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mikelepore
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 Posted:
01 Mar 2007 12:44 am Post subject: Wikipedia
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I just decided that when I see Wikipedia article that
is misleading about socialist ideas, I may occasionally post something
about it on the associated discussion page.
I added to the discussion page that goes with the
article "wage slavery".
Such posts are supposd to be about the researched
information that goes into the article, not about one's own views. My
post probably borders on breaking that rule. Let's see if I get away with
it or whether the bosses delete my post.
Main article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wage_slavery
Discussion page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wage_slavery
I said:
_____________
"... what practical conditions would qualify a
worker as a wage slave"
As of February 28, 2007 the article says, in part,
"Sources disagree about what practical conditions would qualify a
worker as a wage slave. For example, wage slave can denote a worker who
has no choice in who they work for, or it can denote a worker who has no
choice in the type of job they can get." As one who has been a
Marxist for about forty years, I believe the second sentence is
misleading and could be improved. In the socialist viewpoint, it is
irrelevant that a worker has a choice for whom to work and a choice in
the type of job. What makes the worker a wage slave is that a particular
demographic group, all people who don't own sufficient capital to enable
them to live on profits, must, in order to survive, seek and obtain
employment by another demographic group, all people who own sufficient
capital to enable them to live on profits. If the relationship were
instead based on some physical characteristic, e.g., if all blue-eyed
people were predetermined to be the bosses, and all brown-eyed people
could acquire food and shelter only by obtaining employment as the
servants of the former, then the system's character as a form of slavery
might be easier for the average person to recognize readily. Ownership
and nonownership of capital, based primarily on family inheritance, is
nearly as deterministic as a physical characteristic. The worker's
opportunity to reject one job and select another job does not ameliorate
this dominance of one population group over another. Furthermore, all
possible jobs, including the ones accepted by each worker as well as the
ones rejected, will be identical in terms of certain characteristics,
such as the requirement to work the number of hours that are equivalent
to the employer's profits in addition to working the number of hours that
are equivalent to one's own wages, and the general requirement on the
working class to obey the social policies established by people who are
not democratically elected representatives. In choosing a particular job over
others, the worker merely chooses from a menu of options that are always
in certain respects very similar to one another. Mike Lepore, 29 Redmond
Way, Stanfordville, NY 12581 USA 00:32, 1 March 2007 (UTC)
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questing
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Posted:
01 Mar 2007 10:20 pm Post subject:
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Good job, Mike. I noticed that you have already been
called down by someone. I can't understand what a "neutral"
viewpoint is supposed to be. An Anti-Marx screed, perhaps?
Do you know of any writings that say what you said?
If so, it may do good to post links to them on Wiki.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Mar 2007 08:09 am Post subject:
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Thanks. I just added this paragraph there:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Wage_slavery
I'm talking about developing a correct statement of
the views of, e.g., Karl Marx, who was a principal pioneer of the concept
of wage slavery. That view holds that the worker's opportunity to change
jobs has no effect. For example, Karl Marx, in his pamphlet 'Wage-Labor
and Capital' (1849), wrote: "The worker leaves the capitalist, to
whom he has sold himself, as often as he chooses, and the capitalist
discharges him as often as he sees fit, as soon as he no longer gets any
use, or not the required use, out of him. But the worker, whose only
source of income is the sale of his labor power, cannot leave the whole
class of buyers, i.e., the capitalist class, unless he gives up his own
existence. He does not belong to this or to that capitalist, but to the
capitalist class; and it is for him to find his man, i.e., to find a
buyer in this capitalist class."
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davesearles
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Posted:
02 Mar 2007 11:08 pm Post subject:
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I read these things from KM and FE, a decade and a
half prior to the Gettysbug address and am facinated by how more than
even the great AL that they were able to capture into a language not even
native to them this idea and others similar explaining the modern human
condition.
