Isn’t that just ignoring the fact that different bourgeois factions (or even specific individuals within a faction) can be more or less conciliatory or more or less repressive than other bourgeois factions? A given liberal faction may refuse concessions even when faced with an armed and organized labor movement, while another may try to preempt such a mobilization by giving milder concessions sooner. Both are forced, but react differently to different degrees of force.
some that wanted it to succeed because it carried the “American spirit” of rebellion
i want to party with whatever sickos were butt-chugging that much ideology
Stumbled upon the concept of “outside factors and material conditions” and thinks he’s disproved marxism :farquaad-point:
My brother in christ you’re still inside the marxism, you never left
I’m pretty sure Eric Blanc is Marxist, he’s not trying to disprove marxism here
the NLRB itself is a bourgeois institution that severely handicaps what unions can be. having the state be the arbiter of organized labor power fundamentally changes what unions even are.
If people don’t know any examples of this: I can’t speak for many unions, but I know that it is not uncommon (might be universal) that if workers get tired of their union (let’s say they have a good reason, like their national is being too lib or whatever), they aren’t allowed to simply reafilliate; they need to dissolve their union and re-unionize one year later
It’s obviosuly true that bottom-up struggle has given MORE SPACE & IMPETUS for the NLRB to do good things
Yeah I’m gonna stop you right there, I love this bizarre thing western debate nerds do where they think refuting their own point somehow means other people won’t notice they just refuted and muted their own argument, lmao it’s like they think it’s camouflage for something
Now let’s add context to this self-admitted refutation, oh what’s that the feds are raising interest rates to trigger unemployment because they moronically think we’re in the middle of a wage-price spiral, now how does that gel with the assertion that state actors don’t respond to bottom-up pressure
It’s almost like there are multiple kinds of bottom-up pressure at multiple levels of scale, all interacting with a state that contains multiple factions who can use different tactical strategies (conciliatory and adversial) to tamp down on said bottom-up pressure, crazy
the feds are raising interest rates to trigger unemployment because they moronically think we’re in the middle of a wage-price spiral
If you look at the things they actually say, it’s pretty clear that they know full well that inflation is being caused by supply issues and corporate profit-seeking rather than wage increases. It seems instead that they’re raising rates intentionally to fuck over workers simply because they don’t like seeing wages rise.
He doesn’t refute his point though? He says that bottom up struggle is a factor in NLRB actions but isn’t the only factor, due to the fact that higher levels of struggle haven’t always resulted in good NLRB actions. This refutes Leninist and anarchist state theory that say that bottom up struggle is the only factor in good state actions
He refutes his own point by relying on a misconception of Leninist and anarchist theory that is nonsensical and reductive, they do not posit bottom-up pressure is the ONLY factor, but that it is the most important factor far outpacing any other and that is correct as he admitted by mindlessly pointing out the “obvious truth that bottom-up struggle has given MORE SPACE AND IMPETUS”
Honestly, just think for a second how ludicrous it is to argue that bottom-up pressure isn’t the primary concern of any government in history, especially a capitalist one
The only way you can salvage his argument is if you narrow the definition of “bottom-up” to like street protests or town halls or some shit, but again nobody believes that is the ONLY way to effect a government, so he’s both arguing against a phantom and unintentionally refuting his own conception of Leninism and anarchism
Easy to fall into a trap like that when he doesn’t engage properly with theory and instead relies on pure surface intuition
when the bourgeoisie is scared they give concessions. but they are just as happy to remove these concessions as soon as the job market is in slightly in favor of the workers.
this will continue to happen ad infinitum. but people will say ‘see, look at this mild improvement! that means waiting 100 years for something to happen is the way to go!’
This guy is an idiot who hasn’t been paying attention to how capitalist states work and also all of the pain workers are feeling.
I’m willing to bet Eric is comfortable and has a lot of time to scratch his ass and talk about ideals.
The NLRB is marginally better than it has been in a while because the contradictions are heightening. The working class is getting impatient.
