Hudson Dissertation on Protectionism

[don]

E Peshine Smith: A Study in Protectionist Growth Theory and American Sectionalism

December 4, 2012
By Michael Hudson


Peshine Smith (1814 – 82) was probably the most sophisticated of the pre-Civil War protectionists. What he attempted was no less a task than to transform protectionist economic thought from a body of disparate and often self-contradictory parts into an integrated doctrine of economic growth, and to develop political economy as a quantitative engineering science.

PDF: http://michael-hudson.com/wp-content...12/6911813.pdf

[Chris Coles]

Re: Hudson Dissertation on Protectionism

This is a profoundly interesting dissertation as it opens the door to a renewal of the underlying principles of why the USA, (and to a lesser extent, with variation, the rest of the Anglo Saxon economies), were once so economically successful; while at the same moment; showing where they have gone wrong over the last few decades. The clue lies in the Summary from page 3 to page 5 where Hudson summary illustrates Peshine Smith's description:

"Peshine Smith in fact believed that the accumulation of capital was best accelerated by national policies conducive to wage levels sufficiently high as to permit the laborer to allocate some part of his income to the acquisition of educational skills, a precondition for the operation of society's increasingly sophisticated stock of industrial capital.

......................Peshine Smith went beyond these earlier writers, however, in treating labor skills as a form of private ("entrepreneurial") capital as well, representing as they did a capital investment from which the skilled laborer derived a premium over and above the wage rate paid to unskilled labor..............

Please read on to the end of the first paragraph on page 5, from the bottom of page 4.

..........Here then was a powerful argument to win the vote of labor to the cause of industrial protection. Here too was a portrayal of the future growth of American wage rates as being determined not by the opportunity to occupy western lands, as advocated by the Democrats, but by the accumulation of industrial capital with which to employ the nation's labor"

In the UK we got an idea of this when, during WW2, American servicemen arrived being paid up to 5 times the wages here in the UK; which in turn spawned the well known phrase: "Overpaid, Oversexed and Over Here".

In turn, this also relates to my own thesis that where the Anglo Saxon economies have gone wrong is through the removal of what I describe as "Hidden Prosperity". That by reducing the income of the laborer to subsistence levels, no one has the income to enable the replacement of the initial investment that creates new employers and thus new jobs.

[don]

Re: Hudson Dissertation on Protectionism

+1 All good points, Chris

[don]

Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

Eric Hobsbawm, who died last October 1, aged ninety-five, has been much celebrated as one of the twentieth century’s greatest English-language historians despite his steadfast advocacy of socialism and use of the tools of Marxian analysis. But, if asked, the founding editors of Monthly Review, Leo Huberman and Paul Sweezy, his lifelong colleagues and comrades, would have differed a bit. They would have said that it was precisely because Marxism was intrinsic to his theory, understanding, and action that he gained his preeminence.

What made his work especially interesting was his ability not only to capture the historical specificity of a given age, but also his tendency to look at what was on the outskirts of the dominant view and see change as it emerged from the margins. Related to this was his proclivity to take on some of the hardest issues, including those facing the left. The following article, “Lenin and ‘The Aristocracy of Labor,’” is an instance of the latter.


The following brief essay is a contribution to the discussion of Lenin’s thought, on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. The subject is one which can be appropriately treated by a British Marxist, since the concept of an “aristocracy of labor” is one which Lenin clearly derived from the history of British nineteenth-century capitalism. His concrete references to the “aristocracy of labor” as a stratum of the working class appear to be exclusively drawn from Britain (though in his study notes on imperialism he also remarks upon similar phenomena in the “white” parts of the British Empire). The term itself is almost certainly derived from a passage by Engels written in 1885 and reprinted in the introduction to the 1892 edition of The Condition of the Working Class in England in 1844 which speaks of the great English trade unions as forming “an aristocracy among the working class.”

