So lets make a start...

Watching the video posted by 'Hermeticist' on the 'precariat', and seeing that this is not a situation peculiar to Britain, It's time we started to think about forming an ideology that applies to this 'new' phenomenom.
This 'Precariat' is, as far as I can tell, a transient work force developed to provide a 'flexible' group of workers to fit the needs of an international capitalist system that needs workers that they are able to exploit as needed. In a recent chatbox coversation with 'Leon Mcnichol' the following areas came up.
1) How do we organise a basically transient work force?
2) How do we organise a substantialy individualistic work force?

Please watch the video 'The precariat' in the 'International Affairs' section. Think about it and post your ideas here.

I believe that this 'precariat' group are the future of the working-class within the new 'Gided age' that will soon be upon us. Either we join with them, or we face being left far behind.

I would like to point out that farm workers who are the oldest transient work force, and one of the most necessary have organized, so transient labor can be organized if the will is there to see it done. Individualism is however a disease that must be allowed to run its course, mostly for the worst I am afraid.

I'm just thinking aloud here. The question is: Organise them to what end? The gilded age -- which is already upon us -- is itself a corollary, a consequence, of the failure of capitalism. Capitalism "worked" in a certain limited sense from 1945 to 1973. Since then it's been on increasing life support, in which the state-funded bailouts of the last three years are but the latest phase. The increasing disparity between a plutocratic few and an proletarianised many has to be seen as something that developed out of the failure of regular capitalism, necessitating a turn towards increasingly predatory finance capitalism, bringing in its turn accentuated disparity. More on this fascinating subject can be found in Harvey's "A Brief History of Neoliberalism." To reiterate: Organise the proles to what end? Socialism also has no clear answers, no torch-lit path into a golden future. And as capitalism has morphed under the pressure of its deepening crisis into predatory finance capitalism, supported by a compliant state, the world itself seems to be teetering on the brink of ecological collapse -- perhaps the collapse, along with mass extinctions, and runaway climate change, is already inevitable. It's not clear to me what the solutions are. Again, I'm just thinking aloud. In brief, the dimensions of the crisis are of a magnitude previous generations of socialist thinkers could not begin to comprehend.

hermeticist wrote:I'm just thinking aloud here. The question is: Organise them to what end? The gilded age -- which is already upon us -- is itself a corollary, a consequence, of the failure of capitalism. Capitalism "worked" in a certain limited sense from 1945 to 1973.

It should be noted that it would still be working if the wealthy greedy few had not killed the tax base and offshored the jobs that supported it, by design. They simply could not stand the fact that the proles had it semi-good, had a certain amount of say, and they had to actually not be as wealthy as Midas but ONLY as wealthy as Croesus. Stellar greed is their call sign.

Since then it's been on increasing life support, in which the state-funded bailouts of the last three years are but the latest phase. The increasing disparity between a plutocratic few and an proletarianised many has to be seen as something that developed out of the failure of regular capitalism, necessitating a turn towards increasingly predatory finance capitalism, bringing in its turn accentuated disparity. More on this fascinating subject can be found in Harvey's "A Brief History of Neoliberalism."

Good points. And thanks for the suggested reading materials.

To reiterate: Organise the proles to what end? Socialism also has no clear answers, no torch-lit path into a golden future. And as capitalism has morphed under the pressure of its deepening crisis into predatory finance capitalism, supported by a compliant state, the world itself seems to be teetering on the brink of ecological collapse -- perhaps the collapse, along with mass extinctions, and runaway climate change, is already inevitable.

Nonsense this is liberal, egoistic tripe. I am a woodman and I love the wilds, and I will assure you that you have not and will not KILL mother earth; no she will do you in first. The earth was once methane and yet life was here. We are just here for the ride mainly and except for some very limited cosmetic changes that ONLY really effect US, we are weak and feeble compared to nature and the universe around us. Now of course the carrying capacity is getting neared and some humans must go: Our goal is to ensure that it is the third worlders that die off as is needed and necessary, these are the cold facts of reality. This is simply a matter of too little war and disease doing its work, and that is easily remedied, especially among the darker races as they are basically baboons/rabbits with human thumbs, and half the mental powers after all. And your other worries are simply matters of applied will and popular demands backed by the will of the masses. So the reason for organizing them is: To organize them.

I suppose "organise" may have been the wrong term. But the situation behind the precariat, a work force created to fit the needs of the new 'flexible' market, is not unique. So rather than dismissing socialist ideas as failing to address a crisis "of a magnitude previous generations of socialist thinkers could not begin to comprehend" it is in my opinion better to look at early socialist ideologies devoid of the 60s and 70s additions.

