Filed under: Random Shit,Uncategorized | Tags: 1917, Alienation, Bolsheviks, Communism, John Reed, Revolt, Revolution
I’ve been reading John Reed’s “Ten Days that Shook the World.” There is a preface to the mid-1960s edition I am reading that describes the alienation Reed felt as an upper class intellectual who saw the horrors of war and exploitation that undergird the peace, prosperity, and happiness of the possessing classes. Alienated from the community of the bourgeoisie, he found a place in the movement of the workers against their oppression. Today, some might say he ‘bore witness’ or ‘accompanied’ the oppressed in their struggles. Reed overcame alienation through commitment to the cause of the proletariat, pursuing this commitment to an early death. He is buried in Red Square in Moscow.
Almost 100 years after the October Revolution, the world is still in the hands of a bloodthirsty and greedy capitalist minority. Their rule is now entirely global. The geographic breadth of the reign of the bourgeoisie’s reign is complemented by the depth of their cultural hegemony. The specter of communism still haunts the world. but it has been reduced to just that- a spectral apparition appearing only faintly, washed out by capital’s brilliant projection of itself as an eternal Reich.
The situation is basically hopeless. The proletariat is nowhere to be seen. I wish I could say otherwise, but there have been no large, serious autonomous workers movements in the US since before World War II. There have been occasional ruptures, even up to the present with the May Day 2006 marches for immigrant rights, but nothing stays. The movement does not grow, the struggles do not intensify, even as the horrors of global capitalism become even more horrific. The situation is alienating in the extreme.
In the face of total alienation from the mediated bourgeois society, some seek to create a kind of “community” with vegan potlucks, radical community meetings, countercultural bike collectives, and worker co-ops. The contrived “communities” of the radical left are merely the mirror image of the alienated “community” of the commodity society. The radical left seeks to elevate community as a value in itself, severed from any rooting in a material base. By attempting to overcome alienation, the ‘radical community’ succeeds only in commodifying, and thereby alienating, the concept of “community” itself. There is no way out. We are in the desert of advanced capitalism.
What flower can grow in this desert? We need forms of organization and modes of struggle that can flourish and thrive in these toxic sands. Such forms can only be derived from the proletarian struggle itself. We must scatter our seeds on the most fertile ground, the substrate upon which capital reproduces itself must also be the ground upon which we build the struggle.
The task of revolutionaries today is to take on the most difficult tasks- to accept total alienation , to go into the desert and seek to put down roots amongst the exploited and oppressed masses to participate in and build the struggle. From our alienation must come our commitment to build the workers movement. If there is any happiness to be found on this earth, it can only be in the struggle.
Filed under: Analysis | Tags: Capitalism, Crisis, Organizing, Revolution, Workers
I recently went on a road trip around the Midwest of the United States. I was impressed not by the differences between states and cities in this region, but by their similarities. Driving across the prairie into the urban centers, I felt like I was taking a core sample of capitalist development. Although each state and city in the Midwest originated in slightly different circumstances and around slightly different industries or sectors of industry, most states in the Midwest are structurally identical. The capitalist economy of scale has produced a world of cookie-cutter development. This means that the problems and tasks facing the working class in one region are most likely faced by workers in other regions as well. It follows that any innovation in tactics or strategy in one city can be replicated in another, with the proper level of organization. If we can make a breakthrough in one area, it could be relatively easily replicated in the same sector in other areas. This is a serious weakness of capitalist power.
It is important to understand the composition or capitalist industry in order to get an idea of the different ways that different groups of workers experience capitalism, so that we can reach out to and organize these workers.
Capitalism in the US consists primarily of only a handful industries, each monopolized by a handful of corporations. Here are the primary sectors:
1. Agribusiness- large industrial farms owned by Monsanto, Cargill, or ADM
2. Retail, Food, Service, and Distribution- shopping malls, strip malls, and big box stores, supplied by large warehouses and food processing plants centered in semi-rural areas outside cities and meatpacking plants in rural areas. Trucking, rail, and ultimately intermodal transit and shipping tie all the sectors of this industry together. This is the sector of the economy with the largest potential for growth in concrete numerical terms. It is also the poorest and most exploited sector in the US.
