The problem is most workers do not see themselves as a class anymore, all most people care about (at least among my generation) is money and toys, they could care less about marx, capitalism or other intellectually related stuff.

Most people are content not to think about things, the only way to change society is through actual real deprivation and crisis so that it spur’s people to join together.

Modern society in my opinion is even becoming more fragmented and factionated then ever before. Modern Japan women and men are loathe to have families, over 50% of both men and women are single. I think you really underestimate how wealth and the want of being rich and having an easy life corrupts people.

The theoretical question really is this: how can you expect people, who cannot even get on top of the problems of daily life, to assume collective control over the management of society’s resources, the great vision or dream that leftwingers have? How can people, who have difficulty exercising responsibility in daily life over the concerns that affect their lives, be expected to exercise responsibility for much bigger decisions affecting many people? How can people participate in political activity when they already have difficulty in negotiating problems in their own social life? Well if you want to generate real and mature answers to this kind of problem, then I think you should be at least interested in how people are actually living their lives, and think of ways that would make a positive difference to their lives, not in some distant future but now. And I think you cannot really do that “from the outside”, let alone from a Marxist throne, but in the course of actually relating and participating in life yourself.

Obviously you are in no position to “take charge” or “take control” of your own life situation if, for one reason or another, you don’t even believe that you have any choices or options there. I can vouch for that, because I have had plenty experience with that sort of problem, I mean my life wasn’t all plain sailing by any means. And so, I think, that a prerequisite for a political engagement is a kind of culture which actually facilitates the process of people exercising their freedoms and getting more control over their own lives and lifeworld. That is the prequisite for a healthy politics which can withstand the dirty games that can and will be played. But this sort of thing is far removed from Marxists believing that they have to bang the authorative Marxist ideology or progressive liberal moralisms into people’s heads. It is not a question of trotting out endless propaganda about what some authority has said, but using your own nouse and creativity to apply a theoretical perspective to a real situation, with genuine empathy for others. If you are just merely the hack of an authority, you kill your own creativity. I mean, I participate in some scholarly discussions about Marx, but I wouldn’t say it is the “be all and end all of life”, far from it, at most I can hope to do my bit to unlock Marx from the strangulation of Marxist ideology.

I would be very reluctant to accuse Mr Obama of lying, unless I had irrefutable proof, and even if I had it, the question is whether if I accused him of lying would have any positive effect in the given context. In principle, I think I should not “accuse” but “prove”. I’m very aware in this that Mr Obama has taken on an enormous responsibility in which he somehow has to reconcile a vast number of different interests. It becomes enormously difficult to remain consistent in that. And should I have difficulty in being consistent myself, then who am I, to harp about the inconsistency of others?

As regards lying, they say that there is “no such thing as an honest politician”. But that’s only because you can tell many stories about the same fact, emphasizing some things and de-emphasizing others, which are all valid or true; and a politician has to tell a story which is not only valid, but also responds to how people will interpret and act on that story. Which means that a politician can hardly “tell the whole truth with all the details” like a scholar, a lover or a parent might do.

To say that political utterances are political, means that they can affect interests, valuations and power relations among people, and thus that you cannot just spontaneously say anything you might like, because you have to be very aware of the effect of what you say. Mr Obama owed his success in good part simply to affirming the values which masses of people – people who often were disgusted with the Bush administration – actually have, and that is a very different thing from Marxists saying the working class is backward because “it” isn’t Marxist, and therefore, that they first have to go through the Marxist program so that they may be converted to revolutionism.

I wrote these comments not just for Todd, but for all those participating in this little discussion we were having. And if you, Todd, are still confused, then I think you ought to look first at your own confusion before implicitly blaming me for it.

Maybe Mr Obama cannot tell the whole truth, but I think nevertheless he can be credited with being a “principled” politician, somebody with integrity. Okay, I wouldn’t really agree with him about a bunch of things, but I would agree with him that a “politics of blame” is really a dead end, which gets in the way of doing anything constructive.

