Marx on bourgeoisified workers

[Maoist Internationalist Movement <mim3@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

On Thu, 12 Oct 1995, Walter Daum wrote:

>
> I'm pretty sure I asked MIM (and others) some time ago, but I'll try again:
>
> Where does Marx make a distinction between "working class" and "proletariat"?
>
> Walter Daum

Pat for MIM replies: Sorry to be disjointed. I thought I had my
copy of some select correspondence of Marx & Engels, but I can't find it.

Lenin alludes to it with citations in a section of his work
titled Karl Marx. The section is titled "Tactics of the Class
Struggle of the Proletariat," 1914.

Let me whet your appetite for Marx's news articles, reviews and
correspondence:

"This most bourgeois of all nations is apparently aiming at
the possession of a bourgeois aristocracy and a bourgeois
proletariat alongside the bourgeoisie."

Britain attempts "to buy the proletariat."

As long as England has a monopology, "The British
workingman will not budge."

You have probably heard the more famous quotes from Engels
on this, but here's another you may not have heard and relevant
to your Detroit strike.

First Marx to Friedrich Bolte, Nov. 23, 1871:

"For instance, the attempt by strikes, etc. in a particular
factory even in a particular trade to compel individual
capitalists to reduce the working day, is a purely economic
movement. On the other hand, the movement to force through
an eight-hour, etc., law is a political movement."

Engels :

"For a number of years past the English working class movement
has been hopelessly describing a narrow circle of strikes for
higher wages, shorter hours, not however as an expededient
or means of propaganda and organisation, but as the ultimate
aim. . . One can speak here of a labor movement only in so
far as strikes take place here which, whether they are won or not,
do not get the movement one step further."


You know what amazes me whenever we have to trot out these
quotes is that people are so scandalized by MIM, but in reality,
it was much more radical for Marx and Lenin to be saying these things.
Parasitism hadn't developed as long as or as deeply in their
days.

We read beneath the overreaction, just as we can with the O.J. case.
Some people are always looking for a chance to champion the
redneck.




     --- from list marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---

     ------------------