3. Healthcare- Large hospitals
4. Education- K-12 and higher education
5. Corporate Administration- corporate headquarters and the services they outsource (information technology, etc.)
6. Manufacturing- auto, steel, plastics, etc. This sector has been largely outsourced to China, although there are signs that plants are reopening in low-wage, non-union areas of the US.
7. Construction- residential and commercial construction is proceeding primarily through “green field” development on the outskirts of major urban areas. The economic crisis has brought construction to a halt, putting millions of construction workers out of work.
8. Military Industrial Complex- we cannot overlook the millions of people who work as professional soldiers for a living, as well as those who work in the arms plants that supply the military. This is an enormous sector of the economy with a high potential for struggle. It also is directly connected to other sectors, as many workers have family members in the military.
The structure of the current phase of capitalist development is clear. Growth of the capitalist economy occurs primarily as the expansion of urban areas through the construction of new suburban subdivisions, each containing new commercial areas. There has also been some redevelopment of urban core areas (Times Square, for example), but the major growth takes place on the outskirts. Growth of capitalism results in a geographic expansion of capitalist urban areas.
Capital seeks to expand not only through new construction, but through increasing consumption- of education, healthcare, food, retail, and services. The result is that capitalism builds a consumer-oriented “way of life” into its development. While previously, capital sought to increase high wages in order to increases consumption, the current strategy seems to be to keep wages low through expanding largely low-skill service sector employment, while making credit easily available, forcing workers into debt, which is then turned into a tradable asset by the financial system. The other solution to stagnant profits was to globalize the capitalist way of life, increasing consumption in some third world countries, while using others as a pool of cheap labor. This is an arrangement that began in the 1970s as a result to the last crisis of capitalist profits. Now, this rearrangement itself has gone into crisis.
It is unclear how the capitalists will rearrange the system to launch another wave of development. So far, there are no new ideas. They are merely propping up the old system through massive infusions of state funding, while forcing cutbacks on the working class. This situation is highly unstable and is clearly not preferred by capitalist elites, otherwise they wouldn’t call it a “crisis.”
What does this mean for us as revolutionary organizers? I would argue that since the sectors of capital I outlined above seem to be stable, and with the exception of manufacturing, seem likely to grow or at least remain in the US, we should focus organizing efforts in each of these sectors. The crisis has merely intensified antagonisms in each sector. It seems that the trends of the last 40 years in terms of capitalist development will continue, unless the system merely slips deeper into recession. In that case, the tensions in the system will only be greater. Our task remain in any case the same. Revolutionaries must build a base in any of these sectors capable of leading struggles against the bosses. This should be our goal.
It is also important to look beyond the US and begin to map the global supply chain. We need to build an organization of cadre organizers that extends beyond North America, and connects seamlessly with organizers and workers in Asia, Africa, South America, and Europe. The struggle must be as global as capital, or nationalism will remain a dangerous temptation for angry workers.
We should see the emergence of this new structure of production the same way that the old IWW and CIO saw the emergence of mass industry. And like them, we should find a form of organization appropriate to organizing it. Unlike the CIO, we should make sure that our efforts are not co-opted by a bureaucracy, but remain autonomous from capitalism and antagonistic.
At this point, the way forward would involve making a critical assessment of the capacities of the Left to organize workers, as well as the potential to radicalize part of the existing labor movement. We need a new proletarian political organization of revolutionaries that that can begin building mass organization and starting fights in each of these sectors.
As revolutionaries, we should advance the following principles in the struggle:
1) Rank-and-File control. All decisions made by the workers themselves. No bureaucracy above the struggle. Few paid staff, if any.
2) Direct Action. Dependence on tactics that build and keep power in the hands of the workers. No deference to politicians. Build our own power rather than build client-patron relationships.
3) Class Solidarity. Attempt to circulate/expand struggle to others in the same industry/sector and other sectors. Organize across national borders. Organize across racial, gender, sexual divisions in the class in an egalitarian manner.
