It was Marx, I believe, who said that after receiving his wages from his employer, he is immediately set upon by all manner of other parasites and bloodsuckers: landlords, money lenders, monopoly prices etc. This is an aspect of exploitation that I dont see very many Marxists engage in. We typically emphasize organizing against the bosses and the bosses state; we emphasize the worker-as-wage-slave much more than the worker-as- consumer. Do you guys think the worker-as-consumer has any potential to wage a fight against capitalism? I got thinking about this because I read a part of David Harveys Rebel Cities, which was excellent but I had another book that came in the mail that I was so excited to recieve that I put Rebel Cities down. Harvey discusses the myriad ways, besides wage labor and stolen surplus value, that urban workers are exploited. Id like to get some opinions on this. A couple things that come to mind, for example, are tenant committees for controlling rent; In Germany of 1923, during the period leading up to failure of one of the most promising revolutionary situations in history, the working-class was organizing not only soviets and the Proletarian Hundreds armed workers defense units, but also Committees of Control (I think thats what Broue calls them in his unsurpassed history of the German Revolution 1917-1923). The Committees of Control (again, I might be getting name wrong), basically used the revolutionary situation and the economic collapse, along with justifiable coercion/threats/ violence, to control prices, to combat hoarding, etc. So the thread topic: workers in their capacity as consumers and struggle within that context. Im really interested in this discussion and I look forward to learning about the different positions our comrades might have.
Posted on: Sat, 15 Nov 2014 03:22:50 +0000
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