Wobbly times number 151

ON RADICAL LIBERALISM

Radical liberals are the non-revolutionary left. They sometimes call themselves Greens, labor, socialist, communist, anarchist or some ideological subset of human identity; but they never advocate for social revolution.  As a plus, many radical liberals advocate reforms of the system of wage labour which give some of the collective product of labour, including some labour time, back to the producers of the wealth of nations.  Sometimes radical liberals even advocate for national liberation.  Specifically though, radical liberals never advocate for a change in the mode of production and exchange. 

Marx and Engels were social revolutionaries who advocated the abolition of the wage system, common ownership of the collective product of labour and production of wealth for use, with its distribution based on need e.g. communism. The defining characteristics of a social revolution are rooted in a change in the mode of production and exchange. Radical liberals content themselves with advocating reforms of the rule of Capital; but never the total obliteration of Capital as a social relation. They typically advocate a fair wage system with social justice and usually call it, 'being realistic'. With their political pragmatism in hand, they barrack for good rulers to replace evil rulers and, never for a free association of producers, democratically managing the whole the collective product of labour. The self-described anarchists and Communists amongst them sometimes advocate for an equality of wages, not the abolition of the wage system. Some radical liberals calling themselves libertarian socialists advocate for worker owned cooperatives to replace corporations with the aim of restoring fairness and social justice to the marketplace for commodities through genuine competition between enterprises of wage-slaves engaged in self-management, not an end to commodity production and sale and distribution of socially owned use-values on the basis of need. 

Radical liberalism dominates political, social and cultural discourse on the left.  With their identity politics in hand, they dream of ending racism, sexism, ageism, classism etc. while promoting environmentalism to achieve social justice under the rule of Capital.  For radical liberals, changing the mode of production is an out dated way to approach social justice, one which smacks of bureaucratic State socialism.  

Radical liberals may talk of revolution; but they haven't got a clue about what a social revolution from class dominated to classless society would entail in terms of sublating the capitalist mode of production, although many of the more reactionary amongst them advocate a return to pre-capitalist modes of production.  Radical liberals do not realise that the commodity itself is the building block of class ruled society.  As history of human social relations has demonstrated, the commodity undermines any attempt to maintain equal political power between all men and women.  

""We all rail against class distinctions, but very few people seriously want to abolish them. Here you come upon the important fact that every revolutionary opinion draws part of its strength from a secret convictions that nothing can be changed....So long as it is merely wishing class-distinction away. More exactly, it is necessarily that nothing can be changed...So long as it is merely a question of ameliorating the worker's lot, every decent person is agreed...But unfortunately you get no further by wishing class distinction away. More exactly, it is necessarily to wish them away, but your wish has no efficacy unless you grasp what it involves. The fact that has got to be faced is that to abolish class distinctions means abolishing a part of yourself. Here I am. a typical member of the middle class. It is easy to say that I want to get rid of class distinctions, but nearly everything I think and do is a result of class distinctions...I have go to alter myself so completely that at the end I should hardly be recognizable as the same person." - George Orwell

Capital, the modern form of class rule, is founded on wage labour. What is necessary to abolish classes is the abolition of the foundation upon which they are produced. I don't think Orwell grasped this; but he was touching on a fundamental aspect of the radical liberals' angst vis a vis abolishing class rule i.e. their own position in the hire-archy of Capital. I mean, a liberal who is well paid for her labour power is reluctant to embrace the notion that all labour is interdependent in the creation of wealth. Without the garbage man, the surgeon cannot find a clean hospital to do her work. But the surgeon is loathe to embrace the notion that quantity of her hours of labour should draw the same amount from society's collectively produced wealth as the garbage man's.

"Political economy--despite its worldly and wanton appearance--is a
true moral science, the most moral of all the sciences. Self-denial,
the denial of life and of all human needs, is its cardinal doctrine.
The less you eat, drink and read books; the less you go to the
theatre, the dance-hall, the public-house; the less you think, love,
theorize, sing, paint, fence, etc, the more you save--the greater
becomes your treasure which neither moths nor dust will devour--your
capital. The less you are, the more you have; the less you express
your own life, the greater is your alienated life--the greater is the
store of your estranged being."
(Karl Marx, Economic and Philosophical Manuscripts of 1844)

Social justice will never be achieved under the rule of Capital.  Capital is inherently a system of generalised commodity production with unequal political power between men and women of differing classes and even within those classes, as individuals within classes are stratified with varying dynamics of dominance and submission.  Social justice means equal political power between ALL men and women or it remains an meaningless abstraction.  Thus, the search for social justice via radical liberalism remains a mirage, an echo from the last stages of philosophical Idealism, the epoch of the revolutionary bourgeoisie.      

