DebateGate
General Category => 3DHS => Topic started by: Religious Dick on June 21, 2008, 05:51:28 PM
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Published on The Brussels Journal (http://www.brusselsjournal.com)
Spain Gets Smacked by Economic Reality
By Soeren Kern
Created 2008-06-20 13:04
spanish-chronicles-soeren-k.jpg
A national truck driver?s strike in Spain is gradually winding down, but it has managed to bring the already-troubled Spanish economy to a standstill. In doing so, it has also highlighted what happens when a welfare state goes wild.
Some 90,000 self-employed hauliers say they are protesting the soaring cost of diesel fuel, which has climbed to 1.30 euros/liter (about US$8 per gallon) from 0.95 euros one year ago. Skyrocketing fuel prices are, clearly, a big problem all over Europe, and many Spaniards identify with their plight.
But what really irks Spanish truckers is their exposure to the reality of market economics. They are angry that an economic downturn in Spain has reduced the demand for their services. There is now too much trucking supply for too little trucking demand, which according to the basic laws of economics implies lower transport prices.
So the truckers want the government to bail them out via artificial price supports. They are demanding that the government impose a market-distorting minimum transport tariff, a solution that would allow hauliers to continue with business as usual while passing the additional costs over to consumers.
The government has proposed setting aside 55 million euros to encourage early retirements from the over-saturated sector. But the striking truckers are not interested in compromise. Indeed, they are betting that the government will cave in to their demands. After all, the Spanish government always gives in to labor unrest.
In the meantime, the truckers have been determined to share their pain with the rest of Spain. The strike effectively shut down a large chunk of the economy because most goods in the country are shipped by lorry (due to insufficient rail-freight infrastructure). Many factories were forced to close production lines for lack of supplies. Spanish consumers panicked that they would run out of food and emptied supermarkets in towns and cities across the country. As for petrol: Some 75 percent of service stations in Barcelona ran out of gasoline within days of the strike; nearly half of the service stations in Madrid were closed.
Spain Complains
But truckers are not the only Spaniards taking some extra time off. Indeed, job walkouts protesting exposure to market economics have become a national sport in Spain.
? Spanish fishermen, who have been on strike for more than two weeks, are demanding government subsidies that would limit the price of fuel to 0.40 cents per liter for the fishing sector.
? Civil servants in the Spanish judiciary system went on strike for more than two months in February, March and April, with demands for higher pay. The bureaucrats, who are already among the highest salaried workers in Spain, brought the country?s justice system to a near-complete halt when the government offered to meet their demands in two stages instead of one.
? In Madrid, more than 50.000 school teachers went on strike on May 7 that kept more than 700.000 students out of the classroom. Teachers are angry about the ?privatization? of Spanish education. According to the OECD, Spain has one of the worst public school systems in Europe and private schools are indeed filling the demand for better educational opportunities. Some 8 out of 10 students in Madrid now attend private schools, compared with 7 out of 10 students who attend public schools in the rest of the country.
? In Madrid, some 20.000 healthcare professionals at more than 400 healthcare centers went on strike in March and April with demands for higher pay. The walkouts caused the cancellation of more than 320.000 doctors? visits and 4.000 surgeries. In Spain, more than 42.000 patients are on waiting lists for surgery; thousands of patients have been waiting for more than 2.5 years to be treated. The demands for salary increases would cost the government more than 150 million euros a year, even though the average salaries for medical workers have already increased by 63 percent during the past four years.
? In Madrid, garbage collectors threatened to turn the Spanish capital into another Naples, Italy, which has become famous for its mountains of trash heaps. The garbage collectors finally returned to work in mid May after accepting a 5.3 percent pay hike. The government agreed to pay a bonus of 30 euros to those employees who are forced to work on November 3, the festival of San Mart?n de Porres, the patron saint for garbage collectors.
? In Madrid, some 8.000 municipal bus drivers went on a 30-day strike in April that affected some 1.5 million commuters a day. The bus drivers agreed to return to work after receiving a 100 euro pay increase plus additional subsidies to pay the dry cleaning bills for their uniforms.
? In Madrid, 1.800 parking meter readers are on strike for all of June after having rejected a 33 percent pay hike as ?insufficient?. The walkout is costing the Madrid municipality some 400.000 euros a day in lost parking revenue.