The actual phrase may be attributable to Engels, but the concept was familiar in English politico-social debate, particularly in the 1880s. It was generally accepted that the working class in Britain at this period contained a favored stratum—a minority but a numerically large one—which was most usually identified with the “artisans” (i.e., the skilled employed crafts—men and workers) and more especially with those organized in trade unions or other working-class organizations. This is the sense in which foreign observers also used the term, e.g., Schulze-Gaevernitz, whom Lenin quotes with approval on this point in the celebrated eighth chapter of Imperialism. This conventional identification was not entirely valid, but, like the general use of the concept of an upper working-class stratum, reflected an evident social reality. Neither Marx nor Engels nor Lenin “invented” a labor aristocracy. It existed only too visibly in Britain of the second half of the nineteenth century. Moreover, if it existed anywhere else, it was clearly much less visible or significant. Lenin assumed that, until the period of imperialism, it existed nowhere else.

The novelty of Engels’s argument lay elsewhere. He held that this aristocracy of labor was made possible by the industrial world monopoly of Britain, and would therefore disappear or be pushed closer to the rest of the proletariat with the ending of this monopoly. Lenin followed Engels on this point, and indeed in the years immediately preceding 1914, when the British labor movement was becoming radicalized, tended to stress the second half of Engels’s argument, e.g., in his articles “English Debates on a Liberal Workers’ Policy” (1912), “The British Labor Movement” (1912), and “In England, the Pitiful Results of Opportunism” (1913). While not doubting for a moment that the labor aristocracy was the basis of the opportunism and “Liberal-Laborism” of the British movement, Lenin did not appear as yet to emphasize the international implications of the argument. For instance, he apparently did not use it in his analysis of the social roots of revisionism (see “Marxism and Revisionism,” 1908, and “Differences in the European Labor Movement,” 1910). Here he argued rather that revisionism, like anarcho-syndica1ism, was due to the constant creation on the margins of developing capitalism of certain middle strata—small workshops, domestic workers, etc.—which are in turn constantly cast into the ranks of the proletariat, so that petty-bourgeois tendencies inevitably infiltrate into proletarian parties.

The line of thought which he derived from his recognition of the labor aristocracy was at this stage somewhat different; and it is to be noted that he maintained it, in part at least, to the end of his political life. Here it is perhaps relevant to observe that Lenin drew his knowledge of the phenomenon not only from the writings of Marx and Engels, who commented frequently on the British labor movement, and from his personal acquaintance with Marxists in England (which he visited six times between 1902 and 1911), but also from the fullest and best-informed work on the “aristocratic” trade unions of the nineteenth century, Sidney and Beatrice Webb’s Industrial Democracy. This important book he knew intimately, having translated it in his Siberian exile. It provided him, incidentally, with an immediate understanding of the links between the British Fabians and Bernstein: “The original source of a number of Bernstein’s contentions and ideas,” he wrote in September 1899 to a correspondent, “is in the latest books written by the Webbs.” Lenin continued to quote information drawn from the Webbs many years later, and specifically refers to Industrial Democracy in the course of his argument in What Is To Be Done?

Two propositions may be derived in part, or mainly, from the experience of the British labor aristocracy. The first was “that the subservience to the spontaneity of the labor movement, belittling of the role of ‘the conscious element,’ of the role of Social Democracy, means, whether one likes it or not, the growth of influence of bourgeois ideology among the workers.” The second was that a purely trade unionist struggle “is necessarily a struggle according to trade, because conditions of labor differ very much in different trades, and consequently the fight to improve these conditions can only be conducted in respect to each trade.” (What Is To Be Done? The second argument is supported by direct reference to the Webbs.)

The first of these propositions appears to be based on the view that, under capitalism, bourgeois ideology is hegemonic, unless deliberately counteracted by “the conscious element.” This important observation leads us far beyond the mere question of the labor aristocracy, and we need not pursue it further here. The second proposition is more closely linked to the aristocracy of labor. It argues that, given the “law of uneven development” within capitalism—i.e., the diversity of conditions in different industries, regions, etc., of the same economy—a purely “economist” labor movement must tend to fragment the working class into “selfish” (“petty bourgeois”) segments each pursuing its interest, if necessary in alliance with its own employers, at the expense of the rest. (Lenin several times quoted the case of the “Birmingham Alliances” of the 1890s, attempts at a joint union-management bloc to maintain prices in various metal trades. He derived this information almost certainly also from the Webbs.) Consequently such a purely “economist” movement must tend to disrupt the unity and political consciousness of the proletariat and to weaken or counteract its revolutionary role.

