Middle Class
Donald J Donaker (Don)
thrown on the pile of workers with lesser paying jobs and throwing others below on the
unemployment scape pile. Thus bloating the supply of workers relative to available jobs. You
know, that old fuddy-duddy talk!
condition of the working class. After all these years, the masters of amassing profits have
suddenly become stupid and started to replace workers with those humanistic gadgets!
find discourse, on the internet, definitively including the above introduction into the equation.
Anybody understand Marx's prevailing mode of production effect on the law of value, and the cost
of workers' labor power on the job market? Benjamin Franklin did. Or, is the sentiment a
continuation of a wait and see more game? If so, most surely it will arrive at your doorstep as a
too late wake up call.
on, that the current WIIU should not be considered a revival of the original, but a fundamental
replacement of it. I was asked: How could you say such a thing?
before he or she has gone through the full 12 years of required educational indoctrination, and he
or she would have a better chance of coming up with a logical answer, then adults who have lapsed
into an atrophied thinking process because of said indoctrination.
wars, etc..
Don
Andrew Gunderman
Hello? Is there anybody out there? When American citizens are part of "classes" they work for the government, i.e.
GS-Pay-Table.
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 2:16 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Middle Class
|
Deepening Inequality Driving US Middle Class into Oblivion
|
The American middle class is shrinking. For the first time in more than four decades, middle-income households have lost their majority status in the U.S., according to new findings, and are now outnumbered by their counterparts on opposite ends of the income
spectrum. "The fastest-growing segments are the ones at the extremes, the very lowest and highest ends of the income distribution."—Pew Research Center
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Donald J Donaker (Don)
Hello? Is there anybody out there? When American citizens are part of "classes" they work for the government, i.e. GS-Pay-Table.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to workers-international-industrial-union+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
Donald J Donaker (Don)
I had a National Guard buddy 40 years ago when I lived in Boston. He worked for the Rand Corporation
and they were studying "what we do in the country when we don’t need everyone working." I thought
the study was a total waste of tax payer money.
However, technology of all forms have made the creation of knowledge and sharing of knowledge;
automation and robots to build and distribute things; and, the monitoring of tasks, processes, and policies,
cheaper and cheaper. Fewer smart, aka middle class people are going to be needed. We are entering a
world where capital allocation will be the primary source of additional wealth. Those that have the wealth
and the groups that manage and allocate wealth will earn most of the wealth in society. I see no other
outcome. While the middle class shrinks, and lower class will get bigger and bigger. No one did anything
wrong, just a perfect storm where the economic tables are getting very very lopsided. My friend from over
40+ years ago was asking the right question. I wonder if he came up with any answers. It is not a
Republican or Democratic issue, it is a society issue. Not easy to solve...
_____________
I think you left out the side effects of automation - robots on assembly lines and computers on the desks of
everyone with a desk. Gone is the secretary typing pool. Gone are the dozen guys welding car bodies
replaced by two robots that never need a day off or a beer after a tough day.
Add to that artificial intelligence which ought to arrive in the next twenty years and it gets a little scary. Not
worried about the robots taking over the world - just wondering how we're all supposed to pay our bills, buy
things and build savings if we're only working 10% as much per week. Does that mean i replace 10 people
and continue to make the same wages or does that mean I work 4 hours per week and expect to make the
same wages as I do now. I'm guessing my employer will want to cut my wages by 90% too?
Not much discussion of how the economy will work then? We are already seeing the early stages of this with
huge productivity increases and stagnating wages.
End
Don
Donald J Donaker (Don)
[in the book, the capitalist]... details what machine intelligence and robotics can accomplish, and implores employers, scholars, and policy makers alike to face the implications. The past solutions to technological disruption, especially more training and education, aren’t going to work, and we must decide, now, whether the future will see broad-based prosperity or catastrophic levels of inequality and economic insecurity. [the book]... is essential reading for anyone who wants to understand what accelerating technology means for their own economic prospects—not to mention those of their children—as well as for society as a whole.
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Byron Danelius
The answer seems to be some undefined magic. Yes, that’s it! It’s always worked in the past. But the past isn’t the present.
Byron
From: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com [mailto:workers-internation...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Donald J Donaker (Don)
Sent: Monday, December 14, 2015 9:06 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Re: Middle Class
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Andrew Gunderman
That was real intelligent try to suture your infamous robot hysteria into economic data. American citizens aren't part of "classes." We live in a liberal, commerce-based society.
Since most of us work in the private sector we aren't affected by class-based arguments. That's already run its course with progressives of the last century. In the 1800's American U.S. society was more stratified and being a member of high society was key. Not now.
So first of all, by middle class just what do you mean? Only the US government has any answer, in terms of income bracket, ethnicity or demographics.
What economists look at is called labor mobility. If you want to know if the M/C is disappearing, it can't. The question is where does the middle class go - the answer is that over time it gravitates into higher brackets. In their place there are Immigrants moving into middle class. As long as there is upward mobility, there will be changes in the composition of what you call middle class. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
The article tells you the share living in the upper-income tier jumped from 14% to 21% over the same period, therefore most of the 11% lost M/C graduated as it were, and I take it that the remaining 4% attributed to a lower-income tier are immigrants. We have a greater flux immigration during the same time frame.
As long as the trend goes into higher income then what's the issue?
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 2:16 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Tuesday, December 22, 2015 at 6:14:36 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
That was real intelligent try to suture your infamous robot hysteria into economic data. American citizens aren't part of "classes." We live in a liberal, commerce-based society.
Since most of us work in the private sector we aren't affected by class-based arguments. That's already run its course with progressives of the last century. In the 1800's American U.S. society was more stratified and being a member of high society was key. Not now.
So first of all, by middle class just what do you mean? Only the US government has any answer, in terms of income bracket, ethnicity or demographics.
What economists look at is called labor mobility. If you want to know if the M/C is disappearing, it can't. The question is where does the middle class go - the answer is that over time it gravitates into higher brackets. In their place there are Immigrants moving into middle class. As long as there is upward mobility, there will be changes in the composition of what you call middle class. It's not necessarily a bad thing.
The article tells you the share living in the upper-income tier jumped from 14% to 21% over the same period, therefore most of the 11% lost M/C graduated as it were, and I take it that the remaining 4% attributed to a lower-income tier are immigrants. We have a greater flux immigration during the same time frame.
As long as the trend goes into higher income then what's the issue?
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to workers-international-industrial-union+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
Byron Danelius
Andrew:
I truly don’t know if the spell you are laboring under can be broken, but I offer an article I wrote about the middle class during the Bush administration. The economic conditions that are portrayed in this piece have only gotten worse.
Byron
The “Middle” Class
The Origins of the “Middle Class”
There is a reason that this article has quotations around Middle. If one speaks of a middle it usually denotes “in between,” but in this case in between what?
There was a time when the term “middle class” had a definite economic and sociological meaning. If we go back 500 years ago, the middle class meant in between the upper class of nobleman and lower class of serfs. Feudalism had several classes: nobleman , theologians, artisans, and finally the lowest rung of the ladder—the serfs that went with the land owned by the nobles. Each class was clearly defined in wealth and rights that reflected feudal society.
Presently this number has been drastically altered. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out almost 100 years ago unlike acquired rights capitalism is based on “real economic relations—the fact that wage labor is not a juridical relation, but purely an economic relation. In our juridical system there is not a single formula for class domination of today.”[1] The reason for this is that capitalism overthrew feudalism and placed the upcoming merchant class—the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class)—in the dominant position. Defining classes into law, which can’t be fully explored here, prevented the development of capitalism. As Marx and Engels noted:
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — bourgeoisie and proletariat[wage workers] [2]
This split into two classes had been completed for many years after the aforementioned was published in 1848. With only two classes left, there is no class in between, hence no middle class. Let there be no equivocating, capitalism’s two class divisions are the capitalist class and the working class. The term “working class” seems repugnant to many intellectual and salaried workers, but this is a vanity left over from the final overthrow of capitalism.
America didn’t experience feudalism. This is where the idea of middle class notions emanated. We imported this idea from Europe. Paul LaFargue noted that the modern idea of “middle class” began with the intellectuals in the French Revolution. They had high hopes. As LaFargue noted:
Promises cost it [the Revolution] little; it announced to all men that it brought them joy and happiness, with liberty, equality and fraternity, which, although eternal principles, were now born for the first time. Its social world was to be so new . . .even before the Republic was proclaimed. . . .[but] It did not take long to determine the value of the promises of capitalism; the very day it opened its political shop, it commenced proceedings in bankruptcy. . . . In 1790, an electoral act. . .established inequality before the law, no one was to be a voter but the “active citizen,” paying in money a direct tax equal to three days’ labor, and [only those in this category were] to be eligible for office. . . The electoral law deprived so many citizens of political rights, that in the municipal elections of 1790, at Paris, a city which counted about half a million inhabitants, there were but 12,000 voters, Bailly was chosen mayor by 10,000 votes. [3]
The middle class grew from these early intellectuals. It didn’t take long for this prestige to evaporate. As Marx and Engels observed: ”The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage laborers.” [4]
This lowered status became subject to the law of supply and demand. Lafargue continued: “in all branches there is an overproduction of intellectuals, and. . . when a place is vacant, tens and hundreds offer themselves to fill it; and it is this pressure which permits the capitalists to lower the price of the intellectuals and to put it even below the wage of the manual laborer. . . . The capitalists have degraded the intellectuals below the economic level of the manual laborers.” [5]
And of course, the “middle class” to this day is still awash in its fantasies:
These intellectuals of industry and politics, the privileged portion of the wage class, imagine that they are an integral part of the capitalist class, while they are only its servants; on every occasion they take up its defense against the working class [meaning workers with lesser education], which finds in them its worst enemies. . . . They think their education confers on them a social privilege, that it will permit them to get through the world by themselves, each making his own way in life by crowding out his neighbor or standing on the shoulders of everyone else. They imagine that their poverty is transitory and that they only need a stroke of good luck to transform them into capitalists. Education, they think, is the lucky number in the social lottery, and it will bring them the grand prize. They do not perceive that this ticket given them by the capitalist class is a fraud, that labor, whether manual or intellectual, has no other chance than to earn its daily pittance. [6]
In our times, historically, the wages of the “middle class” are usually above what LaFargue referred to as a “daily pittance.” So what does “middle class” mean in our times? Usually those that aren’t on the lower rungs of the wage scale, but they still retain the same economic quality of their lower paid colleagues. Both must present themselves to an employer to get a job for their existence. As a class there is no distinction. That distinction only exists in their fantasies.
