I’m not saying the system can be changed by liberal means like voting every four years. The change comes from people organizing and building a worker movement that can take tangible action like doing general strikes, mass protests, and so on.
Is a completely different argument than this:
At the end of the day, society is a social contract with people at the top deriving their legitimacy from having the consent of the public. The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity
Especially to a liberal.
This
I’m not saying the system can be changed by liberal means like voting every four years. The change comes from people organizing and building a worker movement that can take tangible action like doing general strikes, mass protests, and so on.
Says that political power comes from material leverage and its logical ends are the Mao quote “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun”.
This
At the end of the day, society is a social contract with people at the top deriving their legitimacy from having the consent of the public. The less debate there is on these issues the easier it becomes for a tyrannical regime to act with impunity.
Says that political power comes from the public simply voicing their agreement / disagreement and the ruling class enacting that opinion.
At the end of the day if your way to fight back against the ruling class is through material leverage, public debate simply doesn’t matter, worker organization sublimates that.
It’s not a completely different statement though. A society is fundamentally a social construct based around common ideology. That’s what the government derives its legitimacy from. An organized labor movement is a path towards revising the social contract.
At the end of the day if your way to fight back against the ruling class is through material leverage, public debate simply doesn’t matter, worker organization sublimates that.
As I pointed out above, worker organization doesn’t come out of thin air. It requires education of the masses, which involves public debate. If you study any effective social movement throughout history then you’ll see that it always starts with public debate.
It’s not a completely different statement though. A society is fundamentally a social construct based around common ideology. That’s what the government derives its legitimacy from. An organized labor movement is a path towards revising the social contract.
The social contract that you exists under derives its legitimacy from bourgeoisie elections not labor voluntarism. There has never been a long lived stable society in the modern era that has derived its legitimacy from labor voluntarism. You are arguing about fiction.
As I pointed out above, worker organization doesn’t come out of thin air. It requires education of the masses, which involves public debate. If you study any effective social movement throughout history then you’ll see that it always starts with public debate.
Your own link to the Parenti lecture disproves this. There was never “public debate” at the comparable time in history. There was underground education and labor actions. Public debate was quashed.
11:08
In 1920s when the iww went into townships in the in the early 20s you know in most towns in America in the 20s there was no free speech for syndicalists anarchists socialists wobblies Communists Union organizers of any kind you went into that town you started speaking speaking and organizing the sheriff in his and his and his goons would come and bash your head in a new end and you ended up spending a week in the slam and then driven out of town.
You are conflating the world which you live in, the world you want to live in, and how you think we can get there into one mess that doesn’t actually explain any of the 3 concepts well.
Public debate has meaning, it’s not “people be talking”.
The social contract that you exists under derives its legitimacy from bourgeoisie elections not labor voluntarism. There has never been a long lived stable society in the modern era that has derived its legitimacy from labor voluntarism. You are arguing about fiction.
Nowhere did I talk about any labour voluntarism. You’re misrepresenting what I’m actually saying.
Your own link to the Parenti lecture disproves this. There was never “public debate” at the comparable time in history. There was underground education and labor actions. Public debate was quashed.
There was plenty of public debate in 1930s. Perhaps you have a different definition for public debate that you’re using?
You are conflating the world which you live in, the world you want to live in, and how you think we can get there into one mess that doesn’t actually explain any of the 3 concepts well.
I’m not doing anything of the sort. You’re just putting words in my mouth here instead of engaging with what’s actually being said to you.
Public debate has meaning, it’s not “people be talking”.
No, public debate means people discussing problems to gain common understanding of what the issues are and how to address them. If you think this step can be skipped somehow before any meaningful action can be taken then you’re frankly delusional.
Show me. Show me your 1930’s public debate. Show me how many “views” it got, and compare that to something unquestionably popular in the 1930’s. I’ll even concede to you the unrealistic expectation that a view = 100% conversion.
Then explain how that situation is equivalent to 2024.
Even if I take at face value this comparison: 1935 had a union density of 12.5% which is 2.5% more than 2024. Your argument is that we’d have worker power comparable to 1935 if we just showed the entirety of the AFL-CIO and teamsters Parenti videos and increased frequency of union meetings?
Once again, worker power in 1930s didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. Seriously, read up a bit of history on how the US labor movement actually originated. Also, still waiting to hear what specifically you’re proposing here aside from whinging.
Once again, worker power in 1930s didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere
Yeah it appeared specifically because the 1920’s was the most violent decade of labor action.
This entire thread chain you’ve kept saying, public debate and education is what drives the movement. You’ve effectively been shouting the cart is what drives the movement!
Until labor effectively and most likely violently confronts capital in this country and drives a continuation of wins and improvements in material conditions for a majority of Americans, nobody is going to sit through Parenti videos because they could be watching Mr Beast.
Education and public debate like the cart carries the bulk of benefits to the majority of people (the cart can run away on it’s own but it will eventually stop, like it did in the US), but it is nothing without the horse (effective and again likely violent labor confrontations of capital) that actually generates the motion and the direction.
If we woke up tomorrow and everyone understood Parenti, nothing would actually change until there was a demonstration of the willingness to truly fight, and the fruits of truly fighting. We’d all be sitting on that cart waiting for it to move, effectively the same thing we’re doing now without actually being in the cart. If the horse doesn’t show up we’ll all just go back to watching Mr Beast as the vice closes in on us.
The idea of education and vanguardism as a solution is kinda silly because. we’re still just playing a game of prisoners dilemma and in the US, why bother with that and instead just watch Mr Beast. You’re not a Russian peasant dirt farming for a share cropper, you’re a modern subject of capital with access to youtube.
