<blockquote>There is an old communist saying “We have to raise the bucket from the ground” — meaning that we can’t control where things start from. People enter into radical activity and struggle (as Lenin once said) “with all their prejudices” and then we (together) “raise the bucket” from there. And this is not just a matter of the middle classes and their prejudices. Anyone who doesn’t think the most oppressed enter struggle with very mixed ideas and baggage…. well they don’t know very much about the oppressed in real life.</blockquote>

I understand your argument, but I don't really understand the saying. The bucket on the ground is supposed to be something that all sorts of ideas can fall into. Some people throw a bucket out on the ground when they rise up and surprise everyone. At the beginning, a lot of different people will come throw their ideas into the bucket on the ground, and its a big mix. If noone or no group picks this bucket up and does something with it, then the contents may dissipate or spoil. So revolutionaries need to raise the bucket. They can't expect a bucket full of pure and refined stuff to be passed to them from someone else who already did the hard part of "lifting from the ground."

Here's the trouble I've been having. (Part of it probably comes from my inexperience in presenting in person revolutionary ideas to people who hold non-revolutionary views and my own social awkwardness, but this piece suggests to me that there might be something universal in this too.)

<blockquote>One thing I try to maintain (after years of radical activism and study) is a sense of respect for people who are just starting out. Sure they don’t know many things I have learned. They often still have ideas that I questioned and rejected long ago. But that is no reason for me to view them with anger, or revulsion, or dismay or mockery.</blockquote>

This is all very true and I have been very mindful of this. Perhaps too mindful. I'm struggling in the negotiation between being respectful of the ideas people come in with and finding a proper mode of presentation for revolutionary ideas that directly negate these primitive ideas. And I feel that I'm perhaps unintentionally leaning too far in the direction of respect for primitive ideas in that I find it personally difficult to present revolutionary ideas in a way that that won't come off as condescending or otherwise alienating and as a result I feel that too often I don't present my case clearly and forcefully enough.

I was talking to a guy yesterday (a union member) and he started talking about how American capitalism used to be beneficial to American workers but that nowadays "capitalism has become treason" because capitalists "no longer have any loyalty to their country." I explained to him that I don't think capitalism has ever had any loyalty to any country's workers and that it has always only been concerned with finding the cheapest labor to exploit. He seemed a bit annoyed by this statement. Then he started talking about how "this isn't capitalism anymore." He didn't really back this statement up with any substance. I took it as a purely idealogical statement and was left with the impression that he put it forward because he buys into the ruling class idea that revolutionary anti-capitalism is "anti-American" and he sees himself as very patriotic. I explained to him that this system was absolutely still capitalist. And I told him that it's fundamentally the system Marx described over 150 ago in which workers, who don't own means of production, are forced to sell their labor power to capitalists, owners of the means of production, and that in exchange the capitalist takes a large portion of the value that workers produce and uses it to both consume more himself and also to increase his stranglehold over workers by buying more means of production. He seemed somewhat confused and dismayed by this and didn't really say much in response. At this point I also wasn't sure what else to say. I wanted to talk about how the capitalism of his younger days, the New Deal-style of capitalism that so many liberals want to magically return to, was in large part a byproduct of U.S. imperialism's Cold War battle against the Soviet Union and revolutionary China. But I hesitated. I felt that if I took it to that level he might start tuning me out altogether or even become openly hostile. And so we didn't get beyond this impasse. We then moved on to other topics.

On the one hand I don't think I was forceful enough, but on the other I'm still not sure how I could've furthered the presentation of our ideas without alienating him.

Any tips?

There is a difference between raising the bucket from the ground, and chasing the tail of the dog: we can neither expect formed consciousness, nor should we tail the lack of it. I have yet seen any triangulation in the actual existing left in the USA that is not doing either the former or the later. And this response is not exception: it says "yes, but". It is the "but" that kills it.

No tips on how I can better present our ideas?

Red Fly, have you asked your coworker (more) about what he finds attractive in his vision of patriotic capitalism? I would assume that there is some material or/and ideological basis for his position, and from your understanding of that you might enter into an ongoing discussion (rather than a magic word or two), combined with (shared) practice (direct or indirect). The world is ripe with examples of how capitalism does not work, especially just now.