In earlier times hundreds of men waited patiently outside the factory gates for a foreman to appear and offer jobs for ten men, if you weren't in the first ten, tough, no work. And no work, no food for your family. Yet history shows that this 'flexible' work force was organised, in Russia organised to the extent of a revolution.

Like 'Hermeticist' these are just thoughts. But thinking is the way forward. But I do think that the answer to this problem will be found in earlier socialist thought possibly pre 1945.

AlbertCurtis wrote:Nonsense this is liberal, egoistic tripe. I am a woodman and I love the wilds, and I will assure you that you have not and will not KILL mother earth; no she will do you in first. The earth was once methane and yet life was here. We are just here for the ride mainly and except for some very limited cosmetic changes that ONLY really effect US, we are weak and feeble compared to nature and the universe around us.

As I understand it there have been five (six?) major extinctions in earth's history. I think we are edging towards the next one. As you say, earth will do us in first -- us and a number of other complex life forms. What will emerge from the rubble is unclear but will probably be simple life forms. But I digress.

Capitalism has been predicated on growth. Whenever its detractors (i.e., malcontents like ourselves) have pointed out the inequalities and injustices, we have been told the economy -- the cake -- will grow to such an extent, these inequalities will lose meaning -- "a rising tide raises all boats." But we know that those days of growth -- based on cheap oil, on abundant virgin resources waiting to be pillaged and plundered -- are over. For good. These physical and ecological constraints were not understood by earlier thinkers. So it is not clear -- at least to me -- what new framework can supplant the existing one; what exactly we are aiming for and need to organise for. We don't want another fiasco like the abortive Soviet experiment which went awry largely because there was no clear thinking from the beginning, and hence which degenerated by default into a kind of state capitalism.

Isakenaz wrote:I suppose "organise" may have been the wrong term. But the situation behind the precariat, a work force created to fit the needs of the new 'flexible' market, is not unique. So rather than dismissing socialist ideas as failing to address a crisis "of a magnitude previous generations of socialist thinkers could not begin to comprehend" it is in my opinion better to look at early socialist ideologies devoid of the 60s and 70s additions.

In earlier times hundreds of men waited patiently outside the factory gates for a foreman to appear and offer jobs for ten men, if you weren't in the first ten, tough, no work. And no work, no food for your family. Yet history shows that this 'flexible' work force was organised, in Russia organised to the extent of a revolution.

Like 'Hermeticist' these are just thoughts. But thinking is the way forward. But I do think that the answer to this problem will be found in earlier socialist thought possibly pre 1945.

This is all resonates with me. But again thinking aloud, if you organise the precariat and try to "reform" the system, it is so fragile, so sick, that it will promptly collapse. The postwar social democratic compromise in Western Europe took place against a backdrop of a robust capitalist growth: capitalism could afford to make concessions to organised workers. Today -- in spite of a vastly richer plutocracy -- it's not clear to me it can. It is precisely this sickness and fragility that led to the present growth of the precariat. Contrary to popular supposition, it was and is not the unbridled greed of the plutocracy that has led to this. If, then, the agency is not the cupidity of particular humans but the impersonal workings of a system (Marx would be proud of me), what new system do we envisage? We cannot organise for concessions since the system is not robust enough to allow it. This sick status quo has to be supplanted -- it is truly a revolutionary situation, a revolutionary moment. Again, just thinking aloud and I'm not dogmatic on the matter.

We fight to end wage slavery. It's as simple as that. The problems faced today arise from the doings of a whole class of individuals who the sole purppose in life is to amass surplus value, and who are totally untied to any worry, any population or even any sentiment regarding the negative consequences of their actions.

Power is money, and today, money comes without the need to do nothing. And it comes in BIG quantities if you exploit enough people.

This drive to amass capital and "discipline labour" brought us to where we are today. Where the precariats should be happy to get a lousy bad paid job, or else mister ravi will work for even less.

We cannot think of ourselves as gods who will solve all the problems of the earth. But we can adress the fundamental cause of such problems by tackling this basic foundation in almost all the wrongdoings.

Now of course i am aware that to end wage slavery is too big an objective, or too radical concept to begin with, in order to organize precariat around the idea of true socialism.

That's why we must think of ways and initial "trade-offs" of a propagandist level to at least boast our numbers, and a bigger awareness towards the alternatives to the capitalist way.

Leon Mcnichol wrote:Now of course i am aware that to end wage slavery is too big an objective, or too radical concept to begin with, in order to organize precariat around the idea of true socialism.

