A Patron of Economic Update asks: "I would appreciate hearing your thoughts about how this Canadian Truckers movement aligns with the international workers' ...
I get that, and I've read a little, but I'm also in a place where I feel like all executive function should be placed towards not being here. So bits and pieces here and there until that someday, sorry.
Are these people even working class? I saw this argument with groups like the early anti-lockdown protestors in spring/summer 2020, and how people were like "Oh, but you can't laugh and mock them, they're the working class who need to earn money to afford to survive! If anything you should support their struggle!" but it turned out that basically all of them were your typical fucking jet ski salesman or pool maintenance company owner or middle-manager or cop or something who wanted people to go back to work making money and/or treats for them. And like, sure, working class people obviously did struggle with affording things, but I think most realized that going back to work meant that they were going to expose themselves and potentially their friends and families to a relatively deadly pathogen that was poorly understood at the time, with very few resources like masks to counter, and so weren't really on board with the protests themselves even if they might have broadly sympathised with the idea that the economy slowing down was a bad thing for their standards of living. Similar thing with January 6th.
Hell, I feel like most working class people wouldn't be able to afford to go to a fucking convoy to hoot and holler about something like mask and vaccine mandates, which require very little self-sacrifice and makes sure that you don't get seriously sick and have to take time off work that you can't afford. And I feel like most of the working class is either completely alienated from the political process and just trying to keep their heads above water in a steadily warming, frothing ocean, or they would support measures to keep themselves safe.
Basically, I think there needs to be a recognition that the lumpen and the petit bourgeois also exist. If your world is literally divided between exactly two classes, one of which makes up the vast majority of people and the other which sits in their ivory towers and on their superyachts, then if you see a large collection of people then it's logical to be like "Oh, these people must be working class because there's a lot of them and they don't look especially rich, so we must support them even if they're misguided." But if you know that there these sections of society in the middle, and you know that it's quite difficult to get a very large group of genuine working class people together in one place because they're on the brink of homelessness and can't afford to go traipsing around in giant SUVs, ordering treats from frightened stores as they hoot and clap like seals, then you instantly become very skeptical of any largeish group of people who are all espousing conservative viewpoints. You can safely write them off as coddled manchildren, grabbing and stuffing every treat and luxury into their mouths as they stumble through life like a spoiled child in Willy Wonka's room with the chocolate river.
They're essentially contractors, yes? I've always understood that sort of setup to be a slight of hand "You're now a small business owner! We don't have to give you healthcare anymore :)" This "not working class" is a confusing take proffered around since in my understanding they are engaging in wage-labor and are in the same position they were in (maybe slightly worse!) when they were strictly working-class. Like, are gig workers not working class just because they're technically not employees? People also like dunking on Owner-Operators for their trucks' cost but...it's where they live 151 days out of the year and they only make up 1 in 10 truckers, make median $50k per year, have an average 2008 model truck. Don't know about the specifics of the makeup in this protest though
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Hell, I feel like most working class people wouldn’t be able to afford to go to a fucking convoy to hoot and holler about something like mask and vaccine mandates
Why not? What makes this functionally any different from any other a labor strike?
Sure, what I mean by "functionally different" is lay aside the object of the strike. It feels like some are operating under a "Oh you're striking? That means you can afford to strike. That means that you're not laborers and this isn't a real strike." Which makes it such that there's no such thing as a pure/good strike.
No, owners-operators aren't contractors. They are small business owners or at worst middle class. They own their own capital (truck). They work for multiple people, etc...
50k USD per year net income (so after taxes) is PMC/small business owner easily. Especially in Canada. That's equivalent to a six figure income in Canadian dollars.
It's not a labor strike. The unions are against it. Most workers are against it.
Class is determined by relationship to the means of production, not salary. So we need to establish that owner-operators own those means
Consensus seems to be that truckers' ownership of their own rigs constitute an ownership of the means of production. But given they are combination car, house, tools, what makes them any different than someone who owns a house and car and, say, does AirBNB and Uber+Lyft? Does the latter's ownership of their own capital (car, house) and their working for multiple people mean they're middle class (in current times likely what with affordability, but the question is general)?
I attempted to make clear that I'm not taking a position on the contingent specifics of this protest, rather am asking a general question about how we define these people's class. Looking like I did a bad job :kitty-cri-screm:
AirBNB is just landlordism, so it surely isn't working class.
Uber/Lyft would be non-alienated labour if they dealt directly with clients and didn't have to work on a schedule set by Uber under the threat of being fired while relying on software and organization from a higher authority that cost hundreds of millions to set up. That authority is a sign that the capital that Uber/Lyft has is predominant over the meager capital that a car represents - which they'd likely own anyways.
