Why is class conciousness in the USA so low? Why has it not progressed in so many years? Will be in a forever "We are not ready for a revolution due to lack of class conciousness" stage? : asklemmygrad

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 33 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

Lenin:

Due to settler-Imperialism, USian workers have many transitional ties to the settler-petty-bourgeoisie. The CPUSA is currently speculating on stolen land to fund their retirements, this contradiction runs deep. Inflated wages from Imperialism, to the point where very few workers are exploited for surplus-value, allow workers of oppressor and oppressed nations to speculate on land ("housing market"). Resistance from oppressed nations is suppressed with the world's largest prison system as well as homelessness and vigilante killings. Mass Incarceration is a jobs program for herrenvolk/settlers (guard wages are into the 6 figures, guard unions are the richest and most powerful in the country). In short, Labor Aristocracy (in the flavor of Settler-Colonialism), it's not something mainstream USian Communists are willing to talk about, because they have brought with them Revisionism into the workers movement. Also 98% of US agricultural land is owned by white-settler Kulaks.

More readings:

Notes on the Lower Middle Class and the Semi-Proletariat in Britain (pic)

Lenin piece pictured and quoted in above: Marxism and Revisionism

Amerikans: Oppressing for a Living (prisons are not chasing profits)

A Polemic against Settler "Maoism" (I don't agree with MIM on everything, like the PRC, but every crit here hits all flavors of USian Communism)

Lenin attacking the Economism of the German comrades

MIM criticizing airline unions (which hits big unions like AFL and Writers Guild in that Communists orgs should be a lot more critical of Labor Aristocratic unions)

[–] Comprehensive49@lemmygrad.ml 25 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Read Settlers by J Sakai, the entire book addresses this one question for white USians.

[–] muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml 12 points 4 months ago

Also, zak cope, especially divided world divided class.

You can find audiobooks for both of these on youtube and torrents.

[–] Skipper1402@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 months ago (2 children)

Do you know where can I get it for free?

[–] ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Your local library most likely, it’s a fairly common book.

If you meant online, there are free pdfs available.

https://readsettlers.org/settlers.pdf

Here is an HTML version with a clickable table of contents.

[–] NikkiB@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I highly doubt most local libraries carry a copy of Settlers. Where are you seeing this?

[–] ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

At home in Belarus, and my time traveling and living in the Northeast and West Coast of the United States. I spend a lot of time in the political science part of libraries and I see it pretty commonly. Maybe not all small local libraries will carry it, but starting from a medium sized library, to large ones, its pretty common.

I have also never not seen Settlers in a university library, which are open to the public where I have been.

[–] Xavienth@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I just checked my city's library and my alma mater's and neither have it, though at least my alma mater recognizes that it exists. But it also says there are no libraries nearby from which to request it.

[–] ComradeSalad@lemmygrad.ml 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

That sucks. Most of the university libraries I’ve been to have been pretty good at collecting a bunch of the more unheard of pamphlets and socialist works.

Granted, I was in the more left leaning areas of the United States.

[–] muad_dibber@lemmygrad.ml 3 points 4 months ago

There's an audiobook on torrents and youtube also.

[–] NikkiB@lemmygrad.ml 21 points 4 months ago

You might want to consider World-Systems Theory as a good starting point. Workers in the imperial core do not experience the same kind of exploitation as people in the periphery. The USA is a high-income country.

And nothing lasts forever. Nothing is necessarily so. We are in the midst of a massive global paradigm shift. Multipolarity is on the rise. Things are changing everywhere fast.

Settlers by J Sakai is a brilliant expose of American settler-colonial culture and vital history book that attempts to answer this question, but if you decide to give it a read, I would advise you not to draw too many hard and fast conclusions about its contents. Discussions about this book get explosive because they touch on very sensitive racial tensions, and a lot of people get very ridiculous about the whole thing.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 19 points 4 months ago (1 children)

I think bourgeoisification theory is generally correct: the white American working class has largely benefited from the redistribution of superprofits from imperialism and internal colonization, and so the labor movement has stood with the military in all of its adventures and stood with the carceral system and stood for the flag etc etc. Bourgeosified workers have a material interest in maintaining capitalism, at best they might favor some social democratic reforms to help redistribute superprofits more equitably.