If we can build organizations that are based on these principles in one sector in one city, we can build them anywhere with the proper amount of commitment and skill by dedicated revolutionaries. The task would then be to expand to every sector. Likely, the relationships between workers in different sectors would spread the struggle with minimal effort on the part of conscious revolutionaries.
This expansion of the struggle would severely destabilize capitalism, likely leading to a capital strike (lockouts), increased authoritarianism, and possibly an attempted fascist coup. At that point, the only remaining question would be the timing of the workers revolution.
Filed under: Uncategorized | Tags: America, fascism, Revolution, Tea Parties
This last weekend I drove through the lower midwest. I visited the major cities, each separated by a three or four hour drive through rural areas from the next. These rural areas are the primary base of the so-called “Tea Party” movement, a loosely-organized network of extreme right-wingers opposed to Obama and any kind of basic liberal agenda. Since Obama took office, they have been stockpiling ammunition and arms, holding protests, and organizing. I”ve been hesitant to take them seriously. Their numbers are VERY small, but their voices have been amplified by the corporate media. They are a small white working class base for more reactionary, inflexible elements of the US elite.
Earlier this week, the US congress passed a health care reform bill. It’s still unclear how beneficial the changes will be to working class Americans, but the bill has been fought tooth and nail by the Republican Party and the Tea Party activists. After the bill passed, there were reports of vandalism of Democratic Party offices and death threats against Democratic politicians.
What is really going on here?
The reality is that the US ruling class has its back against the wall. There is currently no major mass movement for health care, education, or any other serious reform. The Obama administration is entirely oriented toward pre-empting the emergence of autonomous working class self-activity, ensuring Wall Street profits and stability.
This kind of pre-emptive counterinsurgency tactic is too much for the right wing of capital- they prefer to risk greater resistance and use brute force to put down rebellions. If they feel that the left wing of capital is becoming too socialistic, likely due to pressure from the working class, they will orchestrate a fascist coup. During FDR’s New Deal, a group of businessmen led by George W Bush’s great grandfather prepared exactly this kind of putsch.
The Tea Party movement are the Freikorps of American fascism. They are willing to overthrow the US government in order to install a government that would put down the workers movement with brute force.
Politics in the US are muddy and unclear, the actors often don’t understand themselves what they are doing, but the historical dynamics are clear. Should the working class begin to organize seriously, the Tea Party movement will provide the shock troops for a seizure of state power by the extreme right of corporate america.
What does this mean for us on the radical left? We may eventually find ourselves in the position of revolutionaries in the 1930s, stuck propping up an embattled liberal regime under attack by the fascist right. I don’t think this prospect is exactly around the corner, but things are developing in this direction.
In organizing, you have to develop a theory and an understanding of society, make a plan for action, and fully devote yourself to carrying out the plan and reaching your goal. There can be no half-measures if you want to be successful. Only by carrying things through to their logical conclusion can we decisively determine whether we were correct in our strategy. This kind of committed, dedicated, singleminded attitude is the polar opposite of the mode of operation of much of the rest of the activist left, which typically proceeds from a fuzzy, hazy theory of society, does not clearly identify goals, and does not follow through with tasks, instead jumping from project to project in what a friend of mine has dubbed “fast food activism.”
The benefit of an all-or-nothing approach is that it gets results. The downside is that you have to maintain a kind of tunnel vision while working on a project in order to avoid getting distracted. Because of this, it’s important to reflect on your organizing every now and then, measuring your accomplishments against your goals, aligning tactics with strategy, and strategy with principles, and make adjustments if necessary.
I’m at such a point with workplace organizing. I am committing to at least another solid year of organizing, so I’d like to make sure I’m on the right path. I am reconsidering my basic assumptions and retracing my steps.
The goal has always been to abolish capitalism instituting some form of workers democracy. This means building organizations that are capable and willing to:
1) Take over production on a global scale
2) Defeat the reaction of the possessing classes
I am not sure that workplace organizing in and of itself is capable of reaching these two goals. In workplace organizing, you build a struggle against the boss with your coworker. The idea is that participation in the struggle builds the organization, which can then take on bigger fights with a broader section of the class. The growth of the mass organization is supposed to lead to a dual power situation, with higher and higher levels of conflict between the working class and the capitalist class, culminating in some sort of final battle.
