UK. Partly cos it's one we're familiar with (as you point out) but also because as you also point out (and I have at points in the past) the W/C in the West generally have fuck all to complain about compared to the developing world.
> 
> S'all relative.


But as you say above the working class in the UK have "fuck all to complain about compared to the developing world" and then have a class struggle movement in just the UK?

I have never lived in a country where anarchist stop looking when they get to the boarder, surely that is just posturing?

As this seems to be an English centric thread I'll duck out as I think anyone talking about class struggle and not including the developing world is a waste of time.

I'm not talking about people complaining because they can't afford a holiday I'm talking about people who are complaining because they can't afford to eat and feed their families.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

> I'm not talking about people complaining because they can't afford a holiday I'm talking about people who are complaining because they can't afford to eat and feed their families.



And this is the problem facing anyone trying to motivate such people to cause change. Tube drivers are a good example - they earn over £30K pa and are w/c and recently went on strike for more money/same hours and won. Good collective action for them, bitchin for those of us who pay to use the tube. And I find it VERY difficult to sympathise with someone complaining they can't afford a holiday to the Maldives.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Eh? I thought that those events were the result of the r/c fucking up that the w/c ended up suffering for...



No it was do with internal stresses that the w/c were placing on their respective ruling classes leading to heightening imperialist competition that ended up in imperialist warfare. The pressures leading to war were in the main collective struggle on the part of the working class on capitals functioining- europe wide. It was know as 'the great unrest 1910-14'.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

We're down to perspectives now mate. You're arguing that it was direct action from the w/c of the UK etc putting pressure on the élites that led to the build up of pressures that caused WW1 say. Another historian would argue that this was a factor, but that imperial hubris on the part of France and Britain, coupled with their fear of a powerful Germany building it's own Empire, were the main forces that ended up causing WW1.

Same goes for the depression. The US collapse was bought about by it's isolationist trading policies and a massive expansion of consumer spending and investment. Or was it caused by the potential for laour unrest in the US?

The causes of WW2...well I've also seen and read here and elsewhere that it was capitalism without a doubt that led to both the rise of Hitler and WW2 itself. Or was the rise of Hitler a reactionary collective movement of agrarian and rural populations rebelling against what they saw as a deceandent regime in Berlin during the period of the Weimar Republic?


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## Sorry. (Jan 7, 2005)

rather a sidetrack though KS. It's the postwar settlements being discussed here, and it's pretty absurd to use World War One as an explanatory factor in 20th century political change as an argument against collective working class political action - the war itself was ended by a revolution in Germany. The years at the end and after the end of the war is probably the most sustained and widespread working class political action in Europe's history. Nobody can seriously argue that the post-war settlement wasn't created by those actions.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

TeeJay said:
			
		

> Most of the economy is owned by plcs. They don't have individual owners - the money comes from pension and insurance funds, paid into by millions of people, the bulk of whem are workers. Secondly, "owners" - of small business and shops for example - may well earn far less than "workers" who are employed by large compnaies (for example chief executives etc). For both these reasons your entire "class analysis" is a nonsense, and can't form the basis of any kind of social or political movement. The only people who buy into it are hopeless utopians who want the world to be rendered in black and white terms, want a ideology that chimes with their own sense of alienation and ennuie, and who want something akin to a religious faith as a crutch to hold onto. It certainly doesn't apply in its old-fashioned form to a modern globalised mixed economy. The nearest it comes to being even vaguely true is in certain places at certain times - typically in very poor countries where 1% of the population really does own 90% of the land and businesses etc, and where there is no kind of redistribution or democracy.
> 
> I'd love it if all the disciples of Marx would actually try to re-think their whole analysis from first principles, rather like he did all that time ago, but this time round use all the information and analysis that has been learnt in the mean time. I am not against radical political ideas aiming at massive change in the world, but marxist and/or revolutionary socialism isn't it. Most people can see this which is why it is marginal. There is an ideological "gap in the market" waiting to be filled. Maybe something along the lines of the concept of a "global citizenship" '.





The basic point I was making was that most people in the thread were talking as though the class struggle was something dreamed up by radicals as a tool for social change that would somehow disappear if they stopped doing it.  That's why I used the simplest of examples. 