Wobbly times number 150

On progressive nationalism

"The right of self-determination means that a nation may arrange its life in the way it wishes. It has the right to arrange its life on the basis of autonomy. It has the right to enter into federal relations with other nations. It has the right to complete secession. Nations are sovereign, and all nations have equal rights."  Stalin, Marxism and the National Question

To speak or write about 'nations' doing this or that or having rights is a prime example of reification.  Stalin was a revolutionary social democrat in 1913 when he wrote the above and like Stalin, most social democrats of the time thought similarly about the right of national self-determination.  The ever growing move away from promoting class conscious praxis for the abolition of the wage system, toward what might be called 'progressive nationalism' on the eve of World War I, demonstrates how far the socialist workers' movement which Marx and Engels had been part of, had been coopted and folded into the dominant ideas of the capitalist epoch through reified thinking in general and political opportunism in particular.  

As Marx critically observed about reification in The Holy Family Chapter VI

"Once man is recognised as the essence, the basis of all human activity and situations, only 'Criticism' can invent new categories and transform man himself into a category and into the principle of a whole series of categories, as it is doing now. It is true that in so doing it takes the only road to salvation that has remained for frightened and persecuted theological inhumanity. History does nothing, it “possesses no immense wealth”, it “wages no battles”. It is man, real, living man who does all that, who possesses and fights; “history” is not, as it were, a person apart, using man as a means to achieve its own aims; history is nothing but the activity of man pursuing his aims."

Nationalism is the political movement of the capitalist class (aka the bourgeoisie) to achieve domination of the producing classes through the establishment of its own political State.  The conception of national sovereignty for the capitalist class develops within and emerges from the womb of feudalism, the system the bourgeoisie sublates via political revolution.  Under feudalism, political power is held by the aristocratic class and sovereignty is in the hands of a monarch, aka the sovereign.  Thus, the 'right of national self-determination' is the political program of those rulers in waiting who wish to impose the wage system on the majority, the working class.    

Colonialism grew out of aristocratic class rule and the well learned historical examples for the projections of class power presented by the Romans, Greeks, Egyptians, Sumerian etc. slave owning classes.  The primary difference between the ancient domination of slave producers within empires, from feudalistic empire building, was the ever growing wealth and consequent political power of the capitalist class, a class which began to seethe and chafe under aristocratic rule as its colonialist mercantilism expanded in historical tandem with the closing of the commons by aristocrats in search of private sources of wealth.  Privatisation by class ruled governments is hardly a new concept.  Henry VIII made vagabond (read 'unemployed) peasants criminals, having them hanged along the roadsides of his kingdom. However, the major political-economic consequence of the closing of the commons was the ever growing employment of displaced peasants as wage-labourers, the workers who created the product of their collective labour as commodities, owned by the employing class and made available in markets for sale with a view to profit.  In the West, this roiling, ever wealth accumulating capitalist class began to show its political face in alliance with the landlord class in parliamentary institutions. In the ideological sphere the decline of feudalism was marked by the gradual decline of feudalist legitimising religions e.g. in Europe, the Catholic Church and with that decline, the rise of the Protestant movement with its work ethic and the ever dominating ideology, bourgeois individualism.  "Dieu et mon droit" was dying.

Whether or not it is labeled 'progressive', nationalist ideology is based on the notion that the employers and the workers have class interests in common.  But within the inherently exploitive wage-system, exploiters and producers have no class interests in common: Buyers do not have interests in common with sellers when they come to the marketplace for commodities.  Anti-colonialist nationalism has been and is the struggle of nascent ruling classes to cement their sovereign rule over the producing classes of workers and peasants through the establishment of a political State.  While the establishment of a capitalist political State may liberate the bourgeois from domination by monarchists or faraway colonial ruling classes, it does nothing, in terms of promoting the emancipation of the workers from wage-slavery.  

"The emancipation of the working class must be the act of the workers themselves"   This was the principle on which the First International was based.  That principle is as true now as it was then.  The wage-system existed then and it exists now, even within political States labeled, 'socialist'.  

In order to emancipate themselves, the workers will have to abandon contemporary leftist mythologies concerning 'progressive nationalism', 'boring from within' the pro-capitalist trade unions and parties, as well as the absurdly conservative notion of, 'a fair day's wage for a fair day's work.'  Until they do, they will continue to spend their lives, as they spend their money, as wage-slaves, all equal under the law, in their own identities, democratically voting for bourgeois to lead them in government, while competing with each other for approval-votes from employers--because, as bourgeois ideology goes, the only way one can be free is if, some other one is un-free.  C'est la vie under the rule of Capital.    

Wobbly times number 149

WHAT SOCIALISTS ADVOCATE

"In short, the Communists everywhere support every revolutionary movement against the existing social and political order of things.