Here’s my concern. In most struggles, “victory” is attained through some sort of compromise. The working class agrees to give up the factory occupation, go back to work, or take down the barricades in exchange for some kind of “recognition” and a set of concessions. We decide to allow capitalism to go on existing in exchange for some benefits. If we didn’t do this, the capitalist class would literally wipe us out. Historically, this has been the fate of almost every single working class insurrection. Those that have triumphed, avoiding bloody liquidation, have had to confront the same choice- defeat, or some degree of accommodation to the existing system and a partial victory.
The dilemma is this: how do we win fights, make gains, and force settlements with the bosses within the trajectory of an escalating cycle of struggle? This question can be summed up as: how do we move from the workplace struggle to the struggle against the capitalist class as a whole for the possession of the means of production and destruction of the capitalist state?
It seems to me that in most cases historically, workers have overthrown the government only as a defensive measure against fascist attacks on their gains. Ofte, these gains were won through direct action.
Here’s the problem. In the current conjuncture- the capitalist class either grants an immediate concession and incorporates resistance into its structure, or moves to totally destroy radical opposition. As anarchist communist revolutionaries, we have no way out. It is basically impossible to prepare for revolution, building through gains, and remain revolutionary.
This topic has been dealt with in some depth by Brighton SolFed and others. I don’t have the answer, but at this point, I’m partial to a strategy that rests on building up small groups of militants, increasing the frequency and intensity of struggle, the strength of network of resistance, while not relying on formal recognition of any kind. This is a highly “cultural” strategy, but would also involve formal organization. This seems to be the only way to build power while avoiding the twin dangers of repression and cooptation. We need to build a vast, global network of class war militants, active in real direct struggle against the ruling class and actively building the organs of revolutionary proletarian dual power.
So basically- let’s start some fights. And build an organization to unite the militants who start those fights, and are developed through them. At this point- the development of militants in the struggle is far more important than where those struggles occur.
Filed under: Analysis | Tags: industrial unionism, Military, Organizing, Unions, War
When the IWW was founded in 1905, there was no “public sector.” Few countries had advanced government bureaucracies which employed large numbers of workers. And while state militaries were large, there was nothing that approached the scope of the military industrial complex we know today. Since 1905, we have been through two world wars, countless imperialist “local” wars, a Great Depression, many revolutions, the growth and collapse of “socialist” state capitalism, many minor recessions, and the growth of a wide range of new sectors of production. Capitalism has undergone serious changes since 1905, even as the fundamental exploitation workers by bosses has remained a constant.
Most of these changes have been brought about as concessions to or as an attempt to coopt or displace workers struggle, or as an attempt to ‘smooth out’ the dynamics of capitalism’s boom-and-bust cycles . The main strategies employed by capitalism to overcome its tendency toward crisis has been to regulate the market through state intervention. Since World War II, the state intervenes in the economy primarily through military expenditures. Sometimes war industry spending is termed “priming the pump” of the economy, as economists think that pumping goverment dollars into the military industries will eventually lead to a “trickle down” to other sectors of the economy. The result is that the United States government spends over 50% of its budget on the military. The war industries are such a large part of the economy, and carry so much weight in government spending priorities, that people speak of a “military-industrial complex,” the union of the military with its contributing industries as a political force for militarism and imperialism.
Importantly, the military is used to regulate the labor market as well, with many low-wage workers enticed into military service by promises of a steady paycheck and job training. This dynamic is likely to become more pronounced as the current economic crisis intensifies and unemployment rises. The result is that the armed forces, at least in the United States, are a mercenary army of the poor.
Military spending contributes to another “solution” to capitalist crisis as well. The capitalist state uses its military to ensure the stability of a global supply chain and global market, extending from oil fields, mines, farms, and factories to consumer markets across the world. When workers in a particular state become sufficiently restive, other states offer them military assistance to put down the revolt, or overthrow the newly established government, or simply begin doing business with the new national liberation bosses the same way they did business with the old colonial bosses.