I think the recent labor upsurge and (hopefully!) rise of class conscious in the US is coming from the end of the empire. White Americans are being debourgeoisified and kicked back down the class ladder into the rest of the working class, child labor laws are being rolled back, the NLRB is being defanged even further, the decline of the dominance of USD is causing painful inflation, etc etc.

Or in other words, all is in chaos under heaven. The situation is excellent.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

White Americans are being debourgeoisified and kicked back down the class ladder into the rest of the working class

Not true, the petty-bourgeoisie and semi-proletariat is always being decommissioned in one area and rebuilt in another, as such is the nature of boom-bust. Incomes for USian workers has been increasing for 4/5ths of the population since WW2. Minimum wage in the US is over twice Mexican industrial wages (and these are good union jobs). Exploitation wages (surplus-value extraction) is practically illegal for most wage work in the US (exceptions exist for undocumented and child labor in the agricultural sector, a tip when reading laws is to look for "customary hiring practices"). There is "cycling" and "shuffling" of property and access to means of production within the white "nation", but overall it is getting richer yoy.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 18 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Incomes have been "increasing" but when you factor in inflation they've been essentially flat since the 70s.

Now this new inflation and high interest rate environment and loss of USD supremacy is actually eroding wages in relation to the cost of living. The result is white workers being debourgeoisified. Note I'm not saying they're kicked down into a position of superexploitation. That's not really possible, obviously, since there's no imperial core to benefit from superexploitation of white US workers.

Times are changing.

I'll also note that internal superexploitation also exists within the prison industrial complex in addition to undocumented migrant labor.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml -2 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Women entering workforce + tens of millions of immigrants + not counting benefits = average wage stagnating while total wealth increases.

losing 3 dollars from 24 dollars to 21 dollars since 1970 when a good union factory job in Mexico (a tariff-free zone for the US market) is 3 dollars total, I'm suspicious in this "debourgeoisification" angle.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 16 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Women being forced into the labor force (they were already working before they had jobs!) means that the unpaid work of the reproduction of labor becomes a second job. You know why family size has declined? It's because everyone has to work and no one can afford childcare while they're all at work because they're not bourgeoisified anymore!That's a sign of the decline of the quality of life for white workers i.e. debourgeoisification.

It's like you think nothing has changed.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Family size decreased because more households were created (i.e. people moved out sooner, less multi-generational households). USian consumption has never decreased. Women were not forced to work, work became more available to them and then at a certain point it became a necessity for white women to work for white households to stay competitive and maintain segregation, women of other backgrounds were already working wage labor. Also birthrates are declining in Imperialist nations mostly due to policies that cut down teen parenthood (increased bodily autonomy, contraceptives and sex education, more access to higher education, more things to consume as opposed to raising children).

"afford childcare": More and more USians do not live with family or support systems that assist in child-rearing, this is due to their ability not to. Childcare costs a lot in the US because it costs a lot to hire Americans to do anything (globally high wages!). These economic dynamics in reproductive relations are experienced broadly in all Imperialist societies. It's a matter of class struggle that some other Imperialist states have subsidized childcare (the US does too, through tax breaks and public education, it just sucks). On a global level, it's very privileged to pay someone to watch your kids, just because it costs a significant chunk of paychecks doesn't mean it isn't historically a bourgeois privilege, and less non-white women are forced to take waged domestic labor up since more jobs are available elsewhere. BTW, inflation for USD is due to a surplus of capital in the country, which is turned into novel industries (Hollywood, Malls, Amazon shopping, Silicon Valley, new cars, new guns), housing speculation, and "sin-taxes" (gambling, drugs, lootboxes). USD inflation is the result of the "Clipping Coupons" part of Imperialism.