"In all these movements, they bring to the front, as the leading question in each, the property question, no matter what its degree of development at the time." Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

"At the same time, and quite apart from the general servitude involved in the wages system, the working class ought not to exaggerate to themselves the ultimate working of these everyday struggles. They ought not to forget that they are fighting with effects, but not with the causes of those effects; that they are retarding the downward movement, but not changing its direction; that they are applying palliatives, not curing the malady. They ought, therefore, not to be exclusively absorbed in these unavoidable guerilla fights incessantly springing up from the never ceasing encroachments of capital or changes of the market. They ought to understand that, with all the miseries it imposes upon them, the present system simultaneously engenders the material conditions and the social forms necessary for an economical reconstruction of society. Instead of the conservative motto: “A fair day's wage for a fair day's work!” they ought to inscribe on their banner the revolutionary watchword: “Abolition of the wages system!"" Marx, VALUE, PRICE AND PROFIT

"The Communists disdain to conceal their views and aims. They openly declare that their ends can be attained only by the forcible overthrow of all existing social conditions. Let the ruling classes tremble at a Communistic revolution. The proletarians have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win." Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO

"All previous historical movements were movements of minorities, or in the interest of minorities. The proletarian movement is the self-conscious, independent movement of the immense majority, in the interest of the immense majority." Marx and Engels, COMMUNIST MANIFESTO


"With the seizing of the means of production by society production of commodities is done away with, and, simultaneously, the mastery of the product over the producer. Anarchy in social production is replaced by systematic, definite organisation. The struggle for individual existence disappears."  Engels, ANTI-DURHING 

Wobbly times number 148

Long Black and  Flat White

The radio was always tuned to the Italian station at Conca’s.  A barrage of polysyllabic static emanated from the speaker. 

“Sounds like a soccer game?”

“Yayes”, the elder woman said.  “Is Italia?  What would you and the young lady desire this morning?”

“I don’t know.  What do you want Frances?  Hey, look there’s some meat,”I peered into the glassed in counter case, “ looks like good Italian sausage.”

“Yayes.  Is very good.” 

“I think I’ll just have the regular breakfast.” Frances said.

“You want a coffee or something to drink too?” the white haired woman asked.

“Yes.  I’ll have a long black and  a sport drink–one of the Red Bulls.”

I decided, “I’d like to have eggs and toast.”

“What?  You want no meat?”

“No.  I’d rather, just have—some potatoes, perhaps, instead.”

“We don’t have no potatoes, Signore.  How about, I give you extra egg and some pineapple and maybe a fried tomato?”

“Sounds great.” 

“Do you want a coffee or something too.”

“Yes.  I’ll have a flat white and bottle of that orange juice.”

“Ok.  You just go sit down; get your orange juice and Red Bool over there in the cooler and I bring everything else out.”

“Where do you want to sit, Tommy?”

“Here’s good.  Ok?”

“Fine.” 

“Can I get a paper too?”

“But of course, Signore.  That will be $14.50,” bells ringing as she pushed the cash register keys.

“Grazie.”

“Prego, prego, Signore.  Are you Canadian?”

“No; I’m an American.  I’m from San Francisco.”

Frances, her blond streaked hair bobbing, made her way to the cooler then smiling with her sly grin, brought our drinks back to the table.

“Bravo Signore.  Are you here on vacation?”

“Sort of.  I’ll be here for another five months or so.”

“I hope, you will enjoy yourself, Signore.”

“I’m sure. I will.  In fact; I already am.”

The  table itself was situated on the line which separated the light from the dark sections of Conca’s.  The Formica topped tables decorated with lilies, surviving miraculously without water.  In the darker corners of the café, a grey haired woman sat under a  old, framed movie poster depicting a broadly smiling fellow, in a yellow t-shirt with black gloves and a Texaco, gas- station -of- the- 50's kind of hat,  in,“Un Americano in Roma”, a Carlo Ponti production, her eyes glued to the coin operated computer screen as a middle aged man next to her (her son?) prompted her every move on the internet–instructional mode.  On another wall, a poster of James Dean walking down rain splattered streets of New York on the “Bolulevard of Broken Dreams”.   Other wall decorations had Humphrey Bogart, Clark Gable and a chewing gum advertisement for Wrigley’s written in German.  The pin ball machine’s hastily scrawled “Out of Order” sign, still there after weeks of these Sunday morning outings irritated me.

“Scheisse.  I thought, they’d have it fixed by now.”

“What’s that Tommy?”

“The damn pinball machine.  It’s been like that for weeks.”

“No worries, Tommy.  They’ll have it fixed soon,” Frances demurely replied.

