Date: Sun, 8 Dec 1996 11:43:26 -0500 (EST) From: louisgodena-AT-ids.net (Louis R Godena) Subject: Re: M-I: Gramsci, Lukacs, mass unemployment and worker militancy Paul writes, while introducing his excellent post: >Gramsci argued, that for the "lukewarmness of the working class" there >were more reasons: >(1)Certainly--as you remarked--the conditions of life, There is much that falls under the rubric of "the conditions of life" that have yet to be intelligently discussed on any Marxism list. One is the dynamics of the "working class" itself, as defined by the pathologies of those who, willy-nilly, end up in its ranks. One could argue that a source for high worker militancy in the period 1900-1920 was that many of the workers were drawn from the ruined ranks of the rural peasantry, and were driven into the novel and unattractive work in the factories by the fear of starvation. There is a remarkable degree of self-actualization and self-motivation among rural workers. Now -- and this is addressed to the squat, humorless dick-heads in the UK and nearby Continent who are furiously moving their lips as they read this -- by "self-actualizing" I don't mean the desire to read Proust or to appreciate Gauguin. Rather, I am referring to that degree of self-direction called for to complete the day-to-day tasks of agricultural life, the wide range of rudimentary skills necessary to maintain oneself and one's family amidst the vagaries of weather, crop failures, price fluctuation, livestock health and safety -- all within a social context of relative isolation and resource availability. There are other issues here as well. People who allow themselves to driven, day-in, day-out like sheep into the soul-deadening routine of factory life, only dimly and sullenly aware of forces far beyond their means, who seek only surcease in nothing larger than their own bodily reliefs, are not in my view promising candidates to precipitate revolutionary change in society. The history of working class struggle bears me out, and presents irrefutable evidence against those who argue that the working class is the primary agent of revolution in modern times. It seems as though the western industrial employer got it right in managing his workers' wants --"prudence to relieve, but folly to cure", in Mandeville's acerbic epigram -- deftly foreclosing both the possibilities of revolution (or even fundamental change) within the economic relationship, as well as a scarcity of docile and ultimately passive toilers for as long as it was expedient and profitable to employ them. One must juxtapose the great undifferentiated mass of "faceless and docile" factory workers -- victims of corrupted power, drilled into a hellish passivity -- against those groups who, by virtue of their conditions of day-to-day life, present prospects more propitious to revolutionary activity. One of course can only speculate, but certainly a propensity for self-direction in a deliberate and purposive fashion, a consciuousness of forces larger than oneself, coupled with a willingness, when pressed, to engage in unrelenting but goal-oriented violence, would, when competently led, have a much greater likelihood of success against the formidable weight of a bourgeois State. Add to this the undeniable fact that heavy industry in the West -- given the configurations of the world economy -- is now a drag on, rather than a spur to, the type of economic development one witnessed in past eras, and the equation becomes more problematic still. In fact, I would be prepared to argue that your points (2) through (4) are rendered irrelevant almost to the point of meaninglessness by this salient economic fact. It is heavy industry, the very reservoir of the proletariat -- the wellspring from which the workers draw their very identity as a class -- that is now in danger of perishing because, to quote Marx, "all the productive forces for which it provides scope have been developed." Thus, these ancillory facts -- "the better organized statal coercive apparatus", or "the hegemony of the ruling classes," or, even, the "weakness and errors of the left" -- a frequent complaint -- pale into insignificance when confronted with the inexorable decline of the Western proletariat and the conditions attendant to its long and tumultuous life. Paul continues: >Michal Kalecki (in Political aspects of full employment, 1943), explains >the economic policy of the Nazi-party as a deal between three positions, >organized by the national socialists: 1) the capitalists agreed with a >statal policy of full employment because the nazi guaranted the >suppression of progressive forces and labor movements. 2) The workers >tolerated and agreed with the authoritarianism of the nazi-state because it >provided for employment and subsistence. 3) The nazi with this consensus >could carry through their political objectives like political and >social control, rearmament, preparation of war. So mass unemployment not >necessarily leads to more consciusness of workers as "truly >revolutionary class". One is reminded here of worker support for the American war in Southeast Asia. Poll after poll showed the continued "loyalty" of unionized workers to the State, urging, for example, the use of nuclear weaponry against the Vietnamese people long after Nixon and Kissinger had more or less given up the use of air power as a bad job. Continued "support" for these enormous crimes -- at the time common knowledge among ordinary Americans -- cannot be explained away by "betrayals" of the trade union leadership or by the "Stalinists" in the infinitesimally tiny politically sects that formed the ass-end of the labor movement in the sixties. Its source must be squarely located within the working class itself, and its readiness to render itself complicit with US policy, in Southeast Asia and around the globe. Would the industrial working class in the US today support a frankly fascist regime? Here, I think, the signs are less clear. It is now twenty-five years later. Much of the bloom has fallen from the rose for the American class. Still, despite unremitting assaults on its well-being, the worker maintains an almost stunned allegiance to the mysteries of the free market. I am reminded, again, of the nascent French Marxists at the turn of the century (referred to in the thread "How fascism began") who were, on the one hand, "committed" to the apocalyptic core of Marxism -- the class struggle -- while at the same time desirous of preserving private property and the free market. This form of economic determinism -- with important qualifiers and amendments -- is a fair *precis* of the attitude of American workers today. Given an extreme version of the type of nationalism we saw in the recent NAFTA/GATT debates developing among, say, midwestern industrial workers, it is not inconceivable that an outright fascist regime could enjoy, at least initially, widespread support among America's workers. >My third argument comes from the post-gramscian left discussion in >Italy. Within political actions of social movements there is a >mechanism, which leads to a braking and slow down of revolutionary >impulses. People struggle for more civil rights, spaces, wealth, better >working and living conditions etc. As a result of these conflicts they >take over certain social and political positions: they gain more rights, >they create welfare organisations, their salairs and living standards >augment, their trade unions and left parties gain political influence >etc.--these all beeing concrete objectives or results of their >struggles. With all these actions they penetrate the state, become >themselves parts of the state (in Italian: farsi stato), accept certain >rules, consent to the state-institutions, they had contributed to >create. Within recent political conflicts one can see, that they have to >loose something, that they fight against cutting of social welfare of >civil rights. Will say, that they accept the whole framework, beeing the >state, that they operate as a corporate force within the state, not >"revolutionary", but "reformistic", having historically constituted >cognitive structures, that assume and reproduce capitalism and bourgeois >state. When this question is raised, I sometimes resort to an analogy. The doctor tells the patient that he has an incurable disease, which will get worse at an unpredictable rate, but that he may hope to carry on somehow for a few years longer. The disease can be cured by an operation, but there is quite a chance that the operation will kill the patient. The patient decides to carry on. Rosa Luxemburg said that the decay of capitalism would end either in socialism or in barbarism. I suspect that most workers today in the West prefer to face the slow decay of capitalism, hoping that it will last out their time, rather than face the surgical knife of revolution, which may or may not produce socialism. It is, I suppose, a tenable view. Louis Godena --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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