But rungs on the wage-scale ladder sometimes collapse to the lower rungs. Losing higher paid positions to lower ones from outsourcing is an example—but more on this later.
Education
The proportional increase in the working class’ education might offer hope beyond LaFargue’s dire observation. The percentage of degreed workers in the U.S.—bachelors and above—stands at 27.2 %.[7] In my location—Minnesota—it is about one-third of the work force. It’s difficult to retain one’s illusions when such a large portion of workers are educated. But more on this later.
Factually, the employment in our present world is a reflection of our increased technology and unless one has familiarity with this technology only the lowest paid jobs are available. The education “advantage” has evaporated and changed into a necessity to find employment.
In 2004, John Podesta and David Sirota posited that “The gateway to the middle class is considered to be a salary of about $35,000 a year.”[8] But despite this very modest definition of entry into the “middle class,” Podesta and Sirota went on to note that the Bush Administration had stripped these middle classers of Federal overtime pay protections and cut job training outlays by billions. The level of $35,000 is only what one can expect with a high school education. They also noted that providing adequate health care for this middle class had also suffered by inauguration of health savings accounts. As was suspected:“The president's health savings accounts, which would put money into the consumers' hands, also would allow employers to contribute less to workers' coverage. In other words, annual health insurance deductibles probably would go up.”[9]
As expected, nothing good could possibly come out of the Bush administration—criminal even under the standards of capitalism. Podesta and Sirota went on to comment on the alleged “drug coverage” for seniors who once considered themselves “middle class.”
As prices skyrocket, the president's Medicare bill all but ensured hundreds of billions in profits for the pharmaceutical industry without providing truly comprehensive drug coverage to seniors. The bill did nothing to prevent drug companies from charging Americans the highest prices in the world.[10]
.What can the “middle class” look forward to?
In an piece by Floyd J. McKay, “The Rapid Disappearance of America’s Middle Class,”[11] he quotes Elizabeth Warren, Harvard Law School professor about the prospects of the middle class:
During the past generation, the American middle-class family that once could count on hard work and fair play to keep itself financially secure has been transformed by economic risk and new realities. Now a pink slip, a bad diagnosis, or a disappearing spouse can reduce a family from solidly middle class to newly poor in a few months."
The danger, Warren finds, comes from both ends of the financial spectrum: a decline in real wages for full-time workers and huge increases in basic family expenses. As a result, families are staying afloat only because both partners work.
Male full-time workers in 2003 earned $800 less than their counterparts in 1970, after adjustment for inflation. Enter the second paycheck, and the family's combined income goes to $73,700 a year, a huge 75 percent increase from 1970.
Sounds great, right?
Not so, says Warren, and most of us would agree. Extra earnings increase costs for transportation, child care and taxes. Additional higher costs of mortgages and health care simply erase the added earnings — and then some. Warren estimates today's two-income family actually has $1,500 less per year in discretionary spending.
If you prefer the 70’s style family of one working parent and the other keeping the home fires burning Warren warns that you had better be ready for a 72% drop in discretionary income compared with a generation ago. McKay continues on about Warren’s observation:
There's no room for error with both parents working and up to their necks in debt and obligations. "A once-secure middle class has disappeared. In its place are millions of families whose grip on the good life can be shaken loose in an instant."
Added to these worries are stratospheric credit-card interest, adjustable mortgage rates, and a banking industry that has made bankruptcy only an option of the wealthy or faltering business enterprises.
Another historical mark of “middle class” entry has been home ownership. “Home ownership” doesn’t really mean ownership but living in a house owned by one’s mortgage holder. The year 2007 hasn’t shown much promise to this earmark of middle classism. As the Houston Chronicle put it,
The number of U.S. homes facing foreclosure surged 58 percent in the first six months of the year, the latest sign of growing problems in the mortgage industry, a data firm said today. In all, 573,397 properties across the nation reported some sort of foreclosure activity in the first half of this year, including receiving notices of default, auction sale notices or being repossessed by lenders, Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. said. That was 58 percent higher than in the first six months of 2006 and 32 percrent higher than the last six months of 2006. . . . The number of U.S. homes facing foreclosure surged 58 percent in the first six months of the year, the latest sign of growing problems in the mortgage industry, a data firm said today.
In all, 573,397 properties across the nation reported some sort of foreclosure activity in the first half of this year, including receiving notices of default, auction sale notices or being repossessed by lenders, Irvine-based RealtyTrac Inc. said. That was 58 percent higher than in the first six months of 2006 and 32 percrent higher than the last six months of 2006.[12]
Outsourcing
Where have the jobs gone that once made it possible to eke out a minimal “acceptable” living? To understand their emigration we must first address the assertion that wages determine prices.
Diamond miners in South Africa produce a very expensive commodity and are paid low wages. High priced labor such as mechanical and chemical engineers are in charge of factories that produce vast quantities of inexpensive goods still command higher wages than most other workers. In a nutshell, the value of commodities isn’t connected to wages, but reflects the amount of efficient productive time it takes to produce them. Thus, candy bars are cheaper than bulldozers; since bulldozers take more expended effort to produce than individual candy bars. Likewise the value of the commodity labor power (wages or salaries) reflects the amount of useful time it takes to produce it. In short, this means the amount of necessary time to produce the food, clothing, shelter, furthering education, etc. for its production just like any other commodity. It takes more to produce an engineer than other types of workers. Wages/salaries reflect this.
So what happens when a factory is sent to low-wage countries from the U.S? In short, the lesser standards of living in Indonesia and other similar locations mean that wages are lower, meaning that profits begin to soar. As Thom Hartmann put it,
When wages go down, profits go up. American wages [this also pertains to salaries—just another word for wages] have been falling steadily since Reagan first reintroduced con economics in 1980, and American corporations are generally more profitable than they’ve been in decades. In part this is not only because wages are going down within the United States but also because U.S.-level wages are being replaced by India- and China-level wages through outsourcing and offshoring.[13]
In essence, if the American “middle class” wants to compete with their low-wage counterparts they must learn to live with their offshorers level of existence. Since the cost of living in the U.S. is much higher this is impossible. Only when American wages reflect the level of the poverty ridden areas where their former jobs have migrated will jobs return to the U.S. Then world-wide low wages/salaries will be the new standard.
Paul Craig Roberts, former Assistant Secretary of the Treasury had a dire outlook for former middle class high tech jobs:[14]
At a Brookings Institution conference in Washington, D.C., in January 2004, I predicted that if the pace of jobs outsourcing and occupational destruction continued, the U.S. would be a third world country in 20 years. Despite my regular updates on the poor performance of U.S. job growth in the 21st century, economists have insisted that offshoring is a manifestation of free trade and can only have positive benefits overall for Americans. Reality has contradicted the glib economists. The new high-tech knowledge jobs are being outsourced abroad even faster than the old manufacturing jobs.
Declines in the highest paid “middle class” jobs have become the rule. From 2001 to 2005 computer science and computer engineer pay fell 12 to 13%. Individuals holding graduate degrees in computer science, computer engineering and electrical engineering fell from 7 to 14%.[15] Non-computer related engineering and architectural jobs were reduced in the five years of 1999 to 2004 by 100,000.[16] Higher paying technical job so closely intimated to middle class membership, that can be outsourced, will eventually be.
The Politics of Capitalism and the Middle Class
Charles Sullivan, writing in CounterPunch said it clearly in a 2004 article, Corporatism and Single Party Politics: “the two parties long ago merged into a single political force that is fueled by corporate money. This single party system not only caters to the rich--it exploits the shrinking middle class. . . . Under the rules of corporate governance, the working poor and the eroding middle class—indeed more than ninety-five percent of the population—are left out in the cold to fend for themselves. . . . That party unifying force is the ruling class power structure of corporate governance. It is driven by the economic engine of capitalism that concentrates wealth at the top of the economic ladder. Capitalism makes the rich richer by exploiting the poor much in the way that slave labor built the pre-civil war south into an economic power--a power that could not endure because it rested on the precarious underpinnings of social injustice.”[17]
The middle class is an illusion. To call on the “middle class” to give up their illusions about their condition is to call on them to give up a condition that requires illusions: that condition is capitalism.
Footnotes
[1] Rosa Luxemburg, Rosa Luxemburg Speaks, Reform or Revolution, p. 78, Pathfinder Press, 1970.