Time, is what it was.  Time was going at another, slower speed now.  I was still in hyper-drive, but not “me mates”.  They hadn’t experienced the complete boot up of Silicon Valley ‘Chip Kultur’.  It was “hurry up and wait” there, taken to the nth degree of absurdity.  These people were still in the 60's or even 70's in terms of the killer pace.  I was just glad to be on the edge of the planet; out of the way in Western Australia; a rat out of the race, a winner, transforming himself back into a human.

“Babe; you know what I am?”

“No, what are you Tommy?”  Frances said as she put down the “Sunday Times”. 

“I’m a runaway slave; that’s what.  I’m a runaway slave.”

“That’s fine, Tommy.  Do you want some of the paper?”

“Yeah.  Hand me the sports section, will you, Beautiful?  I’m determined to learn what the hell is going on with this cricket game.  I mean they bounce the ball in front of the plate and all.  A mystery, a complete mystery.”

“Sure thing.” Frances said, as she peered over the business section and handed me the sports.

“Ah Signora.  Here you are.”  Granny Italiana said with a smile as the plate touched gently on the formica –a typical Australian breakfast of: sausage; ham; fried tomato; an egg, cooked sunny side up, plopped onto toasted white bread. 

 After setting Frances’ long black down she presented mine, “And for you Signore–is these ok?  You see; we have here a little pineapple too.  And a one flat white.” 

“I see.  Very good.  Looks great.  Grazie Signora.”

“Prego, Signore, prego.  Enjoy.” And with that she withdrew back into the kitchen; the heat of the recently lit pizza ovens and Italian conversation with another older woman; the two working, as they did every day at Conca’s; preparing  homemade pizza and breakfasts for their incoming retinue.

Stirring two packets of sugar into the thickened milk and then sipping, I relished the un-frothed, cappuccino like quality of my flat white.  As usual, the sunny side up egg had been placed directly on top of my toast.  I deftly moved it off and picked up the partially soggy tan bread in my hand.. 

“Quaint, how they do the egg ON the toast.”

“It’s the Australian way, dear.” Frances replied with her usual blended tone of sarcasm and irony.

 A hot breath of air blew through Conca’s open door. Outside, blinding white brightness splashed over a landscape of dry brown and green suburban lawns.  A Pizza Hut chain restaurant sat kitty corner cross the street, slowly sucking the Conca’s customer base away. A sun of 40 degrees centigrade burned down from a relentlessly clear, blue sky.  A man of about 45, breezed through the door and picked up one of the “Sunday Times” from the pile of those still for sale.  After perusing it for five minutes, he replaced it neatly on the stack, then, sauntered out again.  The grannies remained in the kitchen, oblivious to the man’s commercial violation.  Then the TV came on.  More soccer from bella Italia.  A teen, sans shirt with girlfriend in tow, arrived seeking shelter from the incessant sun.  Frances scooped up the last slab of egg white into her mouth, then fed her caffeine addiction once more with another sip of  Red Bull as the teen and his woman friend shared coke; she clad black on black: black shirt, pants, ankle high boots, rounded with silver studs.  They exited arm in arm  into a blaze of sunshine.

“She must sweat like a stuck pig in that outfit.”

“Excuse me?”  Frances questioned.

“I mean that woman in black.”

“I see.  Yes, she must.  Are you ready to go back now?”

“Yeah.”

“So long, Signoras” I called.

“Oh, you leaving now?”

“Yes.  We’ll be back though.  When do you start making pizzas?”

“We start now.”

“Already?  It’s only 11.”

“All day, ‘till night Signore.”

“Ok then, we’ll be back sometime for pizzas.”  We stepped out into gush of hot wind.

“You want to give me a massage when we get back?” Frances asked.

“Sounds a delightful proposition.” I smiled.

The car was at least 10 degrees hotter.  We hurriedly rolled the windows down; did a U-turn and made our way back down the Albany Highway and finally down King George Street to our upstairs apartment.  Frances took her clothes off and put a towel down over the Turkish rug.  I got the “Exstress” massage oil out of the refrigerator.

“Eureka!”

“What are you talking about now, Tommy?”

“That’s what’s written on the side of the oil bottle.  Advert gimmick.”

“Hmm.  You want to do the front or back first?”

“Front.”

“Ok, start with the top.”

I massaged her from her top, just below her chin, to the to bottom of her feet.  She turned over and I started immediately in the middle.

“WHAT ARE YA DOIN’.  GIVE ME...YOU GET OUT HERE.  GO!  GET OUT OF HERE!”

“Sounds like it’s coming from the next building.  Those people are always fighting.”

“Yeah.”  Frances said. 

Neither of us, I think, wanted especially to do anything or find anything out about what the cretins around us were doing, yet again.  It seemed like harmless lovers’ spats broke out between couples all the time in our neighbourhood–“Leetal Napoli”, I liked to call it.   But the noises persisted and began to sound a bit closer.  So, I reluctantly got up and peered out the small bathroom window, conveniently located head high.  Nothing to be seen across to the neighbours.  And as I listened more carefully, I determined that the disturbance seemed to be located within our own complex.

