Laboring
Before a crowd of 15,000 union members at
Both Barack Obama and John Edwards took some rhetorical swings at front-runner Hillary Clinton, chiding her for being too much of an insider and trying to exploit her affirmation over the weekend that she had no problem accepting campaign contributions from lobbyists.
“You’ve got to have a president in the White House who is not subject to the whims of corporate lobbyists,” Obama said in a direct reference to
Edwards joined the attack saying: “You will never see a picture of me on the front of Fortune magazine saying I am the candidate that big corporate
But
Obama and Edwards also found themselves on the receiving end of some verbal punches. Senator Chris Dodd tweaked Obama for his recent suggestion that, if President, he might use unilateral force to go after Al Qaeda in
Edwards, who has aggressively courted labor and taken a series of populist stances, found himself at time upstaged by Ohio Congressman Dennis Kucinich. Though the latter is only polling about 2% among Democrats, his progressive discourse deeply resonates among labor audiences. His promise to repeal NAFTA and to institute single-payer universal health care if elected president drew loud ovations.
Tuesday’s debate, however, might have little impact on who labor finally decides to endorse. The AFL-CIO is expected to release its individual unions to endorse whomever they please, foregoing a unified rubber stamp.
Still undecided is the 1.8 million member Service Employees International Union, the motor force of American labor’s rival federation known as Change To Win. SEIU has leaned heavily toward Edwards but also contains within ranks strong pockets of support for both Obama and Clinton. The SEIU meets next month to consider its own endorsement process.
All of labor has been a tad gun shy this cycle, still trying to assimilate the bitter experience of 2004. Early on in that previous contest, both AFSCME and the SEIU came out for insurgent Howard Dean only to see him collapse in the
So as labor contemplates its choices, it finds itself today confronted with the dilemma that anguishes a lot of Democrats: do you go with who you like? Or do you go with who you think you are going to win.
August 7th, 2007 at 6:33 pm
There’s not much of anything to celebrate here, nor anything I’m especially surprised or disturbed by, but one piece – “The AFL-CIO is expected to release its individual unions to endorse whomever they please” – is certainly a vast improvement over the days when the word came down from high and every labor voice was expected to move in lock-step.
As for your last question, I think the unions would be best served if they highlighted a couple of central issues and said they would suggest to their membership that their active support and primary votes go to any candidate who’s aligned with them on those questions and takes a strong stand. The point is to push ALL of the candidates closer to you on the issues, not to come out on the upside of a popularity contest. And they oughta save most of their bucks for the general election – using funds during the primaries to inject their issues into the campaign and help educate their own membership and voters at large, rather than throw all of their eggs in with one wannabe. Of course, these strategies are always decided by Beltway insiders who know better…
August 7th, 2007 at 7:04 pm
Well I think they ought to consider Hill’s hiring of a fellow – Mark Penn – who derives a lot of his income from a company that specialises in union-busting. Seems to me her labor bona fides are in question if she has staff like this.
August 7th, 2007 at 7:36 pm
I’ll comment once I can find the entire debate on politcstv.com , YouTube or somewhere else. I missed everything except the last 20 minutes.
In the meantime there have been three threads in Kossacklandia, totalling 1500 comments?!
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2007/8/7/201336/0845?detail=f
August 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
1500 comments. BFD. What’s to comment on? Marc has it summed pretty tight. Reg, ditto.
The debates are like a NASCAR race under a caution flag. Hillary’s got poll position and a couple of ‘teammates’ running interference. Maybe Dodd and Biden got their resumes in for cabinet spots.
August 8th, 2007 at 12:01 am
The Department of Defense has identified 3,668 American service members who have died since the start of the Iraq war. It confirmed the deaths of the following Americans yesterday:
BLACKWELL, Justin R., 27, Specialist, Army; Paris, Tenn.; 89th Military Police Brigade.
BOHANNON, Jeremy S., 18, Pvt., Army; Bon Aqua, Tenn.; 89th Military Police Brigade.
