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Marx's Proletariat

Marx's Proletariat The MarxisT MoMenT By s am Gindin Mar’ x s Pt aarileort What Can Today’s Labor Movement Learn from Marx? The current economic crisis has brought three decades of labor’s weaknesses to a head. What should have been a turning point in the dominance of big business has, frustratingly, left the American working class even more on the defensive. The standard explanations unions give for this—from financial speculation and corporate greed to government betrayals, from American decline to the rise of China, from union leadB -ut Marx and the body of work he inspired ers complaining about membership passivity introduce three crucial elements to discussions to members complaining about union of social change: a “ruthless criticism of all bureaucratization—point, at best, to partitahl at exists,” including the labor movement and confused truths. What’s missing is a itself;an explicit identification of capitalism broader framework to make sense of the as the system to be challenged; and the auda- world. And there is also something else: as cious claim that the potential for changing the unions lament what is happening to them, world rests with the working class. It is not that there is disappointingly little discussion o Mf arx gives us http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png New Labor Forum SAGE

Marx's Proletariat

Gindin, Sam
New Labor Forum , Volume 21 (2): 9 – Jun 1, 2012
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References (2)

Publisher
SAGE
Copyright
© 2012 Joseph S. Murphy Institute, CUNY
ISSN
1095-7960
eISSN
1557-2978
DOI
10.4179/NLF.212.0000004
Publisher site
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Abstract

The MarxisT MoMenT By s am Gindin Mar’ x s Pt aarileort What Can Today’s Labor Movement Learn from Marx? The current economic crisis has brought three decades of labor’s weaknesses to a head. What should have been a turning point in the dominance of big business has, frustratingly, left the American working class even more on the defensive. The standard explanations unions give for this—from financial speculation and corporate greed to government betrayals, from American decline to the rise of China, from union leadB -ut Marx and the body of work he inspired ers complaining about membership passivity introduce three crucial elements to discussions to members complaining about union of social change: a “ruthless criticism of all bureaucratization—point, at best, to partitahl at exists,” including the labor movement and confused truths. What’s missing is a itself;an explicit identification of capitalism broader framework to make sense of the as the system to be challenged; and the auda- world. And there is also something else: as cious claim that the potential for changing the unions lament what is happening to them, world rests with the working class. It is not that there is disappointingly little discussion o Mf arx gives us

Journal

New Labor Forum – SAGE

Published: Jun 1, 2012

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