This argument is also very general. We can regard the aristocracy of labor as a special case of this general model. It arises when the economic circumstances of capitalism make it possible to grant significant concessions to the proletariat, within which certain strata manage, by means of their special scarcity, skill, strategic position, organizational strength, etc., to establish notably better conditions for themselves than the rest. Hence there may be historic situations, as in late nineteenth-century England, when the aristocracy of labor can almost be identified with the effective trade union movement, as Lenin sometimes came close to suggesting.

But if the argument is in principle more general, there can be no doubt that what was in Lenin’s mind when he used it was the aristocracy of labor. Time and again we find him using phrases such as the following: “the petty bourgeois craft spirit which prevails among this aristocracy of labor” (“The Session of the International Socialist Bureau,” 1908); “the English trade unions, insular, aristocratic, philistinely selfish”; “the English pride themselves on their ‘practicalness’ and their dislike of general principles; this is an expression of the craft spirit in the labor movement” (“English Debates on a Liberal Workers’ Policy,” 1912); and “this aristocracy of labor…isolated itself from the mass of the proletariat in close, selfish, craft unions” (“Harry Quelch,” 1913). Moreover, much later, and in a carefully considered programmatic statement—in fact, in his “Preliminary Draft Theses on the Agrarian Question for the Second Congress of the Communist International” (1920)—the connection is made with the greatest clarity:

The industrial workers cannot fulfill their world-historical mission of emancipating mankind from the yoke of capital and from wars if these workers concern themselves exclusively with their narrow craft, narrow trade interests, and smugly confine themselves to care and concern for improving their own, sometimes tolerable, petty bourgeois conditions. This is exactly what happens in many advanced countries to the “labor aristocracy” which serves as the base of the alleged Socialist parties of the Second International.

This quotation, combining the earlier and the later ideas of Lenin about the aristocracy of labor, leads us naturally from the one to the other. These later writings are familiar to all Marxists. They date in the main from the period 1914–1917, and form part of Lenin’s attempt to provide a coherent Marxist explanation for the outbreak of the war and especially the simultaneous and traumatic collapse of the Second International and most of its constituent parties. They are stated most fully in the eighth chapter of Imperialism, and the article “Imperialism and the Split in the Socialist Movement,” written a little later (autumn 1916) and complementing it.

The argument of Imperialism is well-known, though the glosses of “Imperialism and the Split” are not so widely known. Broadly speaking, it runs as follows. Thanks to the peculiar position of British capitalism—“vast colonial possessions and a monopolist position in the world markets”—the British working class tended already in the mid-nineteenth century to be divided into a favored minority of labor aristocrats and a much larger lower stratum. The upper stratum “becomes bourgeois,” while at the same time “a section of the proletariat allows itself to be led by people who are bought by the bourgeoisie, or at least are in their pay.” In the epoch of imperialism what was once a purely British phenomenon is now found in all the imperialist powers. Hence opportunism, degenerating into social chauvinism, characterized all the leading parties of the Second International. However, “opportunism cannot now triumph in the working-class movement of any country for decades as it did in England,” because world monopoly has now to be shared between a number of competing countries. Thus imperialism, while generalizing the phenomenon of the aristocracy of labor, also provides the conditions for its disappearance.

The relatively cursory passages of Imperialism are expanded into a rather fuller argument in “Imperialism and the Split.” The existence of a labor aristocracy is explained by the super-profits of monopoly, which allows the capitalists “to devote a part (and not a small one at that) to bribe their own workers, to create something like an alliance…between the workers of a given nation and their capitalists against the other countries.” This “bribery” operates through trusts, the financial oligarchy, high prices, etc. (i.e., something like joint monopolies between a given capitalism and its workers). The amount of the potential bribe is substantial—Lenin estimated it as perhaps one hundred million francs out of a billion—and so, under certain circumstances, is the stratum which benefits from it. However, “the question as to how this little sop is distributed among labor ministers, ‘labor representatives’…labor members of war industrial committees, labor officials, workers organized in narrow craft unions, office employees, etc., etc., is a secondary question.” The remainder of the argument, with exceptions to be noted below, amplifies but does not substantially alter the argument of Imperialism.