That's why we must think of ways and initial "trade-offs" of a propagandist level to at least boast our numbers, and a bigger awareness towards the alternatives to the capitalist way.

Exactly, so we need to 'brainstorm' the 'trade-offs' that Leon speaks of.

Capitalism would work in a society with people of moral slant. But it does not work in a society with greedy people because they manipulate the free market.

Ted Kaczynski's manifesto talks a lot about the workers' dilemma.

People would need to be able to trip up the system by

1-Solidarity
2-Forming other businesses that usurp the power the market
3-Getting as many people as possible to stop consuming, only consuming very basic needs, to trip business up.

For example, don't go to movies, buy print media, go to concerts, sporting events, don't buy boats, any other luxury items...Only buy food, basics, to get by.

Yeah, YOUR place of employment might die, but so will a lot more of them. This all has to really crash before it can be rebuilt. Otherwise, the same old just carries on.

Right now, too many people are too enraptured with consumption and consumerism. They define their worth in society by the type and location of their residence, what kind of car they buy, even the cell phone they own.

Until things get bad enough, people won't see what really matters are things they cannot buy. They won't value their freedom until they lose it.

mistek wrote:Capitalism would work in a society with people of moral slant. But it does not work in a society with greedy people because they manipulate the free market.

Ted Kaczynski's manifesto talks a lot about the workers' dilemma.

People would need to be able to trip up the system by

1-Solidarity
2-Forming other businesses that usurp the power the market
3-Getting as many people as possible to stop consuming, only consuming very basic needs, to trip business up.

For example, don't go to movies, buy print media, go to concerts, sporting events, don't buy boats, any other luxury items...Only buy food, basics, to get by.

Yeah, YOUR place of employment might die, but so will a lot more of them. This all has to really crash before it can be rebuilt. Otherwise, the same old just carries on.

Right now, too many people are too enraptured with consumption and consumerism. They define their worth in society by the type and location of their residence, what kind of car they buy, even the cell phone they own.

Until things get bad enough, people won't see what really matters are things they cannot buy. They won't value their freedom until they lose it.

Kaczynski was and still is wayyy ahead of the time. He will be revered in a centrury or two, during but mainly after the coming conflict.

Read his stuff if you want any vision of the future.

godlessnorth wrote:Kaczynski was and still is wayyy ahead of the time. He will be revered in a centrury or two, during but mainly after the coming conflict.

Read his stuff if you want any vision of the future.

Oh, I have...read his whole Manifesto too. He was a Ph.D in math from Berkeley, a virtual genius who analyzed the problems of modern man.
They put him away for life...too dangerous for the powers that be.

I liked what he wrote about earning a living and how man loses his dignity when he is being threatened constantly by non-real threats.

I once had a boss who disliked my usage of Post-its. I used them to remind myself to make calls, etc. I did my job, and I felt I should be left alone as long as I was doing it. This boss decided she didn't like me using Postits on my monitor.
She told me to log any notes to myself in an online database. My point to her was that I have to remember to open the database. She didn't get it. Duh.

But things like this become stressors. And they aren't real stressors, like one's crop failing, severe illness, being attacked by invaders, etc.

But they feel the same, physiologically, over time.

There is a problem with some people, maybe it stems from greed, ego, who knows, but they are corrupt and make life miserable for others.

Isakenaz wrote:I suppose "organise" may have been the wrong term. But the situation behind the precariat, a work force created to fit the needs of the new 'flexible' market, is not unique. So rather than dismissing socialist ideas as failing to address a crisis "of a magnitude previous generations of socialist thinkers could not begin to comprehend" it is in my opinion better to look at early socialist ideologies devoid of the 60s and 70s additions.

In earlier times hundreds of men waited patiently outside the factory gates for a foreman to appear and offer jobs for ten men, if you weren't in the first ten, tough, no work. And no work, no food for your family. Yet history shows that this 'flexible' work force was organised, in Russia organised to the extent of a revolution.

Like 'Hermeticist' these are just thoughts. But thinking is the way forward. But I do think that the answer to this problem will be found in earlier socialist thought possibly pre 1945.

Perhaps we have to create the markets. The more nonwhites we can dissuade or discourage, the more for us.
There aren't the manufacturing jobs we once had, China has undone us with lower labor costs...but people still will buy quality things, and they aren't made in China. If some Americans could put together enough money and create quality products, and promote them as American made, and let it be know they will help the American economy. Now, many will just ignore this, and not patronize it, but many will, as they know if they don't...things are going to just tank.