Re: [Marxism] YADL (Yet another disillusioned liberal)/all class unity is wrong

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

Ideology accounts for much of the passivity of the American workers. 
 
The ideologies of all-class unity have been ingrained in the public psyche  
for generations. My own thoughts is that this ideology is not peculiar to  
America but an important component of the ideological landscape of all the  
leading capitalist countries. These ideologies have roots in the capital labor  
relation itself, as systematic production and is reinforced as the self moving  
logic of reproduction. Labor at all times live and reproduces itself at  the 
mercy of capital. 
 
Perhaps chief among them is the philosophical assertion that lies at the  
heart of the case made for American exceptionalism, i.e. that we are 
essentially  
a classless society because American society is founded upon the primacy of 
the  individual. Hence the role of government is simply to provide the 
"opportunity"  for each individual to become all they can be. So the workers 
find 
themselves  pitted against one another in the market place competing for fewer 
and 
fewer  low-wage jobs. It is every man and woman for themselves, and if they 
don't  succeed, then it must be because they made bad choices. This ideology 
mask the  capital-labor relation, which appears as a law of nature to each 
successive  generation. Beneath the ideology is the proposition that capital 
lives 
and  thrives on wage labor and wage labor rest exclusively on the basis of  
competition between wage laborers. Being pitted against each other in the 
battle 
 for survival is not a natural condition of human existence; most certainly 
not  in a society of plenty. 
 
Competition between laborers for wages means a lot of people must lose in  
order for some to win. 
 
The ideology of individual and personal responsibility means that you don't  
begrudge the success of the rich and you are opposed to anything resembling a  
handout from the government. Entitlements - (sovereign birth rights),  mean  
"something for nothing," and in a time when jobs are disappearing, the ethic 
of  hard work is upheld (as the ideological pivot of the bourgeois order). So 
the  individual is to be unfettered by downsized government and reduced taxes 
on the  rich. Well, human being have sovereign birth rights, spoken and 
unspoken and a  government not responsive to and protecting these rights has no 
moral 
right to  existence and should be overturned and replaced with a civic 
authority  responsible to the people. Revolution is a sovereign birth right 
legalized in  our Constitution as perhaps the most sacred right in the  whole 
document 
 and most certainly the single idea that needs to be preserved  forever. 
 
It is right to rebel.  
 
In these uncertain times people see the decline of their culture and find  
their families in peril. They experience the erosion of "traditional" values;  
they look out of their windows and it looks like the end of the world; they 
look  to their faith for moral absolutes, for guidance and personal salvation. 
"The  system has always recovered and today is no different. I need patients," 
is the  thinking of millions. 
 
Well, patients are important . . . . But mostly to nurses. Weight broke the  
camels back and while waiting one must consider their civic and moral  
responsibility to opposed and overturn an unjust social order. 
 
Appeals to patriotism and national unity are another expression of  all-class 
unity. Each generation gives its pound of flesh in wars of aggression,  that 
in the last instance only feed the war machine. In time of war and global  
instability, pride of country gets translated as a justification for empire, 
and  
even immigrants are scapegoated as a threat to the American way of life.  
Reinforced with the steady drumbeat of fear, all are called upon to unite in  
defense of the "homeland." Yesterday in fact, some frustrated man in New York  
killed 13 people - immigrants, learning English in order to make their  
transition into our society easy. Patriotic chauvinism fuels crimes against new 
 
immigrants. 
 
Month after month at least 500,000 (half a million) people are being laid  
off and thousands each month become homeless. The March 2009 figure is 660,000  
addition workers have lost their jobs. Who is to blame? More importantly, 
"what  is wrong?" 
 
As the deteriorating economic conditions undercut the foundation of all  
class unity ideologies, there are signs that the entire complex of ruling class 
 
ideologies is beginning to lose its grip. Not all at one time, but a process of 
 loosening is taking place. Within the evangelical communities of faith, for  
example, there is an emerging concern about the plight of the poor, the  
environment and human rights. Individual workers, no matter how hard they toil, 
 
see their lives and their families destroyed due to no fault of their own as  
they are swept up in the race to the bottom. Government does not answer their  
needs. Persuaded to put their faith in corporate solutions, they find these 
too  fail to deliver. 
 
None of the solutions offered within the electoral arena offer any real  
answers to the millions of Americans who are engaged in a search for solutions  
to 
their plight. At the start of this months, the indigent of Michigan began  
receiving $40 addition on their bridge cards (food stamps) due to the actions 
of 
 the Obama administration. $40 a month helps, but millions are left out of 
the  social safety net. The people want change, but the only options they are 
offered  are one or another version of all-class unity. Indeed, when the 
content 
of our  time is polarization, antagonism, and social destruction, the 
ideological  complex of all-class unity can ultimately only be a call for a 
fascist 
solution  to the crisis. 
 
The objective polarity today is between absolute wealth and absolute  
poverty. The ideological polarity is between the ideologies of capital and  
capitalism versus the ideology of the new proletariat increasingly finding  
itself 
outside the civic society of the bourgeoisie and entire layers of workers  
being 
pushed lower and lower.
 
WL. 
 
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