It is essential to recall that Lenin’s analysis was attempting to explain a specific historic situation—the collapse of the Second International—and to buttress specific political conclusions which he drew from it. He argued, first, that since opportunism and social chauvinism represented only a minority of the proletariat, revolutionaries must “go down lower and deeper, to the real masses”; and second, that the “bourgeois labor parties” were now irrevocably sold to the bourgeoisie, and would neither disappear before the revolution nor in some way “return” to the revolutionary proletariat, though they might “swear by the name of Marx” wherever Marxism was popular among the workers. Hence revolutionaries must reject a factitious unity between the revolutionary proletarian and the opportunist philistine trend within the labor movement. In brief, the international movement had to be split, so that a Communist labor movement could replace a Social Democratic one.

These conclusions applied to a specific historical situation, but the analysis supporting them was more general. Since it was part of a specific political polemic as well as a broader analysis, some of the ambiguities of Lenin’s argument about imperialism and the labor aristocracy are not to be scrutinized too closely. As we have seen, he himself pushed certain aspects of it aside as “secondary.” Nevertheless, the argument is in certain respects unclear or ambiguous. Most of its difficulties arise out of Lenin’s insistence that the corrupted sector of the working class is and can only be a minority, or even, as he sometimes suggests polemically, a tiny minority, as against the masses who are not “infected with ‘bourgeois respectability’” and to whom the Marxists must appeal, for “this is the essence of Marxian tactics.”

In the first place, it is evident that the corrupted minority could be, even on Lenin’s assumptions, a numerically large sector of the working class and an even larger one of the organized labor movement. Even if it only amounted to 20 percent of the proletariat, like the labor organizations in late nineteenth-century England or in 1914 Germany (the illustration is Lenin’s), it could not be simply written off politically, and Lenin was too realistic to do so. Hence a certain hesitation in his formulations. It was not the labor aristocracy as such, but only “a stratum” of it which had deserted economically to the bourgeoisie (“Imperialism and the Split”). It is not clear which stratum. The only types of workers specifically mentioned are the functionaries, politicians, etc., of the reformist labor movements. These are indeed minorities—tiny minorities—corrupted and sometimes frankly sold to the bourgeoisie, but the question why they command the support of their followers is not discussed.

In the second place, the position of the mass of the workers is left in some ambiguity. It is clear that the mechanism of exploiting a monopoly of markets, which Lenin regards as the basis of “opportunism,” functions in ways which cannot confine its benefits to one stratum only of the working class. There is good reason to suppose that “something like an alliance” “between the workers of the given nation and their capitalists against the other countries” (and which Lenin illustrates by the Webbs’s “Birmingham Alliances”) implies some benefits for all workers, though obviously much larger ones for the well organized and strategically strong labor aristocrats among them. It is indeed true that the world monopoly of nineteenth-century British capitalism may have provided the lower proletarian strata with no significant benefits, while it provided the labor aristocracy with substantial ones. But this was because there was, under the conditions of competitive, liberal, “laissez-faire” capitalism and inflation, no mechanism other than the market (including the collective bargaining of the few proletarian groups capable of applying it), for distributing the benefits of world monopoly to the British workers.

But under the conditions of imperialism and monopoly capitalism this was no longer so. Trusts, price maintenance, “alliances,” etc., did provide a means of distributing concessions more generally to the workers affected. Moreover, the role of the state was changing, as Lenin was aware. “Lloyd Georgeism” (which he discussed most perceptively in “Imperialism and the Split”) aimed at “securing fairly substantial sops for the obedient workers, in the shape of social reforms (insurance, etc.).” It is evident that such reforms were likely to benefit the “non-aristocratic” workers relatively more than the already comfortably situated “aristocrats.”