Ironically, the “mercenary army of the poor” is used to crush revolts which could lead to the emancipation of these very same poor mercenaries.
The military is a central structure of global capitalism. Military production dominates the “civilian” economy and is used to regulate cycles of production and consumption. Military domination of the planet by capitalist forces is the last line of defense the bosses have against the workers revolution. And workers increasingly turn to the military as a career option as the capitalist economy slides into crisis, short-circuiting the potential of a workers movement. Without a stable military-industrial complex, global capitalism would collapse.
Serious revolutionaries should consider this fact carefully. The stability of global capitalism depends on a mercenary army of the poor and on a massive armaments industry.
What would happend if the technique of revolutionary industrial unionism was applied to the war industries? What if soldiers on the front lines organized against their officers commanding them to fight, and built solidarity with the workers in the factories producing their weapons? What would happen if soldiers built solidarity across battlelines, uniting with their rank-and-file opponents against a common class enemy?
Filed under: Analysis | Tags: Capitalism, Class Struggle, Organization, Proletariat, Working Class
I’ve been slowly reading up on the history of the workers movement. I’m going chronologically, digging from the past to the present. I feel a bit like an archaeologist, unearthing the bones of terrifying beasts that roamed the earth during high points of workers struggle- the mixed locals of the Knights of Labor, the flying pickets of 1934, the Soviet, Soldiers and Workers Councils, the Commune, the Red Army of the Ruhrgebiet, the list goes on. All that is left of these proletarian monsters is their fossilized remains, crystallized in the amber of history books and buried in the tar of arcane dissertations. But are these creatures extinct? Or do their distant descendants continue to walk the earth, evolved, and perhaps transformed or even tamed by additional decades of struggle?
In reading about the forms of organization created by workers in moments of upheaval, I can’t help but notice certain organizational features that keep recurring, like a return of the repressed, whenever the proletarian movement is at its most dynamic.
What are these features that arise again and again in the class struggle, these weapons that the working class reaches for instinctively in its combat with the class enemy? First, from the Mixed Locals on down through the IWW and on to the Soviets and the alternative unions of the 1930s, we see that revolutionary workers tend to build organizations open to everyone in the class, unrestricted by trade, craft, nationality, and in their better moments inclusive of all genders. Revolutionary workers tend to favor direct action, establishing new standards of rationality based on their own class viewpoint, rejecting the property rights of the bourgeoisie. Revolutionary workers’ organizations are based on direct democracy, rather than representative democracy. Those who do are those who decide.
Taken together, these three elements are formidable weapons in the hands of the organized army of production. The bourgeoisie never hesitates to disarm the proletariat of these potent weapons as soon as the opportunity for a counterattack arises, seeking to co-opt the movement by demanding to negotiate with representatives, establishing compromises and agreements with certain sections of the class to break up class solidarity, and seeking to channel workers’ activity into bureaucratic, legalistic channels.
It is the task of class conscious workers in our own period to re-arm the proletariat with ideas for struggle and rebuild the army of production through a patient, careful work of organization. As we organize, we should draw upon the best traditions of the past, building direct-democratic, direct-action, class-wide organizations to carry on the revolutionary struggle against the capitalist class.
Maybe then, wild beasts of workers struggle will once again roam the earth.
Filed under: Books | Tags: Glaberman, Gramsci, Lenin, Lynd, Organic Intellectuals, Weir
A review of “Punching Out” by Marty Glaberman, “Singlejack Solidarity” by Stan Weir, and “Wobblies and Zapatistas” by Staughton Lynd and Andrej Grubacic.
“Politics is millions.” So says Comrade Lenin. And for once, I agree with Lenin. Politics begins not with hundreds, not with thousands of people but with millions. Trotsky continues, in his history of the Russian revolution, that revolutions occur when the broad masses, those whose day-to-day lives normally serve only as the backdrop for the “historic” actions of the actors of the ruling classes finally step into the light, upstaging the bourgeoisie and becoming the protagonists of the drama of the class struggle.
