uncharted.ca

...just the understanding of those millions of people will change our old animalistic ways

Then at last came the war’s end – and the Trotskyists watched with bated breath: Would the long-awaited proletarian revolution finally emerge? In Britain a Labor government came to power that proceeded to nationalize major industries and utilities and institute the National Health Service. That is, the system rewarded the working class for its many wartime sacrifices and thereby gave it a stake in maintaining the existing system, a strategy that turned out to be effective. As for the American workers, they mounted a large strike wave almost immediately after the Japanese surrender. Tens of thousands of oil workers, coal miners, lumber workers, truck drivers, and machinists went on strike. In the first half of 1946, 2.97 million workers, across numerous industries, downed tools; the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics called those six months “the most concentrated period of labor-management strife in the country’s history.” But this strife did not end in a revolution, and the workers ended up accepting wages that were sometimes even below wartime levels.

One of the most radical American labor unions was the United Auto Workers (UAW), which in November 1945 mounted a strike against General Motors, requesting a 30 percent wage increase. When GM refused the demand, 225,000 workers downed tools and stayed out for almost four months. In the end, however, the union accepted a paltry wage increase. After his own military service Murray went to work for General Motors in New Jersey and joined the UAW, hoping for another, more militant strike. But disappointingly for him, the 1945–46 strike was not repeated. During collective bargaining in 1948 the autoworkers accepted a guaranteed annual wage increase and other benefits. For Murray, this outcome shattered any remaining expectations he had about the working class. Never again would he believe that the working class would perform its Marx-cast role:

It was no longer clear that capitalism, as Marx had predicted, would destroy itself by reducing workers to an intolerable state of poverty. Instead, labor and capital began to join together in a “happy union,” such that capitalism was able to use many unions in order to remove labor militants. The radical workers of yesterday stopped wearing their union buttons and moved to the suburbs.
(Murray Bookchin, Anarchism, Marxism, and the Future of the Left (San Francisco and Edinburgh: A.K. Press, 1999), p. 48.)

To his credit, then, Weber embraced the concept of democracy. As I’ve mentioned, the formal name that he gave to his several groups was “Movement for a Democracy of Content.”(33) Now, the formulation “democracy of content” is rather ambiguous: after all, democracy is by definition not a matter of content; it is in the last instance a set of rules to ensure equitable and fair popular rule. Democracy, ideally, vests power in the people (as opposed to rulers), such that each citizen has an equal voice, and none has more weight than others. The content of the issues upon which they deliberate and decide is beside the point. As we normally think of it, democracy is a matter of form and specifically not of content.

It seems to me that just as differences in meaning may be at the root of our conflicts, these can also play a role in keeping us disempowered.

revolution changes nothing

We think of power as control, domination, calling the shots. What if that were to change to "building", creating, evolving, things that are of value to the community as as whole? What if we redefined the current conception of power as something undesirable or socially unacceptable - like "abuse" or anti-social behaviour?

It's got to be about teaching a novel understanding of power -- and about getting people to want to learn about it just because they see it working to greater material benefits. Because they desire to get it materially working for them too.