Finally, Lenin’s theory of imperialism argues that the “handful of the richest, privileged nations” turned into “parasites on the body of the rest of mankind,” i.e., into collective exploiters, and suggests a division of the world into “exploiting” and “proletarian” nations. Could the benefits of such a collective exploitation be confined entirely to a privileged layer of the metropolitan proletariat? Lenin was keenly aware that the original Roman proletariat was a collectively parasitic class. Writing about the Stuttgart Congress of the International in 1907, he observed:

The class of those who own nothing but do not labor either is incapable of overthrowing the exploiters. Only the proletarian class, which maintains the whole of society, has the power to bring about a successful social revolution. And now we see that, as the result of a far-reaching colonial policy the European proletariat has partly reached a situation where it is not its work that maintains the whole of society but that of the people of the colonies who are practically enslaved. . . . In certain countries these circumstances create the material and economic basis for infecting the proletariat of one country or another with colonial chauvinism. Of course this may perhaps be only a temporary phenomenon, but one must nevertheless clearly recognize the evil and understand its causes….

“Marx frequently referred to a very significant saying of Sismondi’s to the effect that the proletarians of the ancient world lived at the expense of society whereas modem society lives at the expense of the proletarian” (1907). Nine years later, in the context of a later discussion, “Imperialism and the Split” still recalls that “the Roman proletariat lived at the expense of society.”

Lenin’s analysis of the social roots of reformism is often presented as if it dealt only with the formation of a labor aristocracy. It is of course undeniable that Lenin stressed this aspect of his analysis far more than any other and, for purposes of political argument, almost to the exclusion of any other. It is also clear that he hesitated to follow up other parts of his analysis, which seemed to have no bearing on the political point he was at that time overwhelmingly concerned to make. However, a close reading of his writings shows that he did consider other aspects of the problem, and that he was aware of some of the difficulties of an excessively one-sided “labor aristocratic” approach. Today, when it is possible to separate what is of permanent relevance in Lenin’s argument from what reflects the limits of his information or the requirements of a specific political situation, we are in a position to see his writings in historical perspective.

If we try to judge his work on the “aristocracy of labor” in such a perspective, we may well conclude that his writings of 1914–1916 are somewhat less satisfactory than the profound line of thought which he pursued consistently from What Is To Be Done? to the Preliminary Draft Theses on the Agrarian Question of 1920. In fact, though much of the analysis of a “labor aristocracy” is applicable to the period of imperialism, the classic nineteenth-century (British) model of it, which formed the basis of Lenin’s thinking on the subject, was ceasing to provide an adequate guide to the reformism of, at least, the British labor movement by 1914, though as a stratum of the working class it was probably at its peak in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century.

On the other hand the more general argument about the dangers of “spontaneity” and “selfish” economism in the trade-union movement, though illustrated by the historic example of the late nineteenth-century British labor aristocracy, retains all its force. It is indeed one of the most fundamental and permanently illuminating contributions of Lenin to Marxism.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

Wow! talk about going off at a tangent.... Don, you have taken the debate right back to where, as I see it; all the problems caused by polemic originally arose; after the debates created by the likes of Marx or Lenin.

I do NOT ascribe myself to any of it. Indeed, the great tragedy has been that people became so polarised by those latter inputs.

As I see it; true capitalism, in a true free market context; where access to free enterprise equity capital permits the "aristocratic artisan", NOT labourer, to better themselves; is the one road neither side of the past debate could continence.

On the one hand, the intellectuals such as Marx and Lenin were so affronted by the idea of individuals being able to better themselves; they tried every which way to put a stop to "individualism", (a concept repeated, certainly here in the UK, where we often heard the likes of Tony Blair repeating the word individualism as a pejorative term of reference), while at the same time trying to promote the idea that the poor were there because of everyone else trying to better themselves.

On the other hand, Feudalist's,( incorrectly, IMHO, described as "Capitalists"), were doing everything they could to battle against the former. Each side seeing the battle as a war to be fought and won on the industrial shop floor.

And make no mistake about it; I have been there and listened to it right there on the shop floor, from both sides of the debate, both as employee and employer. It was from that lifetime experience that I have derived my own viewpoint.

What I am doing, indeed have been doing for some decades, is taking the debate into a new arena; free enterprise; where the manager of the business owns the business; and on into free enterprise based true capitalism, (not mock feudalism), which must, in turn, run under rules designed to deliver a completely new way to look at funding new small business creation and a true free market as I have laid out in chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 in The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective http://www.chriscoles.com/page3.html

My argument is that for general prosperity for the majority; then the responsibility for the creation and continuation of such wider prosperity; must be placed with financial institutions that accept their own responsibility to create and maintain access to the free enterprise based equity capital that must be made available to permit ANYONE that wishes to compete; the right to do so.

