File spoon-archives/marxism-international.archive/marxism-international_1996/96-12-08.085, message 17


Date: 02 Dec 96 15:55:12 EST
From: jonathan flanders <72763.2240-AT-CompuServe.COM>
Subject: M-I: Re: Random thoughts on Lukacs


 >> Now this was the working-class of a backward society. What about the 
working-class of Western Europe, the US and Japan? What evidence is 
 there that this class *under normal circumstances* would want to 
 become the new ruling class?.........
 
............In studying the United States since the 1920s, what evidence 
do we  have of an ambitious working-class that is saying something like,
"Out  of the way, Rockefeller, it is our turn now." Isn't the case that
most workers become politically active not in an attempt to restructure 
 society on a model of new class relations? Rather don't they engage in 
struggle to remove concrete forms of oppression such as depression 
 and war? <<Louis P

  Jon Flanders:

  Interesting point, brought on no doubt in response to Louis G's rather
amazing piece on Lukacs and Gramsci.

  I look to US history for an analogy on this question. The northern 
capitalists had lived for 60 years or so with the hegemony of the 
southern planters. They didn't move to active opposition until planter 
control of the government made further "capitalist" progress impossible.

  Then we had the irrepressible conflict and civil war. I would suggest 
that we are moving into such a period today in the US and other advanced 
capitalist countries. The post-WW2 gains made by the unions have come to 
a screeching halt. Now we are sliding backwards.

  You can't pick up a newspaper without fresh evidence of the onslaught. 
I spent a lively lunch hour yesterday, regaling my co-workers with two 
articles in the Sunday NYT. One was on the tax-free capital gains for the
rich, while working class and middle class mutual funds capital gains
taxes skyrocket. The other laid out the plan to re-calculate the cost of 
living, a truly Orwellian scheme, which will show a shift up in the price
of steak, for example, as no increase at all, since most consumers will 
then shift to buying chicken. This new CPI, if adopted, will take 
billions from the pockets of the working class. In another article 
yesterday, the NYT estimates that using this "new CPI", the ten percent 
drop in wages over the last 20 years or so becomes a 35 percent GAIN.

  In all of this, control of the government is key. This is how the 
capitalist class gets the upper hand on every question. It is becoming 
more obvious every day. I can't even get a decent opposition on this 
stuff anymore on the shop floor.

  So it is inevitable that who controls the government will become a 
question. It's not a matter of if, but of when. This may take a reformist
form, as the Lincoln Republicans did in 1861, but as the stakes get 
higher, so will the conflict. The French truck drivers strike gives us 
fresh evidence that the working class has power to spare for this looming
battle.



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