I’ve been thinking hard about a subject for a new post for some time now; I am still somewhat undecided what to write about.
It’s not that I don’t have various ideas and subjects; I do. I just can’t choose one that I think is best, and I’m having a bit of trouble trying to tie the various thoughts of mine into one work.
Anyways, I have decided to mention a few snippets of various concepts that have been on my mind lately.
The myth of “the Boss, as a victim” in the capitalist sphere:
Lately, due to the influence of many more deeply penetrating social analysis’s that I have been studying, various ideas and concepts that I have been encountering in popular (Bourgeoisie) media and culture for years are suddenly noticeably peculiar/ sinister.
The one concept that has struck me most recently, as both strange and completely absurd, is the prominent myth of the “victimized boss”, the “cheated bourgeoisie”, who is “taken advantage of, and swindled” by his labourers. There are many versions of this myth, all of which are presented in the form of opinions and generalizations of the Boss-worker relationship (and presented as an honest analysis of the Canadian work place), but they all contain the same basic formula: “The boss is just an honest person, trying to get by in this crazy dog-eat-dog world with their business, but they are being cheated by the laziness/down-right theft of their employees.”
Wow, that is an incredibly twisted, completely backwards analysis of the worker-boss relationship (in Canada, and elsewhere). This is like shooting someone, and then cursing them for “stealing your bullet”. For a boss, a bourgeoisie, a bloated parasite on the working class who exists on exploited profits, to accuse his labourers of cheating him out of profits is outrageous. This is beyond the pot calling the kettle black; this is the leech complaining that it’s host is “withholding blood”.
And this fairytale, this notion that has even proliferated among workers, and has turned toilers against each other, serves the interests of the exploiters in so many reactionary ways, as this falsehood provides the ideological basis for their various anti-worker assaults. The bosses claim that they are “forced” to import foreign workers and subsequently lay off domestic workers because domestic workers are “Lazy”, and “lack the work ethic” of their third-world counterparts (who, coincidentally, will work for lower wages, and have next to no rights, both of which are very attractive to capitalists). the anti-union offensive is conducted under this pretense, by spreading the imagery of unionized workers as obese and sluggish, always trying to “work the system”. In this scenario the boss is once again the “victim”, as these mooching union workers are protected by the union above their head, so once again the “poor, victimized boss” is forced to shrug and endure the abuse and extortion of the “lazy” union workers.
Everything from the axing of jobs, the shutdown of industries, the outsourcing of labour to the passing of reactionary and draconian laws against the workers are based on this myth, of the “Exploited boss”.
In my experience, I remember that my old boss used to drive workers from the job site to the office, and back again. the thing is, he was unable to do so without loudly complaining about the gas money involved, and making sure that we all “felt grateful” for a job necessity that he considered a great favour. Finally, one day I had enough and told my fellow workers ” Look, we are the ones who pay for his gas, not him. We are also the ones who pay for his gigantic new vehicle, his office, his house, his country club membership… We are the ones who earn the profits, and he is the one who takes them. At the very least, he owes each of us a ride to work every single day, let alone the other half of the profits we generate, which we are never seeing”. This sentiment was well received by my fellow workers, and it has been for years as I have retold it.
Marxism-Leninism upholds that all profit is produced by labour. This is called the theory of surplus value, and is a central tenement of Marxist theory. That said, if all profit in any business/industry is produced by labour, what right has any bourgeoisie to claim that they are “being cheated” (let alone lay any claim to said profit in the first place)? Motherfucker, I produce twenty dollars an hour, you pay me ten; it isn’t you who is getting cheated, and don’t ever forget it.
Red Caught red-handed:
One of the things that I’ve just had to accept and get used to, is people trying to catch me in contradiction; I suppose that anyone who believes in anything can say the same (I remember that I once made a big deal out of a hard-core christian Womyn I know speaking profanity, even though to the best of my knowledge she has only done so on that one occasion. ). Still it is quite irritating, to say the least.
Wether it is someone that I know well, or just a passing acquaintance, as soon as my politics become apparent, they commence their mission to root out hypocrisy in my lifestyle. The biggest problem with this is, even though they are looking for contradiction between my beliefs and my actions, it falls flat because they don’t understand my beliefs, so they can not say that my actions are incorrect.
To give an example, I may talk briefly about some current event or some political theory or whatnot with a person, and then afterwards we may get a soda or something. Immediately their face lights up, and they grin deviously like someone who is suddenly privy to all of my darkest secrets. The following conversation ensues:
“Aha! You’re drinking pop!”
“So?”
“So, you’re a hypocrite!”
“Why? Communists can’t drink pop? What is anti-communist about pop?”
“Pop is made by corporations!”
“So is everything; so is the rest of my food, for that matter. So is my clothing”
“Yeah, but instead of buying from small businesses, you choose to support large corporations! Hypocrite!”
“No, that is your belief, not mine. See, you believe that there is a difference between small capitalists and big capitalists, and supporting smaller ones is somehow “better” than supporting big capitalists. Me, I hold no such beliefs; in my view, the Marxist view, a capitalist big or small is a capitalist. A mom and pop store may not be Walmart, but it has the potential to become one, and supporting petty-bourgeoisie is not preferable to supporting big bourgeoisie. In the meantime, until the workers control the means of production, all basic commodities that I require on a day-to-day basis are manufactured by capitalists.
Would starvation make me more proletarian? Marx said that ‘communism deprives no man of the ability to appropriate the products of society; it simply deprives him of the ability to subjugate the labour of others’. My solution to the corporate stranglehold on production is not a liberal/social-democratic style boycott, but rather to organize the workers to seize all productive facilities as part of a greater revolution.”