[2] Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Chapt 1, Bourgeois and Proletarians. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
[3] Paul LaFargue, Socialism and the Intellectuals, 1900. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1900/03/socint.htm
[4] Marx and Engels, The Communist Manifesto, Chapt 1, Bourgeois and Proletarians. http://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1848/communist-manifesto/ch01.htm
[5] Paul LaFargue, Socialism and the Intellectuals, 1900. http://www.marxists.org/archive/lafargue/1900/03/socint.htm
[6] Ibid.
[7] Education Statistics, http://www.statemaster.com/graph/edu_bac_deg_or_hig_by_per-bachelor-s-degree-higher-percentage
[8] Podesta, John and Sirota, David, “Late, Great, Middle Class,” Los Angeles Times, Sept. 6, 2004, http://www.commondreams.org/views04/0906-24.htm
[9] Ibid.
[10]Ibid.
[11] Seattle Times, January 11, 2007.
http://www.commondreams.org/cgi-bin/print.cgi?file=/views06/0111-28.htm
[12] U.S. Home Foreclosures Jump 58%, Houston Chronicle, July 30, 2007. http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/business/5011634.html
[13] Hartmann, Thom, Screwed: The Undeclared War Against the Middle Class, Barett-Koehler Publishers: San Francisco: 2006, p. 177
http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09302006.html
[14] http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts09302006.html
[15] Ibid
[16] Ibid
[17] Sullivan, Chas., Corporatism and Single Party Politics, CounterPunch, Feb. 22, 2006. http://www.counterpunch.org/sullivan02202004.html
Andrew Gunderman
Good. First Byron here starts with, once upon a time when the term “middle class” had a definite economic and sociological meaning, basically the same thing I said, not to undercut it's importance. America didn’t experience feudalism... We imported this idea from Europe. Class-based ideas are always in search of relevance. I think this is because America was the place people emigrated to get away from class and social divisiveness. He skips to a Bush-administration program, implying that "W" wanted to winnow out the middle class. Fine paper.
All that's before the financial crisis. Since 2011 we've been in recovery from it and Americans have cut debt a bit. That's good!
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 12:18 PM
To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
Andrew:
I truly don’t know if the spell you are laboring under can be broken, but I offer an article I wrote about the middle class during the Bush administration. The economic conditions that are portrayed in this piece have only gotten worse.
Byron
The “Middle” Class
The Origins of the “Middle Class”
There is a reason that this article has quotations around Middle. If one speaks of a middle it usually denotes “in between,” but in this case in between what?
There was a time when the term “middle class” had a definite economic and sociological meaning. If we go back 500 years ago, the middle class meant in between the upper class of nobleman and lower class of serfs. Feudalism had several classes: nobleman , theologians, artisans, and finally the lowest rung of the ladder—the serfs that went with the land owned by the nobles. Each class was clearly defined in wealth and rights that reflected feudal society.
Presently this number has been drastically altered. As Rosa Luxemburg pointed out almost 100 years ago unlike acquired rights capitalism is based on “real economic relations—the fact that wage labor is not a juridical relation, but purely an economic relation. In our juridical system there is not a single formula for class domination of today.”[1] The reason for this is that capitalism overthrew feudalism and placed the upcoming merchant class—the bourgeoisie (the capitalist class)—in the dominant position. Defining classes into law, which can’t be fully explored here, prevented the development of capitalism. As Marx and Engels noted:
Our epoch, the epoch of the bourgeoisie, possesses, however, this distinct feature: it has simplified class antagonisms. Society as a whole is more and more splitting up into two great hostile camps, into two great classes directly facing each other — bourgeoisie and proletariat[wage workers] [2]
This split into two classes had been completed for many years after the aforementioned was published in 1848. With only two classes left, there is no class in between, hence no middle class. Let there be no equivocating, capitalism’s two class divisions are the capitalist class and the working class. The term “working class” seems repugnant to many intellectual and salaried workers, but this is a vanity left over from the final overthrow of capitalism.
Paul LaFargue noted that the modern idea of “middle class” began with the intellectuals in the French Revolution. They had high hopes. As LaFargue noted:
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Thursday, December 10, 2015 at 1:16:41 PM UTC-6, Donald J Donaker (Don) wrote:
Donald J Donaker (Don)
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
Sent: Thursday, December 10, 2015 2:16 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Middle Class
...
Byron Danelius
Andrew:
My article was written to elucidate the “middle class” and is not the same thing as your ridiculous suggestion that “American citizens aren't part of "classes. We live in a liberal, commerce-based society.”
Our society not only remains class divided, it is divided with a vengeance. The concentration of wealth in the top .1% is merely a symptom of this more oppressive division, but technically this increased concentration is not the definition of class divisions. Your claim that we live in a classless society suggests you would be very comfortable in the Republican Party, if not already there. I am forced to consider that your association with the union movement is the result of one of the following: 1. Total misunderstanding of the reason for unionization, or 2. An attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.
Byron
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Trolling, trolling, hi ho the dario, the trolling you go.
On Wednesday, December 23, 2015 at 6:20:54 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
Good. First Byron here starts with, once upon a time when the term “middle class” had a definite economic and sociological meaning, basically the same thing I said, not to undercut it's importance. America didn’t experience feudalism... We imported this idea from Europe. Class-based ideas are always in search of relevance. I think this is because America was the place people emigrated to get away from class and social divisiveness. He skips to a Bush-administration program, implying that "W" wanted to winnow out the middle class. Fine paper.
All that's before the financial crisis. Since 2011 we've been in recovery from it and Americans have cut debt a bit. That's good!
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Byron Danelius <bdd...@q.com>
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 12:18 PM
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com [mailto:workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Gunderman
...To: workers-international-industrial
Andrew Gunderman
I am forced to consider that your association with the union movement is the result of one of the following:
1. total misunderstanding of the reason for unionization, or
2. an attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.
Nobody forces you to do anything over a Hotmail message. You have reasoning ability to decide for yourself, but not for me.
Andrew Gunderman
Trolling, trolling, hi ho the dario, the trolling you go.
Yeah, that's real intelligent. I'll frame it rather literally as a useless remark that does not dissuade that class-based societal divisions are irrelevant today. First of all I would say class arguments are about fifty years too late, that identity politics,
(that based on race or gender) pushed class consideration off the table and there's little or nothing given to restore it, most certainly not from the writings of Marx and Engels. Secondly even if we do accept the socialist history of being against class division,
as I do, then it was instilled by government programs i.e. the Table of Ranks in Russia, the tradition of granting landed estates in return for a lifetime of military service etc., giving democratic meaning to the Russian Revolution.
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Saturday, December 26, 2015 at 2:57:03 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
Trolling, trolling, hi ho the dario, the trolling you go.
Yeah, that's real intelligent. I'll frame it rather literally as a useless remark that does not dissuade that class-based societal divisions are irrelevant today. First of all I would say class arguments are about fifty years too late, that identity politics, (that based on race or gender) pushed class consideration off the table and there's little or nothing given to restore it, most certainly not from the writings of Marx and Engels. Secondly even if we do accept the socialist history of being against class division, as I do, then it was instilled by government programs i.e. the Table of Ranks in Russia, the tradition of granting landed estates in return for a lifetime of military service etc., giving democratic meaning to the Russian Revolution.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
...
Byron Danelius
Andrew: “Nobody forces you to do anything over a Hotmail message. You have reasoning ability to decide for yourself, but not for me.”
You are twisting my conclusion by changing the subject—a regular tactic of the right—as if we didn’t know where you are coming from! I did not state that you were forced into anything. It was I that was forced to conclude that either you lack an understanding for unionization, or that your efforts have been to undermine the WIIU. Quit trying to muddy the waters by denying class divisions. Wage/salary levels are not the only characteristic of classes. Sheldon Cooper is a comic character of a sitcom. You cannot claim his mantle—we are not laughing.
Andrew Gunderman
By all means if we can get away from repeating terms i.e. fuddy-duddy or interjecting
hi ho the Dario in between phrases then I'm all for it. A bit of revisionism, but I've already snipped it from the title here, maybe to the dismay of your 3rd-grade (but not middle) class. I just wish
sometimes that you were all up to date, as it's necessary to connect to the outside sometimes, so I submit for your review
http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N a simple chart that shows the reduction in debt, as compared to a concomitant
increase in Federal Debt to G.D.P. that I'm absolutely sure you all must be aware of.
and all goes with it likewise. This is emblematic of our major malfunction, not getting our message across to the outside via the site. The last halfway, or maybe fully, connected additions to the site were from Donaker himself in Labor Power Reports. Since then much has been mentioned i.e. workplace democracy that never materialized on site. Hell, even a section on the robots would have been an attention-getter but everything was relegated to backroom messages.
We laid better plans, and I know those here with more expertise than I at public images can come up with improvement to the site. Until that happens I'm probably finished.
Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2015 8:32 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Re: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
On Saturday, December 26, 2015 at 2:57:03 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
Trolling, trolling, , the trolling you go.
...
Andrew Gunderman
[Andrew's] association with the union movement is the result of one of the following:
1. total misunderstanding of the reason for unionization, or
2. an attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.
Byron up here is the accuser plainly stating, but not forced to conclude, my own rationale for inclusion to our alternative union. I feel like I can relate this for myself and not have someone else do it, so I will, despite having been forced into it in his twisted way. Butt first, as they say in the news biz, it's probably even better that we present some background for ourselves. So, I'll start out.