--------
out of the fire and into the frying pan:
From the Emancipation Proclamation:
I, Abraham Lincoln, President of the United States,
by virtue of the power in me vested as Commander-in-Chief, of the Army
and Navy of the United States in time of actual armed rebellion against
the authority and government of the United States, and as a fit and
necessary war measure for suppressing said rebellion, do, on this first
day of January, in the year of our Lord one thousand eight hundred and
sixty-three, and in accordance with my purpose so to do publicly
proclaimed for the full period of one hundred days, from the day first
above mentioned, order and designate as the States and parts of States
wherein the people thereof respectively, are this day in rebellion
against the United States, the following, to wit:
Arkansas, Texas, Louisiana, (except the Parishes of
St. Bernard, Plaquemines, Jefferson, St. John, St. Charles, St. James
Ascension, Assumption, Terrebonne, Lafourche, St. Mary, St. Martin, and
Orleans, including the City of New Orleans) Mississippi, Alabama,
Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, and Virginia, (except
the forty-eight counties designated as West Virginia, and also the
counties of Berkley, Accomac, Northampton, Elizabeth City, York, Princess
Ann, and Norfolk, including the cities of Norfolk and Portsmouth[)], and
which excepted parts, are for the present, left precisely as if this
proclamation were not issued.
And by virtue of the power, and for the purpose
aforesaid, I do order and declare that all persons held as slaves within
said designated States, and parts of States, are, and henceforward shall
be free; and that the Executive government of the United States,
including the military and naval authorities thereof, will recognize and
maintain the freedom of said persons.
And I hereby enjoin upon the people so declared to
be free to abstain from all violence, unless in necessary self-defence;
and I recommend to them that, in all cases when allowed, they labor
faithfully for reasonable wages.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
02 Mar 2007 11:46 pm Post subject:
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Dave, are you familiar with the writings of Lerone
Bennett? He denounces Honest Abe as Dishonest, for the way he proclaimed
emanicapation in precisely the territories that he had no control over,
and the places where he did have control (parts of Louisiana and Virginia
remained under Yankee control) the proclamation was not applied.
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davesearles
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 12:06 pm Post subject:
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In the great world of idealism of course AL should
have not waited until 1863 to issue the Emanciation Proclamation, he
should have when he was a member of congress in 1846 introduced into the
house the 13th 14th & 15th amendments!
In the great world of idealism we all should have
immediately recognized the great institutional wrongs that existed even
in our own youth against women and gay people but we didn't, or if we
were able to recognize them we had very little that we could have done or
that we cold have thought to have done to ameliorate those problems. In
our own lifetimes and within the age of our cognizance in New York State
a woman no matter what her estate could not borrow money from a bank
WITHOUT THE PERMISSION OF A MAN.
Go back and read the entire proclamation, why did
Lincoln issue it?
Recall he had previously said that if thought that
pledging to free no slave would end the war he would do that, and if he
thought that by freeing every slave would end the war he would do that.
He had no legal authority except as commander in
chief of a country that was half in rebellion. He had used the
emancipation as a threat,. In September 1862 as I recall he issued the
preliminary proclamation which said that in three months down the line, if
your county does not yield to federal authority, I am going to deprive
you of your economic ability to continue your rebellion, your slaves. And
then in three months he made good on his threat/promise, and those areas
that were not under rebellion were able to keep their slaves.
This was an extraordinary stroke. Never had it been
imagined that the federal government could reach into the established
states and deprive them of their sovereignty to allow slavery. Not even
with congress could that have happened. The war put things on a different
footing because it gave Lincoln the ability to declare slaves contraband
of war. Without the war he would not have had that power.
The irony of the whole matter is that the US
Supreme Court in Dred Scott had specifically recognized the non-authority
of Congress to ban slavery even in the territories:
+Any person descended from black Africans, whether
slave or free, is not a citizen of the United States, according to the
U.S. Constitution.
+The Ordinance of 1787 could not confer freedom or
citizenship within the Northwest Territory to Black people.