? In Madrid, some 1.500 ambulance drivers have called for a strike to begin on 18 June. They are demanding higher wages and less working hours.
? In Barcelona, 2.800 municipal bus drivers have carried out repeated strikes since December 2007. They are demanding higher wages and less working hours. When the municipal (Socialist) government refused to meet their demands in April, the bus drivers began vandalizing their own buses.
? In Bilbao, the largest city in the Basque Country and a major seaport and industrial center, metro train drivers and municipal bus drivers are striking for higher wages and less working hours. Bilbao already has the most expensive public transportation system in Spain after Barcelona. The strikers are believed to have sabotaged at least 60 buses since their walkout began.
? In Zaragoza, Spain?s fifth-largest city which has just invested 1.5 billion euros to host the Expo 2008, more than 10.000 workers charged with cleaning public buildings, including the airport and the train station, have decided this is a good time to press the regional government for a pay raise.
? In Valencia, Spain?s fourth-largest city, metro train drivers have threatened to shut down the system for 12 days in June if the regional government does not meet their demands for higher pay.
According to the Spanish Confederation of Employers? Organizations (CEOE), Spanish workers held 334 strikes during the first four months of 2008, which resulted in the loss of 14.3 million man-hours of labor. These figures represent a 72 percent increase over the same period in 2007. During all of 2007, there were 852 strikes in Spain that resulted in the total loss of 22.5 million man-hours.
Nor is this a new trend. According to a special report published by The Economist in March 2005, Spain ranked third among developed countries (after Denmark and Canada) for the number of workdays lost as the result of labor conflicts during the previous decade. Spain lost 254 days, three times more than the EU average of 73 days (calculated as the number of days lost per 1,000 employees). By way of comparison, the UK lost 20 days while Germany lost 10 days.
Considering all these grievances, it seems strange that Spanish voters in March gave Socialist Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero another four-year term in office. After all, pre-election polls showed that the majority of Spaniards knew full well that Spain was not on the right track (economically or otherwise).
Maybe they allowed themselves to be persuaded that everything would somehow be okay, thanks to Zapatero?s post-modern relativistic political discourse (which posits that all problems are by definition imaginary). Or perhaps they were bribed by the 22 billion euros (a whopping 2.1 percent of Spain?s GDP) in handouts that Zapatero promised to bestow upon them if re-elected.
In any case, Spain?s myriad market disequilibriums are coming home to roost, and all at the same time.
For example, Spain has been reeling from the collapse of a housing bubble that for the last 15 years has enabled the notoriously uncompetitive economy to post some of the highest growth rates in the European Union. Millions of Spaniards are now struggling to accept the fact that they were lulled into a false sense of never-ending prosperity.
At the same time, the generous financial subsidies that Spain has received since joining the EU in 1986 are drying up. During the past 20 years, Spain cashed in on some 100 billion euros (equivalent to nearly 1 percent of its GDP every year) by way of EU Structural and Cohesion Funds, which are designed to narrow the gap between the EU?s wealthy and poor countries. But now that Spain has reached a per capita GDP of 98.5 percent of the EU average (it was 72 percent in 1986), the country will begin paying more into the EU than it receives back.
The implication is that Spaniards will have to strike less and work more if they want to maintain their current standard of living. But that seems an unlikely prospect. Spain recently led a bloc (that included Belgium and Greece) that sought to prohibit British workers from working more than 48 hours a week. In an interview on Spanish National Radio, Zapatero said working 65 hours a week was ?unacceptable? and ?retrograde?.
He is worried that if Brits may choose to work more than Spaniards, Britain will have an unfair competitive advantage.
And what about the nearly one million illegal immigrants that Zapatero ?regularized? in 2005 with the justification that they would pay into the financially unstable social security system? Many of them are now drawing unemployment benefits, so much so that the Socialist government wants to pay them to leave Spain if they promise to stay away for a minimum of three years.
Problem? What Problem?
Just before the March elections, Zapatero insisted that the Spanish economy would grow by 3.3 percent in 2008; since his re-election, however, the government has revised that figure downwards on an almost daily basis. Indeed, Spanish economic growth has slid to 0.3 percent in the first quarter 2008 from 0.8 percent in the last three months of 2007. The Spanish Banking Association says that Spanish growth will probably be negative in 2008. The Spanish economy grew by 3.8 percent in 2007.
