No, the headline is not my best impersonation of Father Dougal but a quote from Stuart of From Despair To Where blogging fame, as he lays into my beloved SPGB.
No worries, as no doubt we will have a good rant and argument over a couple of beers when we both attend Centrism next month, and it has to be said that his last two posts at From Despair To Where have been real crackers. He gets to the heart of matter when it comes to blogging, and how it is that mixture of personal passion and the 'Will I or won't blog today' type dilemma; and Stuart also does a bang up review of 'Japan in the Passing Lane: An Insider's Account of Life in a Japanese Auto Factory' by Satoshi Kamata.
Reading Stuart's review of Kamata's book it reminded me of Ben Hamper's Rivethead. Maybe the broad historical insight is not as acute in the latter book, but there was no mistaking the divide and rule, 'them and us' mentality that permeated his experiences of working on an assembly line in an automobile factory in Flint, Michigan that finds an echo in Kamata's words.
Reading:
"As Kamata points out, the wage and the division of labour, both within the factory and in society at large, helps to create resentments among workers. This resentment is not just between those who direct and manage work (such as lower and higher foremen, most of whom are union men) and those who do the work. Seasonal, temporary workers, for example, are despised among the regular workers as "migrants" who get paid more. Those seasonal workers, in turn, despise the regulars because they can't understand how anyone with any sense or dignity could take working there for so long. And why do they?"
. . . reminded me of every warehouse I have ever worked in.
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