--- In maoism@y..., "aftersorrowcomesjoy" wrote: > in case anyone is interested- > > the discussion at www.2changetheworld.info regarding surplus value > and whether or not their is a white proletariat is going on in much > the same way- so far NO ONE besides myself has given any data to back > up their position. it is actually getting really pathetic because maoist3@yahoo.com replies: thanks aftersorrowcomesjoy. Periodically of course people are going to have to go to the "RCP-USA" and prove to themselves that they are in fact still backward over there and unable to prove anything except by saying "and Avakian said so." If I were them, I'd keep my mouth shut until someone gave me a calculation of surplus-value to use in the struggle against MIM, but they are such loyalists that they'd rather say the facts are not the problem. Plus, I can't place myself in their shoes, because I can't imagine anyone staying in that organization for years at a time without answering basic Marxist questions. They can't be truly motivated to be real scientific communists. They may be there because they think Avakian is cool, but whatever it is, it's not a concern with basic Marxist questions. ************************************************* [maoist3@yahoo.com intro: Defending the "RCP-USA" at www.2changetheworld.info is "Area Man." His comments below.] Let's see if I can help, aftersorrow. First on your rather insistant complaint about data: It seems like you have been offered tons of materialist analysis. Though perhaps you can be clearer as to why you think that is not satisfying. For example: you argue that there are literally no white proletarians. And yet several of us have pointed out that there are millions of white people on welfare who cannot by any stretch of the imagination be considered "privileged" or "middle class." If that isn't a material fact and a materialist argument, what is? That alone is clear proof that there are significant numbers of white working class people in the real proletariat. Or as an example, the material fact is raised that Black and white workers often live and work under conditions that are comparable (including in the poorer sections of the working class.) Perhaps you want photos of them? Who exactly are the people you consider proletarians -- because the monent you define them, you will find that this class is a multinational group -- since all sections of the working class in the U.S. is multinational in various degrees. Do you deny that there are white folks who are among farmworkers, or are homeless, or among the youth who see no future in rustbelt cities from Lowell Mass to Gary Ind.? Isn't that data? Since you insist there are *no* white proletarians, the issue doesn't revolve around exactly how many (quantitatively) there are -- though we all know they are in the millions, right? Let me help you on the issue of surplus value: I'm not sure what you are asking for (or demanding). But let me revisit the discussion. First of all, there is no simple number that defines the real proletariat. (It's not like $4 an hour is proletarian and $8.50 is suddenly middle class etc. -- that is the simply bourgeois sociology.) In fact, in the discussion of these things in MLM (including Marx and Lenin etc.) it is not like *their* data is lists of wages, and cut-off points (beyond which people are supposedly "reactionary".) That whole approach is unmarxist. Also you seem to think that only people who are paid "below the social value of their labor" produce surplus value. Marxism explains that when labor power is a commodity, the price tends to fluctuate around the social necessary labor time needed to produce it. So that wages tend to get drawn to the social cost of reproducing labor power -- which means that the system generally and overall pushes people down til they make just enough to crawl from one pay check to another, and barely can afford to raise their kids. Under imperialism, the arrival of superprofits from the third world allow the ruling class to pay (as a concession and an act of internal political stabilization) sections of the working class moes than that bare minimum -- it produces a labor aristocracy, and then (in the wealthiest imperialist countries) also some relative stability more broadly in the working class (including seniority systems, layoff pay, unemployment pay, pensions etc.) The RCP draft programme talks about three parts to the working class. (Labor aristocracy, more stable sections, and a "real proletariat"). There are in varous documents and publications a description of that "real proletariat" -- which we can gather and reproduce here. But the key point doesn't require a whole lot of statistics: We all know that there are millions of workers, of all nationalities, who barely make it, who don't have savings, who go from paycheck to paycheck, who have trouble paying their bills and raising their families. And if you look at any level of that (people on welfare, people making minimum wage, people making the bottom two fifths of the income scale etc.) those millions of peole include peole of all nationalities -- including white people. Everyone knows (here at least) that the lower sections of the working class *disproportionately* include people from the oppressed nationalities. But the argument that this section of the working class (the real proletariat) has *no* white people in it simply has no factual basis. I'm glad you backed down and said "no not every white worker goes to the Bahamas- no they don't all speculate on the stock market. - that was a sweeping generaliztion I should not have made." But isn't your whole verdict based on such sweeping generalizations? what would be left of your argument if you stopped such false generalizations? The following analysis is an example of that generalized confusion: Aftersorrow wrote: Then you ask me if these welfare recipients are "middle class?" in terms of the white nation's class structure- no. "middle class is not the best way of putting it since "middle class" would include teachers and professionals. But they still are a petty-bourgeois class People on welfare are "a petty bourgeois class"? Only the white women and kids? Or are the Black and Native American people on welfare petty bourgeois too? Your argument seems to be that because there are no people on welfare in the third world, that the people on welfare here can't be proletarians (and that welfare itself must be a form of corrupting privilege.) You said: "Do multinational corporation in the "third world" provide welfare to their reserve army of labor? I don't think so." Perhaps that argument makes sense to you, but it escapes me. But here is one point of clarity I can inject: You seem to think that to be proletarian, people have to be directly "exploited." But this is not (in fact the case) -- many permanently