Re: Why the proletariat?

[Bruce McQuain <mcquain@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>From Rakesh:

>2. Why can't growing latent power be concentrated in fewer and fewer
>workers?

  It can.  But what about the rest?  One must ask the question: "What would
provide the incentive for those favored few (in relative terms) to
jeopardize that favored status for other workers that don't possess the
skills and thereby don't enjoy the same status?

  As I see it, the problem of diminished power then remains for the "rest."

> Where is the contradiction?

  I would guess in the further alienation of workers without a special class
of skills and the unwillingness of the skilled workers, because of the
status their skills bring them, to help the others. This seems fairly
evident in today's society.

   Whereas in the past, a few general skills applied across a wide range of
jobs, that is less and less true.  We are seeing a proliferation of job
catagories which now require specific skills not necessarily applicable to a
wide range of jobs, but to fairly specific areas.  And most of those skills
require specialized training or education.  While that lends potential
power, it also lends security.  On the other hand, we see automation taking
place in the low skill areas that were formerly abundantly available and in
great demand (especially in an industrial age).  That is a threat that
cannot be handled by the usual methods of demonstrating the power of labor.

>Also, what about FDI *in* the US?

  I'm sorry...FDI?

>Moreover, even if factories are completely automated--and doesn't capital
>itself put limits on rationalization (I need to re-read Rosdolsky's chapter
>on Bauer's thesis about the capitalist limits on rationalization) -- raw
>materials and goods still have to be transported to and from the factory;
>so what about transportation workers?

  I read an interesting article recently about a concept to put underground
tunnels the length and breadth of the country.  These tunnels would be
traveled only by unmanned cargo containers which could deliver cargo, at 55
mph, in 48 hrs from coast to coast.

  I would assume the follow-on to that would be door-to-door service.
Suddenly the Teamsters have a problem they are unequipped to fight except
extra-legally.

  We're in a period of technological growth that is exponential.  Technology
is a force that is almost unstoppable and a threat to labor to a degree
today that was unknown and unimagined by Marx in his day.  I foresee further
fracturing of labor and isolation of workers due to this dynamic.  As I
recall, Schumpter differed from Marx in seeing technical innovation rather
than the exploitation of labor as the central dynamic to capitalism.  We're
seeing it with a vengence right now.

>4. I don't think Mattick meant to suggest that unemployed workers will play
>no role in revolutionary social transformation; indeed he wrote a book in
>the 1930s about the conditions of the unemployed and available strategies.
>I believe that his point is that the material power of industrial workers
>will be indispensable.

  Workers are consumers, and that is the most important point of all of this
to the later day capitalist.  This is an awareness that has slowly dawned.
This is why labor's importance seems to have come more to the fore, even in
this era of automation.  It's to their benefit to have a stable and
productive workforce as that is also their consumer base.  They too see the
threat automation poses, but are driven by competativeness to automate.
Catch 22?

  Which brings me to a group of questions that have been in the back of my
mind for some time.  Let me preface them a bit. Most seem to accept the fact
that the US (and most of Europe and parts of Asia) is a post-industrial
society.  All the pundits now tell us we're in another era and the
Information Age is exploding upon us.

   I'm interested in opinions as to how  Marx would approach an "information
age" where the class lines are new and not at all as clear as in the
industrial age and the dilema faced by labor concerning the favored and
unfavored of that class as touched upon above.

  I'm also interested to see if anyone agrees that the Information Age
(sometimes called the "Knowledge Age") equals the Post-Capitalist age?   Is
capitalism as Marx knew it and wrote about it gone?

  And there is more...

 Peter Drucker, in his "Post-Capitalist Society" (New York, Harper Business,
1993) makes the following statement:

  "Only a few short decades ago, everybody "knew" that a post-capitalist
society would surely be a Marxist one.  Now we all know that a Marxist
society is the one thing the new society is not going to be.  But most of us
know--or at least sense--that developing countries are moving out of
anything that could be called "capitalism".  The market will surely remain
the effective integrator of ECONOMIC activity.  But as a society, the
developed countries have already moved into post-capitalism.  It is fast
becoming a society of new "classes", with a new central resource at its core."

  His thinking as well as that of many others echo this theme.  In fact, the
good professor who's written this list asking for advice on how to fire up
his student's interest in Marxism, is smack-dab up againt this.

  This all leads up to the "big question": If we accept all of this, does
this transition from one age to another leave Marxism behind as a relic and
failed alternative to an ideology that has undergone metamorphic change into
something new
or is there a role for Marxism (can it TOO transition) in the
Post-Capitalist/Post-Industrial era?

  Any thoughts would be appreciated.


  McQ



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