BONNELL, Jon E. Jr., 22, Sgt., Marines; Fort Dodge, Iowa; First Marine Expeditionary Force.
HOLLIDAY, Jaron D., 21, Pfc., Army; Tulsa, Okla.; 25th Infantry Division.
LAFLEUR, Jason K., 28, Cpl., Army; Ignacio, Colo.; 25th Infantry Division.
LEONARD, Charles E. Jr., 29, Specialist, Army; Monroe, La.; First Cavalry Division.
MARSHALL, Bradley W., 37, Sgt., Army; Little Rock, Ark.; 25th Infantry Division.
MURCHISON, Matthew M., 21, Pfc., Army; Independence, Mo.; 89th Military Police Brigade.
NEIBERGER, Christopher T., 22, Specialist, Army; Gainesville, Fla.; First Infantry Division.
REYES, Daniel F., 24, Specialist, Army; San Diego; 25th Infantry Division.
WAKEMAN, Dustin S., 25, Sgt., Army; Fort Worth; 25th Infantry Division.
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Tips
August 8th, 2007 at 7:14 am
Rob uses a sports metaphor, NASCAR at that, to make a point, thus qualifying him as a “NASCAR dad.” Congratulations!
The unions may endorse whomever they want, but the union members are not necessarily represented by those endorsements from beholden union leaders and, as we have seen before, the members independently vote for whichever candidate that they like–which is often the Republican. Union leadership distances itself from its members so frequently that they have to count on the support of Democrats to force membership.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:57 am
Rob Grocholski Says:
August 7th, 2007 at 10:29 pm
1500 comments. BFD. What’s to comment on?
Well, as one who was scored (correctly) as overly obsessed with marginal left sectariana, on the Sheehan thread, I would hope and think that a debate addressing issues of concern to a labor movement, that however small as a proportion of the overall working class compared to the height of the power in the glory days of the 30′s-40′s, still represents MILLIONS more than the combined paper membership numbers of DSA, CCDS, Solidarity, Workers World, CPUSA, or the listenship numbers of Pacifica and Air America, etc. s/b of concern/debate on left fora like this.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:14 am
I wrote a comment last night which seems to have dissappeared – hate it when that happens – but I’ll repeat it.
If I were one of the grand nabobs of the La bor movement I’d think long and hard about endorsing Hillary as long as she sees fit to retain the services of people like Mark Penn who derive a significant fraction of their income from companies that specialize in union-busting.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:51 am
Hillary Clinton is offering Dems a big old plate full of “trust me.”
Health care? Bankrupcy Bill?
Lucy with the football?
August 8th, 2007 at 10:04 am
OK, I basically agree, Michael P. Just where and who Labor is going to back is significantly more important than the remenants of left organizations rooted in the ‘struggles’ of the Depression and on. It’s just that I don’t think there was much to be pulled out of Tuesday’s debate that answers those questions. The stilted debate form, the earliness of the campaign — there’s 2 Labor Days before the general election — and Labor’s bad experience from 2004 (Marc’s point), makes the answers tough to figure.
If you’re hoping that Labor gets something out of the Democrats, rallies around a set of issues (reg’s point), I’m with you.
August 8th, 2007 at 1:41 pm
Not that I’m a huge Edwards booster (though he seems sincerely on labour’s side) but I think it almost says it all that he was walking a line with striking workers, while their manager disrupted their rally with a Hilalry for President sign.
August 8th, 2007 at 2:59 pm
jc – I have to admit, I loved that one.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:07 pm
By the way, labour is correct spelling. Americans like to change the way words are spelled and even pronounce z (zed) as “zee” to make the alphabet song rhyme.
Seriously though, from a strictly economic standpoint, if Hillary’s the candidate there will be absolutely no differene between her and the Republican. In fact, her tinkering is what Wall Street prefers. Not even a dime’s worth of difference, adn that dime actually makes hill more pro-finance/tech capital, versus the repubs who are more industrial/military/oil capital. Carl Oglesby’s “Yankees and Cowboys” – greato ut of print book that my father gave me.