These were an analysis of labor aristocracy and of the class position of white privilege and of union aristocracy is useful: the previous form of imperialist capitalism benefited large sections of the USA's working class, in particular Whites and union members (which were never a significant number vs non-union, hence an aristocracy) - as the USA stops being an empire, the drive for profits makes the ruling class unable to buy the loyalty of the workers, and re-proletariatizes them.

Because here is the thing, proletariat and working class are not the same thing: working class is an unscientific term for those who work for non-management wage earners. Proletariat is a scientific definition of the class that stands against the bourgeois in capitalism. You can be a working class person and be bourgeois.

Inability to grasp this has paralyzed the left in the imperialist countries for decades, either leading them into capitulation to liberals via organizing working class forces rather than proletarian forces, or by concentrating on organizing proletarian forces without effective development of proletarian-led national democratic fronts.

The process of the re-proletariation of the working class is uneven but inexorable - and our task as communists is to make it more and more conscious.

The union guy needed not to be told that a return to the past was a bad thing, but that it was impossible, that new thing is needed.

@Eddy Laing

Just to be clear, this was not a co-worker, just a worker I met at Occupy.

No, I suppose I didn't probe deeply enough into why he holds fast to this idea of patriotic capitalism. He said he was a big Ed Schultz fan, so maybe he gets a lot of his ideas from him.

Schultz is constantly going on about "outsourcing good American jobs" and how we need to "put the same incentives on the table for the manufacturers as we do for Wall Street." He's a real national chauvinist (and, judging by some of his other comments, a male chauvinist.) He presents this image of standing up for the "middle class" (his petty bourgeois term for workers). Rarely does he use the term "working class" (and never "proletarian".) His background is not as a worker but as a small capitalist and radio star. And yet the big, jolly image, midwest accent, and plain-spokeness send a kind of visceral message of "blue-collar America." That visceral message is very powerful. If we could train ourselves to capture some of that and move it in a revolutionary, internationalist, proletarian direction that would be huge.

SKS

That's an interesting point that I hadn't thought about. I tend to use, apparently incorrectly, "proletarian" and "working class" interchangeable. I'm thinking that part of the difficulty here lies in the fact that "proletarian" sounds pretty old-fashioned, and so when used in a mass agitational context it can often sound a bit disconnected. I'm not sure how to combat that particular difficulty. Maybe just through repetition we can revive the word for the modern ear. I'm not sure.

Red Fly, setting aside for the moment the ideological influence of the demagogue Ed Schultz (who may weigh heavy, as one among many), but considering the aspirational qualities of the message being delivered and how it might appeal to the person (worker) you were talking to, I was thinking that his/her aspirations possibly are a) perhaps several and diverse, and b) intra-contradictory.

In that case, to understand those aspirations in relation to how he/she perceives the 'objective situation' requires some dialogue. I suspect that 'one divides into two' with his/her perception. The 'real world' and our perception of it are never fully aligned, of course.

but back at the point, the bourgeoisie more or less invented the concept of 'nation'. one could point out (in future conversations) that 'life, liberty and pursuit of happiness' refers to the right of capital formation, not some kind of inner bliss, and this is explained fully by both J.S. Mill (who coined the expression) and by the US Supreme Court (which upheld it), both of whom explain that 'happiness' refers to the rights of private property. Or that from the start, joint-stock companies such as the Dutch East India Company exploited people around the globe, or that American capitals from the founding of the Republic were based in large part through the transnational trade of agricultural commodities produced by slave labor. I'm sure you have more examples of the 'rosy dawn of capitalism' and its continuum to the present that you can draw upon.

My suggestion, however, is not the recitation of a litany of examples, rather it is that in a the process of a dialogue about aspirations, there are ample examples of why and how capital is and has been (for hundreds of years, unfortunately) global (not 'national') and antithetical to the aspirations of the 'ordinary' (workers and other oppressed) people of the world (as well as to their health, cultural welfare, and the sustainability of the planet). And that we should (and need to) be international in our unity and opposition to it.