But that?s not all. Annual consumer inflation jumped to a 13-year high of 4.6 percent in May. And according to the Labor Ministry, the number of registered jobless shot upwards to 2.35 million in May, the worst figure since post-Franco recordkeeping began in 1979. The National Statistics Institute says the unemployment rate jumped to 9.6 percent in the first three months of 2008 from 8.6 percent in the previous quarter, the biggest jump since the first quarter of 1993, when the Spanish economy slipped into recession. Some financial analysts fear the unemployment rate could spiral to 15 percent in 2009.
So far Zapatero?s post-modern approach to Spain?s economic crisis seems based on three reality-evading pillars: denial, passing the blame, and more denial. His Plan A has involved a pop psychology campaign advising Spaniards that ?pessimism does not create jobs.? Plan B blamed ?radical liberalism? which in euro-speak means the free market. Zapatero now wants to implement Plan C, a global advertising campaign in the world financial press designed to highlight his economic non-crisis management skills.
Spaniards, having grown accustomed to three decades of spoon-feeding by Socialist largesse, are in for a long, hot free-market summer.
A short version of this article was published by Pajamas Media on June 14, 2008. Soeren Kern is Senior Analyst for Transatlantic Relations at the Madrid-based Grupo de Estudios Estrat?gicos / Strategic Studies Group
Source URL:
http://www.brusselsjournal.com/node/3348
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Sounds to me like what those Spaniards need is a dose of good old-fashioned Communism. Control by the people of the means of production, allocation of the entire national resources and their profits on an as-needed basis, the elimination of the profit motive, rationing of imports like gasoline and state-mandated transportation alternatives. An end to private ownership of the means of production. From each according to his ability to each according to his needs. Obviously this is an early-warning failure of the capitalist system brought on by the oil crunch but inevitable anyway.
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Obviously this is an early-warning failure of the capitalist system brought on by the oil crunch but inevitable anyway.
Spain's economy is a mixed socialist / capitalist economy.
Obviously what is needed is to eliminate the socialist portions so that the free market portion can blossom.
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Sounds to me like what those Spaniards need is a dose of good old-fashioned Communism. Control by the people of the means of production, allocation of the entire national resources and their profits on an as-needed basis, the elimination of the profit motive, rationing of imports like gasoline and state-mandated transportation alternatives. An end to private ownership of the means of production. From each according to his ability to each according to his needs. Obviously this is an early-warning failure of the capitalist system brought on by the oil crunch but inevitable anyway.
How would any of that help?
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The price of Diesel is not in any way the fault of a Socialist economy. It is a combination of the law of demand and supply and speculation. Spain produces much less petroleum than it uses. I suppose if I were Zapatero, I would begin to make nice with Hugo Chavez.
The free market is not going to blossom in Spain or anywhere else due to huge increases in the price of petroleum products.
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The price of Diesel is not in any way the fault of a Socialist economy. It is a combination of the law of demand and supply and speculation. Spain produces much less petroleum than it uses. I suppose if I were Zapatero, I would begin to make nice with Hugo Chavez.
The free market is not going to blossom in Spain or anywhere else due to huge increases in the price of petroleum products.
So partial socialism doesn't free a country and its people from the law of supply and demand.
Does total socailism free anyone from the law of supply and demand?
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<<Does total socailism free anyone from the law of supply and demand?>>
Sure, it allocates resources and effectively squelches demand. For example, it decides how much gasoline the nation can afford to import for its essential uses, and it defines "essential uses." This probably means that all the non-commercial powerboat owners are told to put their boats into drydock or lose them. For everyone else it devises plans for alternative transportation - - public mass transit (which eats some of the "essential use gasoline") bikes, etc.
Socialist government can intervene decisively to shape the demand side of the equation. As XO suggested, it can also engage in independent foreign policy which is not subject to U.S. control - - trading what it can (if it can) with Venezuela or Iran.
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For example, it decides how much gasoline the nation can afford to import for its essential uses, and it defines "essential uses." This probably means that all the non-commercial powerboat owners are told to put their boats into drydock or lose them.