Probably I got my first glimmer into this when I came back from the Army to study at college. I did a little private-sector work in between too, hardly relevant. I re-started back with the U School of Biz and they hiked tuition the next term. Shifting over to F.I.U. after MGT101 then I took economics requisites over the spring and summer terms. The first instructor was a young guy that I tended to question occasionally. The classes weren't hard, so I took to the library while waiting for the bus to arrive and even got into reading a book about the developmental economics of social systems, i.e. non-market economics. During the next class I had a Professor from Harvard teaching, who became aware of this and put me one a self-reading program so I had to read about the conditions in early English society during the Industrial Revolution and before, I read Marcuse and Galbraith, too, and reporting back to him got an "A" for the course.
To be continued...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Sunday, December 27, 2015 at 10:53:18 AM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
With the approach of new year a lot of websites that don't renew their funds get temporarily disabled, so don't be surprised if http://wiiu.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=section&layout=blog&id=6&Itemid=18
By all means if we can get away from repeating terms i.e. fuddy-duddy or interjecting hi ho the Dario in between phrases then I'm all for it. A bit of revisionism, but I've already snipped it from the title here, maybe to the dismay of your 3rd-grade (but not middle) class. I just wish sometimes that you were all up to date, as it's necessary to connect to the outside sometimes, so I submit for your review http://research.stlouisfed.org/fred2/series/HDTGPDUSQ163N a simple chart that shows the reduction in debt, as compared to a concomitant increase in Federal Debt to G.D.P. that I'm absolutely sure you all must be aware of.
and all goes with it likewise. This is emblematic of our major malfunction, not getting our message across to the outside via the site. The last halfway, or maybe fully, connected additions to the site were from Donaker himself in Labor Power Reports. Since then much has been mentioned i.e. workplace democracy that never materialized on site. Hell, even a section on the robots would have been an attention-getter but everything was relegated to backroom messages.
We laid better plans, and I know those here with more expertise than I at public images can come up with improvement to the site. Until that happens I'm probably finished.
...
Andrew Gunderman
... reporting back to [Aguilera,]I got an "A" for the course but it was not without some extra effort. I still had my U/Miami library card for the year so I went up the stacks (the upper levels of their 7-floor library) on weekends and composes detailed noted on everything. When I reported back it was only supposed to be a verbal report but I had plenty of noted to refer to and I seemed to summon enough interest in it that he kept me on the program, though I thought that I was being punished for something at first.
Any rate the real courses began in fall/winter with those killer Calculus and Physics courses, 5-credits each plus Physics Lab, and I signed up for more economics electives to get them out of the way -- Price Theory and Industrial Organization. Since I was actually an engineering major, that was about it from then until about 2006. I got out of college with a B.A. in Industrial Engineering and the Dept. head suggested, as they all might for self-serving reasons, I should pursue Graduate studies to write for Journals and stuff in the long term. I didn't, but then again I did.
In the I.O. class I took to the main campus library and did field good research on the Chrysler bankruptcy, yet again acing the class. I managed to work in articles from Challenge in my report, which from then, was some kind of economics Journal.
Sometime later I would find myself reading a different Challenge. The 2001 Trade Center crash caused a bit of a recession that had affected the company where I worked, triggering a layoff sometime later that included me. When they wanted me back I stayed put, having already found another, more info-laden position involving programming. I did some extra work at home for them, and other times worked as a Commodities Trader. It's not hard to get trained and be licensed to do that. I found it harder to join a company that stayed afloat in that biz.
The new Engineering position, though, was not as well-paying as the first two that I held at first. Oh, as an aside I took to an interest in politics early in my schooling too. So like Byron here, I had been following the antics of the Bush administration i.e. his shadow boss, Cheney. I've actually read up quite a bit on and about both of them and the dark-money side of politics. I thought there was a long period of stagnation following 2001 that was masked by Fed low-interest rate policy and that housing market boom. The so-called Ownership Society was an actual White House program, and the Fed Chairman was philosophically an Objectivist deeply committed to laissez-faire policy. The didn't look into the burgeoning derivative market nor any of the exotic financial manipulations therein. Technically they followed what is called an Efficient-Market Hypothesis, which basically says the (stock) market has everything priced in.
This is not true, it is manipulated by insiders connected to the government and big-business has had increasing control of politicians over, say the Ford Administration through today. The post-WWII period Donaker writes about was the exception.
The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about an increase in low-skill labor supply and affected lower worldwide interest rates, leading to disinflation. Before the financial meltdown, the Fed was signaling and effecting a very tight money policy that triggered the U.S. market collapse. It was the wrong policy. The current economy is no longer U.S. dominated except for the petrodollar, it's knit into three parts connected by the I.M.F., that will have to bail out any nations involved in future economic conundrums.
I look at the financial sector as a capital class and everything else as a "working" class, the world being interconnected rather than having nationalistic tendency. It follows that labor movements i.e. the Third International should follow the same tendency, rather then being embedding inside particular industries e.g. the U.A.W. or Teacher's Union, with the latter entities still having enormous political clout on the U.S.
In view of outsourcing the U.S. electorate in turn should be seen as a labor aristocracy, and part of the problem turning into world-wide deflation. Robotics innovation in manufacturing is a countervailing trend that should reverse, i.e. be a gain to labor power in the U.S. in my view, because it re-stimulates U.S. manufacturing.
Along with the tendencies of corporations to offshore labor they've likewise avoided taxes. In truth there's a rent-seeking culture of political capital in Washington that serves to run the Congress, and that only a truly Socialist President can begin to address in kind.
Well, this has gotten to be less about me than my overall theory of things. I might have added that I did intelligence work in the Army Security Agency and to this day have expertise at Russian history. In that vein, I would like to portray the Lenin - inspired version of Soviet Marxism as being kind of a half-truth cover up. On the theory side, there was never any "dialectical materialism." When I first looked into alternative political orientations during the height of the Bush administration the CPUSA had an appealing program but didn't address labor in the way the SWP (Trots) had it, which as more accurate. As to the latter, they have some kind of central organization that remains obscure to all but an inner circle of their promoters.
The W.I.I.U. site has done all it can to promote the Debs history and their origins and should try to draw more relevancy by focusing on economics and policy. So we have to understand rather than ignore capitalism, in order to have that political influence today that Debs called for. It's necessary to be in tune with the current trend back to political economy, i.e. state-directed capitalism.
You wouldn't be surprised if I wrote something like, if you are still reading this..., at this point so I will conclude my background/overview in the hope that some others present themselves so we have a better understanding of just who we are. I hasten
to add, that for all you know I could be gathering info so don't go in too deep. I am sure that some of you have a fascinating story and even could be featured on site, i.e. if it stays up. We probably have a lot of collective experience and it should be more
than enough along with a cup-of-coffee donation every month to make this work.
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2015 12:20 PM
Donald J Donaker (Don)
So you think it is important to let us know who you are and
what you are about. What is not disclosed is the attitude
that you carry along with that.
us. I joined WIIU in the beginning, later convincing 3 of my
local comrades to join. At times I regret having done so. As
it stood, we had the majority voting block in the orgainization.
As useless as it was because there was nothing to vote for. The
rganization has degenerated into a free for all, dissipating of
energy and effort.
holding business meeting every Sunday through the internet. No
mention was made to have the minutes recorded. Thinking the
formation of WIIU was too good to be true, on my own, I
recorded the minutes of every meeting. Later, referring to
those minutes, I caught one of the others lying and called him
out on it. Later, I and the other member caught that one passing
contact names on to an anarchistic organization he belonged to.
unified, together with concerted effort.
Here is what I recently received from you:
infamous robot hysteria into economic data.
American citizens aren't part of "classes."
We live in a liberal, commerce-based society."
gets this first on the list:
learn in grade school or when first learning a language. It
covers the basics and helps you understand the situation and
context. My high school friends can attest to my poor memory,
but even I can remember these basic words in french: Qui,
Quoi, Quand, Où, Pourquoi."
pertaining to "lights out manufacturing" (LOM - coined by
Byron and I) or robotic production.
frenetic quest of the capitalist class to eliminate the only
thing that workers own, which is their labor power, from the
process of production. It will never completely come to that
because, capitalism is hell bent to "go to hell in a hand
basket." In other words, the capitalists class are destined
to bust the system whether workers carry forth a revolution
or not.
how it changes the mode of production? That the stark
contradiction in our society is that the capitalist class
owns and controls all of that and conducts production to
sell the products for profit instead of a sane society
were production is carried on for the benefit of everyone in
society.
a comrade.
... reporting back to [Aguilera,]I got an "A" for the course but it was not without some extra effort. I still had my U/Miami library card for the year so I went up the stacks (the upper levels of their 7-floor library) on weekends and composes detailed noted on everything. When I reported back it was only supposed to be a verbal report but I had plenty of noted to refer to and I seemed to summon enough interest in it that he kept me on the program, though I thought that I was being punished for something at first.
Any rate the real courses began in fall/winter with those killer Calculus and Physics courses, 5-credits each plus Physics Lab, and I signed up for more economics electives to get them out of the way -- Price Theory and Industrial Organization. Since I was actually an engineering major, that was about it from then until about 2006. I got out of college with a B.A. in Industrial Engineering and the Dept. head suggested, as they all might for self-serving reasons, I should pursue Graduate studies to write for Journals and stuff in the long term. I didn't, but then again I did.
In the I.O. class I took to the main campus library and did field good research on the Chrysler bankruptcy, yet again acing the class. I managed to work in articles from Challenge in my report, which from then, was some kind of economics Journal.
Sometime later I would find myself reading a different Challenge. The 2001 Trade Center crash caused a bit of a recession that had affected the company where I worked, triggering a layoff sometime later that included me. When they wanted me back I stayed put, having already found another, more info-laden position involving programming. I did some extra work at home for them, and other times worked as a Commodities Trader. It's not hard to get trained and be licensed to do that. I found it harder to join a company that stayed afloat in that biz.