Without having time to do the research, I can't say what percentage of companies are owned by small and smallish groups of capitalists and what percentage are PLC's.  However, even if PLCs do form the majority, the same thing applies regarding class struggle. Having worked for a PLC, I know that it would be foolish to claim that the people who take the largest dividend are not on the opposite side to the people on the shop floor or doing the admin in the office, in terms of where the priorities lie. Major shareholders are still big capitalists, are they not? The managers, meanwhile, are not exactly on the same side as those shop floor or routine office workers either.  Charged with keeping the firm running for those who profit most (capitalists), top and middle management are paid far more than the workers and, in terms of the class struggle, are also on the opposite side; and it matters very little that they also work for a living.  And while some well-paid workers might well earn more than owners of very small businesses, this is an irrelevance. Those workers never earn more than the owners of the actual firm that they work for.  Therefore, as their main interest is in getting maximum profit from their workers while paying them as little as they can get away with, the owners of small firms and their employees are, again, on opposite sides in the class struggle. To say this is not to paint the world in black and white - it is indeed a very complex society that we live in these days, particularly when it comes to the way people perceive themselves, which is one reason for the failure of the radical left - but to state the simple facts.  And the class struggle remains a fact, no matter how many people have an interest in trying to deny it.  If it doesn't apply to a 'modern globalized mixed economy,' now, how come there was plenty of evidence of the class struggle around, say, forty or fifty years ago, when the economy was also ....modern, globalized and considerably more mixed than it is nowadays?

It is interesting that some people in this thread seem to be implying that the class struggle is more applicable in desperately poor countries; another major reason for the failure of the western left is the degeneration of a part of it into little more than a supplier of activists for international solidarity campaigns - from which it, in turn, sucks in a fair number of guilt ridden bleeding hearts, thus pulling the radical left even further away from the concerns of the only working class it can ever decisively influence: the one that exists in its own country.  This is not to argue that international solidarity is irrelevant; it has always been an important pillar of radical working class politics.  It is to argue that loss of confidence and direction led many activists on the western far left, in despair at the supposed conservatism of the working class in their own countries, to look to the Third World for signs of hope and shift their priorities accordingly.  We can now see the result of several decades of this. 

I agree that large chunks of Marx are no longer relevant.  It is only worth bothering with what still clearly applies to the society we have now.  The revolutionary left of old is dying before our eyes. There is, as you say, 'a gap in the ideological market', and when it comes to that section of the working class that it is, at the moment, most possible to influence, it is the BNP that is most successfully filling it.  'Concepts of "global citizenship", meanwhile, amount to no more than words. And to bandy about empty terms is the major over-simplification in this thread so far.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Fine, no problem with that - just don't try and insist as SS did that this is _the entirety_ of working class life/aspirations/desires in the UK. And then extend that to _the whole of human nature_ as an afterthought.





Is it only me that can't help getting the feeling that, had Stobart Stopper been around in, say, 1968, they would have been among the ones shouting loudest about the injustices of the capitalist system and the historic inevitability of the classless society?

Stobart isn't the only one; those who take the most fashionable of contemporary ideological themes and turn them into eternal truths probably outnumber those who have a principled and considered analysis of the world.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

Geri said:
			
		

> She is saying that working class people don't become activists as they are too busy with other commitments - this is true of the population as a whole and not specifically limited to the working class.





I agree with you, but I tried to give a view on why more working class people don't get involved in left politics.


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## kyser_soze (Jan 7, 2005)

> Stobart isn't the only one; those who take the most fashionable of contemporary ideological themes and turn them into eternal truths probably outnumber those who have a principled and considered analysis of the world.



*If* (and I don't think there is) a veiled reference to me in there, as Butchers and co will tell you, the idea of an eternal truth is an anathema to me...

However, we seem to have a few Marxists arguing that case... 






















only kidding kidz, but when I was reading this thread there were a couple of bits that reminded me of the bible studies classes I used to attend!!)


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## Maggot (Jan 7, 2005)

Epicurus said:
			
		

> As this seems to be an English centric thread I'll duck out as I think anyone talking about class struggle and not including the developing world is a waste of time.


 Read the forum Title!


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## Maggot (Jan 7, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> Well a global classless, stateless society of course!


I'm not sure how serious you're being here, but that's never going to happen. There will always be some people with power and some without.


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## montevideo (Jan 7, 2005)

the problem remains that class is still viewed as a category, as form of _class_ification (which to be honest was what the victorian method - smith, ricardo & including marx - was all about). 

Marx never laid open a defintion of what constitutes class other than its antagonistic properties.

This proves problematical today for the class strugglists who have to seek to define class as a process (no problems with that) while still retaining the characteristics of a category.

