Rebuilding the Unions - the biggest task for the working class and the left?

[nino_savatte]

Community can be the warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or the warmly persuasive word to describe an alternative set of relationships. What is most important, perhaps, is that unlike all other terms of social organization...it never seems to be used unfavorably, and never to be given any positive opposing or distinguishing term.​

Raymond Williams, Keywords (1973, p. 76).​

Which is why people make all sorts of appeals to communities which don't really exist, such as the 'community of nations'. To use the same word, without explanation or qualification, to describe things as different as a smallish group of people with a shared history and specific geographical location (a local community), the set of some but by no means all nation states (the community of nations), and a diverse collection of associations of working people (the TUC as a community?) wouldn't seem to be very useful...unless your intention is to bask in some of the 'warmth' that Williams correctly identifies community as having.

Louis MacNeice

p.s. anybody remember the community charge...even the warm persuasion of the c word couldn't make that one a runner.

I was going to post that but it would have attracted the usual comments from the usual people. You do it and no one bats a fucking eyelid.

 

[audiotech]

Theres MC5 thinking about the producers again, rather than the clients

Imbecile.

I think about clients every day.

 

[butchersapron]

Not dishonest at all and you know it. Your playing your dumb games as usual Butchers.

Not dishonest ate you joking? Spot the differnece:

More than 700,000 elderly people are subjected to abuse in their own homes...

Used as evidence that the majority of abuse of the elderly takes place in their own homes -as opposed to the real quote with the bit you've chopped off the end:

More than 700,000 elderly people are subjected to abuse in their own homes or privately run nursing homes, according to the results of a new study to be published this week.

Sad and desperate. That's the only way i can describe something so hamfistdly crooked as that.

Is the rest of you post worth reading after that?

 

[butchersapron]

That means posting up somethign that you said to me on MATB...are you sure? Oh and you also called me "Chimp"...remember? You realise how words like "monkey" and "chimp" are used within a racial context - non?

I've noticed that you only quote those posters with whom you have some sort of affinity...in other words, fellow travellers.

Your reply is likely to be as smug and as self satisfied as the others.

Knock yourself out champ.

I'm a nazi-racist again aren't i?

 

[nino_savatte]

Knock yourself out champ.

I'm a nazi-racist again aren't i?

Did I say you were a "nazi-racist"? You've got an overactive imagination, butchers.

I just wonder how many other people you call "Chimp".

 

[audiotech]

Not dishonest ate you joking? Spot the differnece:



Used as evidence that the majority of abuse of the elderly takes place in their own homes -as opposed to the real quote with the bit you've chopped off the end:



Sad and desperate. That's the only way i can describe something so hamfistdly crooked as that.

Is the rest of you post worth reading after that?

Adding, "or privately run care homes" doesn't take away from my substantive point that most abuse of older peole takes place in their own homes, as that is where most older people live without rigourous inspection.

 

[butchersapron]

Did I say you were a "nazi-racist"? You've got an overactive imagination, butchers.

I just wonder how many other people you call "Chimp".

Clearly i am a racist and we're all greatful to you for bringing to the attention of other posters. Well done.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

I was going to post that but it would have attracted the usual comments from the usual people. You do it and no one bats a fucking eyelid.

I posted it in part to criticise your notion of TUs being communities and belonging to larger communities. At their best individually they can operate as communities; this is especially true at branch and district level. But much of the time for many many of their members, they are little more than insurance schemes; subs paid up to protect against future uncertainties...and why not.

At one time the mining, steel and rail unions were able to operate as somthing like a community where the mass of their memberships recognised, respected and responded to each others interests in a mutually supportive way. But that was a while ago...more's the pity.

Louis MacNeice

 

[brasicritique]

sticks and stones nino sticks and stones.... even your attempts at humorous abuse are inept. I also love the way you use a capitalist constructed definitions of intelligence as some sort of put down.

I take it that you do agree that how we conceptualise intelligence, and the role that education plays in shaping our notions of intelligence eminates from a capitalist construct?

Still one rule for the comrades another rule for everybody else.

 

[butchersapron]

Adding, "or privately run care homes" doesn't take away from my substantive point that most abuse of older peole takes place in their own homes, as that is where most older people live without rigourous inspection.

Ha Ha

Such open dishonesty is remarkable in this day and age! By correctly quoting in full i'm now sneakily 'adding' something - keep it up please.

 

[nino_savatte]

Clearly i am a racist and we're all greatful to you for bringing to the attention of other posters. Well done.

Again with the overactive (but ultimately shite) imagination?