The new Engineering position, though, was not as well-paying as the first two that I held at first. Oh, as an aside I took to an interest in politics early in my schooling too. So like Byron here, I had been following the antics of the Bush administration i.e. his shadow boss, Cheney. I've actually read up quite a bit on and about both of them and the dark-money side of politics. I thought there was a long period of stagnation following 2001 that was masked by Fed low-interest rate policy and that housing market boom. The so-called Ownership Society was an actual White House program, and the Fed Chairman was philosophically an Objectivist deeply committed to laissez-faire policy. The didn't look into the burgeoning derivative market nor any of the exotic financial manipulations therein. Technically they followed what is called an Efficient-Market Hypothesis, which basically says the (stock) market has everything priced in.
This is not true, it is manipulated by insiders connected to the government and big-business has had increasing control of politicians over, say the Ford Administration through today. The post-WWII period Donaker writes about was the exception.
The collapse of the Soviet Union brought about an increase in low-skill labor supply and affected lower worldwide interest rates, leading to disinflation. Before the financial meltdown, the Fed was signaling and effecting a very tight money policy that triggered the U.S. market collapse. It was the wrong policy. The current economy is no longer U.S. dominated except for the petrodollar, it's knit into three parts connected by the I.M.F., that will have to bail out any nations involved in future economic conundrums.
I look at the financial sector as a capital class and everything else as a "working" class, the world being interconnected rather than having nationalistic tendency. It follows that labor movements i.e. the Third International should follow the same tendency, rather then being embedding inside particular industries e.g. the U.A.W. or Teacher's Union, with the latter entities still having enormous political clout on the U.S.
In view of outsourcing the U.S. electorate in turn should be seen as a labor aristocracy, and part of the problem turning into world-wide deflation. Robotics innovation in manufacturing is a countervailing trend that should reverse, i.e. be a gain to labor power in the U.S. in my view, because it re-stimulates U.S. manufacturing.
Along with the tendencies of corporations to offshore labor they've likewise avoided taxes. In truth there's a rent-seeking culture of political capital in Washington that serves to run the Congress, and that only a truly Socialist President can begin to address in kind.
Well, this has gotten to be less about me than my overall theory of things. I might have added that I did intelligence work in the Army Security Agency and to this day have expertise at Russian history. In that vein, I would like to portray the Lenin - inspired version of Soviet Marxism as being kind of a half-truth cover up. On the theory side, there was never any "dialectical materialism." When I first looked into alternative political orientations during the height of the Bush administration the CPUSA had an appealing program but didn't address labor in the way the SWP (Trots) had it, which as more accurate. As to the latter, they have some kind of central organization that remains obscure to all but an inner circle of their promoters.
The W.I.I.U. site has done all it can to promote the Debs history and their origins and should try to draw more relevancy by focusing on economics and policy. So we have to understand rather than ignore capitalism, in order to have that political influence today that Debs called for. It's necessary to be in tune with the current trend back to political economy, i.e. state-directed capitalism.
You wouldn't be surprised if I wrote something like, if you are still reading this..., at this point so I will conclude my background/overview in the hope that some others present themselves so we have a better understanding of just who we are. I hasten to add, that for all you know I could be gathering info so don't go in too deep. I am sure that some of you have a fascinating story and even could be featured on site, i.e. if it stays up. We probably have a lot of collective experience and it should be more than enough along with a cup-of-coffee donation every month to make this work.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Andrew Gunderman <gunder...@hotmail.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2015 12:20 PM
Subject: Re: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
[Andrew's] association with the union movement is the result of one of the following:
1. total misunderstanding of the reason for unionization, or
2. an attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.
Byron up here is the accuser plainly stating, but not forced to conclude, my own rationale for inclusion to our alternative union. I feel like I can relate this for myself and not have someone else do it, so I will, despite having been forced into it in his twisted way. Butt first, as they say in the news biz, it's probably even better that we present some background for ourselves. So, I'll start out.
Probably I got my first glimmer into this when I came back from the Army to study at college. I did a little private-sector work in between too, hardly relevant. I re-started back with the U School of Biz and they hiked tuition the next term. Shifting over to F.I.U. after MGT101 then I took economics requisites over the spring and summer terms. The first instructor was a young guy that I tended to question occasionally. The classes weren't hard, so I took to the library while waiting for the bus to arrive and even got into reading a book about the developmental economics of social systems, i.e. non-market economics. During the next class I had a Professor from Harvard teaching, who became aware of this and put me one a self-reading program so I had to read about the conditions in early English society during the Industrial Revolution and before, I read Marcuse and Galbraith, too, and reporting back to him got an "A" for the course.
To be continued...
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Byron Danelius <bdd...@q.com>
Sent: Sunday, December 27, 2015 11:44 AM
Subject: RE: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
Andrew: “Nobody forces you to do anything over a Hotmail message. You have reasoning ability to decide for yourself, but not for me.”
You are twisting my conclusion by changing the subject—a regular tactic of the right—as if we didn’t know where you are coming from! I did not state that you were forced into anything. It was I that was forced to conclude that either you lack an understanding for unionization, or that your efforts have been to undermine the WIIU. Quit trying to muddy the waters by denying class divisions. Wage/salary levels are not the only characteristic of classes. Sheldon Cooper is a comic character of a sitcom. You cannot claim his mantle—we are not laughing.
Byron
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com [mailto:workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Gunderman
Sent: Saturday, December 26, 2015 2:26 PM
To: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
I am forced to consider that your association with the union movement is the result of one of the following:
1. total misunderstanding of the reason for unionization, or
2. an attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.
Nobody forces you to do anything over a Hotmail message. You have reasoning ability to decide for yourself, but not for me.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Byron Danelius <bdd...@q.com>
Sent: Friday, December 25, 2015 9:40 AM
To: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com
Subject: RE: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
Andrew:
My article was written to elucidate the “middle class” and is not the same thing as your ridiculous suggestion that “American citizens aren't part of "classes. We live in a liberal, commerce-based society.”
Our society not only remains class divided, it is divided with a vengeance. The concentration of wealth in the top .1% is merely a symptom of this more oppressive division, but technically this increased concentration is not the definition of class divisions. Your claim that we live in a classless society suggests you would be very comfortable in the Republican Party, if not already there. I am forced to consider that your association with the union movement is the result of one of the following: 1. Total misunderstanding of the reason for unionization, or 2. An attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.
Byron
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com [mailto:workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Andrew Gunderman
Sent: Wednesday, December 23, 2015 6:21 PM
To: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: The Real Real Middle Class Fuddy-Duddy
Good. First Byron here starts with, once upon a time when the term “middle class” had a definite economic and sociological meaning, basically the same thing I said, not to undercut it's importance. America didn’t experience feudalism... We imported this idea from Europe. Class-based ideas are always in search of relevance. I think this is because America was the place people emigrated to get away from class and social divisiveness. He skips to a Bush-administration program, implying that "W" wanted to winnow out the middle class. Fine paper.
All that's before the financial crisis. Since 2011 we've been in recovery from it and Americans have cut debt a bit. That's good!
<span style="col
Andrew Gunderman
First of all Byron and Don didn't coin the term Lights-Out Manufacturing out of his Local. And what kind of Local Don had been referring to, is anybody's guess. As to his major point about having us all integrally unify ourselves with concerted effort, then
I guess that means there can be no disagreement in our midst. How is this any different from the Congresses of the C.P.S.U.?
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 5:12:15 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
First of all Byron and Don didn't coin the term Lights-Out Manufacturing out of his Local. And what kind of Local Don had been referring to, is anybody's guess. As to his major point about having us all integrally unify ourselves with concerted effort, then I guess that means there can be no disagreement in our midst. How is this any different from the Congresses of the C.P.S.U.?
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 5:12:15 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
First of all Byron and Don didn't coin the term Lights-Out Manufacturing out of his Local. And what kind of Local Don had been referring to, is anybody's guess. As to his major point about having us all integrally unify ourselves with concerted effort, then I guess that means there can be no disagreement in our midst. How is this any different from the Congresses of the C.P.S.U.?
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
Andrew Gunderman
right now that's a nearly a true sentiment, as I have a Redskins cap the N.F.L. logo which has plenty of feathers.
I'll advise what you can do with your hat at the end of this message, so that you keep reading. Quick responses aren't always an indicator of reaction. Couldn't it be that I've already been through this?
Yes and No. In truth I just happen to be an avid poster in other forums, part and parcel of an interest in politics I alluded to in my last post. Without going into any more personal history than anyone else is up to offer I believe the best way to counter certain types of arguments is to know more about capitalism than your right wing opponent does. Some far-right defenses of a "free-market" are really nothing other than common anti-Marxist tropes and you always get the better of an argument by using valid economic theory and specific facts.
It's also called reality, often enough a viable substitute for ideals. As to the keeping within the program and principles of the original W.I.I.U., I had not any awareness that this was a limited forum. It's just a series of e-mail messages and not a forum, besides which it isn't on-site. And I'm not joking that I always win, based on fact content. The key is not to overstate your case, as it relates to robots.
A further note on establishing boundaries for discussion: hardly anything can be explained solely in terms of economic principle. If W.I.I.U. ever established a true International context then shouldn't it have dispensed with political operation? Wasn't that in fact, W.I.I.U.'s raison d'etre, the historical split with the Wobblies? If so, then it was pure idealism based on yearning for a Socialist state, and we're connected with Bernie Sanders.
