bob avakian cheers me up

[duko]

The guy realy give me hope that this shit can change this how i felt when i was a teen and my early 20s
No More by chuck dukowski
NO, I WON'T BELIEVE THAT THIS IS ALL
I'M NOT HAPPY, I'M NOT FREE
PAY CHECK TO PAY CHECK,
LIVING FOR WHAT
EVERY NIGHT I GET DRUNK TO GER SUNK
I NEED ACTION, WON'T TAKE NO MORE,
NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE
IT WON'T WORK, WON'T WORK
NO MORE
I KNEW WHAT I HAD WHEN I GREW UP
I KNOW THAT IT REALLY SUCKED
NOW I'M A SLAVE TO THE SAME LIES
IF I DON'T GET OUT I'M GONNA DIE
I NEED ACTION, WON'T TAKE NO MORE,
NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE
IT WON'T WORK, WON'T WORK
NO MORE
CONTROL, CONTROL FOR WHO,
FOR WHAT?
I'M NO ROBOT, THEY CAN GET FUCKED
REACTION'S MASOCHISM THIS CAN'T LAST
I NEED TO LIVE, I NEED IT NOW
I NEED ACTION, WON'T TAKE NO MORE,
NO MORE, NO MORE, NO MORE
IT WON'T WORK, WON'T WORK
NO MORE NO MORE NO MORE NO some where in the 80s i started reading the rw :)i started to under stand that the hell was going on now a mlm point of view of the sorta same thing broke down by avakian I was just reading this book by Barbara Ehrenreich, Nickel and Dimed . She is an intellectual who decided to go work in basic manual labor for several months. She worked as a waitress, and then she worked in one of these "maids for hire" companies where you clean people's houses, and then she worked at Walmart. And she describes how, on the wages that she made, she had to live in her car part of the time, or in motel rooms you would never want to live in. She is an intellectual and normally reads all of the time, but she found herself too exhausted to read when she came home from work. This goes back to the point I was making at the beginning.

How are people in that position going to equally take part in the process of political decision making, even if you remove all of the restrictions politically that are imposed on them. It's impossible. This is what I was getting at in the first of the three sentences3 I paraphrased a little while ago--that in a society marked by profound class divisions and social inequalities, to talk about democracy without examining the class content of that democracy and whom it serves, is meaningless and worse.

How can you have a democracy in which everybody takes part on an equal basis, when some people have all kinds of leisure time and sit at the top of this whole process --a process that doesn't just involve one country but is worldwide--people who, to use a certain metaphor, are sitting at the top of the food chain eating what is produced by everybody else along the way? How can the other people take part equally with them? It's impossible. So naturally, these people are going to dominate political affairs and the decision-making over the direction of society, and they are going to enforce that rule in order to perpetuate the system that has put them in that position in the first place. so bob made me under stand how capitalistim works and why i realy hate the system and my job i watch the dvd a lot its cool look at when your having a bad day

[redstar2000SE]

duko wrote: I was just reading this book by Barbara Ehrenreich...She is an intellectual and normally reads all of the time, but she found herself too exhausted to read when she came home from work...How are people in that position going to equally take part in the process of political decision making, even if you remove all of the restrictions politically that are imposed on them. It's impossible...How can you have a democracy in which everybody takes part on an equal basis, when some people have all kinds of leisure time and sit at the top of this whole process --a process that doesn't just involve one country but is worldwide...So naturally, these people are going to dominate political affairs and the decision-making over the direction of society, and they are going to enforce that rule in order to perpetuate the system that has put them in that position in the first place.

Well, what would you have?

1. No real democracy at all because workers are "too tired to read"?

2. Shorten the working day drastically for people who have physically exhausting jobs so they won't be "too tired to read"?

3. Share out the physically exhausting work...perhaps a few days a month even for the "intellectuals"?

If you say that workers can't participate because they're "too tired to read", then you're saying that the "intellectuals" should make all the decisions in every form of society...even socialism.

But what, then, is to keep those "intellectuals" from arranging things in such a way as to become a new ruling class?

