"We Gotta Get Outta This Place"

 “Work, Work, Work – Labor, Alienation and Class Struggle” by Michael D. Yates, 2022

Yates is the son of a factory quality inspector who died of work-place related hazards.  He worked at some proletarian jobs himself before finding a sinecure in academe as a Marxist economist, then as an editorial director at Monthly Review.  His prior books “In and Out of the Working Class” and “Can the Working Class Change the World?” are reviewed below. This book is similar to these two books.  The title reflects something beatnik Maynard G. Krebs might have said in the sit-com Dobie Gillis but I’m not sure how many people want to read about working after working all day.

It mostly reads like a ‘greatest hits’ collection of left and Marxist references, with an odd fascination for guerilla war.  He riffs off Ben Hamper’s book about working in the 1970s in auto – “Rivethead” – a hilarious look at the assembly line that never goes into politics.  He attacks the fantasy of neo-classical economics which doesn’t offer proof of its nostrums while still parading as ‘science.’  He focuses on labor exploitation and the various social controls needed to continue exploitation and the accumulation of private wealth.  While Yates doesn’t look into the rentier (or financial) capital flows, the question he might ask is ‘who’ is building and maintaining the real estate and land that is such an essential part of those sectors? Workers!         

Yates surveys the many gruesome and precarious jobs across the world in opposition to the idea that everyone works in a white-collar office with dental benefits.  Garment workers, electronic assembly shops, restaurant and cruise ship peons, street vendors, waste haulers, rag-pickers, farm labor, roofers, prostitutes – you get the idea.  The ILO estimated that in 2019 1.48 billion workers in the world were at the very bottom of the heap, with 160 million of those child laborers. I think this does not include peasants and farmers.  During global recessions and depressions those numbers can double. 

Yates discusses “the injuries of class” that are ignored by liberals and the need for fighting racism and sexism as part of the class struggle, as skin color and gender are many times the markers of proletarian existence.  He has mini-sections on clerks, restaurant workers, security guards, postal and auto workers, custodians, secretaries and admins, medical and gig workers.  He has a chapter on the ‘panopticon’ of control methods – school, religion, laws, technology and media.  Within worksites these might consist of ‘team building,’ cross-training, Just-In-Time inventory, improvement meetings and ‘lean’ production – all somewhat aging methods.  He does address how technology speeds up Amazon workers, but only once, yet computerization has become a major driver of control and productivity.  He addresses the obvious divisions within the working class – religion, nationality, language, gender, skin color, sexual preference, etc.  He still makes the mistake of considering there to be multiple human ‘races.’  All this is pretty standard Leftie stuff.

SOLUTIONS?

What is the solution to this miasma of cruelties?  He takes particular aim at DSA and Jacobin magazine who promote social-democratic and ‘utopian’ solutions, perhaps because they are the biggest organization on the left and embedded within the Democrats.  He reprises his analysis of the rise and fall of the UFW union under the dictatorial and right-wing control of Cesar Chavez, which to my mind is the best chapter in the book.  Yate’s solutions range from traditional Left and environmental demands, transitional demands to some maximalist slogans.  The heralding of the familiar Brazilian MST, the Mexican Zapatistas, the Indian Naxalites, Black Lives Matter, Occupy Wall Street, Richmond CA Progressive Alliance; Cooperation Jackson MS; the Black Panther Party, the UE, the Coalition of Immokalee Workers, Venezuela, Cuba and Nepal is endless.  Hell, he even gives props to the Nation of Islam’s organic farms.  What is not mentioned is that all these forces either came and went or have existed for years without resulting in forward movement towards socialism. Some might play a role in the future in a revolutionary upsurge but it will not be coming from them at present.

Richmond CA Progressive Alliance

Yates supports a Labor or a Workers Party in the U.S., mentioning the successful role of the Richmond Progressive Alliance in electing people to office in Richmond CA.  This is in the context of a somewhat dated discussion of the failures of the AFL-CIO, Richard Trumka, the SEIU, the UAW and others.  He supports ‘direct action’ and mutual aid.  Importantly he understands the need for local ‘assemblies’ – like soviets or councils – that will slowly take-on local political power as they have done in some areas like Venezuela, forming a basis for future workers’ rule and participatory socialism.  He focuses on the issue of agricultural land and thinks small, local farmers and lower tech pursuing agroecology will be the solution to the environmental ruin of the land.  Yates should note that China has in practice abolished social ownership and control of the land that the Maoist revolution first initiated. He has several lists of transitional and revolutionary demands and a long section on revolutionary education, befitting a professor.  Yates adopts wholesale Andreas Malm’s 10 environmental proposals.  He understands that Stalin reversed many progressive policies of the Bolsheviks, especially in the field of women’s rights.  

As part of Yates' demands, he includes some that are clichés and me challenging them might be controversial. “Abolition of the prison system” seems to be a long-range socialist and communist goal but utopian even after a revolution.  “End the incarceration state” or "organize prisoners" might be better transitional slogans.  “Community-based” policing also seems utopian in a capitalist society, though a parallel armed force arises under dual power or in situations where the state becomes weak.  “Open Borders” also seems to be a utopian demand, especially in a capitalist world falling apart.  Nations and their borders will slowly dissolve in a post-revolutionary socialist world society so that is the ultimate goal.  Immediate work programs at the border, organizing immigrants into unions and aid to people’s organizations in the affected countries to fight persecution and for revolution might be better transitional methods.  The reason people are coming to the U.S. is partly due to past and present foreign, military and capitalist U.S. policies.  It’s blowback.  No one actually wants to leave their home if things are going well, so that is one of the keys.  

Yates also wants to ‘demobilize’ officers in the U.S. army.  That is not going to happen except when the ranks take over army units in a revolutionary upsurge or rebellion, as happened in the U.S. army in Vietnam. Better slogans might be to unionize soldiers and to call for soldier’s democracy in the armed forces. Questionable slogans should not be swallowed whole just because they are repeated.  There is not just social-democratic utopianism but also revolutionary utopianism expressed as maximalism.  There is a difference between tactical demands, strategic and transitional demands and long-range goals.  Mixing them up can bring political damage, like making your main demand ‘Socialism Now!’ which some Left groups have done. 

There is nothing about an Anti-Fascist Front, a Left Front or other methods of organization, like revolutionary parties or an International.  He does not mention that “Mutual Aid” efforts can devolve into charity or that cooperatives have become corporate over time.  At any rate, a rare U.S. Marxist academic continues – and repeats - his trajectory.  It is not clear if he is a member of any Marxist group.  He seems closest to or nostalgic for old-line Maoism but includes demands from other tendencies. 

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms:  “In and Out of the Working Class” and “Can the Working Class Change the World?” (Yates)l; “How to Blow Up a Pipeline” (Malm); “Behind the Kitchen Door,” “Walking With the Comrades” (A Roy); “Monthly Review,” “The Precariat” (Standing); “The Sinking Middle-Class” (Roediger); “The Panthers Can’t Save Us Now,” “Jacobin Magazine,” or “Venezuela,” “UFW,” “BLM,” “Occupy Wall Street,” “Labor Unions,” etc.

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog / May 19, 2024