Date: Mon, 3 Jul 2000 20:57:06 -0700 (PDT)
From: Sean Fenley <satellitecrash-AT-yahoo.com>
Subject: Re: AUT: Neo-conservatism and workers


is this guy posting to the right list?
-Sean

--- George Pennefather <poseidon-AT-eircom.net> wrote:
> 
> The Canadian Alliance is a right wing party that is
> growing in popularity
> apparently because its programme includes tax
> cutting policies  by way of
> reducing the state budget deficit. Clearly cutting
> taxes by reducing the
> budget deficit can only mean cuts in state social
> spending which reduces the
> standard of living of the working class particularly
> its lower layers.
> 
> Why is it that support for such anti-working class
> policies can lead to an
> increase in electoral popularity? The Republicans in
> the U.S., the Tories
> under Thatcher and the PDs in Ireland are parties
> that have made this policy
> their clarion call.
> 
> Clearly it is an indication, among other things, of
> the changes in the
> social composition of the working class over the
> years. In the West there
> has emerged a layer of comparatively highly paid
> skilled intellectual
> workers who gain almost nothing from  state social
> welfare spending  and yet
> pay high taxes. This layer is an upper layer within
> the working class. It
> is, in some degree, a transitional layer in the
> sense that some elements
> within  it are in a fluid condition whereby there is
> a flux back and forth
> between the working and middle class. Consequently
> there obtains ambiguity
> within this layer as to its social identity --its
> definition in class terms.
> This condition provides rich fertile ground for the
> blossoming of petty
> bourgeois ideas. Much of this layer may not feel the
> need to unionise.
> Sections of it tend to the view that welfare
> spending is of no benefit to it
> while such spending is supported by their fiscal
> contributions. Their
> ideology tends to support the belief that many of
> the beneficiaries of
> state welfare  don't want to work or are fraudsters
> who scam by working in
> the black economy while availing of welfare payments
> and whatever else. Many
> elements from this upper layer are very often
> involved in private health
> care systems. Consequently they have little sympathy
> for even middle ranking
> workers who may be earning a comparatively
> reasonable wage yet must avail of
> some of the state welfare benefits.
> 
> These neo-liberal policies also strike a chord with
> the middle class, many
> of whom have small enterprises, who don't, in large
> part, qualify for  state
> welfare.
> 
> The upshot is that neo-liberal or neo-conservative
> parties draw support from
> sections of the middle class together with the upper
> stratum of the working
> class. In that sense these parties draw from a
> constituency that straddle
> two classes in addition to the bourgeoisie. In this
> way the middle class and
> a relatively privileged layer of the working class
> are particularly utilised
> by the bourgeoisie to undermine the class
> cohesiveness of the working class.
> Neo-conservatism  is a clever bourgeois strategy,
> anchored in specific
> objective developments, to undermine the working
> class economically,
> politically and even ideologically.
> 
> Much of this layer of the working class would have
> had its origins in the
> middle to lower strata of the working class. Due to
> the growth of the
> welfare state, in particular from the sixties
> onward, much of the offspring
> of the working class would have been able to avail
> of  third level
> education --free education, college grants etc. This
> education would have
> qualified them for admission to the upper layer of
> the working class in a
> period when enormous technological changes have been
> in progress.
> Consequently this stratum has grown in size and has
> become largely more
> affluent.
> 
> This element was not so prevalent in the fifties and
> sixties because the
> composition of the upper layer of the working class
> possessed a different
> character then. The upper layer, then, principally
> consisted of highly
> skilled tradesmen. Later it increasingly included
> highly skilled technicians
> and commercial workers with a residue of highly
> skilled craftsmen. Later
> again it increasingly included a technical
> intelligentsia engaged in the
> electronic and financial sectors. The growth of this
> new element of
> intellectual worker in this layer led to the
> emergence of a correspondingly
> different culture within the upper layer. They
> lacked the trade union
> culture of the proportionately diminishing
> traditional element within this
> layer. This element came from a different background
> in the sense that it
> was college based bearing the particular petty
> bourgeois culture  entailed
> by college life.
> 
> Consequently it did not see themselves as forming a
> cohesive layer within
> the working class.  Consequently their allegiance to
> the trade union
> movement, and labour politics generally, was less
> certain. By virtue of its
> particular education and environment its conception
> of social being bore a
> more individualist or egoist character --their
> consciousness was less
> collectivist. Its education and college experience
> led them to question much
> of  traditional labour politics. However this
> questioning was grounded in a
> negative reactionary perspective rather than in the
> perspective of critique.
> We see then that the very welfare state, that much
> of this layer now seek to
> have undermined, was one of the very conditions of
> its crystallisation as a
> prominent and significant section of the  working
> class higher layer. It is
> this section that has been  the decisive condition
> in facilitating  the
> destruction of the cohesiveness of the working class
> by the bourgeoisie.
> 
> Much of this layer likes to think of itself as good
> as the bourgeoisie. It
> likes to think of itself as cool, cultured and
> "where its at".  It likes to
> imagine --hence the significance of "the imaginary"
> in this ideology that
> envelops them-- that there is some assumed guarantee
> that things can never
> be as they were in the "bad" past. It never even
> considers that living
> standards, rights etc can be invaded by the
> bourgeoisie or that if they are
> it will not be adversely affected. It imagines that
> there is some natural
> scheme of things that guarantees that today will
> always be so --and even get
> better. For it fiction is reality and reality is
> fiction. This is tantamount
> to blissful superstition --a new religion, a new
> ignorance, the post-modern.
> It entertains a superstitious belief in capitalism.
> Even when it shows an
> interest in radical ideas it does so in a way that
> lacks any sense of
> urgency --any urgent sense of the need for real
> change. Radical ideas are a
> form of entertainment --literature and hence the
> growing significance of
> literary criticism as a cannibalistic ideology that
> has been increasingly
> dominating much of the universities.
> 
> This layer emerges from an entirely new objective
> conditions entailing a
> "new" culture and mindset. It did not directly
> crystallise out of the
> working class and trade union movement. Instead it
> is a product of the
> schools and colleges --the ideological apparatus of
> the capitalist state.
> 
> The emergence of neo-conservatism as a populist form
> is an acute reflection
> of the failure of the working class movement to win
> this section of the
> working class over to the side of labour. It is a
> reflection 
=== message truncated ==

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