1/2/14

Roberts (1999, 2003) describes class cleavages without class identities.

Is this related to inequality in the US as well?  Different social circumstances, for sure, but some of the main deep causes and some of the main answers.

Who do I want to study?  What sorts of people should I be paying attention to?

To recognize a change would demand not only that leaders notice the need for this new strategy, but that the base constituents also see the necessity of this mission, no?

What are the impediments to cooperation between these new social movements?

I can study the CTA in Argentina, who has had some contacts and cooperation with the piqueteros, but that cooperation eventually fell apart.  Why?  What sends a movement to go off on its own and not stay with another movement?

Currently many of the issues facing the poor and workers seem based in the ability of capital to travel very easily around the globe.  This creates a context in which capital can flee, and the relative ease of trade has forced local capital to compete with global capital.  Why don’t managers in local companies see their workers/employees as allies in the fight against global competitors?  Similarly, why don’t workers and the unemployed seem themselves as allies against employers, global capital?

One could describe workers and the unemployed as part of the same broad class.  Do workers and the unemployed see themselves as the same class?  Do they see each other as allies? Do union leaders and leaders of the poor see each other as allies or competitors? Why?

Money might be scarce, but are political resources as well?  Can unions actually gain from joining unemployed movements, as opposed to vice versa?  If labor-based parties are moving away from their labor allies, and ostensibly towards some other group (or perhaps just to the media?), should labor start to look towards other groups as allies as well?