Not a word on site about him. At least it's still up for the time being, for want of dues-paying members. So if you're still reading this then get your hat and take up a collection if you cannot afford it.
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 10:04 AM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Donald J Donaker (Don)
right now that's a nearly a true sentiment, as I have a Redskins cap the N.F.L. logo which has plenty of feathers," he can sit in a corner contemplating his naval, while licking his lollipop. As far as I am concerned, that would be equivalent to what he has contributed to building WIIU. On Saturday, January 2, 2016 at 12:14:47 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
Yes and No. In truth I just happen to be an avid poster in other forums, part and parcel of an interest in politics I alluded to in my last post. Without going into any more personal history than anyone else is up to offer I believe the best way to counter certain types of arguments is to know more about capitalism than your right wing opponent does. Some far-right defenses of a "free-market" are really nothing other than common anti-Marxist tropes and you always get the better of an argument by using valid economic theory and specific facts.
It's also called reality, often enough a viable substitute for ideals. As to the keeping within the program and principles of the original W.I.I.U., I had not any awareness that this was a limited forum. It's just a series of e-mail messages and not a forum, besides which it isn't on-site. And I'm not joking that I always win, based on fact content. The key is not to overstate your case, as it relates to robots.
A further note on establishing boundaries for discussion: hardly anything can be explained solely in terms of economic principle. If W.I.I.U. ever established a true International context then shouldn't it have dispensed with political operation? Wasn't that in fact, W.I.I.U.'s raison d'etre, the historical split with the Wobblies? If so, then it was pure idealism based on yearning for a Socialist state, and we're connected with Bernie Sanders.
Not a word on site about him. At least it's still up for the time being, for want of dues-paying members. So if you're still reading this then get your hat and take up a collection if you cannot afford it.
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Socialism is neither an aspiration of angels, nor a
plot of devils. Socialism moves with its feet firmly
planted on the ground, and its head not lost in the
clouds; it takes Science by the hand, asks her to
lead, and goes whithersoever she points. It does
not take Science by the hand, saying : "I shall
follow you to the end of the road if it please me."
No! It takes her by the hands and says: Whither-
soever thou leadest, thither am I bound to go." The
Socialists, consequently, move as intelligent men
[and women]; we do not mutiny because, instead of
having wings, we have arms, and can not fly as we
would wish.
<span style="
Donald J Donaker (Don)
<p style="
Andrew Gunderman
Workers want an identifying emblematic party that takes direct action now, not in some manner of evolution. The financial crisis really socialized the losses of finance capital and not enough leverage regulations have been put in place to temper another
whirlwind in the markets. U.S. is entering recession and is working with serious global deflationary forces. The E.U. already has mass layoff plans. I don't know about item 1. or what all the other B/S that follows is about. C.Y.A. when the site goes back
up then you have a place to propagandize
Sent: Friday, January 22, 2016 9:21 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Workers want an identifying emblematic party that takes direct action now, not in some manner of evolution. The financial crisis really socialized the losses of finance capital and not enough leverage regulations have been put in place to temper another whirlwind in the markets. U.S. is entering recession and is working with serious global deflationary forces. The E.U. already has mass layoff plans. I don't know about item 1. or what all the other B/S that follows is about. C.Y.A. when the site goes back up then you have a place to propagandize
Good. First Byron here starts with, once upon a time when the term “middle class” had a definite economic and sociological meaning, basically the same thing I said, not to undercut it's importance. America didn’t experience feudalism... We imported this idea from Europe. Class-based ideas are always in search of relevance. I think this is&nbs
Donald J Donaker (Don)
“There is a certain quantity of money needed to carry on trade. More than this
sum can be productive of no real use. Less than this quantity is always productive of
serious evils.∗ . . . [Money] is a medium of exchange; and whatever men agree to
make the medium is, to those who have it, the very things they want, because it will
buy for them the very things they want. It is cloth to him who wants cloth. It is corn
to him who wants corn. Custom has made gold and silver the materials for this
medium of exchange. But the measure of value for this medium is not gold and
silver, but labor. Labor is as much a measure of the value of silver as of anything
else. Suppose one man employed to raise corn, while another man is busy refining
gold [?]. At the end of a year the complete produce of corn and the complete produce
of silver [gold?] are the natural price of each other. If the one be twenty bushels and
the other twenty ounces, then one ounce of silver [?] is worth the labor of raising one
bushel of corn. Money, therefore, as bullion, is valuable by so much labor as it costs
to produce that bullion.”
<p style="background: white;"
Andrew Gunderman
You don't know what direct action is? It's a direct appeal -- to a politician, executive, corporation, or whomever responsible for policy change -- and its organized most likely as a protest or demo. The W.I.I.U has done a couple already in the wake of the
Occupy movement.
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 5:09 PM
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Monday, January 25, 2016 at 6:09:33 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
You don't know what direct action is? It's a direct appeal -- to a politician, executive, corporation, or whomever responsible for policy change -- and its organized most likely as a protest or demo. The W.I.I.U has done a couple already in the wake of the Occupy movement.
Donald J Donaker (Don)
employer is emphatic on the point. The labor fakers rarely miss an opportunity to
brand Socialism “un-American.” If your are like most workers, you’re skeptical.
First of all, you can’t quite swallow the “Americanism” of the super-patriots who
peddle this yarn — super-patriots like the American Legion Commander-in-Chief1
who said several years ago that his organization would be used to smash Socialism.
“Do not forget,” he said, “that the Fascisti are to Italy what the American Legion is
to the United States.”
fishy in their attacks. Moreover, your native sense of fair play prompts you to give
the Socialists a hearing. It is up to them to prove their case.
“Americanism”; that one is spurious and is a reflection of property interests; that
the other has its roots deeply embedded in American tradition and is in harmony
with the loftiest aspirations of the Founding Fathers.
cries to high heaven that virtue is outraged. In this manner it sows doubt among
the enemies of despotism and divides them against themselves. Justice Brandeis
made the point neatly when he said:
upon moral sanction. The longing for freedom is ineradicable. It will express itself in
protest against servitude and inaction unless the striving for freedom be made to
seem immoral. Long ago monarchs invented, as a preservative for absolutism, the
fiction of ‘The divine right of Kings.’”
apologists speak of capitalism they do not say “capitalism,” they say “democracy” or
“Americanism.” They use “democracy” and “Americanism” as synonyms for
“capitalism.” They know the workers cherish American traditions and treasure the
Bill of Rights. If the workers can be made to believe that capitalism and democracy,
or capitalism and Americanism, are one and the same, capitalist tyranny is saved.
Just as the rogues of the Middle Ages sought sanctuary in a church, the exploiters
of modern times seek safety in the folds of the American flag.
democracy but, whenever democracy and their material; interests clash, they are
ever ready to strangle the former to preserve the latter. It was the big industrialists
and financiers who financed the rise of Nazism in Germany and Fascism in Italy,
and who applauded the strangulation of free speech, free press and popular
elections in those unhappy [capitalist] countries. And it is the capitalist class in
America which applauds every liberty-throttling measure that is proposed, which
clamors for anti-strike laws and other curbs on human freedom. Like the slaveowning
class of the old South, they are blinded by their property interests. This
proper-blindness, characteristic of all propertied classes, caused the truly great
American, Abraham Lincoln, to remark:
places in organization, which often make a man’s course seem crooked, his
conduct a riddle.” (Hartford, Conn., March 5, 1860.)
Americanism embodied in the Declaration of Independence. That immortal
document declares that whenever any form of government becomes destructive to
the ends of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, it is the right of the people to
abolish it — nay, “it is their duty to throw off such government, and to provide new
guards for their future security.” It utters an admonition against complacently
suffering evil conditions because of a mistaken reverence for ancient forms. “ . . . all
experience hath shewn,” it says, “that mankind are more disposed to suffer when
evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they
are accustomed.”
Fourth of July celebration in New Jersey a few years ago, he mopped his forehead
when he had finished and remarked: “Phew! I didn’t realize that that was such an
be a living thing, not a dead abstraction with which to cloak slavery. But what is
liberty? Is it liberty to be able to quit one master only to be compelled to seek
another? Is it liberty for one class to be in economic bondage to another? The
Declaration of Independence does not define liberty. Abraham Lincoln, the son of
toil and champion of the oppressed, did, He said:
himself, and the product of his labor; while with others the same word may mean
for some men to do as they please with other men and with other men’s labor. Here
are two not only different, but incompatible things, called by the same name,
liberty. And it follows that each of the things is, by the respective parties, called by
two different and incompatible names — liberty and tyranny.”
proposal that the workers should appropriate and dispose of the product of their
labor; the Socialists conceive as the essence of liberty a social system under which
the useful producers receive the full social product of their toil. This is the nub of
the social question of our age. Around it such questions as war, unemployment, civil
liberty, dictatorship, and many others, revolve.
Andrew Gunderman
Sent: Monday, January 25, 2016 7:57 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Re: Non-Class Middle
On Monday, January 25, 2016 at 6:09:33 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
You don't know what direct action is? It's a direct appeal -- to a politician, executive, corporation, or whomever responsible for policy change -- and its organized most likely as a protest or demo. The W.I.I.U has done a couple already in the wake of the Occupy movement.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
Sent: Sunday, January 24, 2016 5:09 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Re: Non-Class Middle
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Tuesday, January 26, 2016 at 6:10:11 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
Next time I go upstairs I'll spell it all out for you. I was part of a group that went through a training session on it many years back. But hey, if you've got all the answers right now go ahead pony up. Does the approach fit in with De Leon-ism?