At this point the poorly-informed, ill thought out onslaught of my capitalist adversary ceases immediately, as he or she realizes that they really don’t understand my beliefs, so in trying to catch me in contradiction, they are merely projecting their own notions onto me, and creating ridiculous straw-man arguments in my place.
I am not some sort of commune-dwelling flower child who is in favour of “free love” and socialism on a Utopian, metaphysical level. I am not some sort of anarcho-primitivist, who believes that complete retrogression is the only solution, and shuns all technological marvels of this age. I am not a pacifist,as I only oppose imperialist war, not peoples war. I completely reject the concept of “sticking it to the corporations” by giving my patronage exclusively to the petty bourgeoisie (and perhaps succeeding only in creating a new monopoly capitalist entity in the process.). I do not support former socialist nations on the basis of their military prowess or nationalist hero-worship, and I am disgusted by those who do.
The wealth of misconceptions about my ideology abounds, and therefore leads to this repetitive, never-ending parade of people searching for hypocrisy in my deeds, tying to perhaps “expose me” and therefore discourage me from the path of Marxism. At this point I wish some of them would do a little bit of research, because their attempts are not only completely futile; they are a maddening irritation!
Who shot JFK? Who the hell cares?
It is quite difficult to be in the political left for any amount of time, and not hear at least a few conspiracy theories.
Admittedly, much of what is known as confirmed factual events to the left is considered wild conspiracy theories by the general public, always has been ( in the case of the plain cloths cop who was forced to admit his infiltration of a protest at Montabello Quebec, I found this to be a great victory, as most people consider the idea of police infiltrators to be a ridiculous, unfounded conspiracy; we in the left know that this phenomenon is very real.).
Anyways, I’m talking about the conspiracies that are still considered conspiracies, even among the informed left-wing. The general proliferation of these theories is large, and they are a dime a dozen.
The most popular conspiracy theories among the political left are “who shot JFK” and “Was 9/11 an inside job” ?
With the Kennedy assassination, there has been an abundance of compelling evidence compiled to possibly implicate the CIA, the Miami Cuban exiles, etc, but still it is inconclusive. The same goes for the September eleventh world trade center attacks, where the United States government is by and large considered the culprit.
I don’t place much stock in these theories. It’s not that I don’t think that there is any merit to them, or that they false; perhaps what they are saying is true, that these events were an inside job.
I just don’t care. It has no relevance to my life, nor is it relevant to the peoples of any nation.
These conspiracy theories about JFK and 9/11 are not only diversions from the everyday hardships of the people of the world, but in actuality, they are the epitome of ethnocentrism.
See, I don’t need to know if agents of the United States government were behind the death of JFK. I know that they were behind the deaths of many prominent black panther party members and American socialists, and that is enough for me. I would like to know conclusively whether the United states government killed Anna Mae Aquash, not JFK.
I don’t need to know if the Miami Cubans had a hand in the Kennedy assassination; they weren’t exactly saints before then. They have had their hands in numerous acts of sabotage, terrorism, subversion and murder of Cubans over the decades since revolution, so whether or not they had a hand in the JFK incident becomes incidental trivia rather than an incriminating sin.
I don’t need to know if the United States government was behind the destruction of the world trade center on September 11th, and the subsequent deaths of 3,000 people. I already know for a fact that the United States government has been behind the destruction of entire cities on every corner of the earth, leading to the death and indirect deaths of Millions. I already know that the US government kills their own citizens covertly. What is so mysterious or scandalous about 9/11, whether the US government had a hand in it or not?
See, this is what I’m talking about: ethnocentrism. Three thousand Americans die, it’s a landmark world tragedy that must be marked every year indefinitely; hundreds of thousands of Iraqis die, it’s a newspaper clipping, a “current event” of interest, nothing more. As Koba correctly remarked on the subject ” A single death is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.”
These conspiracies are beyond irrelevance, as they pass into the realm of service to bourgeoisie reformism and capitalist apologism. Who the hell cares about JFK anyways? Whether he was gunned down or not, JFK was a bourgeoisie front-man who launched an unsuccessful invasion of socialist Cuba, and continued the funneling of aid and “military advisers” into South Vietnam during the Vietnam conflict (even sanctioning the “removal” of South Vietnamese president Ngo Dinh Diem when he refused to cooperate); to be an apologist for this mans regime is in-excusable liberal reformism.
Even 9/11, while I will pay respect to the dead as much as any other dead, is not “the key ” to unlocking some sort of great mystery. By pursuing the trail of “who dunnit”, you are not going to come to any real earth shattering revelation. If the US government did orchestrate the entire thing, that may be tragic but not at all surprising; the entire history of the United States government is a litany of all of the peoples who have been crushed underneath it’s jack boot, both domestically and internationally.
I am sad to report it, but even the local “communist party” in my area, the Communist party of Canada, heavily deludes themselves with these reformist conspiracy quests. When they spout rubbish about JFK to me, I am sickened. Why do you care? JFK was a virulently anti-communist, anti-worker oppressor! Yes I said it ; it needed to be said! Stop this nonsense!
The reason most people are attracted to these diversions is that they mostly center around one question: Is the American government undemocratic, and willing to subvert the will of the people at all costs? This is probably why these conspiracies hold no interest for me, as I know the answer: Yes. Yes, your government is undemocratic, yes they are willing to kill you for their own gains, yes the American government and ruling class will stop at nothing to accomplish their goals. You don’t have to analyze the Zapruder film; analyze the the pictures from the police murder at Kent State, and you’ll find the answer you are looking for.
So, now that hopefully I have established that the American government is undoubtedly undemocratic, we can move on from these conspiracy theories to the more relevant question: What are we going to do about this un-democratic American state, and this government that oppresses the people?
Posted by ravenblade 