August 8th, 2007 at 3:52 pm
“Absolutely no Difference between her and the Republican.”
Gee it must be nice to be a cosseted academic dreamer up there in the Great White North and able to make pronouncimentios about people and issues about which you know nothing. Sort of like your fellow countryman Michael Ignatief – and see the piece on him in today’s Huff Post.
Meanwhile everyone seems to be moved by that retired steelworker who asked the question at today’s AFL-CIO forum where he mentioned that, as a result of LTV’s Bankruptcy, he lost a third of his pension and his health insurance and now can’t pay for his wive’s healthcare. And what has happened to America he asks.
Maybe he should move North and take a course in Marxist Theory and it would be all clear to him. Right jc?
August 8th, 2007 at 4:53 pm
Don’t compare me at all with Ignatieff. I know to which I speak. Finance capital is supporting Hillary Clinton. Do finance and labour have the same interests?
August 8th, 2007 at 4:54 pm
Ignatieff is our own Chalabi – a slogan I coined and was used heavily to defeat his run for liberal party leadership (he’s the party’s own Lieberman)
August 8th, 2007 at 6:06 pm
rlc, I’m sorry for the lost benefits of the LTV steelworker as I am for the lost benefits of the Bethlehem workers. It’s too bad that the companies were forced by union leaders decades ago to concede to lifetime benefits that were unfunded and could not be met by future profits. Labor “victories” in the 1960′s turned out to be nothing more than labor leaders of that period obtaining paper promises only–but, they used that to get re-elected.
On Edwards walking the picket line, I read that he did only had to do it for about ten minutes so that he would get hours of film showing that.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:25 pm
RIC lets Cummings off easy; JC well knows the lives crushed in the spaces between the Republican and Democratic rule in America. He just doesn’t give a shit; they don’t make for good essay reading.
August 8th, 2007 at 7:54 pm
This is real 19th century stuff, here.
It doesn’t much matter which way American labor unions vote because this small percentage of the population (about 15 per cent?) aren’t much more of a constituency than ferret owners. Not only do people don’t vote their supposed pocketbooks (What’s wrong with Kansas?) but most working stiffs never went to University, so don’t understand that History is a Dialectical Process in which Capital and Labor, Right and Left, do Transhistorical Battle.
There is much to be said for not getting educated past your intelligence.
Does it ever bother any of you reactionaries that you employ 18th and 19th century schema to explain centuries 21 and 22?
August 8th, 2007 at 8:20 pm
I hit a nerve again.
Only in America do people read political differences as “doesn’t give a shit abotu them.”
August 8th, 2007 at 8:26 pm
Samuel, thats also elitist. most workers instincctively dislike their bosses – and even if they fear them, thats a subconcious instinct of class struggle. Workers instinctively – including white collar proletarians such as accountants – know that they are only worth a fraction what they produce and anything they get above that they have to struggle for. One of the reasons workers don’t often act on their class conciousness is fear. This, I add, includes white collar workers, journalsits, university professors and anyone who is not a capitalist strictly speaking (even managers are highly skilled workers, not owners of means of prodcution)
August 8th, 2007 at 8:27 pm
So in other words, everyone lives class struggle.
August 8th, 2007 at 8:58 pm
First, to Marc & Readers: I appologize for contributing such a negative beginning to this thread. There’s many things to comment on regarding Labor and the candidates.
Your regard for Ignatieff is very clever, jc, but I disagree.
However, rlc, I think jc is mostly right on the better issue, about the big interest & boost by Wall Street in HRC. One has to be bummed by even a fantasy pretense of Clinton helping the ‘little guy.’ Those little guys are way, way, way at the end of the line under ‘Clinton ’44′
Hotwheelin’ bait for Woody: Even Willie Brown spotted HRC’s vulnerability to lobbyist loot.
And Samuel, the world didn’t unbecome a sun rotating orb 4 hundred years after Copernicus proved it was.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:20 pm
I have no regard for Ignatieff. He’s slime. Do you disagree with that?