This is where the confusion lies, we have not become two great polarised forces constantly at odds with each other, as predicted, we are a fractured variant mutiple of many self-defining forces. In order to tie these threads together into a coherent whole the class strugglists must fetishise the very agent that frees us from that fetish ie The Working Class.


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## The Black Hand (Jan 7, 2005)

montevideo said:
			
		

> the problem remains that class is still viewed as a category, as form of _class_ification (which to be honest was what the victorian method - smith, ricardo & including marx - was all about).
> 
> Marx never laid open a defintion of what constitutes class other than its antagonistic properties.
> 
> ...




Yes I have to agree Monty, it is Toni Negri and his concept of the *multitude*, which doesn't reduce the working class, but recognises many different ways of being that describes it the best IMHO...


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

Which is fine, no matter what you call that concept - but what it doesn't do is show that " the class strugglists" are compelled to do what as he claims, nor that they do. I think that he's reducing people's understanding of the term and what they mean by it to a crude characiture - an easily dismissed strawman.


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## sovietpop (Jan 7, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Which is fine, no matter what you call that concept - but what it doesn't do is show that " the class strugglists" are compelled to do what as he claims, nor that they do. I think that he's reducing people's understanding of the term and what they mean by it to a crude characiture - an easily dismissed strawman.



strawperson 

(sorry couldn't help it)


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

Oops! Letting my true colours shine through there


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## montevideo (Jan 7, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> Which is fine, no matter what you call that concept - but what it doesn't do is show that " the class strugglists" are compelled to do what as he claims, nor that they do. I think that he's reducing people's understanding of the term and what they mean by it to a crude characiture - an easily dismissed strawman.



no it is simply previously The Class Struggle has been pre-determined all we have to argue about is how best to engage in it/seek to overcome it. 

What if The Class Struggle isn't a pre-determined given? Surely that would be the starting point. Again in marx's day the two great forces of capitalism had that scientific inevitable quality that would bring them into conflict. That gave him the confidence to express it the way he did. 

Yet 150 years later this great conflict hasn't occurred, it has been millions & millions of atomised (but no less valid), partial, struggles of re-orientation.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

This great conflict hasn't occoured? Are you serious? Open your eyes and look around. Recognising that it has happened, is happening and will continue to happen is not to demand that this struggle take on pre-determined or limited forms - why do you insist that it does?


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## reallyoldhippy (Jan 7, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> There will always be some people with power and some without.


Some of us think that, just because we may not reach the destination, the road is still worth travelling.


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## montevideo (Jan 7, 2005)

butchersapron said:
			
		

> This great conflict hasn't occoured? Are you serious? Open your eyes and look around. Recognising that it has happened, is happening and will continue to happen is not to demand that this struggle take on pre-determined or limited forms - why do you insist that it does?



no, the great conflict would be 'revolution'. I do not deny since the birth of the industrial working class there has been a constant war of attrition against the methods of capital. But they are atomised pockets, flashes of resistance, & more importantly not necessarily recognised as a conflict of class.

I've said this before but only when working class people recognise themselves as a class would the working class be formed. That is the potential. The reality so far is something that's only ever argued about.


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## butchersapron (Jan 7, 2005)

Revolution would the end-phase of that great conflict. The conflict would have to exist before.


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## sihhi (Jan 7, 2005)

Couple of separate things 

1 LLETSA's point about coming back to old acquiantances and being a novelty/wierdo. I think it's quite common TBH. My case is slightly different from quite an insular nationality thing. When visiting old (turkish)neighbours i can't answer them if they ask me so where do you go in the evening your mother doesn't like what you do.

2 Kyser's point about ruling class/elite + not working-class action being most beneficial for working-class.
I strongly disagree because some of the best things that have been carried out by politicains/elite in order to avoid w/ class activity against them. 
Ie compromising before there is a crisis.
As a broad generalisation:
Just about every advance reform acts 1832 + 1867, liberal reform years 1906-1910, reform act 1919, 1945 has come as a result of compromising _before _ the event of serious trouble.
Arguably benefits from Empire were useful in the pre-war years aswell.
Some of the biggest decreases in inequality came under Attlee to Heath because there still was a strong movement from below (primarily the large workplace trade union movement). 
But when things began to change and that power from below started to be divided + ineffective for all sorts of reasons in the mid-1970s- inequality began to increase again (it started in the last years of Heath, thru Callaghan to today- bar a small reduction again in the Major years)

3. Stobart's point about the tsunami doesn't make sense because society isn't like a tsunami. It isn't either-or it's both-and or something.