+The provisions of the Act of 1820, known as the
Missouri Compromise, were voided as a legislative act because the act
exceeded the powers of Congress, insofar as it attempted to exclude
slavery and impart freedom and citizenship to Black people in the
northern part of the Louisiana cession.
If the south had not gone into rebellion, the south
would have had enough votes until well into the 20th century to have
blocked any amendment to the constitution to outlaw slavery.
No, I have the deepest respect fro the
accomplishments of AL. We do not have the "one man did it all"
outlook of history - however in the case of AL, if hadn't been for this
one individual I do not think that we would be looking at a 50 state
country on the map of NA. Probably a cpplection of pure industrial
fiefdoms. Even AL's Gettysburg Address is considered by many in history
to have been an amendment to the constitution in and of itself "of
the people by the people and for the people."
I only wished that AL had had some introduction to
the writings of Mr. K and Mr. E.
dave
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questing
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 05:29 pm Post subject:
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Mike: You are now being asked to contribute in the
regular Wiki manner. Perhaps you could find some writing to back up your
positions and post links? Yes, I know that writings containing your pov
are not merely there for the picking, but Wiki seems to take great store
in such things as published authors.
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questing
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 05:40 pm Post subject:
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Dave: There are writings by Marx that comment on how
the South had actually taken over the entire nation and that the Civil
War was actually a fight aginst the slave power, not just the South
itself. Remember the beating of an Irish waiter by a Slave-ocrat
Congressman, plus the writings that show that the Slavers wanted to extend
slavery to be on a class basis, not just to "blacks."
Sadly ironic, wouldn't you say?
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The Greenman
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mikelepore
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 07:50 pm Post subject:
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There were alternatives to Lincoln's method, but he
couldn't know about them because he had no way to know about the coming
age of electrical machinery. If Lincoln had allowed the confederacy to
break away, and even keep the institution of slavery, the north would
have progressed into the age of machines and the assembly line, while the
south would remain limited to cotton and tobacco. A work force that's
prohibited to learn the "dangerous" skills of reading and
writing can't invent and operate mechanized industry. Even in the 1860s
this technology gap had started to appear, and the south couldn't even
figure out how to build a railroad. The north could impose a trade
embargo to increase the pressure. With the passage of a few more decades
it would be as though the south were several centuries behind the north
in development. Then then southern regime would have fallen more easily,
perhaps with a shock-and-awe invasion from the north, to back up a
Spartacus style of slave rebellion in the south.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 08:27 pm Post subject:
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Later, I will make a category of topics for specific
social issues, and I will move this discussion of the U.S. Civil War to
that new category. For now, okay to continue here.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 08:35 pm Post subject:
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A big ha-ha to the guy who thinks that it's
"merely my opinion" to show what the term "wage
slavery" means by actually quoting people like Marx, and that
instead, he says, I should indicate what Marx believed by citing a
"peer-reviewed article."
It shows the depths to which the academic mind has
sunk in modern times.
I just added the following paragraph to the
Wikipedia talk page. I can hardly wait to see how he comes back now and
tells me again that I'm merely giving my own opinion.
_____
I made a tie-in to the article when I suggested
that improvement is possible around the section that currently says
"wage slave can denote a worker who has no choice in who they work
for, or it can denote a worker who has no choice in the type of job they
can get." The position of Marx and Engels, who described the wage
system as a form of slavery, was, as Engels wrote, "In what way do
proletarians differ from slaves? The slave is sold once and for all; the
proletarian must sell himself daily and hourly. The individual slave,
property of one master, is assured an existence, however miserable it may
be, because of the master's interest. The individual proletarian,
property as it were of the entire bourgeois class which buys his labor
only when someone has need of it, has no secure existence."
(Friedrich Engels, _Principles of Communism_, 1847) The concept of wage
slavery is that the entire capitalist class as a set enslaves the entire
working class as a set, and it does not focus on how much choice the
worker has regarding where or for whom to work. In Engels' words: a
proletarian is the property of "the entire bourgeois class."
