"The Working Class and the Employing Class have nothing in common!"

I felt the need to quote the preamble to the constitution of the Industrial Workers of the World as the title of the post because all of these readings remind me of the collective memory of the working classes. The Poet and the Pauper is in some ways the re-telling of the Joe Hill story. The child of scarcity conciously seeing the beauty in the wains and surges of the workers. Just as Maliza Banales "would be a writer wether I published or not." So to Joe Hill would be a song writer wether his songs were re-written hymns or if they were banned for their seditious nature. The both "Saw living as a luxury and survivng as a reality." However, they are also both persuaded by the anture of their times. Hill saw himself at war, in a time when the working class had an eye on a world they could take back. Maliza saw resistance to the edifices of power and domination as an act that urged pride in oneself worth. I wonder wether this more contemporary view can at times be counter-productive. When she describes her mothers unwillingness to accept "welfare" benefits she describes it with pride and as a difiant fighter. Hasn't her mother worked to deserve these benefits? She toils at home and at her occupation t feed and nurture a family which will one day too prove to be an even greater part of society as a whole. By refusing what she has rightfully earned for fear of the condemnation of the employing and managerial class has she become not defiant but in a way submissive. Would it not be more defiant, more revolutionary to take the benefits and proclaim them not as hand outs or welfare but her rightful assistance, the resources she is owed by the upper crust which consumes so much more?

In "Steal Away" by Dorothy Allison the beauty and marvel of what can be described as the lumpen class is wonderfully illustrated. The lumpen classes and what more contemporary wobs and anarchists have described as the lumpen struggle is a struggle by and for those who linger on the lines of the working poor. Those who struggle against class oppression but also against mental health issues, addiction, and homelessness. They may choose to compensate for the starvation of oppression with acts deemed illegal or by living lives of resistance through regression into more primal and primitive lifestyles. Allison admits she felt an expectation to becomes a member of the lumpen struggle ("I became what had always been expected of me- a thief.") In the lumpen struggle and in the class struggle as a whole there can be seen a certain beautify in the thief, an elegance in skirting the punishment of the oppressive classes. In this lifestyle their is a means of usurping power from the upper classes, the thief recaptures power by choosing to live outside the legalities of the rulers. Just as Allison takes pleasure when she exerts her power in refusing to acknowledge the sociology professor calls in the hall ways. Here, Allison like Maliza express an emotion that the ruling classes can never under stand through an expression that misleads them: a smile.

The pyramid of capitalist society as presented by the first of the Wobs has a very distinctive third tier, those who deceive you.Wether it be convincing you of the necessity of burying a gangrenous leg in a plot which parcels the land to the working class through the capitalist hands of the land owners. If it is not the clergy then let it be the need for self intoxication as a last ditch effort to forget the hardships of working life that distracts the working class from the need to re-take the means of production. This has been a devastating tactic, it seems that alcohol is always cheaper and more available in the slums, the ghettos, and the skeletal remnants of industrial towns. Drunks tend not to organize themselves.

One of the goals of the Industrial Workers of the World was to develop and strengthen a proud working class culture. Through workers halls, the little red song book, and adopting their own rules of interaction the Wobs sought to counter the immense trepidation of the oppressive classes culture trying to gentrify their own. With the downfall of the IWW after World War II and the rise of the AFL as a union of and for the bosses working class culture was degenerated to become a badge of shame to be tossed off and the middle and upper class culture would be grafted on. The epoch of middle class white patriarchal culture in the 50's and 60's would soon wain with the counter culture of the 70's where middle class youth would reproduce the expectations of their class and simply blur the periphery of cultural acceptance. It was in the 80's that in this country there began a conscious movement to resurface working class pride. With the emergence of punk and American hardcore, the realities of Reaganomics hit hard the already wounded working classes, these classes began to hit back. This was the time when winter coats where replaced with mechanic jackets bedazzled with patches, when green been casserole became a badge of honor. Just as Terri Griffith describes the sharp recognition of the schools eye of judgment devaluing her mothers parenting through superficial observations this period brought back a sense of class consciousness resembling the early 20th century. Hopefully this resurgence continues to swell and becomes a tidal wave one that sweeps away the condemnation, the power, the privilege, the oppression of the upper classes in economics, social status, culture, and power. Then we can rebuild a society of aristocratic peasants who are proud of both intelligence and their aptitude for industry.