“What are you doing, Tommy?  Come back here and finish.”

“I don’t know, Frances.  It’s beginning to sound a bit weird.  Maybe, I better check outside.”

“Are you sure, Tommy?  Could be dangerous.”

The disturbance was getting louder now.  It seemed to have broken out of doors downstairs.

“I’m going down,” I said as I put my trousers back on.

“You be careful, Tommy.”

“Don’t worry.  Remember, we’ve been taking martial arts at Muay Thai.”

“Stop joking, Tommy.”

“Ok, no worries, Frances.” I said with mock confidence.

So, I proceeded outside the front screen door and down the cement stairs.  When I peered over the railing I saw.

“Give mih back ma knife.”  Scotty, our seventy year old downstairs neighbour was saying to a hefty black woman in her late thirties with a long kitchen dagger in her right hand, as they both lurched out of his apartment door; she moving backwards and he approaching her, hands up, with his absurdly demanding appeal.  The knife was in stabbing position.  That it to say, it was being held in her fist with the blade pointing downwards, ready to deliver the fatal blow.

“You get him away from me,” she said.

Then, I noticed the him, she was talking about, a short, puffy eyed black man, in his forties, I estimated.  He made gestures and grunting sounds then, he looked at me in partial shock and partial fear, whether of me or the knife wielding woman or both, I couldn’t ascertain.  He dropped  his half-filled  litre of Emu Bitter in the dead grass near the wall of Scotty’s apartment.

“Get AWAY FROM ME!” she screamed.  And the black man loped off, away and towards the nearby sidewalk, looking furtively over his shoulder as she continued to stare menacingly in his direction, then whirling back towards Scotty who repeated, “ I want ma knife back.”

“Scotty!”  I shouted.  “It’ ok.  Let her have the knife.”

She turned and noticed me then, breaking down in tears, “You call the police!  Call them!  Tell them to make him stop bothering me.  You do that now.  Do it now!”

“Ok, ok”, I said.  And I ran upstairs to phone.

“What’s the number of the police, Frances?  Do you have like a universal number here or something?”

“I don’t know.” she said.

“I’ll look them up in the phone book.  Lets see, yes, here,  police services.”

I pushed the numbers in and waited.

“Police or Fire or some other emergency.  How shall I direct your call?”  the voice at the other end of the line calmly asked.

“Hello.  This is police service.  What is the nature of the problem?”

“I’m an American.  I don’t know whether I’ve got the right number or not.  I haven’t been in Perth very long.  But the situation is that there’s a woman with a knife downstairs and she’s waving it around rather threateningly.  An old guy lives downstairs and he’s asking for his knife back.  And then there was this other guy...”

“Sir?”

“Yes?”

“Where do you live, sir?”

“I live at unit ten, 20 King George Street in Victoria Park.”

“What is the apartment number where the disturbance is taking place.?”

“It’s right below this one.  I ‘m not sure of correct number.  Do you want me to go down and look?”

“No.  That’s quite all right, Sir.  And your phone number?”

“9366-77, let’s see.  I’ve got it here somewhere.”

“9366-789 is it?”

“Yes, that’s it.  How did you know?”

“We’ll be sending someone right out.  Thank-you, Sir.”

 

By this time, Frances had put some clothes on and had  gone out to the balcony to check on the action outside.

“The woman is leaving now.” she said over her shoulder looking back through the screen door at me. “ She’s going down the sidewalk.”

  “ I hope the police don’t hang around all day.” I replied.  “ If it was the States, they’d be here for hours filling out reports and getting statements.” 

“Well, here they are, Tommy.  Quick enough for you?”

The cops came towards the apartment complex and knocked on door below our apartment. 

“Oh no.  It’s not that one,” I said out loud..  “They’re at the wrong apartment.” 

“Here they come upstairs.” Frances observed.

“Ah yes.  I’m the guy who phoned.  It’s apartment one, just down there.”

“What was happening?”  the cop asked as he looked at his partner. 

“Well, there was this guy down there, leaving.  I think that’s his beer bottle down there next to the building.”  I said in a rapid, nervous voice as I went out on the balcony and pointed  towards the Emu Bitter container.  “There’s an older guy who lives down in the apartment.  We heard loud noises coming from down there and so I went out to see what was happening.  When I did, I saw this woman with a knife coming out of the old guy’s apartment.  He was following her and then there was the other guy who sort of took off when he saw me.”

“They were aboriginals.”  Frances stated flatly.

The cops looked at each other, “We’ll go check now.  Thanks for your help.”

They went downstairs to Scotty’s door and knocked.  We heard their muffled voices, speaking with Scotty.  A motorcycle cop drove up outside as well.  And then, all three took off in their vehicles.

