The unemployed and poor as part of the working class, the 99%
I
agree that we need to bring back the term "the working class" in
economic debates, however this article is not about the working class.
This is about the chronically poor who cannot work for physical reasons,
addiction or lack of basic education. These don't need unions,
industrial training or job hunting skills - in other words - TANF. They
need the kind of remedial attention to education and health issues that
looks more like Welfare - although the funds should go toward payment
for going to school rather than staying home (although the subject of
the article should not have to work or learn - but his disability should
be raised so he does not have to work). In short, we need to do
something for the poor - including legalizing drugs and providing
treatment. Sadly, this is not possible in this political environment. If
the working class and the poor would actually vote, there would be no
question of them getting the aid they need - of course the GOP is trying
to make sure they can't, even if they want to, because if they did
there would be no GOP.
Michael
Sean Winters | Aug. 11, 2014Distinctly CatholicPrintemailPDFFrom
yesterday's New York Times, Nick Kristof on the challenges facing
America's working class, and how no one is paying...
ncronline.org
- You and 3 others like this.
Warren Chamberlain If the poor had their rightful access to the means of production, land and capital they could be members of the working class. You can teach a man to fish but without a fishing rod and a right of way to the water he will still starve.
Billie Burk We are spending money to make homelessness illegal. Probably costs less to provide modest housing for anyone that needs shelter and not in a group hovel. But we'd rather ostracize and humiliate than lift people up. Actually extinction of the human race is probably a good thing.- Warren Chamberlain If a person has a right to life he has a right to work to sustain that right, so everyone has a right to the means of production land and capital; Who will "provide" that? We should make joblessness illegal.
Maria Minno A lot of rich people have drug addictions, and that doesn't prevent them from being rich.
Michael Bindner No, it means that the poor should be treated when necessary and trained when necessary - but they are not in the working class, nor should they be called that - until they are ready for work. If not, their disability payments should be enough to live on, not just subsist.- Maria Minno "This is about the chronically poor who cannot work for physical reasons, //addiction// or lack of basic education. "
Well, my comment is a tangent, but I wanted to remind people not to fall for the stereotype that poor people are all drug addicts, or drug users are poor. It's not just poor people. In fact, people with money are more able to buy drugs, both illegal and pharmaceutical, so are probably more likely to be addicted, but not convicted. And it's not just illegal drugs. The worst drugs and the drugs with the most widespread use are legal. (Think of the mayem if all of a sudden nobody could get their caffeine fix in the morning, and their alcohol at night!) I don't actually know how much of a problem drug addiction amounts to; do you? I see the stereotype of drug addicted poor people as part of blaming the poor for their economic condition. 
Charles Brown but they are not in the working class, nor should they be called that - until they are ready for work. If not, their disability payments should be enough to live on, not just subsist.///////// always, chronically, secularly large numbers of the working class are part of the relative surplus population and the reserved army of the unemployed, many poor https://www.marxists.org/.../marx/works/1867-c1/ch25.htm...
- Charles Brown "Considering the social capital in its totality, the movement of its accumulation now causes periodical changes, affecting it more or less as a whole, now distributes its various phases simultaneously over the different spheres of production. In some spheres a change in the composition of capital occurs without increase of its absolute magnitude, as a consequence of simple centralisation; in others the absolute growth of capital is connected with absolute diminution of its variable constituent, or of the labour power absorbed by it; in others again, capital continues growing for a time on its given technical basis, and attracts additional labour power in proportion to its increase, while at other times it undergoes organic change, and lessens its variable constituent; in all spheres, the increase of the variable part of capital, and therefore of the number of labourers employed by it, is always connected with violent fluctuations and transitory production of surplus population, whether this takes the more striking form of the repulsion of labourers already employed, or the less evident but not less real form of the more difficult absorption of the additional labouring population through the usual channels. [14] With the magnitude of social capital already functioning, and the degree of its increase, with the extension of the scale of production, and the mass of the labourers set in motion, with the development of the productiveness of their labour, with the greater breadth and fulness of all sources of wealth, there is also an extension of the scale on which greater attraction of labourers by capital is accompanied by their greater repulsion; the rapidity of the change in the organic composition of capital, and in its technical form increases, and an increasing number of spheres of production becomes involved in this change, now simultaneously, now alternately. The labouring population therefore produces, along with the accumulation of capital produced by it, the means by which it itself is made relatively superfluous, is turned into a relative surplus population; and it does this to an always increasing extent. [15] This is a law of population peculiar to the capitalist mode of production; and in fact every special historic mode of production has its own special laws of population, historically valid within its limits and only in so far as man has not interfered with them. "
- Charles Brown "After Political Economy has thus demonstrated the constant production of a relative surplus population of labourers to be a necessity of capitalistic accumulation, she very aptly, in the guise of an old maid, puts in the mouth of her “beau ideal” of a capitalist the following words addressed to those supernumeraries thrown on the streets by their own creation of additional capital: —
“We manufacturers do what we can for you, whilst we are increasing that capital on which you must subsist, and you must do the rest by accommodating your numbers to the means of subsistence.” [18]
Capitalist production can by no means content itself with the quantity of disposable labour power which the natural increase of population yields. It requires for its free play an industrial reserve army independent of these natural limits. " - Charles Brown "The greater the social wealth, the functioning capital, the extent and energy of its growth, and, therefore, also the absolute mass of the proletariat and the productiveness of its labour, the greater is the industrial reserve army. The same causes which develop the expansive power of capital, develop also the labour power at its disposal. The relative mass of the industrial reserve army increases therefore with the potential energy of wealth. But the greater this reserve army in proportion to the active labour army, the greater is the mass of a consolidated surplus population, whose misery is in inverse ratio to its torment of labour. The more extensive, finally, the lazarus layers of the working class, and the industrial reserve army, the greater is official pauperism. This is the absolute general law of capitalist accumulation. Like all other laws it is modified in its working by many circumstances, the analysis of which does not concern us here. "
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