Re: [Marxism] Theocracy

[Carrol Cox <cbcox@xxxxxxxxx>]

Haines Brown wrote:
>
> In Marx time the working class resided near the point of production
> and social life was concentrated there. The industrial factory also
> forced workers to work as a team, and therefore enforced
> association. The first factor has been diminished by a) increasing
> mobilization of labor, and b) suburbanization thanks to the
> automobile. The second perhaps less so. Even in an economy such as the
> US that is now primarily a service economy, workers still gather at
> the point of production. I'm not convinced that, although the nature
> of work has changed dramatically, contemporary conditions have ceased
> to bring workers together. Of course, there are such factors as that
> Internet that in its own way supports some kind of association.

I think this is misleading, in that it identifies "working class" with
"industrial workers." If you  count the whole of those whose only worth
is their labor power, then the working class was even _more_ scattered
in Marx's day than it is now, since the largest single  fraction of the
class was made up of domestic servants; when you add in agricultural
workers, small shop 'assistants', etc. you see that the working class of
Marx's day never had the remotest chance of uniting. Telephone operators
in Russia in 1917 (certainly members of the working class in any
objective perspective) so hated and feared workers that they stayed home
from work after the October Revolution and the boards had to be operated
by totally unskilled operatives from among the revolutionary forces.

CArrol


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