Slow down Chairman Mao

I get to be one of the working class after all.


In just a few days  I will take a step that few pseudo intellectuals like myself ever get to.  


It all started after I got the letter from my union. 

I felt like Charmian Mao had ordered me to the agricultural center personally.

The letter has asked me to vote for a strike authorization.


Why strike?


The grocery store I work for (like most large businesses)  wants to shaft its workers, and usher in the destruction of the American middle class by instituting pay scales that begin at the lowest amount allowed by federal or state law.

Companies do this in full ironic acknowledgment of Karl Marx.*

I need a strike like I need another ingrown toenail added to my foot.  Yet here we are.  The historical moment.  A test of my beliefs and My So Called Convictions.

I don't have to stand firm at the picket line.  I could cross it and none of you would know.  I could go on then to write about my Herculean efforts to destroy the "man" and you would come to my aid with words of encouragement.

It should seem an easy decision.  I should vote for a strike and picket.  I am a member of the Communist Party USA.  I am an avowed Marxist.  I am proudly pro-union.

The only defect I can see which my hinder my ability is in my character.

I have the stunted moral development of all philosophers.

Like Heidegger to Nazi, I am fearful that I am coward and fearful lazy American who would rather douse his brain in the chemical relaxative of cupcakes and corn syrup sodas than take action by joining with community in defending the working class against such blatant warfare by Capital.

But fear not!

It is always the case that men do not rise to anything but their circumstances.

Nothing in the world has changed.  The slings and arrows that capitalism uses to administer outrageous misfortune still exist.

What commentators about human nature always get wrong when they suppose the weakness and immorality of do-nothingers  is that morality itself is not some Platonic ideal, but is in fact nothing more than a heuristic for survival.

All the fancy talk about peace and justice is a collection of sparkles set against a golden band.  Pretty, but useless.

At no time will man (or woman) avoid pleasure for pain.  What is felt in the crowded breakrooms of union members throughout my state is not the rush of companions in a high stated mind of community and solidarity, but the gawkish animalistic impulse to protect one's own.

But we work with what we can.  And so you can bet I will vote for the strike authorization.  And you can bet I stand strong on the picket line.  I will for a moment give in to my impulse to stop posing and start acting.  If only in some small measure.

Only because it affects me.

[What follows is a comment I left at Hells Newspaper The Daily Brimstone.]

I was watching an episode of Bill Moyers last night and in the episode Moyers was talking about class, unions, and the "working class" and it all sounded so subversive that I got the shivers and shit, and getting the shivers reminded me that in fact that there is nothing to be getting all shivered about, a couple of college profs rapping old school barely constitutes an awareness of radical thinking MUCH LESS action

Then it occurred to me that while I disagree with the tone once used by SIR KELSO (think Sarte and his French man's call to kill all white people)- that what has gotten him so angry so in fact we agree too much now- We both have had personal contact with the hammer.

Obama must perform and change. 
REAL change is necessary, (but not forthcoming from him.)

Real Change may come, but it will be from US.  When the PEOPLE have had ENOUGH.  When they get organized.  When They fight back.

I have warned those who oppose this strike,  "You are dead to me if you cross that picket line."

I will be trading in favors, living off the friendship of the Hippies that own the apartment that I rent.  I will using food stamps, and selling hot dogs at picket rallies, slashing the tires of workers who side against us.

We will use twitter and blogs and tell the newspapers how we microblogged and social networked our strategies (as the only thing the media will want to report is how we tweeted where we would strike and not anything about how the middle class is dying and how the American dream is over.)

What Moyers et al get right.

The worker moverment must be tied to something more than wages.

So can we please stop asking our young men and women to stop dying for a cause that is no good, never was to begin with, and that is now lost to the dustbins of history?