August 8th, 2007 at 9:32 pm
jcummings,
The questions of who owns, and who has access to the means of production goes to the very heart of the matter, for sure. Back in the 19th century one had to depend upon the hereditary rich for even a bare attempt at an explanation, because no one else besides the likes of K. Engels (a filthy rich rentier) and charity cases such as K. Marx had a realistic opportunity to make an argument.
(The Engels-Marx argument, that entreprenuers do nothing and produce nothing, and only steal from workers is transparently untrue. To keep this simple, the Labor Theory of Value is transparently untrue.)
Now we are in the 21st century, and millions upon millions of people now have the opportunity to publish their own thoughts on such and related matters. Perhaps you have noticed that they aren’t buying what you are selling.
Is it tough to be a supposed democrat when the Demos isn’t buying a single thing that you are selling?
It can’t be any tougher than observing that the supposed champions of the poor have to run their articles past the hereditary rich before they can be published.
Have you even begun to rap your mind around the fact that American Democrats are richer than American Republicans and that Conservatives give away more of their money than Liberals?
August 8th, 2007 at 9:36 pm
Yes.
August 8th, 2007 at 9:52 pm
cj, you pine many ready and easy positions on American politicians. I would think it should suffice that an American might have a take or two on a few of your countrymen. However, I was hoping to get rlc, whose a fairly good reviewer of all things Democratic. to chat it up on Hillary and whose backing her, especially the financial set. If you want to run on with a vein about Ignatieff, go ahead, I’m not getting in your way.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:09 am
Samuel Stott confronts a real Marxist.
I bet that really, really made his day–no his year–having spent so long in intense ideological preparation for the inevitable moment of that excruciatingly rare confrontation. I can feel his pathetic glee. Sammy, meet jcummings: Have a ball, y’all.
And I just gotta say, knardy’s Hillary as “Lucy with the football” is priceless. That one will stick–at least with the Generation Zero demo– and you can expect to here it again. Bet on it!
August 9th, 2007 at 6:10 am
Make that “hear it again” and I will take the “will” side of those bets myself!
August 9th, 2007 at 6:31 am
“American Democrats are richer than American Republicans and that Conservatives give away more of their money than Liberals?”
The conservative charity figures are skewed by massive tax-write off contributions by billionaires and even more by religious tithing.
Do American conservatives give to their church out of a desire to help the poor or in the hope it will help spread the gratifying sense of ideological entitlement they so enjoy. Or is it the sincerest possible hedge against going to hell?
My guess is that the motives are mixed along with tradition and community “networking.”
If we looked at median contributions, rather than mean, you can bet the results would be reversed. Liberals give more.
But I have no reason to doubt Mr. Stott’s claim that Democrats are richer than Republicans. Must be their better education, hard work and common sense, since that is what gets you ahead in America, isn’t it, Mr. Stott.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:03 am
So Stott, its transparently untrue?
Gee, I guess I better go work at a bowling alley. And F. Engels was a rentier, but I don’t know about K.
They’ve bought what I’m selling in many countries, 6 languages my work has been translated – and I’m working with some serious scholars. There is a Marxist senator in Vermont. Marxism created sociology. Marxism, as the right puts it, pervades university campuses (I’m not talking about postmodernist “marxist” theory, I’m talking aobut rigorous analysis).
It has nothing to do with rich and poor, but ownership, by the way. Disprove other things for me, O Samuel. Maybe I’ll even work in a billiard hall.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:07 am
And further, if you’ve read Marx/Engels, they are tremendous admirers of entrepreneurs, yet also think its an exploitave system. In dialectics, this is called complimentary/contradictory. Anyone who reads the Manifesto for thie first time, or Economic Maniscriptso f 1848 will be surprised t how much they admire the achivements of capitalism. As do I. I believe a post-capitalist economy will have room for entrepeneurship without the monopolies that prevent competition.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:38 am
I wonder how many of the posters on this thread are union members.