But are the lives of the ‘broad masses’ any less important during non-revolutionary periods when the working class remains taken for granted, in the shadows? Of course not. Because it is during these times of apparent calm that conditions ripen for the next upheaval, perhaps in fact for the final struggle.
Of course, the revolution has not happened yet. We still live under the rule of the capitalist class, and history, written by the victors, leaves untold the story of the working class in its periods of subjugation. Thus, the narrative of class struggle is, as the Haymarket Martyrs said, “a subterranean fire” bursting only occasionally onto the pages of capitalist history during open confrontations between the proletariat and bourgeoisie, but otherwise remaining underground- feared but unseen.
To the casual observer, these episodic confrontations- the uprisings of 1848, 1871, 1886, 1905, 1917, 1934… and so forth, seem spasmodic and perhaps unconnected. It is only through an intimate and first-hand knowledge of the life of our class and the counterinsurgency operation capital has put into effect to keep us down that we can understand the “inner connection” between these events and base our actions as revolutionaries not only on a dogmatic commitment to equality and justice, but an understanding of the forces that move millions.
It is for this reason that the writings of Marty Glaberman, Stan Weir, and to an extent, Staughton Lynd are so important.
Glabermand and Weir are what Gramsci would call “organic intellectuals.” They were rank-and-file workers who participated in wildcat strikes, as well as much more mundane aspects of working class life. They became politicized through these experiences and wrote about them in “Punching Out” and “Singlejack Solidarity.” Both of these books are a treasure trove of stories of everyday resistance, and also loss, in the auto factories, steel mills, and dockyards of mid Twentieth century capitalism.
Glaberman and Weir drew astonishing conclusions from their participation in struggle at a rank-and-file level in their workplaces. Entering the workplace either during or slightly after World War II, they saw the gains made by mass working class direct action in the 1930s be co-opted into the bureaucratic structures of the CIO and other business unions. They developed a sharp critique of the no-strike clause, mandatory grievance procedures, and other embryonic forms of contemporary business unionism. While they were witness to this tragedy of co-optation and disorganization of the working class, they also watched a new wave of revolt wash over the factories in the form of the League of Revolutionary Black Workers and other revolutionary union movements. For Glaberman and Weir, these new formations were merely new manifestations of the creativity and unending resistance they saw in their class comrades everywhere around them every day on the job.
In his book of interviews with widely-respected Balkan Anarchist Andrej Grubacic, Staughton Lynd pays homage to the tradition of working class autonomy and struggle the Glaberman and Weir were part of. But Lynd, as a lawyer and a Quaker, participated in the movement from a different vantage point. He has many inspiring things to say, but it is clear that his admirable commitment to the workers struggle is not based on the fact that his life in the existing society is intolerable, but rather on an abstract moral value system which finds capitalism unnacceptable. He “accompanies” the workers, but he is not in the class in the same sense as Glaberman and Weir. With Staughton Lynd, the tradition of Workerism breaks. Perhaps in this rupture we can see a manifestation and a cause of the isolation of America radicalism from the US working class.
I would argue that it is only through participation in working class life, in solidarity with those who toil alongside us whatever their social or political views may be, that we will be able to participate meaningfully as self-described revolutionaries in a revolutionary movement. If we do not stand alongside our sisters and brothers in the class, then we will either stand in front of them as Leninists, impeding their path, or behind them, useless in the struggle.
We need to look to the example of Marty Glaberman and Stan Weir to understand how to participate respectfully alongside other rank-and-filers of our class in the fight against the bosses and the bureaucrats. Their example is not perfect. They were both men, and hence, their perspective is limited to the fight against capital by waged workers in male-dominated workplaces. They were both white, so they don’t have a full understanding of the role of racism in capitalist society. But there are a many lessons we can draw from their experience, a tradition of rank-and-file participation, which can contribute to the development of a new Workerism, a theory of social struggle based in confidence in the ability of regular working people to re-make the world.
Perhaps, with such a theory in hand those of us who have come to our convictions primarily through books and ideas will be able to participate meaningfully in the real movement, the struggle against the bosses that millions of our class comrades engage in every single day.