Good intentions?#nosmileys

[duko]

the whole point was trying to make was my friends we would be you read the rw yet nope i was to worn out or you wanta go to protest nah i gotta sleep cause i gotta go to work tonight so i under stand the point bob was making here sound like co worker and my self give me a break like the capitalist are gonna let the workers have time know about this stuff it would get in the way of there profits like this from the rw www.rwor.org/a/1251/communism_socialism_mao_china_facts.htm One of the objectives of the Cultural Revolution was to break down the cultural lopsidedness that existed in China. It was a social situation in which artists, intellectuals, and professionals were concentrated in the cities, and in which their work was largely divorced from the greater society, especially the 80% that lived in the countrysideat the time. The Cultural Revolution spawned society-wide discussion about the need to narrow the inequalities between mental and manual labor, between city and countryside, between industry and agriculture, and between men and women.

Artists, doctors, technical and scientific workers, and all kinds of educated people were called upon to go among the workers and peasants: to apply their skills to the needs of society, to share the lives of the laboring people, to exchange knowledge, and to learn from the basic people. Great numbers of youth and professionals answered Mao's call to "serve the people" and go to the countryside. this gonna be realy hard but it must be done or risk going on the capitalist road It is often alleged that the policy of sending doctors and engineers and intellectuals and other skilled people to the countryside was "punishment." No, it was not. This policy has to be seen in a larger social-economic context of Maoist China's quest to achieve balanced and egalitarian development. In the Third World, there is a crisis of chaotic urbanization unsustainable cities with rings of squalid shantytowns; massive inflows of rural migrants who cannot find work; economic policies, educational systems, and health care infrastructure skewed to the well-off in the cities at the expense of the urban poor and the countryside.

[redstar2000SE]

duko wrote: ...give me a break like the capitalist are gonna let the workers have time know about this stuff...

I agree they are not likely to offer "time off" to study revolution.

Does that mean it can't be done?

Well, you did it! Are you an "intellectual" with all kinds of "leisure time"?

No.

You thought it was important to learn this stuff so you made time for it in your life. You didn't go drinking or sit like a lump in front of the dummyvision or whatever.

You were tired...but not "too tired" to read.

So if you could do it -- even under capitalism -- what makes you think that other workers "can't" do it? And what makes you think they won't?

When workers think it's important to learn about revolution and communism, I think they'll do it...just like you did.

duko wrote: It is often alleged that the policy of sending doctors and engineers and intellectuals and other skilled people to the countryside was "punishment." No, it was not.

Well, from what I can tell, it often seemed like punishment to the people who were sent to the countryside.

After all, if you lived in a large city in China in the 60s or 70s, you were basically living in the 20th century...something like an American city in 1900.

But if you volunteered or were sent to the Chinese countryside, you found yourself back in the middle ages...a pretty bad place to be, even without lords or serfdom. (For one thing, you might not even speak or be able to understand the rural dialect -- spoken Chinese is very different from region to region and from city to country.)

In my opinion, it would have been better to proceed more gradually and carefully; urban "intellectuals" should have been urged to volunteer for work in urban factories for a few days each month...maybe even just "half-shifts".

That would have served, I think, to bring their ideas "down to earth" without upsetting them so much that they would end up mostly embracing the capitalist road...which they did.

Be honest: would you rather live where and how you live now under capitalism (bad as it is!) or shovel pig shit for years under "socialism"?

duko wrote: In the Third World, there is a crisis of chaotic urbanization unsustainable cities with rings of squalid shantytowns; massive inflows of rural migrants who cannot find work; economic policies, educational systems, and health care infrastructure skewed to the well-off in the cities at the expense of the urban poor and the countryside.

Very true. But exiling the "intellectuals" to the countryside is not going to help...in fact, it won't result in any measurable improvement at all. There are not enough "intellectuals" in the "Third World" to make a difference.

In fact, I think the only thing that will make a difference is time...the rural population in the "third world" is expected to begin declining world-wide by 2050 or so; and the sons and daughters and grandsons/granddaughters of recent migrants will have become much more urbanized and sophisticated...perhaps ready to consider the idea of proletarian revolution.

We'll see.#nosmileys