Mike Lepore, Stanfordville, New York 20:23, 3 March 2007 (UTC)
I can hardly wait to see how he comes back now and
says again that I'm merely giving my own opinion.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
03 Mar 2007 10:03 pm Post subject:
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I'm not going to spend a lot of time on that Wikipedia
article. I prefer to stir something up and then move on to the next one.
However, pursuant to the name of this site and forum, all of us here may
consider getting involved in the De Leon article. I see that the
allegation about Lassalle was already discussed briefly.
main article
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_De_Leon
talk page
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Daniel_De_Le%C3%B3n
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mikelepore
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mikelepore
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Posted:
04 Mar 2007 01:45 am Post subject:
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Wikipedia does have some crazy policies. They
recommend citing secondary sources instead of primary sources! There is
repeated reference to quoting "reliable" people, where
"reliable" apparently means published by a business or
institution, as the way to avoid "original research"!
So I guess if I present what Newton said about
gravity by quoting Newton, that's bad, so I should instead present what
Newton said by quoting some published college professor who paraphrases
what Newton said.
Are they nuts?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Talk_page_guidelines
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Attribution
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questing
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Posted:
04 Mar 2007 04:18 pm Post subject:
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Mike: Perhaps if you found a published source that
says essentially what you did and quote and link it, the Wikis would find
that acceptable.
That about DeLeon being Lasallean... :lol: :lol:
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mikelepore
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Posted:
04 Mar 2007 10:13 pm Post subject:
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Isn't that what the discussion page is for, to figure
out how to locate published references that are considered appropriate,
how to extract from them, how to phrase it, etc.? I never touched the
article itself and never displayed any intentions to do so, but that shit
head is saying that I have no right even to append my notes to the
discussion page.
If it becomes apparent that he is actually part of
their staff, I will adhere to their unintelligible rules and delete my
notes there. Until it is shown that he is a member of their staff, I
assume that he is merely some mentally ill right-winger who likes to
heckle.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
04 Mar 2007 10:46 pm Post subject:
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Interesting things I found while looking in google for
some of the quotations that SLP literature cites when writing about wage
slavery. One of these is:
"What is essential to the idea of a slave? We
primarily think of him as one owned by another. To be more than nominal,
however, the ownership must be shown by control of the slave's action - a
control which is habitually to the benefit of the controller. That which
fundamentally distinguishes the slave is that he labors under coercion to
satisfy another's desires.... The essential question is - How much is he
compelled to labor for his own benefit? The degree of his slavery varies
according to the ratio between that which he is forced to yield up and
that which he is allowed to retain; and it matters not whether his master
is a single person or a society."
Herbert Spencer in "The Coming Slavery",
as quoted in the SLP publications "The Freeman's Vote" and
"The Constitution of the U.S."
Guess what. The quotation is entirely out of
context. Spencer's intention was to denounce certain political reforms by
calling them "socialist". In fact, the omitted sentence of
Spencer that immediately precedes the quoted passage is: "All
socialism involves slavery."
Ascii text provided by an ultraconservative
pro-capitalist economic theory site:
http://www.econlib.org/library/LFBooks/Spencer/spnMvS2.html#The%20Coming%20Slavery
Another interesting thing...
"When the workers are paid in return for their
labor only as much money as will buy the necessaries of life, their
condition is identical with that of the slave."
John Adams, second president of the United States,
as quoted in the same two SLP publications.
I see that these are not the actual words of Adams.
It is an SLP paraphrase of Thomas Jefferson's paraphrase of Adams. It
comes from Thomas Jefferson acting as recording secretary at a
convention, where he summarized Adams' speech by writing "Mr. Adams
observed that...."