Now as far as big rigs being capital. I don't think the fact they're being used as house/car is relevant. They have an actual house where they can live in, and another car they use for personal transportation. As far as being tools, yes, that's what capital is. So it neatly does fit the position of capital.
As far as salary, I only mentioned it because you did, I agree it's not particularly relevant.
Okay I see, the crux of my misunderstanding is "predomination." I don't particularly like this soft gradient-cutoff, though. I'd much rather find the hard and fast rule I've been trying to sus out.
Obviously it can't be that "bringing any capital to the job makes you middle class" as (silly example) if you own your clothes (tools) and clothes are required for your job, you would be middle class.
You said one's car in the context of Uber also doesn't meet the middle class threshold because it's a meager node in a dominating system. This would be like the clothes-as-tools example, meager capital.
But I also don't see how the rig can be defined as something that's not also a node in a dominating system, assuming both are discretionary/unscheduled/externally organized.
Then separating that from the rig because it costs 5x more than the car or what have you is a question of degree/gradient, which is given to arbitrary cutoff.
Sure, it's pretty simple to establish that a rig isn't meager capital, while a car is (it's not entirely, either - the car is also capital, it's just that it's a small fraction of the relevant capital and the social relations are still of employment).
You have to ask yourself, what is the constant capital necessary to the job of a trucker? There is the truck, there is the road, and that's it. The load isn't constant capital, because it's perfectly fungible and it's not expended by use. The road is collectively owned, so it can be pushed away, and all that remains is the truck, so an owner operator owns essentially all of the capital necessary for their job.
On the other hand, if you take a ridesharing driver, what is the constant capital? The road, the car, and the ridesharing platform, right? The car itself may be worth 20000$, however not all of it is expended for the ride. Fortunately, we can piece out the depreciation and wear cost per ride, which for Uber with an average distance is around 10km. The cost per km to run a commercial car is around 0.3$/km, of which around 0.13$ is constant capital cost, which is depreciation and maintenance. So we have a car capital cost per ride of 2$ on average. That's on aggregate Uber-round 2 billion dollars of capital expended per year, so we could say in aggregate perhaps 10 billion dollars total. By comparison, Uber cost around 28 billion dollars in investment to build, so certainly there is simply a lot more capital in the ridesharing platform than the actual car.
This reflects the observed social dynamics, of ridesharing providing slightly more autonomy than the average job, but on the balance being essentially the same - in a similar way the car an Uber driver operates is around 1/4 of the total capital their job requires, so they are essentially working class still.
In this case, simply comparing the capital the worker owns to the total capital for their job is a pretty good metric to find which one dominates. Unsurprisingly, if one did actually have the lion's share of the capital, they wouldn't have to let themselves be dominated by a single other entity.
50k USD is only 63k Canadian, lol. A calculator I found online says that'd be ~$88k CAD before tax (in Ontario), which is a pretty normal working class salary if you're in the Toronto area.
To be clear, you're right about it not being left-wing. From what I've seen, most of the "truckers" are just dudes in F-150s. The vaccination rate among Canadian truckers is about the same as the general population (just over 80% IIRC), and a relative who's actually a trucker hates these people.
88k might be a normal working class salary in Toronto, yeah, but it's not really a normal working class salary canadawide. That's more than twice the median employment income in Canada according to the latest census. It's only that much in Toronto because real estate is so hideously expensive. It's also not including the 200 000$ in capital they're building up which isn't included in net income. It's much more in line with the income of a small business owner than with that of a working person across the country.
As far as the rest I definitely agree, so many truckers hate them and their union is against it too.
I think a lot of the people there aren't actually truckers. They're the standard issue F-150 owning business owners who are "in solidarity" or whatever, like in the US. But I haven't actually read anything about the "protest" to confirm that.
Because the protest doesn't represent the trucking industry, it represents the covid deniers.
Around 10% of truckers are unvaxed. Around 10% of Canada is unvaxed. It's more a representation of 10% of Canadians generally than it is 10% of truckers.
No trucking union supports it. Punjabi truckers make up >20% of truckers but are very under-represented in the convoy.
All these people who can afford to park their truck and honk all day are owner-operators because otherwise they wouldn't be able to bring trucks to do nothing useful for that long.
So they also don't represent the truckers who are shit on the most, the ones who don't own their trucks and have the worst conditions.
No one is asking for better trucking conditions in this convoy, even though Canada already had a shortage of truckers because the job itself sucks (driving a long time far from home).
This is a far right protest that's using truckers as a mascot, not a truckers protest.
If there were a lot of anti-vax truckers then they could just stop working and hit supply chains hard, instead of being conspicuously loud and obnoxious only.
I got called a "radlib" yesterday for not supporting the truckers.
:data-laughing:
Feels like sometimes people just see a group doing shit and go "hey! they're working class so we gotta support them, no matter what they're doing!"
