XPost: uk.politics.misc, uk.people.health, alt.politics.british   
   From: banana@REMOVE_THIS.borve.demon.co.uk   
      
   In article <1138234205.721893.79950@o13g2000cwo.googlegroups.com>,   
   ib011f9545i@blueyonder.co.uk writes   
      
   >So to sum up your position,it is ok for idiots like me to work while   
   >some of the people you defend sit about having more interesting lives   
   >not doing any boring jobs.   
   >I wonder if you work for a living,or are retired or disabled or what?   
   >Is it still the 1960s where you live ?,in fact reading some of your   
   >post it could have been written by an anarchist in about 1880.   
   >Anarchist rhetoric can be beautiful but if work is voluntary who would   
   >volunteer to do the crap jobs ?   
      
   I don't give a toss about anarchism or any other ideology. So please   
   don't read the following as any sort of defence of, or explanation from   
   the viewpoint of, anarchism.   
      
   To answer your question in terms that I think get to the nub...   
      
   ...in a free society there will be no 'jobs'. Personally I say there   
   will be labour but not 'work', since I use the latter term to mean   
   'forced labour'. Some who share my aims use different terminology but   
   this is not relevant in this context.   
      
   The approach will be as follows: whatever crappy tasks have to be done   
   will be shared out... There will be genuine *society*. People who don't   
   want to do their fair share of the crappy stuff will be considered to be   
   going a bit anti-social. But no compulsion will be required, because   
   since there will be a proper society, everyone will understand that the   
   free active development of themselves is in a healthy, mutually   
   beneficial, and symbiotic relationship with the free active development   
   of everyone else. In short, don't you worry - we can do it. We won't be   
   a society of individual arseholes who'd try to hoard all the food for   
   ourselves if we could get away with it.   
      
   Meanwhile, of course, people will want crappy stuff to become less   
   crappy. I don't doubt that it's quite easy, for example, for free human   
   beings to have a bit of a laugh together even when responsibly doing   
   stuff like mending sewers...   
      
   That said, I fully accept that not every moment of waking life would be   
   a complete idyll, and so the basic principle would be that crappy stuff   
   that had to be done would be shared out, and therefore minimised in its   
   crappy effect on individuals. Very simple.   
      
   Maybe the reason this reminds you of stuff said in the 1880s or 1960s is   
   that it was indeed said in those decades - it's just that you may be   
   unaware that it was also said in every other decade. Same idea was   
   consciously put forward in the 14th century, the 17th century -   
   whenever. Communism is in our bones.   
      
      
      
   >I did not accuse you of saying anything against migrants,   
      
   I know. I do not doubt that you are correct in saying that some people   
   who share my view on welfare benefits hold a view that is completely   
   opposed to my view on immigration.   
      
   >my point was   
   >that I have seen people on demos against migrants "taking our jobs" and   
   >some of the people on the demo have never done a days work in their   
   >lives.   
   >This was the case inSighthill  in Glasgow where a radio reporter   
   >explained to the crowd that the people they were demonstrating against   
   >were actually asylum seekers who were not allowed to work and not   
   >immigrants who would have been able to work.   
   >The reporter asked the people what they did for a living and they all   
   >said they were on benefit,which somewhat undermined their racist small   
   >minded argument.   
      
   I quite agree, although remember that reporting and editing is   
   selective; and also that racism also exists among the in-work working   
   class and of course the in-work petty bourgeoisie.   
      
   I don't know how typical the racist demonstrators were of non-immigrant   
   benefit claimants living in Sighthill. Perhaps nowhere near as typical   
   as the radio programme makers wanted to portray them. Surely some   
   non-immigrant residents have been been able to get to know some of the   
   immigrants and discover that they have actually got a lot in common?   
      
   There has been a big campaign in the UK to get the middle classes to   
   think of white working-class people as a bunch of racist morons, i.e. to   
   'legitimise' middle-class hatred and contempt of the lower orders in   
   terms of their own (usually completely fake) 'anti-racism'. Which   
   reminds me very much of landladies who think they're ever so clean,   
   unlike the 'great unwashed', and of posh people generally, who 'don't   
   know how people can live like that' (yeah, right, they don't). Since   
   they don't actually meet anyone from the lower orders socially, and know   
   little about people who live in those orders, the operative word is of   
   course prejudice - prejudice of a kind that is quite similar to racist   
   prejudice.   
      
   (Which gives me an excuse to tell a story about the police. They have   
   apparently stopped using ethnic-minority actors in their training films,   
   except where the whole point of the film is about ethnicity. Why?   
   Because they'd show e.g. a black actor, playing a burglary victim, or an   
   onlooker, or a criminal, or a cop, or whatever, and they'd ask police   
   trainees what they thought of what the character was doing. The context   
   was not anything to do racism. It might be a minor car accident, or a   
   burglary, or whatever. It's just that one or more of the actors wasn't   
   white. What happened? All the trainees would write down what they   
   thought was expected of them, e.g. 'I did not let the member of the   
   public's racial category affect my judgement, and would treat him just   
   as if he was white'. It just proved impossible to get the kind of dimwit   
   who applies to join the police to notice anything about the person other   
   than that he was black! Eventually the trainers just threw up their   
   hands and said 'fuck it'. The moral of the story being - the police are   
   as racist as fuck. Really deeply, stupid-as-pigshit racist. OK I know   
   this isn't a very original observation, but it's nonetheless true).   
      
   --   
   banana     "The thing I hate about you, Rowntree, is the way you   
               give Coca-Cola to your scum, and your best teddy-bear to   
               Oxfam, and expect us to lick your frigid fingers for the   
               rest of your frigid life." (Mick Travis, 'If...', 1968)   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)