unemployed proletarians are never profitably exploited (including the people on welfare.) To put it another way: A definition of proletarian is those who have nothing to sell but their labor power, and nothing to lose but their chains. The proletariat is not limited to only those who *sucessfully* sell their labor power. High school kids are part of the proletariat (as a class) even if they are not in the labor market. Retired workers are proletarians even if they cannot be exploited. Certainly a disabled and bitterly impoverished textile worker is a proletarian -- even if they are not being literally exploited? right? The proletarian women who stay home and raise kids (either single-on-welfare, or as wives of male workers) are still part of the proletarian class, even if they are never literally and directly exploited. Now it is also possible to put together more statistics on this. Someone posted a useful discussion of poverty and income within the multinational proletariat. And I'm not sure what else is needed. In fact, the problem is not data -- but the political confusion of your analysis. Really, an argument as extreme and absurd as "there are no exploited white workers at all, they are all middle class" or "women on welfare are a petty bourgeois class" doesn't need a mountain of statistics to refute it. I say, again: what world are you looking at? Have you never visited a housing project or chatted with a waitress? Or worked in a sweatshop? Take a road trip some time, talk to the people. ************************************************** ************************************************** maoist3@yahoo.com replies for the Maoist Internationalist Movement: We now see the "RCP- USA" openly say that data is unnecessary: "Now it is also possible to put together more statistics on this. Someone posted a useful discussion of poverty and income within the multinational proletariat. And I'm not sure what else is needed," "In fact, the problem is not data -- but the political confusion of your analysis," says the "RCP-USA" defender. In contrast, the MLPD ("RCP-USA"'s German brethren who also believe that the petty-bourgeoisie/labor aristocracy is a minority) knew right away that when it met MIM it HAD to respond with overall statistics on surplus-value. In fact, MLPD PUBLISHED them, which puts the MLPD leagues ahead of the "RCP-USA" in at least ATTEMPTING to follow Marx's labor theory of value. The only problem is that the MLPD simply ASSUMED that all revenue from sales stemmed from German workers, so they divided revenue from sales by number of German workers and concluded that surplus-value came from German workers. Wow, they did not even include Turkish workers, never mind what portion of that surplus- value is extracted from the Third World. It's called "assuming that which has to be proved," but at least the MLPD knew that it was supposed to calculate the surplus-value. "RCP-USA" does not know or does not care to involve itself in this basic Marxist exercise of the brain. And look how deliberate they are in this strategy: they tell you statistics and an overall calculation of surplus-value extraction are UNNECESSARY facts, but taking "a road trip" is a NECESSARY fact-checking. What they do not want you to do EVER is sum up from the empirical level to achieve what Mao called "rational knowledge." They tell you to go on a road trip or walk through the garment districts. That's all. Let's turn this around. The "RCP-USA" should go spend some time with the welfare families it is talking about. And the next time they visit, they should look up from the posters of Bob Avakian's face they are carrying long enough to LOOK at what they see in those apartments that welfare- recipients live in. The "RCP-USA" is now referring to the whites on welfare as disproof of our line. Without mentioning that some of those are going to be lumpen, they simply think facts are unimportant. To the "RCP-USA" if the government declared them officially "poor," then there must be an exploited white proletariat. MIM already has written in detail on this question--with the FACTS. Here is just one example: http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/books/ capital/cox.html Let's quote some facts about U.$. conditions and those in official poverty: "For example, the average persyn in 1970 had 478 square feet of house space. In the mid-1990s the figure was 814. Color TV went from 34% ownership to 97.9% ownership.(p. 7) Going to college went from 25.4% of high school graduates in 1970 to 60% in 1996.(p. 56) "In 1971, 31.8% of all households had air- conditioners. In 1994, 49.6% of households below the poverty-line had air-conditioners.(pp. 14-5) The poor also do better than 1971 U.S. households in clothes dryers, dishwashers, refrigerators, stoves, microwaves, VCRs and Personal Computers. That is not comparing the poor of now with the poor of the past. We are comparing the poor of now with all households of 1971 and the poor of now are better off." The "RCP-USA" has no concern about how such a lifting of the material condition of the poor is possible with regard to luxury goods. They don't want embarassing questions, like "could it be the influx of surplus-value from China and other places stepped up and made that possible?" They want you to feel concern about the people called "poor" in the united $tates and they don't want you to think about the definition of exploitation or the conditions of the Third World proletariat as a reference point. The "RCP-USA" also does not want you to know that in fact u.$. poverty is usually a temporary condition especially for whites, and that there is no way it can form the basis of class consciousness: "Almost 70% of fast-food workers are teenagers (p. 147) as MIM has pointed out before. We may even hope that teenage boys are doing more cooking and middle- aged wimmin less thanks to the popularity of fast- food." "MIM also agrees with the fact evident for anyone to see that there is class mobility within the United $tates. We see it to such an extent that MIM does not believe it is possible to speak of a white proletariat. Before they know it, people who would be white proletariat find themselves in the middle-classes or if they do not find themselves as such, they know many people from their milieu that have "gotten ahead." Thus, no class identity can form. Almost 30% of the people in the bottom fifth find themselves in the top fifth within 16 years based on a study covering 1975 to 1991.(p. 73) Less than 20% of the bottom fifth stays in the bottom two-fifths of income. The reason for this is that the bottom fifth contains a large portion of youth and immigrants who will "make it" with time. People who fall into the bottom fifth are largely retirees." http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/bookstore/books/capital/cox.html