I am.
I belong to AFSCME and Marc Cooper is dead wrong when he says that AFSCME is a “sure bet” to endorse Hillary. This is conventional conservative wisdom because AFSCME endorsed Bill Clinton in 1992.
There is as much, or more, support for Barack Obama among the rank and file and our elected leaders as there is for Hillary. Sit back and watch, then acknowledge this presumption was without foundation and in error.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:41 am
“And I just gotta say, knardy’s Hillary as “Lucy with the football†is priceless.” Amen.
Was still hoping rlc might weigh in a bit more on cumming’s earlier point …”In fact, her tinkering is what Wall Street prefers. Not even a dime’s worth of difference…”, and not necessarily weigh in to defend Hillary. Jc’s rhetoric is a bit strong, sure, but, this point, imho, is a good example of theory mingling with reality. Exactly when Labor is timid and unsure where and how to place it’s leverage in the presidential campaigns, the most powerful capitalist players have spotted the momentum flow slowing building up with Hillary and have cash to burn to court influence with her. The unlevelness of the ‘playing field’ is in plain view. Plain enough veiw that even Willie Brown expressed concern that Clinton might need to explain away that support.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:49 am
Speaking of AFSCME, if you’ve never seen this hilariously dubbed PSA from the 1970′s, and need a morning laugh, well, take a look (NSF–salty language).
Apparently, this was an “alternate” take produced in the studio by the voice-over guy as a joke. Should give you old fogies a chuckle.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:53 am
oops, that ‘NSF’ should be “NSFW”= “not safe for work”, unless you have headphones, or your boss and coworkers already swear like sailors.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:28 am
LOL. Great AFSCME link Samuel.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:42 am
First of all I am not a Hillary supporter. Did anyone read my comment about her hiring of staff like the union-busting Mark Penn? And I agree with Edwards (who is my current fave by the way) that she is too close to the lobbyists and that it is transparently true that the money has to influence her votes – did she really think that the Bankruptcy “Reform” bill she voted for a few years ago was good for Middle America?
(And Woody, that steelworker had his pension cut and his health benefits lost because LTV could dip into the pension funds of its workers and, when things got bad, use banjruptcy to absolve those debts. Try that as an individual under the new law – no you can’t. Only corporations can duck their promises.)
But what I objected to was the cavalier notion of Comrade cummings – the People’s Commisar of Ideological Purity – that she was just like the GOP candidates. Sorry but that is bullshit. If Cummings thinks that Hil and Rudy would do the same things, appoint the same people, hen he is nuts.
I’m sick and tired of academic dilletantes with no stake in the game playing these silly games. Isn’t one Nader in 2000 enough? Go ask that retired steelworker if its a game.
And I really, really don’t have the time or inclination here to discuss the philosophical manuscripts of 1848 or the “Young Marx” vs the “Old Marx” or the theory of Capitalism as rendered by Marx and Engels. Been there, done that.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:49 am
i really don’t understand why people who disagree with me have to insult me. I am not for ideological purity, but I am – as are many others – for noticing who is more and who is less beholden to capital. If I was for ideological purity, I’d never have supported a bourgeois mainsteream liberal like Nader.
To cll me a dilletante is just so full of shit. As if the life of the mind meant nothing. Really, I find that disrespectful. this is what I do. And I’m a union member, by the way.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:50 am
Rudy would be worse than Hil on all areas except for financial markets. On that one, no difference at all, if finance seems to prefer Hillary to someone who made a name prosecuting corporate crooks.
Make no mistake, I’d take anyone – including hillary – over Rudy. But I’m merely pointing out the obvious, as do other Dem candidates.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:51 am
The young/old Marx split is heavily discredited in Marxian studies. It was an intellectually fraudulent move by Stalinists and Maoists to remove his earlier, mrore essentialist and humanist material, so they could have their Marx without any talk of human injustice. There is total continuity throughout Marx’s career, at least from These on Feur onwards.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:49 am
jc you should really communicate with Clare Spark who is big on the history of Ideas or Suze Wiessman who, I believe, did her dissertation on Victor Serge. I’m just too tired to go there these days.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:50 am
And why would you take anyone – even Hillary – over Rudy if there is essentially no difference? She look better in a frock?