Filed under: Analysis,Random Shit | Tags: Bosses, Capitalism, Class Struggle, Work, Workers
If you read stuff about the 1970s and 80s, there is a lot of talk about the “bosses’ offensive,” an aggressive attack on workers movements by capital.
A friend of mine from Italy told me that in 1977, the bosses and pro-boss workers (we call these people ‘scissorbills,’ because their words cut you) staged a march of several thousand people in opposition to the continued wildcat strikes, sabotage, and occasional kneecapping, kidnapping, or assassination of bosses in the plants of northern Italy. This action was sufficient to change the climate and turn the cultural tide against the workers’ insurgency.
In my own workplace, we have seen an ebb and flow of class struggle on a micro-level. Initially, when the union went public, the boss was so afraid of us that he would sneak in and out the back door of the store without us knowing. We actually had a hard time planning actions because we could never find the boss to make demands.
The company replaced our boss with a new, more authoritarian manager. She set about breaking the union. Many of our fellow workers quit of their own volition before the union-busting really started, so we were already weak when the boss went on the offensive against us.
How did our new boss attack us? The same way we attacked our boss. She picked a winnable issue- something that we cared about but that we would be unable to defend. An issue that would isolate us from our coworkers, where we would not have “common sense” or the moral high ground behind us. In this case, it was the day-old sandwiches. We used to keep the sandwiches we didn’t sell at the end of the night for the workers who would come in the next day to have for lunch. Since we’re all so damn poor, this small gesture of solidarity meant a lot- it saved us money, and sometimes meant we got to eat when we would otherwise miss a meal.
The boss took away our sandwiches and put a note in the back room instructing us that we were no longer allowed to keep the sandwiches.
We were outraged. She was taking food out of our mouths. Immediately, two workers confronted the boss and demanded we be able to keep the sandwiches, explaining how important it was to us, how we didn’t make enough money to buy lunch every day, and how upset all the other workers would be.
The boss had prepared an answer in advance. She said it was against health code to keep the sandwiches, and that her boss would not allow it. We went back and forth a bunch of times to no avail.
The next day, I packaged up the sandwiches and put them in a stapled-shut bag, labeling it for a coworker who worked the next morning. He got the sandwiches and shared them with others on his shift. This was a direct action, directly contradicting the boss’ wishes.
I got called in the back room the next day. I was informed that if I did this again, I would be written up. Two writeups and I would be fired.
What could we do? We could do another march on the boss. A strike? A picket? A phone-in? We couldn’t figure out how to escalate. Our coworkers were not comfortable openly disobeying the boss, especially with the legitimacy of “health code” behind her.
Our boss won. We lost the sandwiches. We did not have the organization we needed to defend ourselves.
This was the first defensive battle of a long retreat. Once you lose once, the effect can be devastating. People lose confidence in their ability to win and your organization crumbles. The boss gets increasingly brazen in their attacks.
But their brazenness generates agitation. You might have to bide your time, but eventually, the time will be ripe for a counterattack. It’s important to understand this dynamic in order to be able to beat back the bosses’ offensive, but also to be able to take the occasional loss in stride, pick our battles, and stay on the offensive more effectively.
Filed under: Analysis,Random Shit | Tags: Bosses, Capitalism, Culture, Gender, Media, Work
For most of my life, I’ve felt that men and women were different. Women like to do certain things and men like to do certain things. I felt like this had something to do with the special character of men and women. It seemed to be true because in fact, most of the men and women I know conform to these basic stereotypes. Growing up, I was told that it was OK to break with these stereotypes because, frankly, it wasn’t a big deal and it doesn’t hurt anyone if some men love other other men and act feminine, or some women love other women and/or act masculine. But the categories remained intact, despite the acceptability of some deviations.
It seemed like there was a natural way for the majority of both sexes of act.
I started working at a multinational clothing retailer recently. I only work a few days, mostly nights. Actually, I’ve probably been fired because I haven’t been scheduled to work in the last two weeks because I called in sick too much because I work too much because none of my jobs pay enough so I work too many hours.