And for someone who likes to chuck his weight about, it's a pity you can't spell a simple word like "grateful".

 

[brasicritique]

Imbecile.

I think about clients every day.

Is that because nino does not pay?

 

[audiotech]

Ha Ha

Such open dishonesty is remarkable in this day and age! By correctly quoting in full i'm now sneakily 'adding' something - keep it up please.

Butchers, the word "sneakily" never passed my lips. Fuckwit I admit did though.

 

[butchersapron]

Community can be the warmly persuasive word to describe an existing set of relationships, or the warmly persuasive word to describe an alternative set of relationships. What is most important, perhaps, is that unlike all other terms of social organization...it never seems to be used unfavorably, and never to be given any positive opposing or distinguishing term.​

Raymond Williams, Keywords (1973, p. 76).​

Which is why people make all sorts of appeals to communities which don't really exist, such as the 'community of nations'. To use the same word, without explanation or qualification, to describe things as different as a smallish group of people with a shared history and specific geographical location (a local community), the set of some but by no means all nation states (the community of nations), and a diverse collection of associations of working people (the TUC as a community?) wouldn't seem to be very useful...unless your intention is to bask in some of the 'warmth' that Williams correctly identifies community as having.

Louis MacNeice

p.s. anybody remember the community charge...even the warm persuasion of the c word couldn't make that one a runner.

Collective production of social meanings.

 

[butchersapron]

Butchers, the word "sneakily" never passed my lips. Fuckwit I admit did though.

You really and truly don't get what quotes are do you? You're not messing about,

 

[audiotech]

You really and truly don't get what quotes are do you? You're not messing about,

I don't make them up as you clearly did with your "tearing up" that you had conjured up from nowhere.

 

[Louis MacNeice]

Collective production of social meanings.

Care to elaborate? Which collectives are doing the production and what are the meanings being produced? I think things have moved on since Williams was writing and that because of the use some collectives have put the word community to it can and does sometimes have an unpleasant edge where warm persuasion is turned into a somewhat frostier demand.

Louis MacNeice

 

[Louis MacNeice]

MC5 - when you cut the end of that quote off, you did make a bad mistake re. the argument you were having. Now it may well be that from your experience you think that most abuse of the elderly takes place in their own homes, but that is not what the piece said. Why not go away and find some evience to support your claim (which I suspect is correct), rather than try to defend your misuse of the truncated quotation?

Louis MacNeice

 

[brasicritique]

Taken your football off with a huff nino or maybe your paying MC5 money for services rendered

 

[butchersapron]

Care to elaborate? Which collectives are doing the production and what are the meanings being produced? I think things have moved on since Williams was writing and that because of the use some collectives have put the word community to it can and does sometimes have an unpleasant edge where warm persuasion is turned into a somewhat frostier demand.

Louis MacNeice

Sure louis. Bascially, that collective existence (defined however) produces meaning, meaning for the members of that community and that this is poltically important. It's not something that can be ignored or swept aside by people outwith of that community trying to impose their own values on it.

3 basic practical points about this (shamelessly nicked off Castells)
a) demands about collective consumption
b) affirmation of local cultural identity
c) conquest of local political autonomy

Edit: which doesn't of course define those collectives as you asked. That's the fuzzy area about this. Self-definition and processes versus a crisp objective definition.

 

[butchersapron]

MC5 - when you cut the end of that quote off, you did make a bad mistake re. the argument you were having. Now it may well be that from your experience you think that most abuse of the elderly takes place in their own homes, but that is not what the piece said. Why not go away and find some evience to support your claim (which I suspect is correct), rather than try to defend your misuse of the truncated quotation?

Louis MacNeice

This is what's annoying - i suspect that he's right too, from my many years in the 'industry'. I asked him if he had other evidence to back it up, but nothing appeared. He devalues the point by acting so dishonestly.

 

[cockneyrebel]

Classic, this thread is has turned into everything that is great about web board debating

 

[tbaldwin]

Nino and MC5?
You really have lost the plot yet again.

 

[ViolentPanda]

Something about bolting horses and stable doors comes to mind...

Really?

I was thinking of a nice purge...

 

[durruti02]

I have no problems with either of these two statements.

But you get the other side of the coin as well where groups ignore the trade unions and just do community work. Fight Racism, Fight Imperialism with their "third worldist" stance are one example but another example is the IWCA.