I decided to go back downstairs then. Scotty came out, when I did, “Ah, they tahride to steal ma mooney.  They always want that, they do. But I fooled ‘em.  They only got ten dollars from the table.  But Ah  fooled ‘em.”  And he pulled a wad of bills from the back of his shorts.  Scotty always wore shorts, his ultra tan spindly legs forever exposed to the West Australian sun.  “Yes, Ah fooled ‘em.” he said again and chuckled, continuing to wave his money in the air. “They didn’t want ma new toaster.  Hah, they didn’t want anything else.  Just mooney.  I knew them from my old apartment.  Yes, they used to come around there too.  He’s deaf, you know.  Can’t talk.  Oh, she always wants mooney.”

“Did you used to give them money?”

“Ah yes, I gave here some mooney.  Yes, they used to live next doohr to me in Perth before.  I used to live there, ya know.  Right down in the City.  Then that company came and mooved us ahll out.  They tore the building down, don’t ya know.  Made us ahll move out.”

“I see,” I said.  “Well, I guess, I’ll go back upstairs now.  Good that you’re ok.  You know, you should have just let her have that knife.”

“That was ma knife.”

“Yeah, I know.  Anyway, I’ll see you later.”  I said, trying now to escape back upstairs to Frances, massage and the good life, once again.

Noticing my intent, Scotty quickly turned the subject around, “Me brand new toaster won’t work; won’t plug in.  Me sister sent it.  Brand new and it won’t plug in.  Fooking Australians.  Maybe you can make it work, Tommy.  Won’t ya come in for minute and take a look.”

Why he thought, I could fix anything was beyond me.  But I agreed, “Ok, sure,” I said.

Scotty’s  place smelled a  musty mix of sour air.  It was sparsely furnished: a small TV; a couple of plastic chairs; a well worn couch; lamp with a frayed shade.   Clearly his brand new, shiny white toaster would be one of his few luxuries--quite possibly, his only one.  He handed it to me with great care..

“Looks like they moved the refrigerator.”  I observed as I took the toaster in hand.

“Oh yes.  There was a commotion, ah what a commotion.  They moved me fridge; thought they’d find mooney there behind it.  But, I fooled ‘em.  They only took $20.”  And he pulled the fat wad of bills from his back pocket once again, shaking them in my direction.

“So you actually knew these people before?”  I queried.

“Ah yes.  They used to live next to me in the City.  They’d come over and talk.  Sheah would talk. We watched TV.  I tried to keep here inside this time.  I went to the door and closed it and said, ‘Now you can’t leave.’ But I forgot,” he laughed and hit his forehead with his hand, “ it only lowcks from the outside.  She got right out.  Took me knife as well.”

“Here’s the problem,” I said as I removed the plastic shipping covers from the prongs of the toaster’s electrical plug.  “No wonder you couldn’t get it into the electrical socket.  The plug’s still got this thing on it.”

I plugged it in and pushed the toast lever down.  As the internal wires turned orange, he said, “Oh, oh, thank-ya.  Thank-ya.  Me eyes aren’t too good, don’t yah know.”

I looked at his eyes more closely this time.  His searching, grateful gaze came through  pale blue colour, clouded by a greyish haze.  Perhaps cataracts; perhaps glaucoma, I couldn’t tell.  It was obvious though that his sight was pretty severely impaired. 

“Won’t you stay and have some beer,” he offered. 

I saw, he was drinking Emu Bitter from litre sized bottles.

“Not right now, Scotty. It’s a bit early for me.  Besides, Frances is waiting for me upstairs.  Maybe later, huh.”

“Oh, oh, thanks for fixin’ me toaster.  It’s brand new, yah know. Me sister sent it to me.  They didn’t take it.  They didn’t want anything but some mooney.”

Wobbly times number 147

May Day 2012 in Fremantle,
Western Australia
Filmed by Mike Ballard, this is the main May Day union 
workers' march through Fremantle, Western Australia 
on May 6, 2012. The film begins at the beginning of the 
march near the Fremantle Esplanade and ends after the 
march with the workers sharing home made beer brewed
 in honour of an old Australian seaman and unionist by 
the name of Paddy.


Employers know enough to belong to a 'union'. It's called 
The Chamber of Commerce. Doctors know enough to belong 
to the AMA. There are plenty of corrupt, shonky operators 
out there amongst the employing class, in the political State 
and amongst professionals. Corruption goes along with wealth 
and power accumulating at the top of a hire-arky. Even Lord Acton 
knew that. The real reason workers should actively join in union is 
to present a more powerful face to their employers when it comes 
time to negotiate the price of their skills. Without unions, there is 
NO negotiation. Without unions, there will be no resistance to the 
constant downward pressure on real wages by the employing class. 
It's market economics 101 folks. Employers want lower prices for the
 skills they purchase and workers should be wise enough to bargain 
for a higher price, including working conditions. Social justice 
remains an empty abstraction without its being filled in with 
workers receiving back more of what they produce.

