19 February, 2016 - 06:59
#1
What do you think about work?
International Communist Current
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I don't work anymore, except sometimes when I try to post things on this website. When I had paid jobs I always made out I resented them even if sometimes I didn't. I resented the COMPULSORY nature of paid employment, even before I understood capitalism's demand that workers sell their labour power or starve. And that under capitalism all of us workers are forced into competition with each other; and if you don't toe the bosses line about how the job should be done, then you'll be in trouble and may even get sacked.
This doesn't just apply to workers in factories or supermarkets but even to those who have what might be called superior jobs: academics, workers in science or the arts and those who see themselves as having cosy nooks in government offices. The boredom can be crucifyingly excruciating at times, and no choice exists as to leaving unless you win the jackpot somewhere. Even glamorous Ronaldo, the rich and talented soccer player, was being taunted only yesterday on the tv about his possibly deteriorating goal scoring skills. After all he's growing older. Nobody who is a wage labourer, and Ronaldo is despite his fame and wealth, ever really escapes the life sapping possibly unconscious cancer of becoming unemployed, or superfluous or unnecessary to capitalism's requirements. In Ronaldo's case, he also suffers the constant threat of serious injury, which could mess up the rest of his life when he retires shortly.
The working class doesn't struggle for the right to be equal but for freedom from paid employ, only then can we start to be ourselves and we'll find at last that we're not all equally the same at all, but are different and not fixed forever in a mould.
I suppose it bit me more with manual labour. Everyone is, as you say, different. Different qulaities.
I do actually think that there is a common universal to humanity.
If you think e.g. Nitezsche disagrees, you misunderstood IMHO!
Just thinking out loud, for which I apologise if it's immensely dull...
By definition communists seek to abolish the class system of workers and capitalists.
So wouldn't the simplest way that revolutionary consciousness might appear, given that this is always a response to encountering something immovable within the current system, be from the persistence of class relations despite a threat to its underpinning in labour?
So we'll have these new wild technologies and people will start wondering why the majority are stll so impoverished that they have to work all day at making websites prettier ha
lem said:
But don't we already have these new wild technologies lem, so why don't people already wonder why the majority are still so impoverished they have to work all day wasting their lives making websites prettier or even sillier activities? That's the question!
I supose the answer is that some people do wonder, but maybe not enough. Or maybe it isn't enough just to wonder about life's failures, but you have to look for a reason too. And the trouble is that so many individuals who do look for a reason come up with the wrong answer. Instead of simply seeing that the misery stems from capitalism they avert their eyes from that and look to the failure of sexual relationships, or the education and health systems as being the cause, or they cotton onto the environment as something that needs sorting out but don't see any of these problematic issues as being themselves the poisonous result of the outdated and crippling economic system that runs itself, ruins our lives, is out of all control of human wishes and is just longing to be got rid of before it gets rid of us.
Why can't people see capitalism for what it is? And why do so many of the people who do see that it's an unsatisfactory system think it can be improved and don't think we need to get rid of it? That's what I don't understand
Is it because everyone's been brought up for years to see money as the solution to everything and can't see anything wrong with that? The solution to impoverishment is assumed to be money, not its abolition and the freeing up of the power of the working class.
i can only speak for myself here: but my very sincere interest in communism does't stem from an inability to answer life's problems, though, perhaps, its sincerity does.
though i suppose people aren't flocking to speak with the icc because the distractions of post modern life seem either permissable, or more likely, fixable. either by themselves or through recourse to the normal capitalist channels.
i think we should be wary in answering this question.
while obviously the icc and left communism isn't a cult, the more exposed you are to its arguments, that life can be radically better for the vast vast majority of people, and without repeating the mistakes of the past, the more likely you are to feel very sick with the passivity of others and the systems of ideology which create and sustain that acquiescence.
lol
I could definitely ask myself: am I more free from poisonous ideology, or just more of an idiot?
It's an insanely difficult judgment for anyone to make of themselves.
But independent of that there is also the question of how people can link the obstacles in their life with the worker's movement, unless the obstacle becomes insurmountable to them at work. Which I probably think is key. Surely there is nothing left communists can do but wait and hope to God that this dynamic materialises.
Unless of course left communists somehow become a leading internet provider of advice on how to be happy in contemporary life. Which I can't see, given the ideological apparatus is so obviously manifest in every facet of our lives...
I don't know much history. But because communism aims to be the worker's abolition of class, I expect it to propagate most easily at work. This is elegant / simple, and with that aforementioned pervasive ideology how can anyone expect to think up an alternative more complex way?
In effect I think the question isn't what more can we do, as much as is Marxism true (i.e. are we fucking up doing what we do).
SURELY there is some chance of success and that what was wrong isn't already made right.
SO WE ARE DOING OK
I may have become simple minded in my old age, but I think communism is really all that matters - don't have any doubts about it this - and that if we can't get there then that will be a disaster for everyone and everything, the planet included.
Sure thing. I guess I'm a nihilist, to an extent......
lem said "Sure thing. I guess I'm a nihilist, to an extent......"
Lucky old you! But how can a nihilist be sure about anything?
Enjoy your hot cross buns!
it's great to hate [yourself]
I only meant, Fred, that I'll leave nothing behind but a damaged corpse and some debt.
I'm not even beyond good and evil lol