I agree that the two things should go hand in hand but ultimately the power of the working class rests in the workplace. Until we sort out the workers movement in trade unions then we will also be fighting a losing battle or only get extremely limited gains.

agree ..

i never did agree entirely with IWCA about unions ( which was odd anyway as most were union activists) though i understand where they were coming from

FRFI had given up entirely on the w/c as i remember .. we were all bought off and the future was prisoners migrants etc



and yes ultimately the workplace is paramount .. i do think though that there is a problem within trot/leninism which makes o#ut dogmatically that teherfore that is where ALL our activity is


italian autonomism (and before them CLR ?? and Duna.?? ) argued that class/struggles are not just consituted in the workplace ..

 

[rauscher]

Where as Rauscher of course has given up on the working class being a revolutionary class...in favour of....zilch.

Yes I have given up on the idea of the working class leading a revolution if only it would recognise the correctness of a group that has never had more than 60 members.

No, I don't have a strategy for the emancipation of the working class. But neither do you. So we have that in common.

I do work in community groups in my local area (I live in Spain). We won't achieve anything spectacular but we may help a few people concretely. It's not terribly exciting I know but I prefer it to the delusions of self-importance you need to continue pouring time, effort, money and energy into a group that simply repeats the same old mantra without ever bothering to take account of reality.

 

[audiotech]

MC5 - when you cut the end of that quote off, you did make a bad mistake re. the argument you were having. Now it may well be that from your experience you think that most abuse of the elderly takes place in their own homes, but that is not what the piece said. Why not go away and find some evience to support your claim (which I suspect is correct), rather than try to defend your misuse of the truncated quotation?

Louis MacNeice

Right, here's the full paragraph:

More than 700,000 elderly people are subjected to abuse in their own homes or privately run nursing homes, according to the results of a new study to be published this week

This was posted with a reference that it wasn't "good timing" at my suggestion that most abuse took place in older people's own homes rather than care homes.

I replied that: "The report doesn't take anything away from what I stated, that the majority of abuse affects those in their own homes."

Then I was accused of: "jumping the gun in saying that it [the report] finds that the majority of abuse takes place in private homes". I never said the report said that. That was an assertion based on my experience.

A further post from our distinquished guest taunted me by saying that I had "chose the wrong day to quit sniffing glue". How's that for deliberate "misuse" of the English language?

He went on to say that I claimed that the report backed up my points, namely that the majority of abuse takes place in the home. I never made such a claim. Again I said: "The report doesn't take anything away from what I stated..."

Next, I'm told by Butchers: "tearing up the adult protection system", if you'd read the bloody link that we're tlaking about you'd surely know that it exactly what the govt is considering doing as a direct result of the finding sof this report. That's a quote from the article..."

Erm, no such quote exists in the article.

Then I'm told that the report "doesn't mention anything like that" - this being a reference to older people subjected to abuse in their own homes. This is when I used the 'truncated quote' to demonstrate that the report had mentioned that.

Then all of a sudden I'm being accused of being "dishonest", which is rich coming from someone who said they were having no more to do with Urban, when they flounced out of here some time back, but who has now sneaked back in here under a different name.

I've also had abuse being hurled my way, along with another poster, by some comment stating that somehow we've "lost the plot". Ha! No fucking chance. This from a complete cretin too.

Then you add grist to the mill with your "you did make a bad mistake" and a supposed "misuse" of a "truncated quote".

Funny how you are silent on the crap spewed out by my protagonist innit?

 

[mk12]

italian autonomism (and before them CLR ?? and Duna.?? ) argued that class/struggles are not just consituted in the workplace ..

yep i think that's right. "social factory" stuff isn't it?

In the period of the ‘socialized’ worker, resistance grows against the imposition of work, struggles expand beyond the narrow point of production into the realm of consumption, while different sections of the working class seek control over home and community life by struggling for ‘self-valorization’

 

[butchersapron]

I never said any such thing and i've not crept back in. Ask the mods inspecter Clouseau.

And that's as dishonest as your other attempts. Anyone looking at the thread can easily enough see that your claim was that the report backed up your argument that the majority of cases of abuse took place in the home and that this quote was your supporting evidence:

More than 700,000 elderly people are subjected to abuse in their own homes...

Now, that was was totally unacceptable quoting as i showed pretty clearly above. Just swallow it. You got caught and are now freaking out for some reason - despite me deliberately gining you plenty of room for manouvere to avoid this sort of shit. There has been no abuse thrown at at you whatsoever.

Wayne Kramer's just rang me up btw - he intends to sue you for being an emabarrasment to the good name of his band.

 

[butchersapron]

yep i think that's right. "social factory" stuff isn't it?

Should be the basic starting point for contemporary analsyis.