Leftism is when you support a group of petite bourgeois small business owners upset that the government isn't doing enough fascism.
I just told the dude "ok Kautsky." There was no comeback to that.
Because no one knows wtf you're talking about
People who have read State and Revolution should? It was also on an explicitly commie page, so I'd have expected people to get it.
I don't know about you,, but I came here chasing unfulfilling parasocial interactions, not as a big reader.
Don’t be a lib. Read theory.
I get that, and I've read a little, but I'm also in a place where I feel like all executive function should be placed towards not being here. So bits and pieces here and there until that someday, sorry.
Kautsky is kind of a deep(ish) cut and requires learning about the politics leading up to the Russian revolution, so you’re right about that lol
Then again, so is everyone else ribbing you to read Lenin.
:thinkin-lenin: hmm
Are these people even working class? I saw this argument with groups like the early anti-lockdown protestors in spring/summer 2020, and how people were like "Oh, but you can't laugh and mock them, they're the working class who need to earn money to afford to survive! If anything you should support their struggle!" but it turned out that basically all of them were your typical fucking jet ski salesman or pool maintenance company owner or middle-manager or cop or something who wanted people to go back to work making money and/or treats for them. And like, sure, working class people obviously did struggle with affording things, but I think most realized that going back to work meant that they were going to expose themselves and potentially their friends and families to a relatively deadly pathogen that was poorly understood at the time, with very few resources like masks to counter, and so weren't really on board with the protests themselves even if they might have broadly sympathised with the idea that the economy slowing down was a bad thing for their standards of living. Similar thing with January 6th.
Hell, I feel like most working class people wouldn't be able to afford to go to a fucking convoy to hoot and holler about something like mask and vaccine mandates, which require very little self-sacrifice and makes sure that you don't get seriously sick and have to take time off work that you can't afford. And I feel like most of the working class is either completely alienated from the political process and just trying to keep their heads above water in a steadily warming, frothing ocean, or they would support measures to keep themselves safe.
Basically, I think there needs to be a recognition that the lumpen and the petit bourgeois also exist. If your world is literally divided between exactly two classes, one of which makes up the vast majority of people and the other which sits in their ivory towers and on their superyachts, then if you see a large collection of people then it's logical to be like "Oh, these people must be working class because there's a lot of them and they don't look especially rich, so we must support them even if they're misguided." But if you know that there these sections of society in the middle, and you know that it's quite difficult to get a very large group of genuine working class people together in one place because they're on the brink of homelessness and can't afford to go traipsing around in giant SUVs, ordering treats from frightened stores as they hoot and clap like seals, then you instantly become very skeptical of any largeish group of people who are all espousing conservative viewpoints. You can safely write them off as coddled manchildren, grabbing and stuffing every treat and luxury into their mouths as they stumble through life like a spoiled child in Willy Wonka's room with the chocolate river.
Largely, I don't think so.
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Wait was r/CTH seriously still around at the start of the pandemic? Has COVID warped my sense of time this much?
Fun fact. 2020 was now two years ago, and the Floyd Riots were 1.5 years ago :graeber:
Fuck
And the subreddit existed for both the start of Covid and the riots
oh my god the world is crumbling
Yes and yes :covid-cool:
They're essentially contractors, yes? I've always understood that sort of setup to be a slight of hand "You're now a small business owner! We don't have to give you healthcare anymore :)" This "not working class" is a confusing take proffered around since in my understanding they are engaging in wage-labor and are in the same position they were in (maybe slightly worse!) when they were strictly working-class. Like, are gig workers not working class just because they're technically not employees? People also like dunking on Owner-Operators for their trucks' cost but...it's where they live 151 days out of the year and they only make up 1 in 10 truckers, make median $50k per year, have an average 2008 model truck. Don't know about the specifics of the makeup in this protest though
edit:
Why not? What makes this functionally any different from
any othera labor strike?they are not protesting for better labor conditions though, just for less concern over thousands of people dying everyday
that seems pertinent to a discussion of whether it is a labor strike IMO
Sure, what I mean by "functionally different" is lay aside the object of the strike. It feels like some are operating under a "Oh you're striking? That means you can afford to strike. That means that you're not laborers and this isn't a real strike." Which makes it such that there's no such thing as a pure/good strike.
Obviously it's not a labor strike
No, owners-operators aren't contractors. They are small business owners or at worst middle class. They own their own capital (truck). They work for multiple people, etc...
50k USD per year net income (so after taxes) is PMC/small business owner easily. Especially in Canada. That's equivalent to a six figure income in Canadian dollars.
It's not a labor strike. The unions are against it. Most workers are against it.
Okay my question here is
I attempted to make clear that I'm not taking a position on the contingent specifics of this protest, rather am asking a general question about how we define these people's class. Looking like I did a bad job :kitty-cri-screm:
AirBNB is just landlordism, so it surely isn't working class.
