Why aren't blue collar workers leftist anymore...

Demonizing

demo nixing sounds like it could be a thing.

So how do we change this situation? Just trying to stimulate discussion, I'm not asking for someone to just fix everything.

Because the radicalism coming from blue collar workers was typically out of pro-Union sentiments, and once Union bureaucracies were established and became increasingly less and less able to improve their conditions, they lost trust.

not much, except that people today have much greater access to information, and much more freedom to pursue it. but they don't do it. there is just no effort to self-improve and seek alternatives.

in my view, there is little excuse for this lack of interest and effort. a google search and 10 minutes on wikipedia is all it takes to start thinking differently. hell, a few seconds of critical thought and contemplation should be enough; forget google and wiki. because of that, personally speaking, i no longer have much sympathy for the masses. they get what they ask for; unfortunately, i and many others also have to deal with the consequences of their choices.
it's not about arrogance or elitism. simply put: the people are stupid; that stupidity is exploited by many of the smarter persons in the world, especially those without scruples or ethics. the only way to stop that exploitation is to use one's mind and intellect. but, for some reason, that's too much to ask of the average person.

I still think that's a gross over-generalization and doesn't explain much.

your experiences with people might differ from my own. i'm probably just more cynical and pessimistic. but, personally, i have no hope in the masses.

Among blue collar workers, the most obvious action to be taken firstly is getting them unionized. In the US at least, only about 10% of workers are unionized, which creates a major problem both for organizational purposes and "education" so to speak. I'd imagine it would not be an insurmountable task to convince your average worker, especially bluecollar ones who often are faced with questionable conditions and treatment, to collaborate together for mutual benefit. It's at the very least an entrypoint where non-leftist workers get exposure to leftist ideas through the inherent environment of class conflict that is created.

On a side note, this is actually where I think that the "intellectuals" participating in leftist organizations can really play a major role if they are properly educated/trained on the matter: helping to form and network unions. They can act as neutral parties who can help ensure that the union structure does not devolve into bureaucratic hierarchies as a matter of principle, as well as help strategize what actions would be appropriate as part of negotiation processes and when they'd be best used. Get enough unions networked with one another, and you might even see the return of the general strike as a viable tactic. It would be a nice way too to get the idea of the left being "on your side" through having interaction that isn't just ideology pushing.

I can agree with these ideas.

Fuck off, Winston Smith.

This.

The working class have been brainwashed, not just in the US, but almost everywhere in the world.

I blame Hollywood and the media.

Confirmed for not having read "1984". Winston Smith writes that all hope lies in the proles.

i don't expect you to agree with me. you said you were trying to stimulate discussion; i was just adding my antidemocratic interpretation to the mix.

Because evolution only made people as smart as they needed to be to reproduce. And at various points throughout history, non-retards were getting culled. What do you think is the long-term effect of burning heretics? Suggestible morons.

They never were. The people that made your "utopia" come true in Russia were not blue collar workers.
They were upper-middle-class shit-stirrers that manipulated people, sabotaged their countrymen and took advantage of disaster. Those that did their fighting? They were confused, starving masses. They didn't know or care what they were fighting for. They just wanted order.
Most blue collar workers were loyalist.

Great counter-argument!
And when it comes to communists, acting condescending is always warranted.

was that me? lmao I deleted the post because it adds nothing to the discussion
can you please go away

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what did he mean by this?

Okay, that's pretty funny. I'll give you that, Holla Forums.

Whereas you're the loan voice of reason in an otherwise crazy and stupid world? I wonder how many people think just like this…

As to the question in OP, it's because blue collar workers are still overwhelmingly male. The modern left relies on feminism and other IDpol that is of no relevance to workers. And the actual left is too cowardly to call the SJW left on their shit for fear of being called an X-ist

Given how PC and SJW the Left is, and how macho blue collar jobs tend to be, well they won't take too kindly to ugly women with dyed hair and faggy looking guys telling them about "privilege" or even going near them. Also, in those environments, their family background likely is religious and has this Calvinistic "hard work is good, never be lazy, you will be rewarded' mentality along with some anti intellectualism, especially towards art degrees.

I mean, i'd rather wait until automation renders them unemployed, then start marketing towards them. Blue collar workers don't give a fuck about your theory, they would mock your books, rather good paying jobs, beer, women,etc. They aren' that bright, but they likely won't fall for any revolutionary promises thinking its some loon wanting to bring back the USSR.
Ultimately, I would say they are a lost cause, and it's best to indirectly reduce their misery.

Obviously not, since the condition of the workers in Russia were vastly different and more brutal than those of a modern blue-collar worker. This allowed them to see through their own system much more sharply than today because the whole facade of "capitalism with a human face" hadn't been made up. Also most people here have varying grades of support for the USSR. We don't think it's a "Utopia" by any means.

The only people who actively sabotaged their economy were the propertied classes since they much preferred a potential restoration of the monarchy by the German army rather than having to deal with a potential socialist uprising or even a more liberal constitutional government. Plus saying something like "middle-class shit stirrers" make it sound like everything was fine and dandy in the Russian empire until these spooky scary socialists decided to show up, when in fact, the Russian empire was a fucking pitiful agrarian shithole where the majority of the population lived in absolute shambles and were completely unaware of their condition. If it wasn't thanks to these "shit-stirrers", who'd come from all walks of life and belonged to different parties and organizations. There were communists, liberals, socialists, peasant oriented populists, christian reformers, anarchists, etc. If it hadn't been for them causing a stir in the popular consciousness, then hardly any intellectual progress would have been achieved. And ultimately, maintaining the conditions of the Russian empire would have been much worse than what the USSR ever did.

Then again, most of the actual middle-class socialists like the mensheviks, who had little popular support at the time, went to join the counter revolution in the name of "the country" or "democracy". At least, the bolsheviks knew how to win mass support at a time of dire crisis. They "took advantage of disaster" and in the end it proved to be the only right choice considering the material conditions of the situation.
You don't just go join a revolutionary party that promises to shackle to whole order of things if you just want "order". If all you wanted was "order" you'd opt to keep the status quo. The sort of order a revolution proposes is the kind where everyone's humanity is recognized, thereby putting a check the exploitation of the few over the many.

Also: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_movement#Structure_and_ideology

surely, if most people just wanted "order" they would just flocked en masse to the white movement right? :^) not just university students, conscripted peasants and literal feudal landowners and porkies. They sure managed to restore that law and order didn't they :^)
to the proletarian cause that is :^)
but in case, saying shit like "THE MASSES WERE ALL CONFUSED AND DECEIVED BY THE EVIL COMMUNISTS!!!11" is just plain wrong and ideologically motivated. Sure, many people had to be conscripted (in the same way the forces of order were doing), sure, many were probably neutral, but that doesn't mean that a sizeable population wasn't also in full support of the revolution. In fact, if it wasn't for actual supporters, like the rail-road unions who sabotaged the white army, then it's pretty much very likely than the bolsheviks would have lost the civil war. I guess you could also say it was the black army in ukraine who helped decisively, but that's a whole other debate.

finally it's very doubtful that most workers had actually been "loyalist". They may have had loyalist ideas, but they were not loyalists, because they didn't oppose the revolution. Otherwise it would have failed.

KekeK. So who exactly is your socialist utopia for?

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He also said they couldn't rebel until they became conscious and that they couldn't become conscious until they rebelled (or something like that, it's been awhile since I read the book).

Skilled labor can pay quite well, at least compared to a lot of call center jobs and other low-skill white collar stuff.

read any book on actual revolution please. bolsheviks only came to rise because they supported workers factory initiatives and supporting giving power to the soviets which formed a parallel governance at the time.

The working class has not been "brainwashed." It just has no time to read. We demand that they read books and learn theory, while the liberals just spout stupid slogans that can be digested during the commute to work.

Simplicity and directness is necessary to reach busy people. Cut all the fat–all the philosophy and all the idpol. Sell this shit like "Common Sense." Own where you live. Own where you work. Follow the money. You work and have nothing to show for it.

This.

This.

Among younger audiences, I usually rely on asking how much time they spend commuting to work, wages and working conditions; the cherry top is usually asking them is they like to have a boss and if they even need it.

Because the left has shown no interest in the national proletariat.
They're more interested in helping pic related.

I don't know. Great question, OP.

This is true, but not because of ethnicity because liberals despise the working class. The Mexican immigrants are only filling a vacuum left by neoliberal capitalism, which makes them potentially valuable.

Exactly.

Because the mainstream left abandoned the white proletariat.

Dirt poor factory workers are tired of college educated pink-haired black chicks screaming at them about their "privilege".

Checked, but I don't think most white proles have even experienced those people before. If anything they are similarly spooked by the same indoctrinated boogeyman mentality, only with a different scapegoat.

The right wing has always whined endlessly about how the ebul liberals are taking over colleges. Now that they're correct by a stroke of sheer luck, people are still reluctant to believe them.

This explains worker hate for left.

The Left abandoned their own people, they view working class whites as worthless, uneducated, stupid.
They uphold anyone who isnt white, they help capitalism by supporting mass immigration.
Then they have the arrogance to look down on them and say we are doing this for your own good, you are too stupid and dont know any better I MEAN MY GOD ITS THE CURRENT YEAR.
Being demographically replaced, having their jobs taken away, mocked by the leftist media.

But!

Dont just blame the left.

Did you forgot the GOP was run by neocons for the past decades, neocons who also support mass immigration,outsourcing. blind loyalty to israel and never ending wars.

This is an uprising of the white working class against the elite in general.

The neocons weren't conservatives, they knew leftists weren't going to support Israel so they exploited the GOP.
This is why you see neocons saying they are going to vote Hillary, neocons are an Israeli fifth column.

Ah yes this reminds me of the famous quote for The Communist Manifesto, "Let the ruling class tremble at a communistic revolution. The working class has nothing to lose but its chains. Non-white workers of the world unite!"

This. It's evident the left is to blame for the unattractiveness of the left itself. Die CIS scum!

Of all the goofy shit in this retarded diatribe, the notion of a "leftist media" is what I find most amusing.

Thing is, the liberals openly admit that they dislike the white working class, because they dislike the working class in general and whites do not fall into their imaginary hierarchy of pity. Liberals are not the left and not merely because they aren't "true" leftists. They are for markets and private property by definition.

They are "the left" because they are only left wing by American standards. The "actual" left was formally persecuted for its beliefs, so now it does not bother. In reality, American politics are some of the farthest right in the world; the unpopularity of neo-Nazism is simply because fascism is largely a European phenomenon.

Neocons have not abandoned whites as much as they have pretended to be their advocates, much as liberals have pretended to care about minorities and the disabled. They like Israel so much because the European Jews are the superior whites among the evil browns that don't count as human when they get unlawfully killed.

Im just giving you the reason why working class whites dont support you from their point of view the left wants to destroy them and everything traditional to replace it with never ending "progress" that has no end game.

And the media is leftist, it is a corporate left, but it is leftist.
Litttrly the only way the alt right grew is through the internet because the gatekeepers think we are ebil nazis nyeh xD!

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I knew left/right distinction is shitty and misleading, but I never knew the situation was THAT bad.

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Toppest of all kek

They're planning to become the 1%.

lack of Class Con + 100 years of anti-communist propaganda + the 'Murican dream =

nice meme. they're not stupid because of their tastes; their tastes are a reflection of their stupidity.

taste reflects intellect, intellect reflects culture. will you deny that a culture that eagerly consumes media like spectator sports, "r&b" music, social media, superhero films, and television sitcoms – one that develops personal and emotional attachment to those things – is perhaps not particularly committed to intellectual and critical thought?

if so, please demonstrate how people are actually very intelligent and thoughtful. show me that i'm wrong to think them stupid. it might actually make me feel optimistic about the future.

(best post)
This, though one thing that's hurt us most is that most of these measures (offshoring, immigration) targeted union-dominated sectors of the economy with laser precision, and new sectors were kept squeaky clean of unionization as they arose. Perhaps the most dangerous part right now is that the one and only significant organized political faction openly against the laissez faire trade and mass economic immigration of neoliberalism, and the transnational empire building (like US military/CIA meddling and EU expansion into the 3rd world) of neoconservatism is the radical right.

The combination of the mainstream left/right trying to destroy the labor market, and the radical left attempting to "pack" the electorate with migrants (while of course doing jack and shit for the overwhelming majority of 3rd-worlders that can never leave), hounds the working class into the waiting arms of fascism.

I don't think I'd call them genuinely leftist, but it's true they brand themselves that way, to use accusations of rightism as their shield against criticism by their audience and subjects.

Blue-collar workers have no use for lefty ideology. They have to work to survive and being told that they're taken advantage of is not going to put food on the table. Until they are financially stable enough to survive a strike, they'd rather not think about it.

Stop samefagging.

And the reason why the the labor movement collapsed in the first world has more to do than with immigration.

The working class was obliterated in Britain during Thachers reign, the 1980's saw the slow de-industrialization of major European economies such as Italy and France, while the rust belt was created in the US through Reagan's policies. The labor movement was annihilated through a combination of state and private interests to further the profits of multinationals who could not tolerate high paying labor. Migration came later when European birth rates started falling and un-specialized low payed labor had to be imported.

Also no one here is favor of unrestricted immigration you ad hominem slinging retard.

~5% of the US population is in manufacturing, and less than 40% of these workers are employed in factories, with an overall 9% consisting of blue collar workers. As the US has turned to more jobs in the service sector, those who have stayed in manufacturing have been disproportionately conservative, Christian and anti-intellectual. That isn't to say that they aren't a victim of prevailing ideologies, but they are far from the easiest allies to obtain.

Bleh, I missed the telltale Holla Forumslack Israel-baiting in that last post.

Anyway, except for certain jobs (natural resource extraction, some [but NOT ALL] service jobs) immigration and offshoring are mostly interchangeable. As my graphs showed, the means of decline were already well underway by the '80s, with the destruction of the old trade tariff regime, immigrant quotas, and progressive taxation. This infamous productivity/compensation graph shows labor being decisively shattered around 1973, by the time Reagan took office, there was nothing left to do but mop up the survivors and consolidate the oligarchy's winnings.

And I don't think anyone would call the deposed exile refugee flotilla that is stuff like Holla Forums or the anti-Atheism+ community a "significant organized political faction", by "radical left", I was obviously referring to the creatures with an iron grip on the overwhelming majority of NGOs, academia, major websites, charities, and "communist"/"socialist"/"anarchist"/etc parties.

That is an incredibly basic view of blue collar work today. If you add the figures on this page:
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_largest_employers_in_the_United_States

For farming, durable & nondurable manufacturing, construction, transportation & warehousing, repair & maintenance, mining & logging, utilities, waste management & remediation services, and postal workers, you end up with 36.5M jobs out of the total 145M, or 25.6%. This doesn't even even touch on the fact that many service-sector jobs were once as heavily unionized as blue collar work.

And thinking that more automation will magically bypass Jevons' Paradox to become anything more than a productivity-enhancer for the human labor that will always be required by limitless consumer demand until our species goes extinct is pretty silly