Saturday, June 6, 2009

22

"Working class consciousness"?

1) The reason MD advocate the possibility of revolution via the
intervention of a relatively, numerically, small section of the
proletariat is very simple, we see that only a relatively small section
(a vast minority) of the proletariat have potential power over the
process of capitalist production.

The acts of most people do no effect the world but function at a
level wholly contained effects of the world's turning. In contrast
the proletariat's anti-act, the act of non-production or of ceasing
work, instantly has effect (like in a dream) on capitalism as a whole
(in the past few months, lorry drivers, postmen, tube workers and
now railway guards have stopped sectors of the British economy).
Most workers are now employed in sectors that are peripheral to
the economy's well being., if they take industrial action it causes
inconvenience only to the immediate employer and perhaps a few
companies up and down the supply chain. In contrast the
essential proletariat is that group of workers who can halt vast
areas of the economy by stopping their work.

These workers are employed in the economy's core industries,
industries that can only operate with a relatively high level of labor
input into their processes, which give to those workers an already
existing control over process; core workers' latent power can be
demonstrated immediately in industrial action which spreads its
knock-on effect to all businesses in the locality and beyond,
producing spiraling repercussions in society. Core-workers
include factory workers, dustmen, power workers, distributions
workers (post, rail, road haulage, ferries, dockers, etc); in all of
these examples the cessation of work causes immediate and
widespread problems for the economy, and this is why it is
precisely in these industries that wildcat action is more frequent,
quite simply, industrial action in these industries has a history of
success.

Our certainty concerning the revolutionary potential of the essential
proletariat is not at all founded upon a presumption of the
superiority of life lived as a proletarian, or that working class
existence is an end itself that should be pursued by pro-
revolutionaries. We do not see the modes of working class
organization as an indicator of a possible, post-revolutionary

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