From: gerald_a_levy (gerald_a_levy@msn.com)
Date: Mon Jan 20 2003 - 19:38:52 EST
Re Paul C's [8366]: > If we > take a materialist view, we can hardly expect social groups to act > against their own percieved interest. But, how they identify and change their understanding of their own self-interest can be more complex. E.g. they may identify it in their own self-interest to fight for jobs other than the ones they have now. Thus, many bank workers (especially at lower levels) might be readily convinced into being re-trained for jobs in another sector if they felt that they were being upgraded (just as many industrial workers, such as assembly workers, might perceive it in their own self-interest to change jobs). > Well I had not noticed any revolutions taking place in the countries with > large proportions of the workforce in financial services! I don't think there is any country where large proportions of the workforce are in financial services (although, this sector is a significant employer in a small number of cities: here in New York City, the single biggest group of workers are employed in the F.I.R.E. [finance, insurance, real estate] sector). > You have to account for the massive conservatism if not outright > reactionary nature of the political process in the anglo saxon > countries. Too big a question for me to tackle now, but I see no apparent causal relation between that conservatism and the political perspectives of financial sector employees. > My hypothesis > is that the long term influence of the financial/rentier interest and > its associated servant classes accounts for this. If we add up all of the workers in this sector, it is still a small fraction of the workforce and their political perspectives can not be seen as the locomotive which drives the political climate in advanced capitalist nations. Also, it should be noted that in the US the single largest group of employees in the financial sector are low-wage and low-benefit workers, such as bank tellers, who are disproportionately minority and women workers who certainly don't tend towards conservatism. > One must be quite clear that there are real conflicts of interest between > state employees and industrial workers. These can be politically exploited. I'm not clear on how you think they can be "politically exploited", but it is true that there are real conflicts between industrial workers and _some_ state employees. E.g. there is often a real conflict of interest between the police and the rest of the working class. > On the other hand some sections of state employees, constitute a servant > class of the proletariat in that their services are consumed in large > part by the working class - most obvious examples of this are people like > cleansing workers, teachers, nurses in public hospitals etc. As such > these groups tend to identify with the working class, and tend to be > favourably disposed to socialism since socialism would retain them > as a category, and offer them better living standards. And the other state employees might still be won over to socialism. Thus, soldiers and sailors tend to be nationalistic and conservative. Yet, every successful revolution has involved winning over a segment of that social layer or at least getting them to step aside at a critical moment and not open fire on other workers. Remember the "Aurora" and the role that the sailors at the Kronstadt Naval Station played in October? > I agree, that simply identifying if a group are productive or unproductive > is not in itself enough. One needs to also see whose flunkies they are. This suggests that all state employees are "flunkies". This is not a designation that will help win some over to the side of socialism regardless of whose "flunkies" they are. > It is, I think, slightly more subtle. In Capital the key feature, > is whether the workers are productive for capital as a whole > not whether they are productive for individual capitals. > Thus workers who appear to be productive to a firm of investment > bankers, and who get fat annual bonuses as a result, can > be unproductive from the standpoint of capital as a whole. I agree that it is important to distinguish between workers who are productive of surplus value and workers who can assist individual capitalists obtain a profit since a proportion of the latter group can be unproductive laborers if their labor does not create value but rather only helps to distribute surplus value. > You should not wish for the impossible. You have to be able > to formulate a program that will unite a sufficiently broad > coalition to be effective, but if you try to accommodate the > interests of the financial sector employees you end up with > Tony Blair's version of socialism. Blair, like other Social Democrats, is class accomodationist. He accommodated British and US imperialism rather than the interests of the financial sector employees in the UK. As for the first part of your sentence above: what -- in broad outline -- would such a program be from your perspective? Solidarity, Jerry
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