Big Bill Haywood didn’t become interested in the labor movement because he was educated in theory. He became interested in the labor movement because he saw what happened with Haymarket Square Massacre and the Pullman Strike. He didn’t form IWW because after he joined the WFM he learned theory. He formed the IWW because the WFM failed to protect workers when bosses exploited differences in types of labor. In America there was no vanguardism in the labor movement, it was survivalism and blood.
The modern Big Bill Haywood doesn’t have the real motivation of blood. He has the de-motivation of youtube, processed food, and overall cheap dopamine. That’s what “education” is competing with. Until the left develops a way to actually compete with cheap dopamine, our only realistic answers is quite literally collapse into the previously understood problem of late 19th early 20th century conditions whether organic, manufactured, or accelerated.
You’re asking me for answers that nobody has, to a problem and set of conditions that the majority of leftists cannot actually even explain. We simply pretend they’re conditions of the past that we read in books while we plan for the glorious future in our mind palaces.
This
Is a completely different argument than this:
Especially to a liberal.
This
Says that political power comes from material leverage and its logical ends are the Mao quote “Political power comes from the barrel of a gun”.
This
Says that political power comes from the public simply voicing their agreement / disagreement and the ruling class enacting that opinion.
At the end of the day if your way to fight back against the ruling class is through material leverage, public debate simply doesn’t matter, worker organization sublimates that.
It’s not a completely different statement though. A society is fundamentally a social construct based around common ideology. That’s what the government derives its legitimacy from. An organized labor movement is a path towards revising the social contract.
As I pointed out above, worker organization doesn’t come out of thin air. It requires education of the masses, which involves public debate. If you study any effective social movement throughout history then you’ll see that it always starts with public debate.
The social contract that you exists under derives its legitimacy from bourgeoisie elections not labor voluntarism. There has never been a long lived stable society in the modern era that has derived its legitimacy from labor voluntarism. You are arguing about fiction.
Your own link to the Parenti lecture disproves this. There was never “public debate” at the comparable time in history. There was underground education and labor actions. Public debate was quashed.
11:08
You are conflating the world which you live in, the world you want to live in, and how you think we can get there into one mess that doesn’t actually explain any of the 3 concepts well.
Public debate has meaning, it’s not “people be talking”.
Nowhere did I talk about any labour voluntarism. You’re misrepresenting what I’m actually saying.
There was plenty of public debate in 1930s. Perhaps you have a different definition for public debate that you’re using?
I’m not doing anything of the sort. You’re just putting words in my mouth here instead of engaging with what’s actually being said to you.
No, public debate means people discussing problems to gain common understanding of what the issues are and how to address them. If you think this step can be skipped somehow before any meaningful action can be taken then you’re frankly delusional.
Okay I’ll buy the ticket, lets take a ride:
Show me. Show me your 1930’s public debate. Show me how many “views” it got, and compare that to something unquestionably popular in the 1930’s. I’ll even concede to you the unrealistic expectation that a view = 100% conversion.
Then explain how that situation is equivalent to 2024.
What do you think was happening in union meetings exactly?
Even if I take at face value this comparison: 1935 had a union density of 12.5% which is 2.5% more than 2024. Your argument is that we’d have worker power comparable to 1935 if we just showed the entirety of the AFL-CIO and teamsters Parenti videos and increased frequency of union meetings?
Once again, worker power in 1930s didn’t just magically appear out of nowhere. Seriously, read up a bit of history on how the US labor movement actually originated. Also, still waiting to hear what specifically you’re proposing here aside from whinging.
Yeah it appeared specifically because the 1920’s was the most violent decade of labor action.
This entire thread chain you’ve kept saying, public debate and education is what drives the movement. You’ve effectively been shouting the cart is what drives the movement!
Until labor effectively and most likely violently confronts capital in this country and drives a continuation of wins and improvements in material conditions for a majority of Americans, nobody is going to sit through Parenti videos because they could be watching Mr Beast.
Education and public debate like the cart carries the bulk of benefits to the majority of people (the cart can run away on it’s own but it will eventually stop, like it did in the US), but it is nothing without the horse (effective and again likely violent labor confrontations of capital) that actually generates the motion and the direction.
If we woke up tomorrow and everyone understood Parenti, nothing would actually change until there was a demonstration of the willingness to truly fight, and the fruits of truly fighting. We’d all be sitting on that cart waiting for it to move, effectively the same thing we’re doing now without actually being in the cart. If the horse doesn’t show up we’ll all just go back to watching Mr Beast as the vice closes in on us.
The idea of education and vanguardism as a solution is kinda silly because. we’re still just playing a game of prisoners dilemma and in the US, why bother with that and instead just watch Mr Beast. You’re not a Russian peasant dirt farming for a share cropper, you’re a modern subject of capital with access to youtube.
Big Bill Haywood didn’t become interested in the labor movement because he was educated in theory. He became interested in the labor movement because he saw what happened with Haymarket Square Massacre and the Pullman Strike. He didn’t form IWW because after he joined the WFM he learned theory. He formed the IWW because the WFM failed to protect workers when bosses exploited differences in types of labor. In America there was no vanguardism in the labor movement, it was survivalism and blood.
The modern Big Bill Haywood doesn’t have the real motivation of blood. He has the de-motivation of youtube, processed food, and overall cheap dopamine. That’s what “education” is competing with. Until the left develops a way to actually compete with cheap dopamine, our only realistic answers is quite literally collapse into the previously understood problem of late 19th early 20th century conditions whether organic, manufactured, or accelerated.
You’re asking me for answers that nobody has, to a problem and set of conditions that the majority of leftists cannot actually even explain. We simply pretend they’re conditions of the past that we read in books while we plan for the glorious future in our mind palaces.