Category: Class (Page 8 of 24)

Leftists hate means-testing. If we’ve learned nothing else from listening to leftists talk about policy in the last 5 or 6 years, it’s that. They heap scorn upon it. They claim to avoid it when they work on their own advocacy and mutual aid projects. And they criticize politicians who put it into programs, especially liberal Democrats.

But I think the term ‘means-testing’ carries a lot of ambiguity. Leftists, in particular, tend to use the term interchangeably with ‘paperwork.’ That is to say, they seem to think applying a means test amounts to requiring people to submit (often extensive) paperwork proving they have a low income and thereby ‘deserve’ support.

Let’s talk about that.

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In an earlier post, I discussed the distinction between mutual aid and charity. Among other things, I pointed to this distinction as a false dichotomy. In truth, mutual aid and charity operate more as end points along a spectrum. Non-profits even sometimes engage in mutual aid, while mutual aid orgs sometimes do charity. I want to expand on all that in this post by bringing in the notion of prefigurative politics.

But, more than anything, I want to bring in the issue of how people set up a mutual aid org from the beginning. So, as a starting question, why do mutual aid orgs form? What do they want to accomplish? What do they look like?

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Over the course of May and June of this year, I attended a set of training sessions called Organizing for Power. The Rosa Luxemburg Foundation does the trainings, with Jane McAlevey serving as the lead trainer.

Overall, it’s a good training in certain practical matters of organizing. I’d recommend it. For the most part, they base the training on McAlevey’s popular books about union organizing. I’ve written about those books several times in the past, including a post on key lessons and a post on some problems and issues with McAlevey’s notion of an ‘organic leader.’

Does the course impart any key new lessons a person can’t gain by reading McAlevey’s books? Not really. But they structure the training around reinforcing lessons and practicing them. And not to mention helping people work through their ‘bias’ in favor of activists. Many of the fellow students organize within their own unions and social orgs. These things alone make the training worthwhile.

For readers looking to put theory into practice, I’d say do the training! I think the training could serve as a starting point to figuring out how to apply lessons to your own workplace or org. But I’d recommend balancing alongside astute critiques of the model.

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I subscribe to a few leftist magazines. One of them – Catalyst – has published a few contributions to a debate over the status of Lean production. Not long ago, I read the most recent article in that debate: one by the title ‘The Politics of Lean Production‘ by Matt Vidal.

The debate itself concerns both the theory and economics of Lean. Is Lean a bad thing by its very nature? Or, on the other hand, do we have ways we can redirect it for the benefit of the left? Vidal reads his opponents as arguing for the former, while he argues for the latter. And while Vidal doesn’t really want to go there, no less than Lenin himself once tried to re-capture something a bit like Lean.

Let’s take a look at this debate.

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