You're all a bunch of Bourgeois!

[Reaganista]

http://www.etext.org/Politics/MIM/art/animation/wwc.html

There is no proletarian class in the first world!

[Against Miik!]

How can you listen to that? I would comment, much to your dismay, but I can't really understand whats being said.

[Danish]

Wow.

I half agree with that. The working class in the Global South has clearly become akin to the proletariat that toiled in North America and Europe until the 1940s, but that doesn't mean there is no working class left here. The shift from a manufacturing-based economy to a service-based economy has had a heavy impact on the working class in the North. We are facing major regression, an onslaught from the ruling class. Because the working class here is become increasingly poor, we are forced to buy goods produced in the South for ridiculously low wages because they are cheap. This is what's refered to as "the race for the bottom."

Nevertheless, whoever came up with that animation has very little understanding of a Marxist class analysis. Anyone that sells their labour and doesn't own capital is proletarian.

[Reaganista]

Anyone that sells their labour and doesn't own capital is proletarian.

He says as he drives his gold plated Escalade to his summer home.

[dislocated214]

The people that work white-collar jobs are still working class people (proleterians). They have bosses. In the Marxist sense, as Danish said, anyone that sells their own labor to someone else and doesn't own their means of production (computers, hammers, etc) are proleterians.

But how do you define the working class today? There are still many who fit the categories traditionally thought of as the workers. But what of the millions of white collar employees whose tools are computers and telephones? What of the millions of service workers, mostly women, whose output can't be measured in so many yards of cloth or tons of steel? What about the millions of men and women behind bars, many of them producing profits for the prison-industrial complex?

Yes, they are all part of the working class, and what they do contributes to the overall social product.

You can't put just one face on the working class of today. It is as diverse as the population of this country. In recent years, women and people of color have joined the work force in great numbers, changing forever the idea of what labor looks like.

Generally, these workers are more exploited and they bring with them a greater eagerness to organize. The most successful organizing drives of the union movement in recent years have been in industries with lots of underpaid women--most of them Black and Latina.

Nevertheless, all workers, be they women or men, gay or straight, living in small towns or cities, have some things in common. They don't own the plants, stores or offices where they work. They live from wages, not from dividends or interest or any other token of ownership.

And, in most cases, the work they do gives value to something that's for sale. The process of production is so broken up into tiny segments today that often it's hard to see what each worker contributes to the final product. But whatever is required in the process--from sweeping the floor to parking the boss's limo--is ultimately factored in to the value of something to be sold: a commodity.

Marx looked very carefully at commodities and at the relations between worker and boss in the production process. What he discovered about the system of capitalism and its tendency to drive down workers' wages is of the greatest interest to all workers.

http://www.workersworld.net/wwp/article_23.shtml

[nowhesingsnowhesobs]

office temps - the damned of the earth

anyone remember when danish said that the paris riots were class war?

[dislocated214]

The paris riots were more like immigrants getting really fucking mad when they saw the white French being treated like royalty and themselves getting treated like shit. I have a French friend who said that the Muslim/African immigrants that live in Paris live in separate districts from the white French and their neighborhood schools suck and homes, etc.

[Reaganista]

The people that work white-collar jobs are still working class people (proleterians).

like bigshot murderer lawyers who sit by their pools eichmanning the third world to death but just haven't made full-partner yet?

sorry, no, those people are not oppressed.

[nowhesingsnowhesobs]

No I meant the middle class students getting upset about the possibility of not having a job for life

[Reaganista]

The paris riots were more like immigrants getting really ****ing mad when they saw the white French being treated like royalty and themselves getting treated like ****. I have a French friend who said that the Muslim/African immigrants that live in Paris live in separate districts from the white French and their neighborhood schools suck and homes, etc.

Washington DC

You're unfamiliar with this?

this is the story of Africans all throughout kanada and amerika, read the origin of urban crisis.

[dislocated214]

Originally Posted by The Tway

You're unfamiliar with this?

this is the story of Africans all throughout kanada and amerika, read the origin of urban crisis.

When did I say that I was unfamiliar with it?

[mx]

Marxism as a valid theory died in the 20th century. History is not formulaic. And I could care less about my class.

[Reaganista]

that's a ridiculous thing to say, capital has only become more and more dominating over the world's people in the intervening 6 years

When did I say that I was unfamiliar with it?

You acted as though the situation in paris was different from the reality that Africans face in every single Amerikan city

[dislocated214]

Originally Posted by The Tway

like bigshot murderer lawyers who sit by their pools eichmanning the third world to death but just haven't made full-partner yet?

sorry, no, those people are not oppressed.

I think I'm pretty sure that the third world proleterians are "more" opressed then the first world proleterians. But I mean look at the middle-class and mortgage rates. Especially in my area, Northern Virginia and DC mortgage rates are skyrocketing. Even the middle-class is struggling to hold two jobs and make ends meet.

Back to my Marxist self:
We are waiting for the third world to kick the shit out of imperialism there. But they are also waiting for us to kick the **** out of it here.

[/endmarx]

Originally Posted by The Tway

that's a ridiculous thing to say, capital has only become more and more dominating over the world's people in the intervening 6 years



You acted as though the situation in paris was different from the reality that Africans face in every single Amerikan city

Maybe thats how I came off. Oh gawd I hate the capitalist internet opressing me and not letting Tway understand who I truly am.

[dislocated214]

Originally Posted by mx

Marxism as a valid theory died in the 20th century. History is not formulaic. And I could care less about my class.

How is history not dialectical?

[mx]

I can't speak for all historians, but as an Honors History student at an Ivy League University I can say, very strongly, that Marxism is very, very out of fashion. Viewing history as a scientific progress ignores the fact that humanity is comprised of individuals, not classes, who act on free will and sometimes, almost understandably. What I want is not necessarily what my neighbor wants. History is a continuous, not a process.

[Reaganista]

I think I'm pretty sure that the third world proleterians are "more" opressed then the first world proleterians. But I mean look at the middle-class and mortgage rates. Especially in my area, Northern Virginia and DC mortgage rates are skyrocketing. Even the middle-class is struggling to hold two jobs and make ends meet.

omg you might not get to buy a new car and take a trip to cabo this year!

HORROR OF HORRORS!

Back to my Marxist self:
We are waiting for the third world to kick the **** out of imperialism there. But they are also waiting for us to kick the **** out of it here.

and a fat lot of good the blue collar slob amerikans do by buying everything they can from wal-mart at super-low rape of asia, africa and south america discount prices. if you shop at these places you're just as murderous as the politicians who further their goals and the people who own them. (the companies and the politicians)

[Hababi]

How is history not dialectical?

Marx claimed it was linear, yet individual society's moved into communism, then realized how terrible it was and moved backwards in Marx's dialectic, to capitalism. Thus destroying his dialectic.

[Reaganista]

I can't speak for all historians, but as an Honors History student at an Ivy League University I can say, very strongly, that Marxism is very, very out of fashion.

shocking that private institutions funded by private capital wouldn't teach you how said private capital is ruining the earth for everyone but first world eichmans.

[mx]

and a fat lot of good the blue collar slob amerikans do by buying everything they can from wal-mart at super-low rape of asia, africa and south america discount prices. if you shop at these places you're just as murderous as the politicians who further their goals and the people who own them. (the companies and the politicians)

Some people can't afford to make political statements when they go to stores. They buy from Walmart because it is cheap, simple. And they are not bad people for doing so.