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
<p style="background: white;
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Lecture rooms on mineralogy, on astronomy, on the differential calculus, on law, on electricity, on anatomy, on all of these and similar subjects, are not liable to become centers from which mental corruption radiates. True, there may be, as there often is, corruption in the appointment of the professors in these, as in all other, branches—but the corruption ends there. The reason is obvious. There is not motive for misdirecting instruction. There may be lack of up-to-dateness; there may be even ignorance; a set purpose to corrupt and mislead is not likely.
It is otherwise with regard to the social sciences. Some indirectly, most of them directly, bear upon the class struggle. Indeed, it would go hard to pick out one branch of the social sciences that is not begotten of the palpitations of the class struggle. Where the class struggle palpitates, material interests are at stake. It is an established principle that the material interests of a ruling class, in part, promote immorality. To promote incapacity to reason upon the domain of sociology is one of the corrupt practices of ruling class material interests.
2. an attempt to scuttle the original intent of the WIIU.<span style="color: black; font-family: "Calibri","serif"
Donald J Donaker (Don)
based on social science from 4 individuals. Regarding one
of them; the crux of our social/economic posed by one
of our most revered American founders, Benjamin Franklin
of value. Since his passing, the other 3, of the 20th
Century, embraced that law of value, basing all their
writings and convictions, pertaining to the subject of
society and economics, on it.
insisted that it be based on social science, within strictly
definite terms. Not by the capitalist class, had they been
ridiculed for adhering to that principle, but by a great
many of their fellow working men and women, as being
"dogmatic," "doctrinaire" and "sectarian." If true, than it
logically follows that Benjamin Franklin should be added to
those 3 and all their cohorts, including all those who have
continued on in the same vain ever since their passing.
the list, "dogmatic," "doctrinaire" and "sectarian," being
used to ridicule a comment by a person who adhered to
that one gets his money's worth, $5 a month, pushing disruption.
If enough members were to step up and seriously support WIIU, I
can assure you that ample funding is forthcoming to pay for the
continuation of the WIIU website.
and Nigel, his crony in GB are peeking in, probably with glee.
about the disruption. Add to that, Andrew apparent affinity
to similar behavior.
Andrew Gunderman
Okay "Don" you have made your point. From now on I will follow whatever line you choose. You are the Ruler.
Sent: Friday, January 29, 2016 9:12 AM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Martin Schreader
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Martin Schreader
Andrew Gunderman
The Perceptions Editor brings a tragic Stalin aura to the forum. Why, I just let him have his way. I decided no matter what he says it's okay with me. Not a problem.
So now we're cited for being agent provocateurs. Charged with spying.
Next come the phony forum trials, right? We're working our way back thru Soviet history, your next stop the Twilight zone.
Sent: Tuesday, February 2, 2016 5:41 PM
To: workers-internation...@googlegroups.com
Subject: Re: Non-Class Middle
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Scott Wallace
As for the child that said: "right now that's a nearly a true sentiment, as I have a Redskins cap the N.F.L. logo which has plenty of feathers," he can sit in a corner contemplating his naval, while licking his lollipop. As far as I am concerned, that would be equivalent to what he has contributed to building WIIU.
If ordered to retract, I will refuse. If that is unacceptable, WIIU might as well give me the boot right now.Donald J Donaker
On Saturday, January 2, 2016 at 12:14:47 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
right now that's a nearly a true sentiment, as I have a Redskins cap the N.F.L. logo which has plenty of feathers. I'll advise what you can do with your hat at the end of this message, so that you keep reading. Quick responses aren't always an indicator of reaction. Couldn't it be that I've already been through this?
Yes and No. In truth I just happen to be an avid poster in other forums, part and parcel of an interest in politics I alluded to in my last post. Without going into any more personal history than anyone else is up to offer I believe the best way to counter certain types of arguments is to know more about capitalism than your right wing opponent does. Some far-right defenses of a "free-market" are really nothing other than common anti-Marxist tropes and you always get the better of an argument by using valid economic theory and specific facts.It's also called reality, often enough a viable substitute for ideals. As to the keeping within the program and principles of the original W.I.I.U., I had not any awareness that this was a limited forum. It's just a series of e-mail messages and not a forum, besides which it isn't on-site. And I'm not joking that I always win, based on fact content. The key is not to overstate your case, as it relates to robots.A further note on establishing boundaries for discussion: hardly anything can be explained solely in terms of economic principle. If W.I.I.U. ever established a true International context then shouldn't it have dispensed with political operation? Wasn't that in fact, W.I.I.U.'s raison d'etre, the historical split with the Wobblies? If so, then it was pure idealism based on yearning for a Socialist state, and we're connected with Bernie Sanders.Not a word on site about him. At least it's still up for the time being, for want of dues-paying members. So if you're still reading this then get your hat and take up a collection if you cannot afford it.
From: workers-international- industrial-union@googlegroups. com <workers-international- industrial-union@googlegroups. com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
Sent: Thursday, December 31, 2015 10:04 AM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Subject: Re: More Non-Real Middle Class
Almost all of your contributions to the forum is absent of promoting the principles and program of WIIU whichis supposed to be base on the program and principles of the original WIIU. One wonders if you know it andalso understand it. What you do often is leap to the attack, carping about substantiated information presentedthat critically impacts the class struggle as suffered by the working class. Each time I can imagine youputting another feather in your hat.Regarding your carping of my last post, I remind you again, I cannot consider you a comrade.
On Tuesday, December 29, 2015 at 5:12:15 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
First of all Byron and Don didn't coin the term Lights-Out Manufacturing out of his Local. And what kind of Local Don had been referring to, is anybody's guess. As to his major point about having us all integrally unify ourselves with concerted effort, then I guess that means there can be no disagreement in our midst. How is this any different from the Congresses of the C.P.S.U.?
From: workers-international- industrial-union@googlegroups. com <workers-international- industrial-union@googlegroups. com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 5:51:07 PM UTC-6, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
The Perceptions Editor brings a tragic Stalin aura to the forum. Why, I just let him have his way. I decided no matter what he says it's okay with me. Not a problem.
So now we're cited for being agent provocateurs. Charged with spying. Next come the phony forum trials, right? We're working our way back thru Soviet history, your next stop the Twilight zone.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Martin Schreader <mschr...@gmail.com>
Sent: Tuesday, February 2, 2016 5:41 PM
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Tuesday, February 2, 2016 at 6:19:52 PM UTC-6, Scott wrote:
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
Real Union Of Social Science (RUSS) has no affiliation with any political party or political organization whatsoever. For any political party to be endorsed by RUSS, it must embrace all the principles of RUSS.
The dismal track record of the Green Party in Germany should sound the alarm for workers everywhere. The conclusion of this article relates Karl Marx's projection of advanced capitalism's decadence which is here now but the Green Party seems to be unable to comprehend it. This should serve as a warning to US workers on what to expect from the Green Party of America in a time of crises.
Two years ago the Green Party of Germany entered the coalition government with the Social Democrats under the chancellorship of Gerhard Schroeder. Two of the more prestigious positions in the new federal government were assigned to Mr. Tritin for the environment and Jaschka Fischer for Foreign Minister, both of the Green Party.
It didn't take long before this coalition partner was whipped into line. Under the new government, the dismantling of the so-called SOZIALSTAAT (loosely translated, a government with across-the-board social programs to serve the people) proceeded rapidly. These were reforms previously gained before the Capitalist State again became solidly entrenched after World War II; something the previous CDU-FDP government didn't dare to do. Despite lip service and objections from the Greens, that program is proceeding unabated. Today, there is still two-digit unemployment in the eastern part of German since reunification 10 years ago. The present administration has wholeheartedly endorsed the inhuman and criminal war against Yugoslavia by NATO with the active participation of the German army under the command of Minister of Defense, Rudolf Scharping.
The point is that despite all the good intentions one must remember that the political state has always been and will continue to be the executive committee of the ruling class. It is combined and well organized in every industrialized country. Nothing short of a social revolution by the working class can abolish the antisocial system of private ownership of the industries around the world.
Reforms and compromises only re-enforce and perpetuate that system and will only tighten the iron collar of wage slavery around the necks of the workers of the world. The oppressed and exploited proletariat of the world is looking to the US working class for inspiration. Let us work towards the overthrow of capitalism here as well as in the rest of the industrialized world rather than tinkering with reforms which only strengthens the ruling class.
To ignore the history of when the darling of labor, the Social Democratic Party (now glorified by the Greens), betrayed the German workers by opening the door to fascism, is to invite a repeat performance. The current latent reactionary element is held secure by the "dumbing down" of the working class with patchwork reform sops. It lurks in the sidelines of the political state ready to spring forward whenever the capitalist class beckons. That time will arise when the capitalist system once again nears bottom in the pit of decadence.
The German public may wax indignant towards the antics of National Democratic Party (NPD) followers but the skinheads do not have institutional organizing capability. No more so than the brown shirts and black shirts had when the Third Reich was instituted. When the eleventh hour arrived it took the services of the working elite, judges, lawyers, engineers, doctors, etc., to institutionalize, codify and legalize fascism and implement it by conducting its nefarious programs. Did these workers have proper social education? Were they class conscious from the standpoint of being workers? Absolutely not. Was the capitalist class educated class consciously from the standpoint of being the ruling class? Absolutely yes. The result was that the capitalist class acted in its own material self interest while many workers, especially among the best educated, acted in servitude to the ruling class in conducting the operations of the diabolical Third Reich.
