The COVID-19 pandemic has greatly heightened our awareness of our food supply — and the grocery stores we visit to stock up. Grocery workers became even more essential in March and April, as many of the rest of us were sent home to work or were laid off.

But how much do most customers know about what really goes on behind the scenes in our local supermarkets — now or before the pandemic? What's gained and lost as all that food makes its way to the shelves?

Author Benjamin Lorr spent five years looking into that as he studied all aspects of American supermarkets — from the suppliers, the distributors, and supply routes, to the workers in the retail outlets themselves. In the reporting for his new book The Secret Life of Groceries: The Dark Miracle of the American Supermarket, Lorr met with farmers and field workers and spent 120-hours-straight driving the highways with a trucker as she made her multistate rounds. He worked the fish counter at a Whole Foods market for a few months, and went to trade shows to learn about entrepreneurs who were trying to break into the industry. He also traveled to Asia to learn about commodity fishing – finding human rights violations along his journey.

Rudy and Annie join the two co-chairs of Philly Socialists, Mara and Janaya, for what starts as a conversation on the issues women and non-men comrades face when organizing, and ends up being a discussion of Philly Socialists’ base-building activities and their philosophy on the party. The episode starts off with a discussion of the experiences in PS to make the spaces more welcoming to everyone, the role of child-care and of strong sexual harassment policies, and how to provide spaces for everyone to become leaders.

https://cosmonaut.blog/2020/11/08/organizing-the-oppressed-with-mara-janaya-of-philly-socialists/

• Greens advance as Labor returned in Qld election: "The most important result of the Queensland election is the advance of the Greens. The Greens have increased their representation from one to at least two members of parliament."

• Four socialists elected to Melbourne councils:

  There has been a surge of support for socialist candidates in the Victorian local councils elections, with four socialists elected to three councils. The postal vote ran from October 6-23.

  Sue Bolton, standing with a team of Socialist Alliance members and independents, was re-elected to the City of Moreland Council for a third term, winning 12.1% of the vote. 

  Jorge Jorquera from the Victorian Socialists was elected to Maribyrnong council for the first time, receiving 8.76%.

  Stephen Jolly and Brigid O’Brien were re-elected to the Yarra Council with 26.07% and 15.13% of the vote respectively. This will be Jolly’s fifth term as councillor.

  Other socialists also received significant votes: Sarah Hathway (Socialist Alliance) received 15.81% in the Greater Geelong council; George Kanjere (Victorian Socialists VS) received 12.6% in Darebin Council; Liz Walsh (VS) received 10.61% in Maribyrnong Council and Nahui Jimenez (VS) received 10% in Moreland Council.

Austria: Scandalous Bann of a Rally against Islamophobe Racism!

Minister for Interior suppresses freedom of speech … in the name of freedom of speech

Statement of Michael Pröbsting, Spokesperson of the RKO LIBERATION (Austrian Section of the RCIT), 9. November 2020

https://www.thecommunists.net/worldwide/europe/austria-scandalous-bann-of-a-rally-against-islamophobe-racism/

-- 
Revolutionär-Kommunistische Organisation BEFREIUNG
(Österreichische Sektion der RCIT, www.thecommunists.net)
www.rkob.net
aktiv@...
Tel./SMS/WhatsApp/Telegram: +43-650-4068314

Virenfrei. www.avast.com

On working-class versus ‘middle-class’

Part 1

“In studying such transformations it is always necessary to distinguish between the material transformation of the economic conditions of production, which can be determined with the precision of natural science, and the legal, political, religious artistic or philosophic–in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out — K. Marx, “A Contribution to the Critique of Political Economy.” “Preface.” https://www.marxists.org/archive/marx/works/1859/critique-pol-economy/preface.htm

Prima facie, accepting the above from Marx, damned if the above ain't a difference that can be analogized (applied) so as to differentiate between a scientific economic category, the working class, and the so-called 'middle class’ which, IMO, is a sociological convention, a ‘state of mind’--‘upper’ and ‘lower’ class too--that is of a "...legal, political, religious, artistic or philosophic–in short, ideological forms in which men become conscious of this conflict and fight it out."

Let me start again. I read "material transformation of the economic conditions" not just as being technical changes in the means of production but also as fundamental changes in the modes of production and, by that changes in the nature of the classes to be found therein. Such as, for instance, a change in status of a man from being an Independent Worker IW (1) perhaps, running after prey armed with bow and arrows of his own fashioning--to being a slave B (2) who had been captured while trying to run away from a predator armed with factory manufactured cannon and musket. The hunting predator become captured prey (3). This change of class status is, obviously, independent of what the ‘prey’ thinks, i.e. from his ‘state of mind’.