That a comprehensive failure to create a fully competitive free market structure, (indeed, a fully NON competitive financial services industry), is the real cause of all of our problems today.

Thus as I see it, it is not correct to try and take the debate back to the thoughts of Marx or Lenin, as that is a dead end; neither created a successful society.

We must move on and put into place the lessons learned from long experience.

And, yes, for the record, I suppose I am what one might call an Aristocratic Artisan; but as I see it, the very best were the likes of the great entrepreneurs, engineers, artists and sculptors, (of which I am not). That we have to bring forward the new idea that such people, are individuals with the capacity to, on the one hand; design and manufacture; and on the other; lead those around them towards a better future within an economic structure where EVERYONE has a chance to better themselves.

The debate must be taken away from any polarising influence; from either viewpoint. Neither side prospers with the overall economy in such a mess as we have today. Yes, some may feel they are well ahead of the “game”; but for how long as things stand?

[don]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

Wow! talk about going off at a tangent.... Don, you have taken the debate right back to where, as I see it; all the problems caused by polemic originally arose; after the debates created by the likes of Marx or Lenin.

I do NOT ascribe myself to any of it. Indeed, the great tragedy has been that people became so polarised by those latter inputs.

As I see it; true capitalism, in a true free market context; where access to free enterprise equity capital permits the "aristocratic artisan", NOT labourer, to better themselves; is the one road neither side of the past debate could continence.

On the one hand, the intellectuals such as Marx and Lenin were so affronted by the idea of individuals being able to better themselves; they tried every which way to put a stop to "individualism", (a concept repeated, certainly here in the UK, where we often heard the likes of Tony Blair repeating the word individualism as a pejorative term of reference), while at the same time trying to promote the idea that the poor were there because of everyone else trying to better themselves.

On the other hand, Feudalist's,( incorrectly, IMHO, described as "Capitalists"), were doing everything they could to battle against the former. Each side seeing the battle as a war to be fought and won on the industrial shop floor.

And make no mistake about it; I have been there and listened to it right there on the shop floor, from both sides of the debate, both as employee and employer. It was from that lifetime experience that I have derived my own viewpoint.

What I am doing, indeed have been doing for some decades, is taking the debate into a new arena; free enterprise; where the manager of the business owns the business; and on into free enterprise based true capitalism, (not mock feudalism), which must, in turn, run under rules designed to deliver a completely new way to look at funding new small business creation and a true free market as I have laid out in chapters 3, 4, 5 and 6 in The Road Ahead from a Grass Roots Perspective http://www.chriscoles.com/page3.html

My argument is that for general prosperity for the majority; then the responsibility for the creation and continuation of such wider prosperity; must be placed with financial institutions that accept their own responsibility to create and maintain access to the free enterprise based equity capital that must be made available to permit ANYONE that wishes to compete; the right to do so.

That a comprehensive failure to create a fully competitive free market structure, (indeed, a fully NON competitive financial services industry), is the real cause of all of our problems today.

Thus as I see it, it is not correct to try and take the debate back to the thoughts of Marx or Lenin, as that is a dead end; neither created a successful society.

We must move on and put into place the lessons learned from long experience.

And, yes, for the record, I suppose I am what one might call an Aristocratic Artisan; but as I see it, the very best were the likes of the great entrepreneurs, engineers, artists and sculptors, (of which I am not). That we have to bring forward the new idea that such people, are individuals with the capacity to, on the one hand; design and manufacture; and on the other; lead those around them towards a better future within an economic structure where EVERYONE has a chance to better themselves.

The debate must be taken away from any polarising influence; from either viewpoint. Neither side prospers with the overall economy in such a mess as we have today. Yes, some may feel they are well ahead of the “game”; but for how long as things stand?

I was hardly embracing Hobsbawm's essay or revolution fantasies. (I would include my time as a master electrician as part of labor's "aristocracy".) To me most of the piece was a time capsule from the Cold War era. Eric's point on a "non-working" labor force in a first world country - benefiting materially from the labor of the Third world - tends to neuter them politically, is pertinent. There's a lot of moralizing on the 'tulip about the inability of working people to act in their own best interests - suggesting they're lazy, stupid, etc. Hobsbawm's framing of that phenomenon did open a dialog from a radically different direction - one not wholly without interest.