As has been the case of all political leaders under ultra reactionary capitalist rule, Hitler was extracted from the working class. Such specimens throw themselves into the fray with more fervor then any member of the capitalist class could muster. For that matter why should they when they can recruit fanatics to do the dirty work for them. And the added beauty of it is that coming from the working class, who are the vast majority, these tyrannical charlatans are accepted wholeheartedly by that class as one of their own.
While this was transpiring in Germany, the American capitalist class was not a holy innocent either. Go back to the end of World War I with the signing of the peace treaty. It brought the German country to its knees economically. Militarily, Germany was compelled to dismantle and destroy its military arsenal. This included biplanes that were already becoming obsolete by capitalism's future weapons of mass slaughter which were already appearing on the drawing boards. US capitalism's military supremacy of the skies was soon to come. Now flash forward to the scene of the Battle of Great Britain and observe the German bombers raining tons of bombs on London. These planes were carried back and forth with engines manufactured by General Motors of America right in Germany. Substantially, other military production was conducted in Germany by the American holy innocents such as General Motors, Ford, Chrysler and DuPont. The destruction of Germany's military arsenal after World War I turned out to be fortunate for US capitalism by providing it with a lucrative market. The same goes for all the iron and steel supplied to Japan for the build up of its war effort. US capitalists reaped huge profits while the sons and daughters of the American working class were killed and maimed.
If it were not for Germany and Japan providing such a convenient opportunity for the US capitalist class to crank up its production to the maximum, the US working class might have got its own Hitler and Third Reich. Sinister conduct was already on the move with members of the ruling class and high level underlings busily practicing and promoting anti-Semitism. Anti-labor sentiments by the ruling class were running high precisely because workers were becoming dangerously restless. Capitalist markets were scarce, production was severely curtailed, the stock market was flat and mass unemployment prevailed. US society had all the ingredients of an outbreak of fascism. But as has been pointed out, fortune played into the hands of the American capitalist class when Germany and Japan were provoked into commencing World War II. The US capitalist made sure these countries had an ample military stockpile to start a war. It could then jump into the melee and crank up its own production several notches to produce for the US war effort which is precisely what happened.
During the time leading up to this social upheaval, the political scene abounded with liberals hawking their feeble reform sops to the working class in every industrialized country. Despite that, the inevitable happened. The capitalist class went berserk and threw the world into chaos and human slaughter. And with that came the spectacle of many of these do-gooders jumping ship and prostituting themselves by helping the capitalist class to expedite the war effort. Reflecting on that we can see what Daniel De Leon meant when he said, "Scratch a liberal and out jumps a reactionary." Interestingly, as of this writing, the American working class was patronized by the christening of their illustrious leader during that black mark in history, Franklin Delano Roosevelt. His statue was dedicated in honor of the sops instituted under his administration. Never mind that during his presidential campaign he promised that no American son would die on foreign soil.
This is a brief account to illustrate that when capitalism has reached the point when it can longer contribute to social progress; when it actually hinders it, then all of the reform posturing of liberals is like a worn out shoe. In the industrially advanced countries, liberalism is a feeble obstacle to capitalist reaction. All of them, including the Greens, hovering from their ivory tower of intellectualism, will easily be swept aside leaving the working class vulnerable to capitalist reaction. In the penetrating words of Karl Marx, "On a level plane simple mounds look like hills and the imbecile flatness of the present bourgeoisie is measured by the altitude of its intellectuals." The same goes for the American Trotskyites and Russian styled communists who cling to the despotic tendencies of pseudo Marxism with an intellectual death grip and the phony socialist parties who were out reformed by the great reformer, FDR.
We have seen that the capitalist class is class conscious and will always act in its own material interest. It has the compulsion to pursue this to the point of destroying civilization. The only remedy for this is for the working class, the vast majority, to become class consciously educated and organize to promote its own interest. Since conventional educational institutions are a reflection of capitalism's status quo, its educators just don't get it because they have already been indoctrinated by the very same educational process they are engaged in. To achieve class consciousness, workers must set up and pursue their own educational process.
A group of workers in Minnesota has done exactly that. Its organization is called "Real Union Of Social Science" and is dedicated to educating their fellow working men and women about the class struggle between the capitalist class and the working class. Its guiding authority is the truth and principles that serve to emancipate the working class from wage slavery by replacing capitalism with a real union social system.
Indispensable to working class education is the truth about Marxism. By the way, Karl Marx did not incite the world working class into revolutionary fervor when he and Frederick Engles composed the Communist Manifesto. Long before, and up to that time, millions of workers had already gone through revolutionary struggles. Notable among them were those in the Communist League who commissioned Karl Marx and Frederich Engles to compose a party program for that organization which ended up being the Communist Manifesto. Therefore it was not dictated by Marx to the working class but democratically approved and adopted by workers in that organization. This is in stark contrast to the claim by the cabal of intellectuals, braying ever since that manifesto was issued, claiming that it was a sinister and diabolical scheme concocted by Marx which led the impressionable working class astray. Small wonder that Marx referred to these self proclaimed geniuses as he did in the quote mentioned above. Following are quotations from the Communist Manifesto pertaining to capitalism. Material and social conditions that have transpired during the 20th Century demonstrates proof positive that Karl Marx's analysis is correct.
"The bourgeoisie, wherever it has got the upper hand, has put an end to all feudal, patriarchal, idyllic relations. It has pitilessly torn asunder the motley feudal ties that bound man to his "natural superiors," and has left no other bond between man and man than naked self-interest, than callous "cash payment." It has drowned the most heavenly ecstasies of religious fervor, of chivalrous enthusiasm, of philistine sentimentalism, in the icy water of egotistical calculation. It has resolved personal worth into exchange value, and in place of the numberless indefeasible chartered freedoms, has set up that single unconscionable freedom-Free Trade. In one word, for exploitation, veiled by religious and political illusions, it has substituted naked, shameless, direct, brutal exploitation."
"The bourgeoisie has stripped of its halo every occupation hitherto honored and looked up to with reverent awe. It has converted the physician, the lawyer, the priest, the poet, the man of science, into its paid wage-laborers."
"The bourgeoisie has torn away from the family its sentimental veil, and has reduced the family relation to a mere money relation."
"The need of a constantly expanding market for its products chases the bourgeoisie over the whole surface of the globe. It must nestle everywhere, settle everywhere, establish connections everywhere."
"The bourgeoisie, by the rapid improvement of all instruments of production, by the immensely facilitated means of communication, draws all nations, even the most barbarian, into civilization. The cheap prices of its commodities are the heavy artillery with which it batters down all Chinese walls, 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 a word, it creates a world after its own image."
"...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."
"...For many a decade past the history of industry and commerce is but the history of the revolt of modern productive forces against modern conditions of production, against the property relations that are the conditions for the existence of the bourgeoisie and of its rule. It is enough to mention the commercial crises that by their periodical return put the existence of the entire bourgeois society on trial, each time more threateningly. In these crises a great part not only of the existing products, but also of the previously created productive forces, are periodically destroyed. In these crises there breaks out an epidemic that, in all earlier epochs would have seemed an absurdity-the epidemic of overproduction. Society suddenly finds itself put back into a state of momentary barbarism; it appears as if a famine, a universal war of devastation had cut off the supply of every means of subsistence; industry and commerce seem to be destroyed. And why? Because there is too much civilization, too much means of subsistence, too much industry, too much commerce. The productive forces at the disposal of society no longer tend to further the development of the conditions of bourgeois property; on the contrary, they have become too powerful for these conditions, by which they are fettered, and no sooner do they overcome these fetters than they bring disorder into the whole of bourgeois society, endanger the existence of bourgeois property. The conditions of bourgeois society are too narrow to comprise the wealth created by them. And how does the bourgeoisie get over these crises? On the one hand, by enforced destruction of a mass of productive forces; on the other, by the conquest of new markets, and by the more thorough exploitation of the old ones. That is to say, by paving the way for more extensive and more destructive crises, and by diminishing the means whereby crises are prevented."
"The weapons with which the bourgeoisie felled feudalism to the ground are now turned against the bourgeoisie itself."
"But not only has the bourgeoisie forged the weapons that bring death to itself; it has also called into existence the men who are to wield those weapons-the modern working class-the proletarians."
Below is Real Union Of Social Science's (RUSS) E-mail address. Click on it to reply for more information and comments and how to support or become a member of Real Union Of Social Science. Because of our operating expense, contrabutions are always welcome. Thank you for your consideration:
E-mail russm...@comcast.net for more information, to submit comments or to become a member. Because of our operating expense, contributions are always welcome. Thank you for your consideration.
...
Andrew Gunderman
Now that is a truly great article. I will be looking at all it for the next little while here. Thanks.
Sent: Wednesday, February 3, 2016 6:36 PM
To: Workers' International Industrial Union
Martin Schreader
Martin Schreader
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Scott Wallace
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Donald J Donaker (Don)
...
Andrew Gunderman
The last reply I sent apparently didn't get thru, haven't flown the coop.
Sent: Monday, February 29, 2016 9:06 AM
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Sunday, March 13, 2016 at 12:13:29 PM UTC-5, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
The last reply I sent apparently didn't get thru, haven't flown the coop.
From: workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com <workers-international-industrial-union@googlegroups.com> on behalf of Donald J Donaker (Don) <ddon...@comcast.net>
...
Andrew Gunderman
I check occasionally, what I am not allowed? I pay dues.
Sent: Monday, March 14, 2016 9:37 AM
Donald J Donaker (Don)
On Monday, March 14, 2016 at 6:16:11 PM UTC-5, Andrew Gunderman wrote:
I check occasionally, what I am not allowed? I pay dues.
...