No legal US working relationship outside of "customary agriculture" (migrant/child exploitation) is at exploitation level wages. Minimum wage is above Chinese factory wages, you're going to need to see people getting 2-4 dollars before regular exploitation hits. Super-exploitation is the 60 cent wages seen in Haiti.

White men have been leaving the labor force since the 50s. Black men have been leaving too, but for different reasons, in different directions. This points to an increase in bourgeois white men.

"Cost of living" is an obfuscation. Poor Brazilian workers do not live in Favelas because their cost of living is lower, but that their wages are tiny so they can't afford a well constructed home:

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Okay, so I should clarify what I'm hypothesizing.

I'm not saying that bourgeoisification has already been eliminated or that we have reached the end of superprofits and their redistribution to the US working class, I merely contend that it's begun its decline and is stratifying into even smaller and smaller subsections of the white working class. It would also be some time before we see the effects on things like air conditioning because of the inertia from previous development. The already installed air conditioners don't just go away - people just stop running them.

US inflation used to be something that could be exported onto the rest of the world, but now the chickens are coming home to roost. The surplus of dollars is a poor explanation (kind of libertarian tbh), it only explains half the problem. The other side of the surplus comes from declining demand for dollars. The US sanctions regime has overreached on Russia and is now bifurcating the global economy into "countries that can trade with the US" and "everyone else" which created a boom in non-dollar trade. The high interest rate environment, too, is hurting demand for loans in US dollars as countries look for other sources of capital and deleverage themselves from US loans and debts.

The US is still superexploiting those workers in Brazil and Mexico; US workers are not going to be living like them in the near future! Yet as worker's struggle in Latin America brings a new pink tide we are going to see more trade in national currency, more internal development, more investment from outside the US, and ultimately less superexploitation.

This is a trend, that's all I'm saying.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 1 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Surplus capital is not a "libertarian thing", it's a Lenin thing, it's the reason why capital is exported.

Where is the money going? Police, judicial, and carceral costs are increasing year over year. Capital is coming in from other Imperialist states and neo-Colonial outposts, which is fueling both housing construction and housing cost at the same time. There has never been more homes to workers in the US than right now.

And if you find my other post quoting Lenin, the petty bourgs are constantly being destroyed and refreshed, which is why the workers movement consistently gains new revisionist ideologies.

What I contend: The US middle classes have always been in this cycle, ya know many whites have struggles with drugs and drug incarceration (which has softened, drug use charges are getting lighter and lighter). De-Dollarization is still not affecting US workers, but also it's greatly over-hyped. Surplus Capital will continue to be sent from all over the world to the US housing market and silicon valley.

Old homes and old appliances are still signs of total wealth growth, but also, new appliances have never been cheaper for USians and more people in the lower income brackets can afford them. Capital exports bring down the prices of goods. Car ownership is a luxury, it's at 90+%, but also, the bottom 20% of population owns just 1% of cars:

This bottom 20% of USians is 60% Black/Indigenous/Latino. White poverty has been fairly consistent while poverty in other groups has been dropping in approach.

And just because someone is low income, doesn't mean they have no wealth (housing speculation, owner-farmer).

It's clear that wealth is increasing even though incomes are stagnating (because surplus money-capital arrives in the form of globally funded mortgages and historically low interest rates). Wages in 2020 are about as good (but way better for more people!) as the last 50 years, USians are not gonna have a lot of economic smoke for the Imperial regime.

Class consciousness is useless if it does not address labor aristocracy, and Communists have been saying "it's getting worse!" since WW2, but it never has.

You should take a larger study of US economic conditions. We are in a much worse position of Economistic practices than WW1 Germans who Lenin railed against, I have linked the text in my other comment in the thread. These aren't conditions to wait around for! Don't wait for shit to get worse! There is revolutionary potential now! You have hundreds of national liberation struggles and 100 million oppressed nationals across Black/Indigenous people and Chicanos/Latinos. These struggles could have been turned into revolution in the 60s but revisionist Communists at that time said "wait we need white workers!".

Did I mention that over half of the money spent on incarceration and policing (reaching a quarter trillion dollars every year, chart ends in 04, $261B spent in 2018) is wages for cops, guards, and judicial staff?