That is the most succinct statement of why Americans should hate socialism I have ever seen.
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LOL.
I hate powerboats. Now if a socialist government ever told me to put my canoe in permanent drydock, I admit it, we'd have a problem.
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LOL.
I hate powerboats. Now if a socialist government ever told me to put my canoe in permanent drydock, I admit it, we'd have a problem.
My Canoe is a Pelican , made in Canada.
There needs to be places where no motorised boats are , so that Canoes are not swamped in wakes , This should not be a problem in Georgia or Canada tho , lots of swamps and lakes , many too shallow for speeding.
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I was kidding about "my canoe." My wife and I just rent at the marina or the outfitter rather than buy one and haul it around. I've never seen a lake or river in Ontario with a powerboat ban, I think the cottagers are just too powerful a lobby and more of the cottage-owning types are likely to favour engine power over wind or paddle.
It's not just the wakes, though, it's also the noise and the pollution.
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I suppose it depends on the circumstance at each time and location some Georgia creeks are off limits altogether because they are on priviate property.
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For example, it decides how much gasoline the nation can afford to import for its essential uses, and it defines "essential uses." This probably means that all the non-commercial powerboat owners are told to put their boats into drydock or lose them.
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That is the most succinct statement of why Americans should hate socialism I have ever seen.
What percentage of Americans actually own powerboats that are not in drydock? I would guess under 2%, maybe under 1%.
Of course, this is simply speculation about what the Spanish government might do.
The percentage of Spaniards with motorized powerboats tied up at anchor is probably much smaller than the number of licensed bullfighters. Spain has few large lakes and fewer rivers than the US.
I would not hate anyone who told me to take my boat out of the water or lose it. Actually, nature tells us to do that. It rains, boats fill with water and sink. If anchored in saltwater, they get shipworms and sink. It is never wise to leave a boat in the water for extended periods of time.
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(http://www.nmma.org/facts/boatingstats/2005/files/populationstats2.asp)
http://www.nmma.org/facts/boatingstats/2005/files/populationstats2.asp
Most of my freinds have a boat, I wonder if a majority of these are in Georgia?
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What percentage of Americans actually own powerboats that are not in drydock? I would guess under 2%, maybe under 1%.
The stats Plane posted show about 6% of Americans - including children - own boats.
When you only include adults in the calculation, the number more than doubles.
So much for your guesses.
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What percentage of Americans actually own powerboats that are not in drydock? I would guess under 2%, maybe under 1%.
The stats Plane posted show about 6% of Americans - including children - own boats.
I did not say boats.
I said "powerboats not in drydock", since those were the only ones mentioned i the highly hypothetical speculation about what the Spanish government might do.
So the actual figure would be Spaniards with boats that were both powered and in the water.
Plane claims that if the Spanish government were to seize every powerboat in the water if it were not removed from the water, then that would be the "most succinct reason for Americans to hate socialism" that he had ever heard of.
I think that perhaps there are much more succinct imaginary actions that the American government might take, if we had a Socialist government than asking people to move a damned powerboat. I hardly think that the Spanish government is likely to cause Americans to hate Socialism at all. Most Americans, if they are like my students (I am guessing that they are if possible less knowledgeable), could not find Spain on a frigging map, have no clue about who constitutes the Spanish government, and are barely aware of anything that the Spanish government has done since it subsidized Columbus.
Please note that the suggestion about telling Spaniards to move or lose their power bats came from Michael Tee and not from Sr. Zapatero, who has not taken a position on powered watercraft ownership, and I am guessing never will.
This has been one of the silliest discussions I have ever been a party to.
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I said "powerboats not in drydock", since those were the only ones mentioned i the highly hypothetica;l speculation about what the Spanish government might do.
The stats were for use of powerboats.
Did you even look at them?
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The stats were for use of powerboats.
Did you even look at them?
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The discussion was about how the Spanish government MIGHT tell SPANISH powerboat owners that did not have their boats in drydock to get them out of the water or lose them.
If the Spanish government were to do this, it suposedly would, in Plane's mind, cause everyone (I suppose in Spain) ro renounce "Socialism" forever.
It did not have anything to do with the percentage of Americans who own powerboats, both in and out of the water.