Library of Congress, gif images of pages from
"Journals of the Continental Congress", page 1099
http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/ampage?collId=lljc&fileName=006/lljc006.db&recNum=244&itemLink=r?ammem/hlaw:@field(DOCID+@lit(jc00682))%230060245&linkText=1
The preceding url may be copy-pasted but won't be
clickable on this page because they used a parenthesis character in the
url (bad webmaster practice).
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questing
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Posted:
05 Mar 2007 12:36 am Post subject:
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He appears to be backtracking and is saying that he
did not understand what you were doing.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
05 Mar 2007 09:30 am Post subject:
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If that guy is right, Wikipedia has some rules
straight out of the Twilight Zone. The use of a secondary source being a
requirement? He asked me, "Did Marx evaluate his own quotes?"
In other words, you can't show that Marx said X by quoting the book where
Marx said X, but you can show that Marx said X by quoting Marx's next
book where Marx says, "In my previous book, I said X."
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The Greenman
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Posted:
05 Mar 2007 06:10 pm Post subject:
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I came across earlier today:
http://www.conservapedia.com/Main_Page
Its suppose to be an alternative to Wikipedia whom
they, at this website, claim to be biased.
John T.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
05 Mar 2007 09:05 pm Post subject:
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That's kinda interesting. I believe the wiki software
is either free or cheap for anyone who wants to install it on their site.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
07 Mar 2007 09:31 pm Post subject:
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conservapedia.com's page entitled 'examples of bias in
wikipedia' is hilarious.
The change in the calendar terminology, 'before
current era' instead of "before Christ', and 'current era' instead
of Anno Domini, is described as unfair because the days of the week are
still named after the gods of Norse mythology.
So let's all raise the banner: Get the Thor out of
Thursday!
This one's a real winner: "Wikipedia is six
times more liberal than the American public."
Yep, the number I read off the gauge looks like a
six to me.
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davesearles
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Posted:
08 Mar 2007 11:08 am Post subject:
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Yes, there is no class struggle excpept between
liberalism and conservatism.
Going back to wage slavery and the concept on
non-freedom even with a limited choice between 'employers", an
interesting obit in the news:
From 3/7/07 NYT obit by By PATRICIA COHEN
Jean Baudrillard, 77, Critic and Theorist of
Hyperreality
....
Mr. Baudrillard was known for his witty aphorisms
and black humor. He described the sensory flood of the modern media
culture as “the
ecstasy of communication.”
One of his better known theories postulates that we
live in a world where simulated feelings and experiences have replaced
the real thing. This seductive “hyperreality,” where shopping
malls, amusement parks and mass-produced images from the news, television
shows and films dominate, is drained of authenticity and meaning. Since
illusion reigns, he counseled people to give up
the search for reality.
“All of our values
are simulated,” he told The New York Times in 2005. “What is
freedom? We have a choice between buying one car or buying another car?
It’s a simulation of freedom.”
....
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davesearles
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Posted:
12 Mar 2007 05:45 pm Post subject:
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lets see how long this wording lasts at:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daniel_De_Le%C3%B3n
De Leon was a Marxist, and argued for the
revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, trying to divert the SLP away from
its Lassallian outlook. However, his famous polemic with James Connolly
shows him to have been an advocate of Lassalle's Iron Law of Wages.[1]
However by the same logic, similar language in the Communist Manifesto by
Marx and Engels, pertaining to the level of wages and temporary effect of
union activity on working conditions, would also lead to Marx and Engels
being described as advocates of the Iron Law.
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davesearles
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Posted:
12 Mar 2007 10:18 pm Post subject:
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I rewrote it:
De Leon was a Marxist, and argued for the
revolutionary overthrow of capitalism, trying to divert the SLP away from
its Lassallian outlook. However, his famous polemic with James Connolly
shows him to have been an advocate of Lassalle's Iron Law of Wages.[1]
However this assertion seems questionable because by the same logic Marx
and Engels could be described as advocates of the Iron Law because
language in the Communist Manifesto pertaining to the level of wages and
temporary effect of union activity on working conditions is similar to
the language used by DeLeon in his answer to Connolly.