You say you are noticing a trend, I'm saying there's always a small amount of losers in a massive petty booj economy, and this accounts for the trend you see, even though it has always been a factor, and adds new petty booj ideologies to workers movements, the state of the movement is evidence as such. The US is "overextended" (with few boots on the ground...), but what will happen when the US needs to ramp up war production to keep global wages low? Another boost in wages and carrot sticks of Opportunism so unions take war contracts (like they are doing right now making bombs that drop in Gaza). The US was able to "defeat Communism" through the height of anti-Imperial consciousness in the 70s, don't hold your breath that movements that haven't changed since then will be any different in the future.

It's important to get across that a worker can go from high income ($150k) to low income ($12k, minimum wage), but actually double down on their bourgeois character because they started a business. From Semi-proletarian to Petty Bourg proper. Their total wealth would not have changed.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 4 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Surplus capital is not a “libertarian thing”, it’s a Lenin thing, it’s the reason why capital is exported.

Sorry, we're miscommunicating I think. Are you conflating "dollars" with "capital" here?

My reading tells me the export of surplus capital refers to the export of productive machines, not the literal national currency. But I am, in fact, talking about the demand for the literal national currency i.e. not surplus capital specifically. Yes, US productive capacity is still high and there's still a lot of unequal exchange happening between the US and its imperialized holdings as it forces them to use its machines and proprietary software etc etc, but notably interest rates have needed to remain high (so no more historically low interest rates) and this has put incredible downward pressure on the value of loans in USD.

At the same time, the sanctions regime has bifurcated the global economy. There's now a parallel economy that exists outside of USD and this is adding additional downward pressure. Nations can now get loans from elsewhere (notably China), trade with national currencies for commodities and even resources like oil, and avoid unequal exchange with the declining hegemon because of the large and growing non-USD economy. The value of US dollar and demand for dollars can still decline despite US exports.

So, between nations not wanting loans from the US and being able to trade without USD, literal demand for dollars has fallen. This is, in part, where the inflation is coming from.

Where is the money going? Police, judicial, and carceral costs are increasing year over year. [...] Did I mention that over half of the money spent on incarceration and policing (reaching a quarter trillion dollars every year, chart ends in 04, $261B spent in 2018) is wages for cops, guards, and judicial staff?

Is this not a sign of the debourgeoisification of the rest of the working class? The empire needs to spend more and more on policing and incarceration of exploited and superexploited workers at home, to the point that those high costs of control are now eating into quality of life of the rest of the working class due to inflation. At the same time it needs to keep elevating the lifestyles of pigs higher and higher to keep them showing up to work, as the act of policing itself becomes more reviled and more mentally taxing (I'm reminded of Fanon talking about how colonialism dehumanizes the colonizer). This is the other side of where the inflation is coming from.

As the cops, guards, judicial staff, and all the other carceral employees demand more wages they're acquiring investments and housing and special legally protected status. They're being further bourgeoisified, developing into their own special class and totally separate from the rest of workers who are beginning to be debourgeoisified (they can't acquire housing, they can't build savings, they don't have investments, they certainly can't seclude and segregate themselves away from the rest of the working class into white enclaves).

This special class of carceral workers is being elevated at their expense. They're being turned from national police to colonial police, many white workers are being turned from settlers into... not natives, but something adjacent?

These aren’t conditions to wait around for! Don’t wait for shit to get worse! There is revolutionary potential now! You have hundreds of national liberation struggles and 100 million oppressed nationals across Black/Indigenous people and Chicanos/Latinos. These struggles could have been turned into revolution in the 60s but revisionist Communists at that time said “wait we need white workers!”.

When did I give this impression? I merely contend that shit is getting worse, not that we need to wait for anything!

Yes, the internally colonized people of the US are the most revolutionary force within it. I work in a factory and I can see how all the positions of management are only given to white English speakers, while the production floor is dominated by nonwhite people whose first languages are French, Arabic, or Spanish. I can see what you're talking about every day.