August 9th, 2007 at 1:23 pm
I have a lot of contacts, but I was considering contacting Ms. Spark, if only just for her Pacifica experiences.
I am mostly working with Pre-Marx theory these days, am actually studying Bolivar among others, Rousseau and the formation of “theory” as such.
August 9th, 2007 at 1:24 pm
Hilalry would probably be better on every other issue except economics.
August 9th, 2007 at 1:25 pm
Actually Hillary and Rudy would probably just as bad on civil liberties, if Hillary’s husband’s record is any indication.
August 9th, 2007 at 6:04 pm
Aren’t we all “beholden to capital?”
Unless you want to go back to hunting/gathering, you won’t get far without capital.
August 9th, 2007 at 8:35 pm
Bunkerbuster says:
“The conservative charity figures are skewed by massive tax-write off contributions by billionaires and even more by religious tithing.”
Indeed, tax write-offs and religious tithing count in the calculations. So-called “Liberals” aren’t billionaires and don’t take tax write-offs? Get serious.
As for tithing, you can discount it just as soon as you redefine “giving away money” to exclude this form of giving away money, but you can’t, because it is a form of giving away money.
“Do American conservatives give to their church out of a desire to help the poor or in the hope it will help spread the gratifying sense of ideological entitlement they so enjoy. Or is it the sincerest possible hedge against going to hell?”
This is always the sign of a losing argument, when you abandon mere facts to speculate upon the the motivations of actors when you disapprove of their acts. According to this logic, St. Julian licked the wounds of lepers because he was greedy for a good place in heaven, and Alfred Schweitzer invented the polio vaccine for world fame and the Nobel Prize.
The circular argument that “Liberals
August 9th, 2007 at 8:51 pm
jcummings says:
” I really don’t understand why people who disagree with me have to insult me.”
What do you think the posting section of this blog is about? I always put “Liberal” in scare quotes because so many “liberals” these days are so manifestly illiberal. They fly into a rage at disagreement, resort immediately to insults and psychologizing and eagerly support speech codes and the right of people like Ward Churchill to retail their proven lies and plagarisms at public expense.
In their astral ignorance or malevolence, as the case may be, they think anyone who doesn’t agree with them is either from the wacko Left or a “Conservative.” So much for a full and free discussion. The important thing is to get the favored group of hacks elected instanter, before the world explodes.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:08 pm
And finally, Jcummings,
I can’t agree with you that a rejection of the Labor Theory of Value amounts to a wholesale dismissal of everything Marx and Engels wrote, its just a rejection of the Labor Theory of Value.
It makes sense that Marx and Engels discounted the legitimacy of the riches they enjoyed for being well-born and having the right connections, but no sense that they couldn’t assign value to the entreprenurial function per se. No sense at all.
This same ongoing Left-wing non-argument was recently enacted within the brain-dead precincts of “YearlyKos”, when Hillary was roundly booed for saying that lobbying is an expression of democracy, and that corporations are worthy of consideration for actually providing jobs to actual people.
August 9th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
“Alfred Schweitzer invented the polio vaccine for world fame and the Nobel Prize”
Uh…it’s Albert…and he didn’t invent the polio vaccine. That would be “Joseph” Salk.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:18 pm
Stott – cite me something in Marx that instults enterpreneurship. As I said, they admire entrepreneurship, while simultaneously decrying what it does – there is no value judgement here, capitalism is exploitave so dialectically, it contains its negation….
Check this (on the bourgeoisie from the manifesto) – it is admiring.
The bourgeoisie cannot exist without constantly revolutionizing the instruments of production, and thereby the relations of production, and with them the whole relations of society. Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. All fixed, fast frozen relations, with their train of ancient and venerable prejudices and opinions, are swept away, all new-formed ones become antiquated before they can ossify. All that is solid melts into air, all that is holy is profaned, and man is at last compelled to face with sober senses his real condition of life and his relations with his kind.