[don]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

In Hobsbawm's world I would be seen as a die hard Petty Bourgeois - 35 years of self-employment will do that to one's "class consciousness". I would love to see a return to some sort of truly competitive capitalism but I also realize we've been in an age dominated by monopolies for a century and they ain't getting smaller. Self-employment and artisan-ship will have some place in our future, as dystopian as it appears, leaving hope for those inclined. One note on small time entrepreneurship - I was always grateful that a small percentage of the work force opted for self-employment. There was always plenty of competition in what I was doing - who needed more.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

I was hardly embracing Hobsbawm's essay or revolution fantasies. (I would include my time as a master electrician as part of labor's "aristocracy".) To me most of the piece was a time capsule from the Cold War era. Eric's point on a "non-working" labor force in a first world country - benefiting materially from the labor of the Third world - tends to neuter them politically, is pertinent. There's a lot of moralizing on the 'tulip about the inability of working people to act in their own best interests - suggesting they're lazy, stupid, etc. Hobsbawm's framing of that phenomenon did open a dialog from a radically different direction - one not wholly without interest.

Then it was my misunderstanding of your original motive and now I do fully understand where you are now coming from. You are correct; there are a lot of references, not just here on iTulip, to the idea that somehow the artisan is some form of inferior person, less worthy. My take on that is such people are classically using that as a way of being able to keep up a pretence that they are superior; when they are no different; just working at a different level.

As I see it, the highly skilled artisan sits alongside the innovator, (as described by William Kingston in: Innovation; the Driving Force in Human Progress), particularly as they are often one and the same.

A conversation; even one taken on a computer screens thousands of miles apart; opens the mind to new horizons.

Have a great weekend.

[aaron]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

The debate must be taken away from any polarising influence; from either viewpoint. Neither side prospers with the overall economy in such a mess as we have today. Yes, some may feel they are well ahead of the “game”; but for how long as things stand?

Chris, your last sentences are wrong and why the system is messed up. One side DEFINITELY prospers. It is only when that one side might suffer do you get the "OK, we agree, 2% increase in taxes is OK". They are horrified that the gravy train might end with Congress not ponying up more free money.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

Chris, your last sentences are wrong and why the system is messed up. One side DEFINITELY prospers. It is only when that one side might suffer do you get the "OK, we agree, 2% increase in taxes is OK". They are horrified that the gravy train might end with Congress not ponying up more free money.

aaron, I have to agree, my sentences were not well phrased, to say the least. However, because of that, they do not give a clear sense of where I was coming from either. What I am trying to get across is that, over time, as the entire economy collapses around everyone; everyone loses out in the end.

Yes, I do see your point, that they are so far ahead of the game, then they may never lose out. But there has to come a point where the economy is so far below the horizon that even they will start to see they cannot gain any further advantage and accept the need for change.

[aaron]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

And the only time people like that give up power is when a revolution occurs (yes, usually armed). They will NEVER accept real change.

However, your ideas at the local level might be useful. You need a marketer to go with your inventiveness. Even better, go to a town and implement it and be successful. That will help with the marketing effort. Your efforts to get politicians on your side are doomed to failure, in my opinion.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

All I can say is, I have opened a conversation with intent to raise £450 billion for conversion into Vanishing Bonds. If such is anything like past history; I may be at this point for another decade at least; but you never know when dealing with a persistent man like me

[aaron]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

All I can say is, I have opened a conversation with intent to raise £450 billion for conversion into Vanishing Bonds. If such is anything like past history; I may be at this point for another decade at least; but you never know when dealing with a persistent man like me

I wish you the best. It would be great if you could get it done.

[Chris Coles]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

In essence, I am relying upon the concept that, while for the majority within the FIRE economy, there is no point in accepting the need to change direction; there will be those that have already recognised the need, [to change direction], and by my taking the first step, they will be largely protected from criticism for trying to find a solution.

That there are good men and women out there that will step forward to help. We shall see; it is early days yet.

[don]

Re: Eric Hobsbawm's take on "Labor's Aristocracy"

Great thread!