I question that one of every sixteen Americans has a powerboat floating out there on a lake, river, or marina.
Every once in a while, my neighbor tows some sort of small fiberglass boat home and parks it in the yard to breed mosquitos in. It sits there for a spell, usually between two and six years, and never leaves the yard, then he sells it or gives it away and he remains boatless for a year or so. Never have any of these boats every taken a weekend vacation to the ocean or anywhere else. Sometimes these boats have a motor attached, most often they don't.My neighbor has six children, and they have about ten children of their own among them: that's one inert boat among 17 people. But my neighbor's boat is never in the water and never uses fuel of any kind as a result, so that would be zero boats in the water for all those 17 people.
This seems to be a pattern here in Miami-Dade County
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The discussion was about how the Spanish government MIGHT tell SPANISH powerboat owners that did not have their boats in drydock to get them out of the water or lose them.
The what was the point of your claim "What percentage of Americans actually own powerboats that are not in drydock? I would guess under 2%, maybe under 1%"?
Seems like it would be a pointless claim. Plane's stats refute your guess.
And in Minnesota, there is a boat in damn near every yard during the week. They're gone on the water during the weekends. In the Charlotte area, probably about 1/3 of the houses have a boat. And Lake Norman, Mountain Home Lake, Lake Wylie, and the Catawba River are filled with boats on the weekend.
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And in Minnesota, there is a boat in damn near every yard during the week. They're gone on the water during the weekends. In the Charlotte area, probably about 1/3 of the houses have a boat. And Lake Norman, Mountain Home Lake, Lake Wylie, and the Catawba River are filled with boats on the weekend.
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But see, we were not discussing those watercraft. We were discussing boats that are in the water and therefore likely to be hypothetically seized by the Spanish government, thereby causing Plane to hate socialism succinctly.
I suppose we could assume from these facts from "The Land of 10,000 Lakes" that the capitalistic Law of Supply and Demand that has raised the price of gasoline to over $4.00 has still been unable to prevent fun-loving Minnesotans to use said gasoline for recreational purposes.
I speculate that Mother Nature, who has been known to impair recreational navigation by freezing all 10,000 lakes and many rivers every winter, has proven more effective at conserving gasoline for several months of the year, and of course, by causing it to rain, which also impairs the degree of joyfulness one might derive from recreational boating.
The Spanish government is well down the list of hazards to recreational motorboating, it would appear.
Seldom, if ever, does a happily recreating Minnesotan have to contend with a couple of determined and Socialist tricorn hat-wearing Guardia Civil confiscating his prized watercraft.
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But see, we were not discussing those watercraft. We were discussing boats that are in the water and therefore likely to be hypothetically seized by the Spanish government, thereby causing Plane to hate socialism succinctly.
Then one would have to wonder why you brought up American boat ownership.
Is it because you are incapable of staying on the topic?
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And BTW, winter does not preclude Minnesotans from enjoying their lakes. It's just that they only use flat bottom boats pulled by ATVs then. Also, pickup trucks, cars, and snowmobiles are used extensively on the lakes during this time. There is also a second Fishing Opener during the winter time.
And in the spring, when the lakes are just starting to thaw and there is a layer of water on top of the ice, the Minnesotans really enjoy it. You can combine ice and hydroplaning - what fun!
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And in Minnesota, there is a boat in damn near every yard during the week. They're gone on the water during the weekends. In the Charlotte area, probably about 1/3 of the houses have a boat. And Lake Norman, Mountain Home Lake, Lake Wylie, and the Catawba River are filled with boats on the weekend.
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But see, we were not discussing those watercraft. We were discussing boats that are in the water and therefore likely to be hypothetically seized by the Spanish government, thereby causing Plane to hate socialism succinctly.
I suppose we could assume from these facts from "The Land of 10,000 Lakes" that the capitalistic Law of Supply and Demand that has raised the price of gasoline to over $4.00 has still been unable to prevent fun-loving Minnesotans to use said gasoline for recreational purposes.
I speculate that Mother Nature, who has been known to impair recreational navigation by freezing all 10,000 lakes and many rivers every winter, has proven more effective at conserving gasoline for several months of the year, and of course, by causing it to rain, which also impairs the degree of joyfulness one might derive from recreational boating.