Uber/Lyft would be non-alienated labour if they dealt directly with clients and didn't have to work on a schedule set by Uber under the threat of being fired while relying on software and organization from a higher authority that cost hundreds of millions to set up. That authority is a sign that the capital that Uber/Lyft has is predominant over the meager capital that a car represents - which they'd likely own anyways.
Now as far as big rigs being capital. I don't think the fact they're being used as house/car is relevant. They have an actual house where they can live in, and another car they use for personal transportation. As far as being tools, yes, that's what capital is. So it neatly does fit the position of capital.
As far as salary, I only mentioned it because you did, I agree it's not particularly relevant.
Oh my god I love this site, you’re all hella smart.
Okay I see, the crux of my misunderstanding is "predomination." I don't particularly like this soft gradient-cutoff, though. I'd much rather find the hard and fast rule I've been trying to sus out.
Sure, it's pretty simple to establish that a rig isn't meager capital, while a car is (it's not entirely, either - the car is also capital, it's just that it's a small fraction of the relevant capital and the social relations are still of employment).
You have to ask yourself, what is the constant capital necessary to the job of a trucker? There is the truck, there is the road, and that's it. The load isn't constant capital, because it's perfectly fungible and it's not expended by use. The road is collectively owned, so it can be pushed away, and all that remains is the truck, so an owner operator owns essentially all of the capital necessary for their job.
On the other hand, if you take a ridesharing driver, what is the constant capital? The road, the car, and the ridesharing platform, right? The car itself may be worth 20000$, however not all of it is expended for the ride. Fortunately, we can piece out the depreciation and wear cost per ride, which for Uber with an average distance is around 10km. The cost per km to run a commercial car is around 0.3$/km, of which around 0.13$ is constant capital cost, which is depreciation and maintenance. So we have a car capital cost per ride of 2$ on average. That's on aggregate Uber-round 2 billion dollars of capital expended per year, so we could say in aggregate perhaps 10 billion dollars total. By comparison, Uber cost around 28 billion dollars in investment to build, so certainly there is simply a lot more capital in the ridesharing platform than the actual car.
This reflects the observed social dynamics, of ridesharing providing slightly more autonomy than the average job, but on the balance being essentially the same - in a similar way the car an Uber driver operates is around 1/4 of the total capital their job requires, so they are essentially working class still.
In this case, simply comparing the capital the worker owns to the total capital for their job is a pretty good metric to find which one dominates. Unsurprisingly, if one did actually have the lion's share of the capital, they wouldn't have to let themselves be dominated by a single other entity.
50k USD is only 63k Canadian, lol. A calculator I found online says that'd be ~$88k CAD before tax (in Ontario), which is a pretty normal working class salary if you're in the Toronto area.
To be clear, you're right about it not being left-wing. From what I've seen, most of the "truckers" are just dudes in F-150s. The vaccination rate among Canadian truckers is about the same as the general population (just over 80% IIRC), and a relative who's actually a trucker hates these people.
88k might be a normal working class salary in Toronto, yeah, but it's not really a normal working class salary canadawide. That's more than twice the median employment income in Canada according to the latest census. It's only that much in Toronto because real estate is so hideously expensive. It's also not including the 200 000$ in capital they're building up which isn't included in net income. It's much more in line with the income of a small business owner than with that of a working person across the country.
As far as the rest I definitely agree, so many truckers hate them and their union is against it too.
I think a lot of the people there aren't actually truckers. They're the standard issue F-150 owning business owners who are "in solidarity" or whatever, like in the US. But I haven't actually read anything about the "protest" to confirm that.
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I don't know enough about the Canadian trucking industry to comment here.
Because the protest doesn't represent the trucking industry, it represents the covid deniers.
Around 10% of truckers are unvaxed. Around 10% of Canada is unvaxed. It's more a representation of 10% of Canadians generally than it is 10% of truckers.
No trucking union supports it. Punjabi truckers make up >20% of truckers but are very under-represented in the convoy.
All these people who can afford to park their truck and honk all day are owner-operators because otherwise they wouldn't be able to bring trucks to do nothing useful for that long.
So they also don't represent the truckers who are shit on the most, the ones who don't own their trucks and have the worst conditions.
No one is asking for better trucking conditions in this convoy, even though Canada already had a shortage of truckers because the job itself sucks (driving a long time far from home).
This is a far right protest that's using truckers as a mascot, not a truckers protest.
If there were a lot of anti-vax truckers then they could just stop working and hit supply chains hard, instead of being conspicuously loud and obnoxious only.
Bingo
I know enough about astroturfed chud shit to be moderately certain
You got called a radlib for that take... here?
No, no, not here.