From: "FoofighterPilot" <cwright-AT-megapathdsl.net>
Subject: AUT: Re: Re: Raising Wages and other reforms (was: voting ... A Reply to Noam Chomsky)
Date: Sat, 3 Apr 2004 21:23:37 -0500


> Chris wrote:
>
> >There is a distinct difference between supporting an actual struggle and
> starting from a set of abstract/minimalist demands...<
>
> To me, the obvious question to follow that would be, How about starting
out
> by supporting an actual struggle and in the course of that struggle
> advocating for these "minimalist demands"?  Would that also be
> objectionable?  (If so, I guess all the anarchists who fought for the
> eight-hour work day, etc., were wrong?)

I agree that that is somewhat different, but that is not how most Leftist
act.  They start with a set of programmatic demands, a living wage being a
popular one these days, and then they go find actual struggles and try to
get those struggles to adopt their demands.  And in fact that already shows
that the Leftists in those cases are outside, looking in.  IMO, if we are
not organically a part of a struggle, pushing demands is neither effective
nor helpful.

And the whole "Look at this historicl struggle..." thing is not impressive.
Just because someone in the past did it doesn't make it right.  Moreover,
the fact that the anarchists were part of an already active and vibrant
workers' movement in the perid puts them in a different position than we are
in today.  They did not pull that demand out of their asses because they
thought it was the right demand.

> >It is not our job to demand a living wage.<
>
> To which the immediate question that comes to mind is, who are "we," and
> what is supposedly our "job"?  Are we all to look at our role in the
> struggle as a matter of fulfilling the duties of a particular "job"?  So,
I
> guess we're the professionals, then?  (Sorry, maybe that was a little mean
> of me, but that statement really does beg that question, at least as I'm
> reading it.)

Exactly my point on one level.  The people who have their little
preformulated programmes and demands are exactly professionals in the worst
sense.  As for 'we', it strikes me as completely different if we are
organically linked ot a struggle than if we are outside it hawking a
newspaper.  For example, I know a person who was involved in a fight to
organize her workplace and she followed her co-workers' basic demands, but
fought with them over how the struggle would be waged, to not put their
faith in the union, to control the struggle themselves, to rely on their own
self-activity.  She did not have to put forward demands, but she did fight
for workers' self-control over their struggle and she raised the political
limitations of the struggle.  That, to me, is a good example of how to
proceed.

> >To me, that is pure social democracy because we do not, in such
instances,
> address the need to abolish the wages system, for example.<
>
> And I say, who the fuck says we don't?  Just because we're supporting the
> fight for a living wage or advocating for a 30-hour work week (though, as
> an impoverished temp worker, I can't personally remember the last time I
> could get as much as 30 hours of work in a single week -- which, you might
> say, is the flip side of the problem this would be addressing)...does that
> mean we're unable to address the need to abolish the wages system
> (eventually) too?  Am I missing something here?

Actually, demanding a 30 hour work week abstractly from any coherent
movement is exactly what is the problem.  And why does every Leftist have to
act like their own personal situation is proof of squat?  I was unemployed
for 15 months in the last 24, but that doesn't make me more proly than thou.
And swearing does not make you more prole, btw, its just an affectation.

> What if we can fight for the reforms mentioned above, but in a different
> way from what Chris assumes, doing so as part of a continuing struggle for
> much greater changes, framing it in a larger context, maybe advocating
> different methods and approaches...  Is that such an impossible thing to
> do?  Do you really think it's so impossible to fight for some incremental
> progress in workers' lives (i.e., our lives) as part of a larger
> revolutionary project?

If you promote demands abstractly, disconnected from real struggles, as your
main approach to people, then it is a practice older than our
great-grandfathers.  If you mean that when a struggle arises or when we are
involved in a struggle organically, that we have some ideas about that
struggle and about how it links to the abolition of capital, then we have no
issue.  But the two are not the same.

Chris



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