I guess I'm just optimistic that the white working class has finally entered its own decline, but as you say, the embodied and generational wealth that they've accumulated will take quite some time to disappear. This is not a call to wait around, merely an observation that the time those misguided white communists were waiting for might be happening.

All of this is to say that the recent labor upsurge and rise in class consciousness has a material basis and isn't just a fad.

Am I to understand that your point is nothing has fundamentally changed?

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 0 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

Nothing has fundamentally changed from the 60s, assimilation (which is paid for by Imperial value transfers) of oppressed nations is dual education and incarceration, both have increased over time, in dialectic. Women have been participating in wage labor more and more but that looks to have reached a relative peak.

You seem to think inflation is anything other than more wages than can be spent or reinvested (if in savings banks and credit unions). Inflation in the US is due to super-profits added to wages. An exploited Proletariat literally cannot save money, and globally luxury spending does not mean they are exploited!

My reading tells me the export of surplus capital refers to the export of productive machines, not the literal national currency.

Example: Sterling system. Britain exported capital to its own settlements in Canada and Australia. Britain was practicing "unequal exchange" (violent trade monopoly) with India, paying off their domestic workers with it, and then sending settlers to collect more resources in the colonies. Also, Lenin called French Imperialism "usury Imperialism" because France was exporting literal currency in loans to Russia and other European states. Capital exports of "real machines" are mostly to other Imperialist states or military allies, or Socialist states brought into circumstantial trade deals (same as Lenin's time with NEP), and not "backward" economic systems of semi-colonial, semi-feudal character as seen in former Spanish colonies, India, and Africa. France still performs "usury Imperialism" (coupon clipping) with French and Euro currencies.

Cops are petty booj, more cops means more petty booj.

The US is a more advanced British Empire + French Empire in one. It's not a surprise since the US inherited every Imperial relationship the former great powers had!

I guess I’m just optimistic that the white working class has finally entered its own decling.

This is copium and you're universalizing your position within the Settler economy. In my other post there's a Polemic Against Settler "Maoism" that criticizes your line (this does not mean you are 100% wrong! It means you have some fundamental misunderstandings but you are in the right direction!). New class consciousness is due to the eugenic nature of settler society where productive, but unexploited economically due to Imperialism, workers were put into the disease gauntlet serving fascistic semi-proles and petty boojies who did not care for their well being.

Outside of Economistic practices focusing on wages and prices, the great thing this new wave has brought through the pandemic is organizing around workers' health and wellness, as well as property abuses such as AI likenesses for performers. These are still material problems and the pandemic exposed them, but still this unions are hitting Economistic dead ends in organizing energy, still many workers are were permanently injured by the pandemic conditions and many are still getting sick with no protections. Union activity isn't the end all be all of class consciousness, as seen in AFL's history of making the bombs that kill people so they can have houses and cushy retirements.

And don't pray for white conditions to worsen. Lenin railed against German comrades who were preoccupied with wages in Imperialist states. No strong party was developed during and after WW1 and when the "crunch" actually happened to workers obsessed with wages and inflation, they suited up to herd the "undesirables" into camps. My worry is that when whites start feeling real class struggle they'll turn my people in prison into actual slaves if we don't have the readiness for a violent opposition ala AIM and the BPP.

[–] queermunist@lemmy.ml 2 points 4 months ago

Nothing has fundamentally changed from the 60s

Bold statement!

You seem to think inflation is anything other than more wages than can be spent or reinvested (if in savings banks and credit unions).

Yes? Inflation, as experienced by the worker, is the cost of goods and services and housing rising faster than wages. Which is happening. Inflation does not automatically equal higher wages. Inflation, again as experienced by the worker, means higher prices. If that comes with higher wages then the worker can keep up with inflation and no one notices much other than the fact that their savings literally lose value over time, but debourgeoisification has disrupted this process. We are now seeing inflation actually outpace workers, they are not just making more to pay their higher bills and it's lead to the recent labor upsurge.