Wobbly times number 146

Michael R. Krätke - Why Could Max Not Complete Capital? from FastBodies on Vimeo.

I think Kraetke's assessment of the GRUNDRISSE is spot on. Marx wanted clarity and the GRUNDRISSE is Marx thinking in left Hegelian conceptual language.  The GRUNDRISSE was never meant for generalised publication.  I'd be wary though of distancing Marx too far from Hegel, as one can then miss the dialectical analyses which continue through CAPITAL and the THEORIES OF SURPLUS VALUE. The first chapter of the first volume of CAPITAL is a masterpiece; but if you can't discern the dialectical movement, the unity of opposites, the subject/object relationship, it may appear to be too difficult to grasp. I think this is what Lenin was getting at when he quipped that none of the Marxists had been able to grasp CAPITAL except in a very mechanical way...this was after his close reading of Hegel's LOGIC during his sojourn in Switzerland. Haw! But my critique of Lenin is that he didn't grasp the necessity for removing wage-labour from Soviet daily life. ;p I would be most interested in any expansion Marx made in his observations vis a vis the fetishism of commodities. I also find the general topic of fetishism which Kraetke indicates was of further interest to Marx fascinating.

The exploitation of the producers of wealth by the owning, ruling classes has been a world system since most of humanity left the classless hunting and gathering means of producing sustenance. Political States develop out of these producer/owner social relations. How to overcome exploitation inherent in class dominated societies and modes of production, this was the political project of communists like Marx, IMO.  Marx was able to develop his critique of political-economy as he learned more about how the complexities of the system operated historically and were developing as he was alive. Obviously, Marx didn't repudiate the labour theory of value; but he was becoming more aware of how the price of commodities was being manipulated into reflecting much more value than they had through the development of promissory notes via various forms of credit--to Marx 'fictitious capital'. 


State forms of development out of pre-agricultural classless society also caught his attention via Morgan's ANCIENT SOCIETY.  The attempt to link calculus to Capital's boom/bust cycles is also fascinating.  I never knew that Samuel Moore was a math consultant to Marx.  Anyway, an interesting lecture given by a well informed academic.  

Wobbly times number 145

For those who attempt to understand the material universe using dialectical logic, there are conceptual tools which the mind can use to orient perceptions within the myriad phenomena: the unity of opposites, the categories of universal, particular and individual and the totality, among others e.g. the transformation of quantitative changes into qualitative change.  The following is my own dialectical analysis of 'identity politics':

Classes developed within classless populations of hunter/gatherers as agriculture and animal husbandry were brought into being--products of human labour and innovation.  This occurred first around 10,000 years ago when humans began their march out of a total dependence on hunting, fishing and gathering within Nature alone, towards class dominated civilisation in which human beings had some certainty and control over the security of their food supplies, which had previously been left to the dependency structures demanded of humans adapting to their immediate, multiple Earth-wide environments; the exodus out of Africa put humans everywhere by 8,000 BCE.  This was the moment when humans first discovered that certain plant foods could be domesticated, along with the possibility of domestication of certain animals. Breeding domestic animals was, I think, the beginning of a 'scientific' understanding of reproduction amongst humans i.e. the parts which males and females played in the process, which beforehand had remained ensconced, within the sphere of human reason, in mystified religious explanation.  

Within pre-agricultural society, political power remained at an egalitarian level. Along with the politics of dominance and submission, based on private ownership of wealth which mark the generation of class society, came other dynamics of unequal political power, most especially that between men and women.  Patriarchal systems of dominance and submission sprang from necessities born of maintaining the dominance of the class of appropriators of wealth over the producers of wealth. During the earliest ages of planned production, the political dominance of owners of food surpluses of domesticated plants and animals grown and raised on their private land over and above that of the immediate needs for sustenance of producers themselves became the accepted norm. These owners of food surplus became the first ruling class. The mutual recognition amongst humans within their communities that private ownership of surplus was just, led to rules/laws for maintaining and protecting the priority of private ownership of property/wealth over possible communal need, an aspect of human social relations absent in the classless hunter/gatherer societies. This dominance (inherently an aspect of political power) was and continues to be maintained through force and violence or the implied threat of same within the social relations between human beings organised in political States. This phenomenon also occurs, most often murderously, within the political boundaries of so-called, 'failed States', e.g. 2012 Somalia.  The violence inherent in the political relationship between men and women flows out of the ownership of surplus wealth and the mutual recognition inherent in sustaining private ownership of same.  Within this mutual recognition, lie the seeds of the modern political State, the form of government within civilisations based on class rule and the maintenance of patriarchal forms of marriage.  