The Spanish government is well down the list of hazards to recreational motorboating, it would appear.
Seldom, if ever, does a happily recreating Minnesotan have to contend with a couple of determined and Socialist tricorn hat-wearing Guardia Civil confiscating his prized watercraft.
Well to recap ...Plane
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Re: Spain Gets Smacked by Economic Reality
? Reply #7 on: June 21, 2008, 08:34:16 PM ? Quote Modify Remove Split Topic
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Quote from: Michael Tee on June 21, 2008, 08:27:30 PM
For example, it decides how much gasoline the nation can afford to import for its essential uses, and it defines "essential uses." This probably means that all the non-commercial powerboat owners are told to put their boats into drydock or lose them.
That is the most succinct statement of why Americans should hate socialism I have ever seen.
Boats are just a vehickle for the point.
The more Socialist the government , the more the government decides for you what you will do with your resorces.
For some people a boat is part of the job and for some it is part of the pursuit of happyness , neither should be easy for the government to suppress.
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The more Socialist the government , the more the government decides for you what you will do with your resorces.
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So if the government refuses to let a guy buy a Sherman tank and drive it to work, or prohibits rabbit hunting with Gatling guns, they are Socialist?
Some of the most Republican precincts in South Florida are gated communities than ban people from living the compound if one drives a pickup truck. They also tell you what color you must paint your home. Beige seems to be a favorite.
Coral Gables just spent a lot of money battling a Santero priest who sacrificed live poultry and goats on a backyard altar.
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The more Socialist the government, the more the government decides for you what you will do with your resources.
None of this is Socialism. Just having larger scope of government doesn't make it socialism. Many western democracies have governments that expand and contract their size and scope. That absolutely does not make them socialists. The right wing military juntas we installed all over Latin America made some very controlling laws that stripped people of all kinds of liberties, but they were by no means socialists. Even RD's favorite leader, who he's defended on more than one occasion, Fascist Augusto Pinochet, had some horribly constricting laws over personal freedom and you'd likely have met your demise with a gunshot to the back of your head in a football stadium (after a few months of torture) if you told him that he was a socialist.
Socialism is the turning over of the means of production to the proletariat. It is the historical political and economic rule between capitalism and communism. It has nothing to do with this minutiae.
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Socialism is the turning over of the means of production to the proletariat. It is the historical political and economic rule between capitalism and communism. It has nothing to do with this minutiae.
No really , you mean that there has never been a socialist government?
The right to use your own resorces as you see fit is not absolute anywhere ,but socialism injures this right the worst.
Other rights have other enemys .
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Socialism is based on mutual cooperation by members of a society.
It has taken a variety of forms, and has described itself in many ways. None of those ways has ever involved the confiscation of powered privately-owned watercraft.
Many, perhaps most, Americans routinely spend well over half their incomes on housing, transportation (cars, fuel, maintenance and insurance), medical care and educating themselves and their children.And yet they gasp in horror at the thought that Danes and Swedes have managed to accomplish all these goals for nearly every member of their societies by simply paying a maximum of 50% in taxes, and receive superior education, housing, medical care, transportation from their governments, in countries with a very small proportion of the resources of the US in a much harsher climate.
The crime rate and the proportion of people in prison is a tiny fraction of what it is in the US.
Neither Sweden nor Denmark have nationalized corporations to do any of this.
Personal watercraft and hunting are popular sports in both countries.
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Socialism is the turning over of the means of production to the proletariat. It is the historical political and economic rule between capitalism and communism. It has nothing to do with this minutiae.
No really , you mean that there has never been a socialist government?
The right to use your own resorces as you see fit is not absolute anywhere ,but socialism injures this right the worst.
Other rights have other enemys .
Yes, really.
Marx did not write "workers of Spain unite" or "workers of East Manitoba unite." He wrote, "workers of the world unite." There is no such thing as "a socialist government" or a "socialist nation." Socialism is international and will be completely dominant as capitalism is today.
While welfare states and universal healthcare may be laudable goals, it does not make a country socialist. That is part of a perception that many people, especially Americans have never been able (or more likely - willing) to comprehend. Nationalisation, while it can be a step towards class consciousness, could also be used by a government for ill purposes just as easily. Trade unions are perhaps the best tool to aid workers in class consciousness, but even those can be self-defeating if operated maliciously as with the AFL in the United States.