The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the entire surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere.
The bourgeoisie has, through its exploitation of the world market, given a cosmopolitan character to production and consumption in every country. To the great chagrin of reactionaries, it has drawn from under the feet of industry the national ground on which it stood. All old-established national industries have been destroyed or are daily being destroyed. They are dislodged by new industries, whose introduction becomes a life and death question for all civilized nations, by industries that no longer work up indigenous raw material, but raw material drawn from the remotest zones; industries whose products are consumed, not only at home, but in every quarter of the globe. In place of the old wants, satisfied by the production of the country, we find new wants, requiring for their satisfaction the products of distant lands and climes. In place of the old local and national seclusion and self-sufficiency, we have intercourse in every direction, universal inter-dependence of nations. And as in material, so also in intellectual production. The intellectual creations of individual nations become common property. National one-sidedness and narrow-mindedness become more and more impossible, and from the numerous national and local literatures, there arises a world literature.
The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all, even the most barbarian, nations into civilization. The cheap prices of commodities are the heavy artillery with which it forces the barbarians’ intensely obstinate hatred of foreigners to capitulate. It compels all nations, on pain of extinction, to adopt the bourgeois mode of production; it compels them to introduce what it calls civilization into their midst, i.e., to become bourgeois themselves. In one word, it creates a world after its own image.
The bourgeoisie has subjected the country to the rule of the towns. It has created enormous cities, has greatly increased the urban population as compared with the rural, and has thus rescued a considerable part of the population from the idiocy of rural life. Just as it has made the country dependent on the towns, so it has made barbarian and semi-barbarian countries dependent on the civilized ones, nations of peasants on nations of bourgeois, the East on the West.
August 9th, 2007 at 10:22 pm
I like provoking liberals and even fellow socialists by talking about how I prefer corporations to small businesses. Fact is, who runs America but chamber of commerce small business assholes on a grand scale. Corporations are more vulnerable to pressure from civil society, and treat workers far better. And are you gonna have a small business make computers?
August 9th, 2007 at 11:40 pm
JCummings,
I can’t cite you a single thing in Marx that insults enterpreneurship (except by omission) any more than I can site you a single thing that assigns it a value, but you are far more knowledgable than I am on the subject so I defer to you.
In the labor theory of value, what share of value does Marx award to enterpreneurship and what to managment? My understanding is zero and zero, but certainly, I am willing to accept a correction, which would require an actual citation or quotation on your part.
It strikes me that you are a genuine Marxist because you seem to believe that:
“Conservation of the old modes of production in unaltered form, was, on the contrary, the first condition of existence for all earlier industrial classes. Constant revolutionizing of production, uninterrupted disturbance of all social conditions, everlasting uncertainty and agitation distinguish the bourgeois epoch from all earlier ones. ”
This is just wrong, friend. Capitalism quickened the pace of change, undoubtedly, which is why you and I and most so-called “poor” people in the West live better than Charlegmagne, but as scientific history the above is perfectly wrong.
First, because, prior to Capitalism, shifts in production were merely less frequent as opposed to nonexistant, and, second, because prior to Capitalism that bugaboo Nature had vastly greater power to impose “everlasting uncertainty and agitation.”
As a Marxist you are dealing with these subjects. My opinion of the Left, overall, is that it has zero interest in the question of how wealth is actually produced, and has pretty much ceded all ground on such and related questions to Ronald Reagan and the Wall Street Journal.
August 10th, 2007 at 12:07 am
Thanks Richard.
You answered better than I asked. Even when you’re obviously mentally more serious elsewhere. Appreciate it dude.
Jcummings: A “lunch bucket Repulican” oh, say a Joe Schwartz voter: someone who buys into the base GOP standard, but who might actually understand living wages and purchasing power. What do you think they’d intelligently respond with on your point, the one that I keep harping on?