Everything from "However" and beyond is
my own.
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mikelepore
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Posted:
13 Mar 2007 09:46 am Post subject:
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Dave, before I even look, here is my premonition. The
wikipedia editor (whoever died and made them emperor, I have no idea)
will post a reminder that contributors are always supposed to make a
point by referencing one a "reliable and reputable" source,
which the editor uniquely has the mental power to identify with
objectivity.
In prcatice, to wikipedia editors "reliable
and reputable" sources means someone who said anything in a
published article. If an author were to write the moon in made of green
cheese, and a printing press were to print it, then, by golly, the moon
is made of green cheese. That's called being "reliable and reputable",
as far as I can discern from their confusing documents of rules and
regulations.
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davesearles
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Posted:
13 Mar 2007 11:45 am Post subject:
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I posted the change and it went through. Let's see how
long it stays up. If they take it off, I'll keep putting it back. What
can you suggest about making the wording better and adding a link to the
text of the manifesto that I am talking about. Should I make a file
somewhere of that specific text on my site and refernce to it, or simply
reference the whole C.M. at the marxist archive site? Or better yet, can
links be added to go right to the section of the referred to text at the
wiki site for the CM?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Communist_Manifesto
(the referred to text is quoted in the discussion
page for DeLeon)
What I would like is to get the text of DeLeon to
Connolly and put it right above the manifesto text for a comparrison.
Its funny, DeLeon was a Marxist, but how often did
he actually quote marx or refer to writing such as the CM?
dave
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mikelepore
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Posted:
13 Mar 2007 05:04 pm Post subject:
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As for making the wording better, I don't like your
two uses of however and two uses of because. The structure is: Xxxx xxx xxx. However, xxx xxx xxx. However, xxx xxx xxx
because xxx xxx xxx because xxx xxx xxx.
Uses of "because" go backwards in reasoning. Need to find a way
to move the reasoning forward.
If they do delete something and you put it back,
your log-in name will be cancelled. I guess you can keep registering with
an infinite number of pseudonyms. There's probably a better way.
About quotes, I'm leaning toward direct quotation
of short sentence fragments, and then referencing the whole document,
like this:
Marx and Engels explained that the
bourgeoisie "has given a cosmopolitan character to production"
and that it will "nestle everywhere, settle everywhere."
[footnote number]
[end of article]
[footnote number] [Link to the Communist Manifesto
text at marxists.org, or the specific section if it's separated out]
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davesearles
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Posted:
13 Mar 2007 06:11 pm Post subject:
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I have very little discretion in the way I write, The
way I think it goes down on the page and it is very difficult for me to
think of a better structure. Please feel free to delete and alter as you
think. If you want you can use my sign on name. email me if you want the
info.
dave
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questing
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Posted:
14 Mar 2007 04:10 am Post subject:
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I think there is a lot that could be done on
Wikipedia. For example, I think too much space is given to Karl Popper's
attacks on Heraclitus, Marx and dialectics in general, while there is no
mention of the "other side," so to speak. Popper considers
"choice" to be freedom, as opposed to knowing the correct
answer to a question.
Example: There are many, many brands of laundry
soap. Popper would drone on and on about it being freedom to have so many
choices. Marx would have said someything such as, " I want to know
which detergent or detergents do the best job of cleaning clothes. When
that is determined, then I do not care about the rest. "Choice"
is merely a smoke-screen for willful ignorance and avoidance of the
subject matter. It also make the person slave to the object rather than
its master. I want to know the best soap so I can wash my clothes and
then worry about actually important topics."
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mikelepore
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Posted:
16 Mar 2007 01:40 pm Post subject:
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I
don't know much about Popper. He became well-known for his study of how a
scientific hypothesis can be tested, and he also supported capitalism, so
the combination of these two facts leads many shallow thinkers to
conclude that the goodness of capitalism is a scientific conclusion.
That's about all I know of him.
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