Class rule is perpetuated in the patriarchal organisation of class society and justified to its members on the basis of the need to identify offspring in the male line in order to pass on accumulated wealth.  Monogamy and polygamy become the only legitimate forms of marriage recognised within class society's political State.  These marriage forms are a direct result of the dynamics of unequal political power fundamental to the establishment of class divided society. They reflect a legitmation of male control over the female and a generalised preference for maintaining male ownership of lion's share of the class society's collectively produced wealth.  And with wealth comes dialectical opposite, political power. (I realise that there have been exceptions to this rule in history e.g.  Queen Elisabeth I, Gina Rinehart, Cleopatra and so on.)

Applying a dialectical analysis to what is known today as 'identity politics', one can logically discern the interconnection or unity of opposites within the various levels of the universal, particular and individual.  On the universal level, we can start with living beings.  Amongst the living beings, we can logically separate life into plants and animals--flora and fauna.  The totality of life, of course, continues to exist, independent of our efforts to logically grasp particulars and individuals within it. Amongst the animals, we can logically separate forms of life into various species, including, human beings. Most animal types are divided sexually between male and female. Exceptions, of course are those animals such as amoeba which replicate through self division.  Amongst humans we can further logically divide, in our minds, necessarily connected opposites or unities into classes, based on the producers of wealth and the appropriators of same.   

The differences between identity politics and class politics start with differing philosophical dynamics.  Identity politicos are committed to positively maintaining themselves as a particular ideological subset within the totality of humanity.  Class conscious workers are committed to negating themselves as a class and with that material feat, the elimination of the ideological subset of class. Whereas the practitioners of identity politics emphasise the positive differences between their particular identity and those who are not of their  identity, maintaining and recognising their identities of ideological subsets in the present and into the future; class conscious workers see the need to differentiate between the class interests of those who produce wealth from those who appropriate the lion's share in order to end this macro-dynamic of political power.  Ending the political domination of one human being over another is the end result of negating the class dominated civilisation.  Equal political power between all human individuals is communist praxis.       

To be sure, a worker can be for negating the negation of class rule while embracing some particular ideological subset of humanity.  Most individuals in this day and age identify themselves with one or more of these ideological subsets e.g.: the national, the religious, the political, the philosophical, the professional and so on.  Most individuals mentally place their various ideological identities into some hierarchical priority.  Most individuals who engage in identity politics, not only self-identify as this or that part of the myriad ideological subsets of humanity, they also identify other human beings as belonging some ideological subset of humanity, whether they, the others, want to be so identified or not.  A prominent example is race.  Although, most anthropologists and biologists would agree that there is only one race amongst human beings, the great mass of people have been socially schooled to identify two, three or more races amongst humans.  On the positive side, one human will identify him or herself as being 'white' or 'black' or 'red' etc.  By positive, I don't mean 'good', I mean more or less the affirmative, a 'yes' to the question, 'which race are you?' followed by the answer, 'I am this or that separate race.'

Identity politics have everything to do with saying, "I am".  Identity politics become for many individuals, a preferred escape route from the social alienation and oppression which are generated within the power dynamics of class dominated civilisation and its governmental expression, the political State. The longed for community (Gemeinschaft), which humans lost when they developed class dominated civilisation, expresses itself in stunted form with identity politics.  Identity politics can lead in all kinds of political directions, from a conservative's embrace of a particular nation State or race, to a liberal's love affair with celebrating the diversity of 'races' (which don't exist on a biological level) and nation States, which after all, are the governing structures of class rule.  

Identity politics are about preserving an ideological subset of humanity, of positively identifying one's self or one's perceptions of others as being something other, more than 'just' another alienated individual human being in class society. Within the scope of identity politics comes the struggle to place one identity's priority over another identified subset.  Thus, in racist politics, one race is given priority over another.  In sexist politics, one sex is given priority over another.  Where physical power to coerce is non-existent, moral suasion is used to promote political hierarchies of identity. In the dynamics of political power, dominance and submission always come into play.  With moral suasion comes brow beating guilt into those who will not submit sufficiently to the other identity's perceived priority.  Thus, the inherent tie to class dominated civilisation's social psychology of sado-masochism continues to be generated through identity politics.  As a result, the possibility for members of the working class to see themselves as the producers of all wealth not found in Nature and emancipating themselves from the exploitation inherent in the wage system i.e. making a social revolution for themselves, is retarded at best and at worst is squelched from yet another direction. 

Cui bono?  

About 10% of the population, the ones who scarf up over 70% of the world's wealth--the ruling classes on our planet, who, along with their flunkies, are the ones who benefit from maintaining the rule of the social relation Marx called Capital.