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## typerighter (Jan 7, 2005)

.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

reallyoldhippy said:
			
		

> Some of us think that, just because we may not reach the destination, the road is still worth travelling.



Exactly.

Even if what Maggot says were true- that there will always be some with power and some without - if the former were never to be challenged they would become....even more powerful than they already are.

A hell of a lot has been gained over the years by the working class/poor/powerless etc etc as a result of collective action, without the system actually being overthrown


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## typerighter (Jan 7, 2005)

.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

typerighter said:
			
		

> I can safely say I've had very little interest in politics at all, coming from a council estate with a university education and with a parent working for the big broadcasting corporation. I used to brush past those handing out political leaflets outside the door of the uni bar and always read 'personal agenda'. That's me. I wouldn't stand up and say 'The country needs to be like this!' Why? Because the person next to me might think the opposite - it takes a god complex to think you can speak for 60 million people. I am politically _wary_, not politically aware.





So what?  What point are you trying to make? Nobody is saying that they claim to speak for 60 million people.  The only way anything worthwhile can be built is by persuading others of your viewpoint, in the hope that you can win a majority to seeking the kind of society you'd like to see, not by imposing anything on them.  There are all too many examples of the latter in history (but even to say that is to over simplify), but I don't think that's what most people in this thread are talking about. The logical conclusion of what you are saying is to abstain from politics.  To declare your fear of imposing your viewpoint on others is merely a way of disguising your political apathy.  Politics will not simply go away if you ignore it; to do what you seem to be advocating would just leave the field open to the very worst kind of people.

And politics doesn't begin and end at the door of the student union bar you know.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

typerighter said:
			
		

> *BUT* isn't power intoxicating, like ants to suger?





For some people yes.  But again - so what?  Making abstract points is another example of disguising the fact that you seem to have nothing to say.


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## Pickman's model (Jan 7, 2005)

LLETSA said:
			
		

> For some people yes.  But again - so what?  Making abstract points is another example of disguising the fact that you seem to have nothing to say.


as the bishop said to the nun.


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## LLETSA (Jan 7, 2005)

Pickman's model said:
			
		

> as the bishop said to the nun.





As I was saying....


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## Pickman's model (Jan 7, 2005)

LLETSA said:
			
		

> As I was saying....


...before i was so rudely interrupted...


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## sihhi (Jan 7, 2005)

kyser_soze said:
			
		

> Most were from affluent families (not all m/c, most were affluent w/c) who' parents felt the way my mum did about education being key to improving their kids lives


My mum was pretty similar- utterly fixated on having a good education- she was and still is. 

I'd agree with BA and Sorry that comprehensive education, free violon lessons, dole money, free museums- are all the result of working-class action. 



> Was it all based around a huge movement? No. Much of it depended on massively influential external conditions and the threat of a possible revolution. Some of it was caused through the actions of individuals



No there wasn't single huge movement- nor should there be necessarily. There were/are huge incentives to encourage self-centred, ego-gratifying behaviour developed by bosses + leaders over the years precisely to prevent large movement from developing. That's not to underplay the self-destructive behaviour from within the working class.

Of course it's individual leaders (like Attlee or Cripps) who set things up and individual leaders (like Churchill or MacMillan) who continue them. But their motivations are born out of what other. 

Leaders are often very clever indeed and think ahead of how to secure the elite positions. The NHS is a good example. It became the key propaganda tool for Labour making sure that the urban working class vote was theirs alone. And it was used cleverly to make sure opposition to the system stayed by and large within Labour Party. "Labour has given you NHS- they are the true good people what has anyone else ever done vote Labour" etc

You'll still hear Tony Benn for example saying we must Vote Labour all the time + reclaim Labour because without the Labour Party we'd never have had the National health service, slum clearance and house building without it etc etc.


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## 888 (Jan 7, 2005)

Thora said:
			
		

> So this discussion got me thinking – something that doesn’t happen very often tbh.  Can you be part of the class struggle if you are not actually working – or are you some kind of “professional” activist, parachuting in to save the workers?  Is it class, or is it about authority/power? And surely we are against work anyway?



I'd feel very uncomfortable (with myself and with genuinely relating to anyone outside the activist ghetto) if I was a professional activist, permanently and voluntarily unemployed for that reason. Fuck full timers, whether paid by a union or party bureaucracy, or by the state.

rednblack put it well on page 1.


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## 888 (Jan 7, 2005)

Maggot said:
			
		

> Fair enough, but what is the aim of your class struggle?



communism. That is, liberty for all, and the wealth of the whole world for all to share.


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