On
Workers' Culture
The following article is an extract from an unsigned
editorial in the newspaper Correspondence,
December 12 1953. It may have been written by C.L.R. James, who
had written an extensive essay on a related theme several weeks
earlier. It should be noted that despite the use of the masculine
pronoun throughout the article, the
Correspondence group were quite sensitive to
questions of gender. Thanks to Scott McLemee for providing this
material.
Picket lines, wages and hours, union bureaucrats and even the
union meetings do not command the lively interest of the workers that
they held in the past. Yet from the stories that we get every day
from the shops, we can see a new form of struggle emerging. It never
seems to be carried to its complete end, yet its existence is
continuous. The real essence of this struggle and its ultimate goal
is: a better life, a new society, the emergence of the individual as
a human being. Each scrap with the boss, each manifestation of
discontent with things as they are, all tend to smash down the old
and help the new to emerge. This struggle is not the old one. This is
the struggle to establish here and now a new culture, a workers
culture.
Culture for the American workers does not necessarily mean
attending lectures, visiting museums, reading or writing books. For
him it is a way of life, his relations with his fellow humans on the
job, his relations with his neighbors, the kind of house he lives in,
what he does in his spare time, the movies he sees, the things he
likes or dislikes, this is his culture.
It is this that we must be extremely sensitive to. We must watch
with an eagle eye every change or indication of the things that these
changes reflect. It is these things that must fill our consciousness
and the pages of the paper.
From earliest time man has chosen various forms to express
his feelings, the ideas that motivate his life and express his
desires. The cave man scratched these things on his cave wall with
stone
implements; later, others expressed themselves in their
architecture. The middle ages found feudal lords gathering around
themselves artisans, craftsmen, and artists to give expression to
their idea of culture. Today things are different. If we fail to
recognize that difference then it will be impossible to give
expression to it.
We know the vital force of our society to be the working class. We
must observe the forms that this class uses in expressing itself. In
the shop it may be marked by an aggressive attitude toward the boss,
by the attitude of the worker toward his machine, the men around him.
His activities outside the shop are a vital part of the same. This is
the expression of the things he feels, his own attempt to build for
himself and his family the kind of life he wants to lead. It is those
things that constitute his culture. The things he does to his home in
the way of decoration and conveniences, his car, TV, his friends,
amusements, sports, the places he goes, and the things he does are
all expression of what he want out of life.
No one compels him to do any of these things as a boss in the shop
compels him to bend over his machine. These things are his free
expression of his ideas and desires as much as if he were to sit down
and write about them, a thing he rarely does. We must see it, put it
in the paper. It is his culture.
Martin Glaberman Archive
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