This is not universal, obviously. The wages of managers, cops, so-called skilled laborers, bureaucrats, etc have risen in pace with inflation. We have seen some workers keep up and other workers fall behind, splitting off those workers and debourgeoisifying them as they fail to save and fail to attain property and fail to get "ahead." I'm not sure why you're insisting this isn't happening.

Do you think there isn't a labor upsurge and that class consciousness isn't rising?

An exploited Proletariat literally cannot save money, and globally luxury spending does not mean they are exploited!

You're right! And would you look at that, the savings rate in the US has been declining since the 60s, supposedly the period when things stopped changing. The savings rate briefly went up after the financial crash and bucked the trend of decline (i.e. when capital destruction created new avenues for investment) and obviously spiked during the period when people cared about COVID, but on the whole there has been a steady decline that coincides with the way real wages have stagnated.

Inflation is not in "luxury spending" it's in fucking groceries and rent and housing.

The US is a more advanced British Empire + French Empire in one. It’s not a surprise since the US inherited every Imperial relationship the former great powers had!

Okay, so you are speaking literally of currency being exported. But you're contradicting yourself and I'm confused.

You say "capital exports bring down the prices of goods" yet we are also talking about conditions of strong inflation. Is this not a contradiction? Does this not indicate that capital exports are falling, and that demand for USD is falling? You say nothing has changed, but despite the harshest sanctions regime in history we have seen Russia's economy continue to grow! We are seeing nations make deals with each other in national currencies, totally bypassing USD. We are seeing alternatives to the World Bank and IMF, which offer loans in currencies other than USD.

The world is changing, and the conditions for white workers will change with it. Maybe it's too early to say

Cops are petty booj, more cops means more petty booj.

What productive assets do they own? I think they're a special protected class created by the State, and while their class interests align with business owners and independent farmers they are still distinct and it's worth recognizing it.

This is copium and you’re universalizing your position within the Settler economy.

Maybe. Some of the trends I'm noticing have only been around for a few years, it could just be a blip and the white working class will go back to feasting on the superprofits of the global South soon enough. But-

Outside of Economistic practices focusing on wages and prices, the great thing this new wave has brought through the pandemic is organizing around workers’ health and wellness, as well as property abuses such as AI likenesses for performers. These are still material problems and the pandemic exposed them, but still this unions are hitting Economistic dead ends in organizing energy.

We've also seen the contract fights have not focused on wages. While the companies have been throwing record wages at workers the contracts still get rejected because what they actually want is time away from work and time where they can't be scheduled and an end to understaffing, or like you say, workers' health and wellness.

But we are also seeing union locals organizing against the Zionist genocide. That's huge! The labor upsurge might be gaining a political character and you seem to be ignoring it in favor of pessimism. The union leadership is still in lockstep with the Democrats, and as long as that is the case they will hit those dead ends, but if I'm right and the rank-and-file are being debourgeoisified then we are going to either see the leadership change or we'll see the NLRB declared unconstitutional and unions will have to go back to illegal strikes.

[–] davel@lemmygrad.ml 17 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago) (1 children)

It used to be much higher, before multiple red scares, multiple cold wars, FBI/OSS/CIA chicanery, and massive amounts of propaganda.

[–] chesmotorcycle@lemmygrad.ml 5 points 4 months ago

Yep. I was shocked when I first learned how widespread support for socialism once was. Even farmers in Texas and Oklahoma were on board.

[–] JoeDaRedTrooperYT@lemmygrad.ml -3 points 4 months ago (1 children)

Liberals infiltrating the left,

[–] cfgaussian@lemmygrad.ml 10 points 4 months ago

That more of a consequence of the low level of class consciousness than a cause.

[–] Vampire@hexbear.net -5 points 4 months ago (1 children)

How has nobody mentioned identity politics yet?

They're concerned to.the point of obsession with every way of dividing themselves apart from by class.

[–] ProbablyKaffe@lemmygrad.ml 9 points 4 months ago* (last edited 4 months ago)

you're right, the problem is that militarized identity politics known as "whiteness"

that being said idpol is a symptom of a deeper rot (labor aristocracy)

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