Few types of literature put capitalist views on class struggle with such explicit and appalling candor as that dealing with “disciplinary problems” in the workplace. With economic development has come a certain mellowing in the shrill tone of the anti-employee diatribes of the 19th-century class-warhawks; but it has lost none of its virulence or its domineering aspiration, for it self-consciously promotes the atmosphere of coercion that justifies unpaid labor as the source of capitalist profit. The American Management Association (AMA), “the nation’s #1 business trainer!” according to its brochure titled “How to legally fire employees with attitude problems,” is...
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A spectre is haunting America – the spectre of the middle class. Ever since Alexis de Tocqueville proclaimed the US to be a “middle-class country”, North Americans have anxiously sought to moralise and ennoble their notion of class struggle: Most were regular employees of major corporations like McDonnell Douglas, Grumman and Hughes Aircraft. If they didn’t go to work, they risked losing their livelihoods, their houses and their cars. They were, in fact, not middle- class at all in the Marxian sense of the word. They were working-class, but, unlike similar people in Britain or Germany, they called themselves...
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From the Western Socialist, #1, 1960 Why does the World Socialist Party belittle the nationalization of wealth, when it really means the same thing as Socialism? If the government, on behalf of the people, decides to take over the wealth of the nation, what sense is there in wasting our time doing the same thing? Would it not be better for us to get in and help them do it? -W.S. Reader We gather from W.S. Reader the wording of the query that our correspondent is a little mixed up in his differentiation, or lack of it, between the...
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To the Editors: I read your magazine regularly and find it interesting, informative and also puzzling. What puzzles me is that you advocate socialism and at the same time oppose social reforms. I always thought that socialists saw nothing inconsistent in working for the establishment of socialism while at the same time participating in the fight for immediate demands. I believe democratic socialism can be achieved when and if a majority of the people become convinced that it is a desirable alternative to the present order. But I rather doubt that I shall see socialism in my time. In...
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The Story of the German Working-Class Movement (Review) Hammer or Anvil. The Story of the German Working-Class Movement. By Evelyn Anderson (207pp.; V. Gollancz, London). This short history of the German labor movement from the time of Bismarck’s anti-socialist laws to its extinction under the Hitler regime deals with both the political and trade-union aspects of the movement and is written from the same point of view that prevailed in those organizations. There is little criticism and what there is is directed only to the late phases of the movement. Some errors of fact appear here and there with...
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The Growth of American Thought. By Merle Curti. Harper & Brothers, New York, 1943. (848pp., $5.00) Well written, interestingly constructed and partly original in its researches, Curti’s book is nevertheless a dull affair. This is not the writer’s fault, but results from the fact that American thought has not grown in depth but has been a mere accumulation of detailed knowledge incapable of changing the general climate of opinion. Save in technology, the whole intellectual development from colonial times to the present war has not been very impressive. However unwillingly, Curti’s book demonstrates the intellectual poverty which accompanied the...
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From the Western Socialist, March-April, 1942 “The mode of production in material life determines the general character of the social, political, and spiritual process of life.” When Karl Marx presented this analysis to a confused world, back in 1859, he provided an explanation of cause and effect in the social world that still serves the needs of our more inquisitive minds today. The slovenly and the superficial will miss its meaning, the sycophantic drudge will seek to sabotage its lesson but, to the serious student of social affairs, it affords a meaning of untangling the snarls that disconcert his...
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The Job
From the Sept-Oct 1949 issue of the Western Socialist To a worker, a job is almost a matter of life and death, for he is dependent on it for his daily wants – food, clothes and a place to sleep. If he cannot find a job, or is without one for any length of time his situation become desperate and it has occasionally happened that protracted unemployment has led to suicide. The alternatives the worker has to wage labor are few, if any, because the means by which he lives and propagates his species are owned and controlled by...
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