le peuple ne veut que son dû

It’s May Day!

Workers of the world unite, you have nothing to lose that isn’t about to be outsourced anyhow…

I try to retain a modicum of empathy, but I must confess to certain feelings of schadenfreude when the same white collar and tech sector workers who spent much of the 1990’s as cheerleaders for globalization find themselves getting poked with the shit end of the outsourcing stick. Did they seriously think the trend was going to limit itself to manufacturing jobs?

Class war ain’t what it used to be. There was a time when burly men in workman’s caps and fierce women in headscarves took up hammers, wrenches and farm implements in open rebellion against the capitalist oppressors. Today’s service economy has reduced these archetypes to a random office prole in Dockers or a beige pantsuit banging his or her head on the cubicle desk and weeping gently. Even if the motivation was there, the tools are lacking. Not many offices keep a cabinet full of sickles these days, though one can fashion an effective bola out of an optical mouse (which explains management’s push toward cordless peripherals).

The idea of a proletarian revolution has never been an easy sell in America, anyhow. The “Land of Opportunity” myth has retained its allure though several bank panics, bread riots, and corporate scandals. Dialectic materialism and the theory of historical inevitability aren’t going to shake the masses’ confidence in that dream any more than knowing the dismal odds of winning will stop a habitual gambler from buying a scratch ticket. After all, if you work hard and bear the millstone of capitalism without complaint for a couple decades, there’s a better than 50% chance that your company won’t go belly up after the CFO blows the pension fund on hookers and blow, and that you won’t end up standing by the curbside, mournfully watching your $600,000 McMansion go for pennies on the dollar at a bank auction.

The unionization moment may currently be a very sick beast, but it hasn’t died yet, though the non-trade segment has been reduced to conducting an extended holding action (and occasionally successful small raids) to avoid losing even more ground. Today’s union meetings are hardly fonts of radical agitation. Any given meeting is likely to consist of two hours spent deciphering obtuse legal jargon split with two hours of listening to the guy from the next office over explain why the seagull who shit on his Prius represents a legitimate grievance against management.

The Red Army Choir – The Internationale – Poor socialism, you have been so roughly used by opportunists and ideologues all too willing to reduce humanity into abstractions and equations.

The Proletariat – Another Banner Raised (from Soma Holiday, 1983) – The Proletariat were the odd men out on the legendary This Is Boston, Not LA compilation. Their stridently Marxist artpunk/postpunk stuck out like a sore thumb amongst some of the rawest, fastest hardcore ever recorded, but it's pretty interesting (if rather humorless) stuff.

Gang of Four – To Hell With Poverty! (from the Another Day/Another Dollar EP, 1982 ) – We’ll get drunk on cheap wine? Sounds like a fine short term plan, but it will only make things worse in the long term.