neo-Marxists and their dream of a 19th Century working class revolution
In my free-range reading about politics on the Internet I repeatedly stumble across neo-Marxists who sound like they're still stuck in the 19th Century, dreaming of a working class revolution, opposing "bourgeois political parties", without spending a single thought on all the ways in which the working class has changed over the past 150 years. Growing general prosperity in the "first world" has accompanied a huge differentiation in the circumstances, pay, and benefits of those who work for a living. There's been a great expansion in professional and managerial positions and benefits like health insurance and 401(k) plans. Even within the non-managerial set of workers, the average hourly wage has never been this much higher than the federal minimum wage.
Among the 150 million of us who work for a living in the US, there's never been a more unequal distribution of wages, salaries, and benefits.
This has led to a fracturing of the working class in the first world, we sort ourselves into different neighborhoods, different affinity groups, different identities. You might dream of the working class organizing itself to topple the bourgeoisie, but many of those who work for a living also invest in stocks, own real estate, or run their own business on the side. Roughly half of workers in the US have tax-deferred retirement accounts that tend to invest in the stock market.
I work as a manager in a union shop, but most of our union members are attorneys who make over $100,000 per year. Probably not who you think of when you think "working class".
So our journalists and politicians have created a new, yet imperfect, proxy for the first world working class -- people who do not have college degrees. And, we're finding in the US that more and more of these "working class" folks are voting Republican, which is a party of tax cuts for the wealthy and hostility to unions. Similar trends are occurring in many European countries, those who have less education and therefore less earning power are voting for right-wing parties more often than before.
From a global perspective, much of the working class has been exported to other, less economically advantaged countries. To speak of the working class in the US or Europe is to ignore the greater portion of the working class who live and toil in other countries for much lower wages and see the fruits of their labor exported in exchange for surplus US Dollars or British Pounds.
So, not only is the working class divided within the first world countries, they are divided among the rest of the world's countries.
To presume some sort of anti-bourgeois unity among the world's 5 billion workers across 200 countries requires a stupendous lack of imagination.
It's why I don't use much of the language used by neo-Marxists. I feel they're stuck in the past.
There's also the additional layer of environmentalism, which didn't exist to the same extent in the 19th Century, we didn't realize how our industrialization -- whether capitalist or socialist in process -- would begin destroying the global environment.
All this is why I use what I consider very simple language in my utopian politics of global green communism. We limit global production to what is ecologically sustainable, and we distribute that production fairly. I don't require a proletarian revolution against the bourgeousie. But I'm not sure what I require, exactly. Some sort of global democracy that gives people the opportunity to choose this kind of limitation and distribution. Yet, I'm pessimistic that people would choose what I'm selling, even if they had the opportunity. But I guess I want that choice to be explicit, informed, and consensual. You had the choice to save the planet and share its output fairly, but you chose something else.
Perhaps that's why I'm sticking with the Green Party right now even as the Democrats are cratering. Perhaps I'm tired of the pretense of compromise as we proactively destroy the planet and allow a small group to hoard the destructive surplus.
I'd been reading what one neo-Marxist said about how he's anti-Left -- but of course he's also anti-Right -- he's mainly against the presentation of two choices, between a bourgeois Left and a bourgeois Right. He sees a third option, a Marxist option. And, yes, I see even more options. I agree, the Left-Right dichotomy has been used to blind us from our other, more radical options.
Neither I, nor the planet, has much time left for this bipartisan, nationalist game. But I still remain unsure how to stop playing it, really --> how to get the rest of you to stop playing it. But perhaps setting a good example is the only nonviolent way to proceed -- and organizing with those who might agree.
Among the 150 million of us who work for a living in the US, there's never been a more unequal distribution of wages, salaries, and benefits.
This has led to a fracturing of the working class in the first world, we sort ourselves into different neighborhoods, different affinity groups, different identities. You might dream of the working class organizing itself to topple the bourgeoisie, but many of those who work for a living also invest in stocks, own real estate, or run their own business on the side. Roughly half of workers in the US have tax-deferred retirement accounts that tend to invest in the stock market.
I work as a manager in a union shop, but most of our union members are attorneys who make over $100,000 per year. Probably not who you think of when you think "working class".
So our journalists and politicians have created a new, yet imperfect, proxy for the first world working class -- people who do not have college degrees. And, we're finding in the US that more and more of these "working class" folks are voting Republican, which is a party of tax cuts for the wealthy and hostility to unions. Similar trends are occurring in many European countries, those who have less education and therefore less earning power are voting for right-wing parties more often than before.
From a global perspective, much of the working class has been exported to other, less economically advantaged countries. To speak of the working class in the US or Europe is to ignore the greater portion of the working class who live and toil in other countries for much lower wages and see the fruits of their labor exported in exchange for surplus US Dollars or British Pounds.
So, not only is the working class divided within the first world countries, they are divided among the rest of the world's countries.
To presume some sort of anti-bourgeois unity among the world's 5 billion workers across 200 countries requires a stupendous lack of imagination.
It's why I don't use much of the language used by neo-Marxists. I feel they're stuck in the past.
There's also the additional layer of environmentalism, which didn't exist to the same extent in the 19th Century, we didn't realize how our industrialization -- whether capitalist or socialist in process -- would begin destroying the global environment.
All this is why I use what I consider very simple language in my utopian politics of global green communism. We limit global production to what is ecologically sustainable, and we distribute that production fairly. I don't require a proletarian revolution against the bourgeousie. But I'm not sure what I require, exactly. Some sort of global democracy that gives people the opportunity to choose this kind of limitation and distribution. Yet, I'm pessimistic that people would choose what I'm selling, even if they had the opportunity. But I guess I want that choice to be explicit, informed, and consensual. You had the choice to save the planet and share its output fairly, but you chose something else.
Perhaps that's why I'm sticking with the Green Party right now even as the Democrats are cratering. Perhaps I'm tired of the pretense of compromise as we proactively destroy the planet and allow a small group to hoard the destructive surplus.
I'd been reading what one neo-Marxist said about how he's anti-Left -- but of course he's also anti-Right -- he's mainly against the presentation of two choices, between a bourgeois Left and a bourgeois Right. He sees a third option, a Marxist option. And, yes, I see even more options. I agree, the Left-Right dichotomy has been used to blind us from our other, more radical options.
Neither I, nor the planet, has much time left for this bipartisan, nationalist game. But I still remain unsure how to stop playing it, really --> how to get the rest of you to stop playing it. But perhaps setting a good example is the only nonviolent way to proceed -- and organizing with those who might agree.