{"resolved":true,"match_type":"uuid","source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","requested_by":"printed_page","book":{"source_type":"original_book","book_id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","id":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","uuid":"bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title":"Labor and Monopoly Capital The Degradation of Work in the Twentieth Century","normalized_title":"laborandmonopolycapitalthedegradationofworkinthetwentiethcentury","author":null,"edition":null,"publisher":null,"year":null,"isbn":"0853459401","isbns":["0853459401"],"parsed":true,"ai_readable":true,"document_type":"book","page_count":183,"navigation_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","title_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/title/Labor%20and%20Monopoly%20Capital%20The%20Degradation%20of%20Work%20in%20the%20Twentieth%20Century","fixed_page_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","path_api_url_template":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/book/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page/{printed_page}","read_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/read/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802","page_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/page","search_url":"https://workshop.closeclaw.top/api/ai/books/bde76793-4c65-415a-a237-6ccacc2e0802/search"},"page":{"printed_page":315,"pdf_page":170,"physical_index":170,"physical_index_base":0,"printed_page_status":"recognized","page_sha256":"f5b0cff59016ed9c1fdd898936b0c20aa8458a9027121a1e413b0326cf25cb5a"},"chapter":"Acknowledgments","content":"The second precondition is considerably more difficult to satisfy. It may be described simply by saying that while social conditions have been changing rapidly over the past half century, and the working class along with them, the class struggle has been in a state of relative quiescence in the United States, Western Europe, and Japan—the countries of developed capitalism for which the analysis must be made. We are therefore lacking in concrete experience, for the most part, of the sort which will indicate the forms and laws of struggle which will predominate in the new social conditions which characterize the epoch of monopoly capitalalthough we do have some interesting indications from the sixties, of which the French events of 1968 are perhaps the most suggestive. Those who have been wrestling with this problem since the thirties best realize how, in the absence of further concrete experience, discussion tends to degenerate into cliche, apologia, and the repetition of old formulas, and how difficult it has become to say anything new or fresh about it.\n\nIt seems to me that a fruitful discussion of the working class as a class conscious of and struggling in behalf of its own interests will begin to revive as two conditions begin to be satisfied: first, as a clear picture of the class in its present conditions of existence is formed by patient and realistic investigation; and second, as experience begins to accumulate of the sort which will teach us to better understand the state of mind and modes of struggle of this class.\n\nI would like to make one further comment, having to do with my own attitude on this subject, since there seem to be some questions as well as some misconceptions on this score. Some readers have concluded, chiefly on the evidence of my description of a process of “degradation oflabor,\"that I myself am “pessimistic\" about the future of working-class consciousness. But if readers will take the trouble to compare, they will find that the wording which I have used to describe the effects of the capitalist mode of production on the physical, moral, and mental constitution of the working population differs from Marx's only in being milder. A new study by Steven Marcus of Engels's classic first work, which in many ways set the tone for Marx, notes that \"The descriptive or characterizing term used with the greatest frequency throughout The Condition of the Working Class consists of variations of the word demoralize'—demoralized, demoralizing, demoralization and so on.\"\\*\n\nBut neither Marx nor Engels considered themselves “\"pessimists\" on that account; on the contrary, they found in this unremitting assault of capital upon the humanity of labor the precondition for revolt.\n\nThis therefore I regard as a specious clue to my own state of mind; there is, moreover, no need for mind reading, since I have a clear conviction and no hesitancy in stating it. I have every confidence in the revolutionary potential of the working classes of the so-called developed capitalist countries. Capitalism will not, over the long run, leave any choice to these classes, but will force upon them the fulfillment of the task which they alone can perform. This presupposes an enormous intensification of the pressures which have only just begun to bear upon the working class, but I think there is no question that it will happen. I have long tended to agree with those who think it will still be a long time in coming. But time is a social and historical concept, not a purely chronological one. When I look at the great changes that have occurred during the past ten or fifteen years, I believe I see this time passing rather more quickly than I used to think would be the case, In any event, historical time is difficult to forecast, and may be measured out in generations; it sets its own pace and not a pace to satisfy our wishes. But pass it will, whether rapidly or slowly, and bring in its train those explosive developments which for the past few decades have appeared limited to “other” parts of the world.\n\n314 Labor and Monopoly Capital\n\nAppendix 1\n\n315\n\n\\* Steven Marcus, Engels, Manchester, and the Working Class (New York: Random House, 1976), 133.","previous_page":null,"next_page":316}