But when, with repetition of cruelties, in direct proportion, to the same extent, as mental as physical, over centuries of generations, as these come to be imbued, inbred, into the mind and body of the slaves then one can see how it is that the difference between the "House Negro" and the field hand (4) could come to resemble the class distinction that it is not. It is ‘caste’-like but not even classic caste (being something one is born into and dies with) as this 'caste'-like privilege that is bestowed by, can be stripped away by the Other, the 'Massah', at this one’s whim.

And just as surely are the affects of the 'class-like' mien of the upper-paid levels of today's working-class. (5). The fact that they can be fired at the will of the Other, the Owner—may be out of their consciousness but its still buried in, burned into, their sub-consciousnesses—but such a fact is abandoned, allying them with the capitalist against their own interests, against their own class, against their own brother and sister members, who are not paid enough to be, what the capitalist has taught them that they, the formers, are 'middle class'. Even ‘upper middle class'.

But, quantitatively, just what is 'middle class'? 50G's, 100G's??? Where is the dividing point? If it is 50G's then is the person making $49,999.99 not in the same ‘class’ as the 50G + 1er?  Is it something that like the castigation (but not the economic category, i.e. class) as it is pejoratively used, that term 'petit-bourgeois'--itself a scientifically determined class--that is hurled outwards by too many self-asserted and self-assured hands guided by ill-informed ‘Marxist’ 'minds'? Meaning it must be a something like a "We'll know it when we see it." Is economic class that superficial? That ill-defined?

“What else does the history of ideas prove, than that intellectual production changes its character in proportion as material production is changed? The ruling ideas of each age have ever been the ideas of its ruling class.” (6)

That’s where the bullshit comes from. From the ruling class. A ruling class, the bourgeois capitalist class, that has subverted, stolen away from us, the community and commonality of our own humanity. And should the better paid members of the ’middle class’ continue in the errs of their ways then they too will be trashed into history’s ashcan alongside the masters they gladly and greedily served.

(1) --all classes, such as the IW, postulated here will be placed on a solid, scientific if you will, basis in a second part to this posting which will not, it is more than likely, be posted today.

JAI

(Posted to FB by Anthony DiMaggio.)

Today is the day I get to be the unceremonial wet towel for all my liberal friends who are breathing (understandably) a sigh of relief now that the malignant narcissistic, wannabe fascist, has been defeated. This was never really about Trump. This nation is teetering on the brink of disaster and collapse, between the mounting climate crisis, a broken economy, and the Covid crisis. But the failure to respond to these challenges is a product of a longstanding dysfunctional political culture that's been building for years (decades). It's going to take years to climb out from under this mess, if we are able to do it at all. And one major problem is that we have a fundamentally broken political system. We now have a White House populated by relatively sane competent neoliberal managers who are not going to put forward an agenda (without mass pressure) to combat the defining challenges of our time, including record inequality, ecological devastation, and rampant racism and white supremacy, among countless other problems. The other political party has totally abdicated when it comes to any notions of responsible governance. The cuckoo birds have taken it over, and it is now dominated by conspiratorialism, white supremacy, militant anti-science, and authoritarian/ascendant fascist politics. A country can't survive with that sort of status quo moving into the future. It's totally unsustainable and is going to end in disaster. We have to keep this in mind, as we hear calls to "get past" our differences with white nationalist enablers, conspiratorial Qanon sympathatizers, and climate change flat earthers. And the pathological notion, held by at least a third of the public (those infamous non-voters), that we can now get past politics after election day and sweep everything that's happened in the last four years under the rug needs to be rejected outright. We desperately need a real progressive mass movement. And that's not going to be built by ignoring the dual threats of rising reactionary extremism and pathological apoliticism. The rest of the world knows the U.S. is one election away from a return of the cuckoo birds to power. The sooner we join the rest of the world in recognizing the horrific threats, the better.

Why don’t Greens and other modern socialist parties start by running down ballot candidates that can actually do some good in local politics instead of putting all their effort into repeated failed attempts at the highest office in the land. That’s proved itself to be a dead end strategy. Do what DSA is doing but in a new party. 

Here's what Scott McLarty said about that on FB: