This particular reading fascinates me. I took a course on revolutions during Fall quarter and all of them had to do with huge masses of people against the top minority. We spoke a ton on Communism and Marxist ideals and such. One of these Communist revolutionaries was Rosa Luxemburg, a German Communist who spent her life trying to instill a Communist regime. The thing that really gravitated her towards Communism is the idea that such a revolution has the capacity to be spontaneous, something not really seen in other revolutions. They usually need some sort of organization and a leader, but in Luxemburg's eyes, the working class can just all of a sudden decide to stop working, pick up their pitchforks, and go and kill people.
But the thing is, there was never a successful Communist revolution in Germany. There was a spontaneous revolution, but it ended in Luxemburg's imprisonment and eventual death.
One could argue that such a revolution happened in Soviet Russia, but even then, you had people like Lenin and Trotsky leading the Red's against the White's. The idea of a true spontaneous revolution was seeming less and less likely.
And then I read these pieces by Scott and Kelly. First, let us talk about Scott. His use of peasants can definitely be molded to something more applicable to us. For example, well, us! We are the peasants! In the beginning, he says that peasants are in an "ironic position of having to power a ruling group those plans...are very much at odds with the goals for which peasants had imagined they were fighting." It's like Omar said in discussion yesterday: "we are participating in our own domination." The fact that we are going along with hegemonic ideals increases the hegemonic power that is placed against us! The fact that we accept all ideals in favor of avoiding potential conflict makes us work towards our own demise.
However, here, Scott proposes a new method that still secures our safety by avoiding this potential conflict, but also creates grounds for fighting hegemonic power: the idea of "everyday forms of resistance", this so called feet dragging of work. This is performed on a small scale, but the thing is, there is multiple scales. Also, just as Luxemburg would have loved to see, Scott's idea of everyday resistance is able to be so spontaneous because it is on such a small scale, exclusive to a small amount of people with a common interest. I think Luxemburg's vision was too crazy, thinking that millions of people in the workplace would have just decided to spontaneously walk out of their work and start a revolution. Something much more practical and understandable is this idea of everyday resistance.
Kelly's narrative brings to light this idea. Working in a McDonald's, he and his fellow workers did everything that management probably would not want them to do. What one may call laziness is what he calls resistance. However, though I understand his ideas and platform, I would like to read more into his story; I am not fully convinced. Though, some of his points do stand out. The fact that they unbutton their uniforms, wear their hats to the side, and make more food for themselves in itself is counter-hegemonic. They are saying that they won't accept these shitty wages and then continue to be subjugated to bad workplace practices. If they were gonna get low pay, they were gonna work the way they wanted to, not they way no manager or cooperation wanted them to.
Lastly, we have Adolph Reed Jr., who does not believe Scott and Kelly. He claims that this everyday resistance does not prompt change and is like carbon to humans. Bitch, okay, what. Without Carbon, there is no humans. So, by this logic, without everyday resistance there is no mass movement uprisings. He really tries to undermine everyday resistance, but doesn't realize that he just played himself. Congratulations: you played yourself.
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