And Woody, or GM, or… What RLC says passes with me that many Democrats are fully atune to contradictions in Hillary’s financial support. Whether these same Democrats can do anything to alter that, well, that is tough to conclude happily, at this point.
What say youse guys?
August 10th, 2007 at 7:12 am
Stott, I hope you know you’re quoting the Communist Manifesto, not me. Yes I’m a genuine Marxist, insofar as I believed he changed how we look at philosophy and economics, but I’m not a sectarain party member preachign revolution.
Before you have an opinion on creating value in/re the Left, read Das Kapital, read Sweezy and Baran’s Monopoly Capital, etc. etc. Don’t form opinions on topics of which you have no clue, respectfully…
You are right about the labour theory of value. Yet – heavens – they also admire capitalitsts for overthrowing the old aristocratic mode. And changes in production were indeed less frequent before capitalism but they were constant.
August 10th, 2007 at 7:17 am
In the first five chapters of Capital, the implication of how value is created by direct producers should explain how enterpreneurs contributel On management – they are simply highly skilled workers, often paid what they are worth. There is nothing against managers in Marxism. Managers aren’t owners.
August 10th, 2007 at 9:19 pm
Actually, Jcummings, accusing me of not having read various stuff is the Platonic form of a losing argument, and even sillier because you have no idea about what I have read.
The Labor Theory of Value, adumbrated interminably in volume one of Kapital, assigns zero value to both managerial and enterprenurial contributions to the value of ongoing capitalstic enterprises.
This is either a true or untrue statement. I can’t prove a negative, but you can surely prove a positive, so go ahead.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:21 am
This is a difference of interpretation, Samuel.
The ltov (labour theory of….) assigns roles to direct producers- if a direct producer is thus an enterpreneur there is nothing against enterpreuneurship. Depends, again, on interpretation.
you’re right, I have no idea. Yet, I still haven’t seen any evidence you’ve read what I was talking about – and you thought I was writing what I quoted from the Communist Manifestol.
Even if you are correct about the LTOV this isn’t saying much beyond the obvious. Most capitalists of my aqquaintane- indeed how the department of labor measures productivity – is indeed indirectly, if not explicitly basedo n the LTOV.
August 11th, 2007 at 8:26 am
Stott joins the Trotskyists and “Pareconists” in stating that management are not workers. Of course they aren’t in a classical sense, but how many managers (aside from holding shares) own their means of production?
How many people can truly be classified as capitalists at this point?
This is what M and E predicted, a shrinkage in the number of capitalists as teh world market grows, more workers, less capitalists, with mergers, etc. This will make the transition entirely bloodless.
August 11th, 2007 at 9:49 pm
“The ltov (labour theory of….) assigns roles to direct producers- if a direct producer is thus an enterpreneur there is nothing against enterpreuneurship. Depends, again, on interpretation.”
Geez, since the entire point of Capital vol. 1 is to inveigh against the inhumanity and injustice of the historically inevitable factory system, (which will, of course give way to communism –and which, of course, has already come and gone with no communism in sight ) you apparently concede the point—-Marx assigns no value to entreprenuership and management within the factory system—within Capitalism. (As opposed to some guy growing and selling his own turnips.)
Entreprenuers and managers don’t even figure: all that complicated math he deploys upon the question of extraction of surplus value (and thus Value) assigns quantifiable contributions to labor, only.
In this respect, Marx is a model for the Left, even today. The question of how wealth gets created and marshalled is of no interest, except insomuch as those same questions bear on what wealth can be redistributed, and how.
In a word Marx’s crucial insight remains that that of the Left: Production is Easy, Distribution is Hard.
The exact opposite is true, of course.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:30 am
On communism or lack thereof, its too soon to tell.
You are correct partially on my reading of entrepeneurship, incorrect on management (since you haven’t shown how management are owners) and very incorrect on issues of distribution and wealth marshalling.
August 12th, 2007 at 9:31 am
I’d still like you to cite some passages to show what you mean.
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