Socialism will dominate once class consciousness is achieved, which will happen. Then socialism is inevitable. It has to be. The elite and bourgeoisie will have no cards left to play. Where will they receive power when no one is their to run their factories? To do their construction? To sell their items? To staff the hospitals? The means of production will mean little without the proletariat to run it for them.
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Socialism will dominate once class consciousness is achieved, which will happen. Then socialism is inevitable. It has to be. The elite and bourgeoisie will have no cards left to play. Where will they receive power when no one is their to run their factories? To do their construction? To sell their items? To staff the hospitals? The means of production will mean little without the proletariat to run it for them.
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This is like saying, "If we had some ham, we could have ham and eggs, if we had some eggs."
Perhaps class consciousness will happen, but there are many people who are more interested in their own personal materialistic expression, like wearing designer clothing or owning a 42" teevee, which will allow them to feel superior to his fellow man. Many people are uninterested in mere equality. They want more, and even the perception of more will do just fine.
How will class consciousness be achieved? Isn't expecting the entire human race to join in a single belief a bit of an impossibility?
Buddha, Jesus and Muhammad have all tried to do this, and all have failed. I don't think we have even arrived at the point where every adult has drunk a minimum one Coca-Cola, despite a global organization and massive advertising budgets.
Everyone is not a Mormon yet, either, and they can enlist you even after you are dead and can't put up a fight.
The closest we seem to have come as a global effort is to eliminate smallpox.
Class consciousness is a system of beliefs, like a religion. It is a lot more complicated than a desire not to die a ghastly death by the pox.
Take a guy like Plane, who considers the threat to power boat ownership to be a major loss of freedom. How will anyone ever cause him to have any degree of class consciousness?
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You are right to be skeptical XO, especially in a country so far removed from any semblance of holding value for workers and labor. This is a place where neoliberalism and conservatism have convinced some of the poorest that more money for the wealthiest 0.5% will eventually tinkle down onto them and make everything better. It is natural to be skeptical that workers would ever stand up for themselves when so many bourgeoisie and elitist traps lay in their path to class consciousness:
Racism
Crass consumerism
False crises
"Safety & security"
False ideals
But class consciousness is not a religious notion or a set of beliefs that all of the people must accept. Think of it like this: it is the point where the school kids realize that the two or three bullies don't really have any power over them. That point is the moment when class consciousness is achieved. When the proletariat realizes that it is they who hold all the cards and that the elite, the bourgeoisie, and protecting groups like the police, are not the ones who have the power.
It isn't a difficult realization if you think about it. The cars we drive, the nurses we rely upon, the docks where all of our global commerce takes place rely upon the proletariat to function. What stands in the way are the obstacles I listed above and many more such as nationalism. But the most remarkable weapon against these is capitalism itself. It is creating lifestyles that will not be sustainable. At the same time capitalism has good aspects that promote worker education and solidarity without even knowing it.
That is why, in the long-term capitalism is doomed to be a thesis and meet its antithesis to form a synthesis.
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I am all for people developing a sense of class consciousness. But Americans are experts in advertising.
Observe how the Republicans renaming the inheritance tax "The Death Tax" gained instant support from the 95% of proles who will never have a chance of having enough to pay it. They were convinced by clever admen that they were somehow voting against the unfairness of death or something.
The inheritance tax, after all, is not a tax Conrad Hilton pays on all his hard work (assuming thaqt hisa work was really hard). No. It is a tax on Paris Hilton, on money she has never earned.
The Republicans start screaming "class warfare" every time anyone suggests that 1% of the population owning 95% of all the profitable ventures in the country. It is THEY who are the class warriors, whenever they sock you a $29 late fee on a $20 credit card payment that was a day late, every time they sock you $200 cancellation fee when you want to ditch their expensive cellphone.
But again, this is obvious to me, but impossible to hammer through the thick skulls of the proles.
Now watch as Sirs chastises me and calls me an "elitist" for referring to dummies as "proles".
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Is class consciousness the antithesis of "unity"?
or just its opposite?
For generations we have prayed for unity and brotherhood , what is better about class consciousness?