After all, if the problem is always somebody else’s fault, then the onus is on someone else to change, but that is precisely what renders people powerless, because not only is it very difficult to get somebody else to change, it also means that you yourself cannot do very much to make a difference, except keeping on “challenging other people to change”. Such a Leftist political style centered on blaming is just very weak, and has little result; the real challenge is what you can change yourself, even if only an idea, and how you can thereby influence others. You can blame the blacks, the immigrants, gays, the banks, the capitalists, popular delusions etc. with moral fervour and holy scorn, but by doing so you literally give away your own power and all this really achieves is, that you create more animosities and social envy. It does not tell people what they can do to make a positive difference or advance toward a goal. A “leader” is somebody who can show you the next step, because he knows how to do things, and get things done. You just don’t provide any real leadership, by wailing about how evil other people are.

“Here is a good example of leftists not respecting workers and imagining that they might change or even trying to find the roots of their thinking, which may not be as hopeless as we might think.”

Yes, I remember some people writing about that sort of thing on LBO-Talk. Doug’s answer was simple common sense: why can’t we talk anti-capitalism and anti-racism at the same time? It’s not like there’s some objective reason for prioritizing one over the other.

When I was involved in the drive here at Algonquin College to unionize the part-timers (the provos only recently made it legal), I attended a meeting of the organizing committee during which some members brought up a recent OPSEU shin-dig where a couple of gay members attended (I think) wearing something pretty flamboyant if not outright threatening to masculinity (maybe dresses; I don’t recall now). One member, a woman, was openly disgusted that such people would dare attend and act that way. When I asked her what was wrong with it, all she could really do was bluster and mutter about “obviousness”.

As for how I view the working class, I’d say all of the above. Pressures to conform and “stay with the program” are present everywhere (and not just because we live in class societies; I suspect, as social animals, that there’s at least some hard-wiring that makes it more difficult to stand out in a group), but there are also plenty of areas of contestation and places where bourgeois society hasn’t really insinuated itself very well (if at all) into working-class consciousness AFAICT.

I completely agree with Marx’s quote about the educators needing education; life changes and our education has to change to suit its circumstances. But he also published his Manifesto and first volume of Capital in the hopes that the working class would read it, think about it, and make good use of it (adding that such use can’t come by way of a “royal road” to knowledge). In short, the education of the working class and their organization into a conscious proletariat is something that cannot be ignored.

Workers do indeed take part in those facets of human life that you mentioned above but so do capitalists and their functionaries and representatives. I was left with the impression from your words that workers did something _as workers_ that was unique to them as opposed to something that humans as such do. I see I was mistaken.

What you said about choice above is a bit confusing. I’m not entirely sure what you’re talking about when you say that we can either focus on everything going wrong or “what people are achieving in daily life”. When I read your words on the latter, I immediately think about the daily reproduction of life, which is interesting enough and goes on regardless of what Capital thinks about it (even though Capital has to have a hand in it), but I don’t see why focussing on that is so important. As for the former point, when Marxists focus on “everything going wrong”, I see that as examining why things do or don’t happen in class society or what can be done in terms of winning the class war (or at least putting us in a better position vis-a-vis the owners). Dismissing it as pessimistic seems a little premature, to put it mildly.

Re. Obama: “is there something to be learnt from that about the shape of popular consciousness?” Well, yes, but I don’t think it’s some great mystery to be anxiously pored over as terribly important. The man lied and still does so, certainly as a member of his class and quite likely because (I suspect) he fetishizes co-operation and social peace.

“When like today workmates said I was doing something well, that does me good.”

Yes. Same for me. But what point are you trying to make with this?

“Todd proves this himself, by focusing on ‘enthusiasm’ and indicating his need to believe in something, hoping it is not ’superficial’.”

While Todd is happy that Jurriaan finds something worthwhile in what Todd wrote, Todd is still having trouble with what Jurriaan wrote and is still feeling confused (especially when Todd is addressed in the third-person as if he weren’t around).