Anyway…
Most of the time at this job all I do is fold clothes. Somethings I work in the early morning unpacking new shipments of clothes and putting them on the sales floor.
I mostly work on womens’ floor, because womens’ clothing sells much more than mens’. There is more work to do because women buy way more clothes than men do. Maybe they’ve got something to sell, too.
One day I focused the lights on both floors. The boss told me to focus the lights on certain things in order of priority 1) Visuals (this means mannequins that are set up by the “visual team”- a labor aristocracy of workers who set up mannequins while the mass workers fold clothes) 2) Marketing- there are giant blow-up photos of women and men wearing the clothes we are selling. The womens’ floor has pictures of all women. The mens floor has pictures of all men. 3) Product- piles of shirts and jeans. This was the order of priority for what the corporation wanted customers to notice.
The company I work for launched a marketing campaign to market womens clothes to women and mens clothes to men. They bought ads on TV and on Facebook.
People came streaming into the store to buy the products. Men bought the mens clothes. Women bought the womens clothes.
Would anyone know what was right for women and men if the corporations didn’t tell us? I doubt it.
Corporate America controls the media. The media produces the common sense of our society- our idea of what is right and what is wrong. In our own time, the means of production also includes the means of producing culture. The corporati0ns produce our sense of self-hood through control of culture. They tell us what is right for women and men. Without the perpetuation of the gender binary by corporate america, people would likely find expressions of their sexuality much more comfortable than those given to us by the bosses.
Which makes me wonder- why are they so invested in producing men and women?
I don’t know the answer to that question, but I do know that until workers control the means of production, the bosses will control our most basic emotions about what it means to be a man, a woman, and to be human.
Filed under: Analysis | Tags: Alienation, Lenin, Organizing, Revolution, Social Factory, Technology, the State, Unions, Work
I have four jobs- two in the fast food industry, one in a large multinational clothing retailer, and another as a substitute teacher. On my way to work today, I was thinking about the different flavors of alienation I have to look forward to. First, I will have to “manage” classrooms of children for eight hours. I have to follow a lesson plan set out by another teacher and approved by the state. But despite the drawbacks, teaching will be the easiestand best-paying job I will do all week. I will get several breaks, including a full paid hour for lunch. I can use the computer while at work. In fact, I’m writing this while on the clock right now.
After my day of substitute teaching, I’ll head to a fast food restaurant for a second full shift. At the restaurant, I’ll work on an assembly line, closely monitored and supervised by management, unable to answer my phone and confined to a ten-sq. foot area for eight hours. I will be physically and emotionally exhausted by the time I get home at the end of the day.
It seems to me that each of these types of work will give rise to different kinds of demands stemming from the particular nature of the alienation workers in each industry confront. Fast food workers are alienated at an intellectual level and a physical level. We have to produce emotion and feeling on the demand for customers. In addition, our bodies are put to work, our motions Taylorized down to the last twitch.
Teachers face a much more subtle alienation. Teachers are forced to “teach to tests” and stick to state-sanctioned curriculum. They are alienated from the students they teach, who confront them as alien objects that must be controlled and somehow brought to reproduce state-sanctioned knowledge. The alienation of teachers is primarily at an intellectual level.
Lenin claimed that socialist consciousness would have to come to the working class from outside because workers would only be able to advance to “trade union” consciousness, making “economistic” demands on their own. However, I think there is a tendency for the demands of workers to become more inherently “political” and less “economistic” as capitalism advances. How can a teacher make a demand without calling into question the legitimacy of the state’s plan?
I believe all workers should organize. However, I think it is worth noting that as workers refuse to perform the most alienating types of labor or as technology makes these jobs obsolete, most workers will face circumstances that are alienating on a more intellectual than physical level. As capitalism advances, every demand will be a demand for workers power, since every demand will be a refusal of capital’s right to manage the social factory. Similarly, as capitalism seeks to manage its crisis, the power of the state has become increasingly interwoven with the power of the bosses on the shop floor. The economic has become political, the political has become economic. Lenin is obsolete.
