Black unemployment in July 21 Left Business Observer

[Mathew Forstater]

Jim, I agree it would be better if no one was exploited and if everyone had
enough.  I agree that it doesn't have to be the way it in fact is--I don't
believe the pie has to be fixed, or unemployment has to be what it is, etc.
But I find it problematic to argue that it is actually a good thing for
Blacks that racism has resulted in their being disproportionately unemployed
or receiving lower wages, because they are therefore less exploited.  Within
the present capitalist system, people who are unemployed are worse off than
those who are employed, people who get paid less are worse off than those who
get paid more, people who have less benefits or job security are worse off
than those who have more.  It doesn't mean that things couldn't be better for
the employed or those with higher pay, etc., but that doesn't change the fact
that the unemployed and lower paid are objectively materially worse off and
experience greater hardship in their lives.

But if we want to work toward a better society then there are some things I
think are important to recognize.  It is not simply a matter of 'false
consciousness' if there are workers who have an objective material interest
in racism.  If white workers want to climb the wage/employment ladder instead
of smash it, then racism may be helping them, whether they actively
participate in it personally or not.  Don't you think this is an important
thing for organizers to be aware of?  Won't it help effective political
activity to realize this, if it is the case?

By the way, my approach (not really "my" but the approach of Botwinick,
Darity, Mason, Williams, et al, who people on this list don't seem to have
the time or willingness to take a look at) does start with production.  Very
much so. (By the way, Botwinick has been very active in labor organizing and
politics for many years. I believe he is one of the key figures in the US
Labor Party).

Are the LBO list posts archived?  Again, I'd be glad to forward past posts
where I thought I outlined the basis in capitslist production for this story
and/or my reading list to any interested, or those who missed this topic the
first couple times around.

best,

Mat

Jim heartfield wrote:


> In message <35CDC8E2.98991931 at levy.org>, Mathew Forstater
> <forstate at levy.org> writes
> >if we can imagine another socioeconomic system in which everyone is
> >absolutely better off, and that is what we use as our benchmark, then we
> >can never employ the distinction between absolute and relative within
> >the present system.  everything is relative, then.
> >
> >for example, if Blacks sufffer higher unemployment rates due to
> >discrimination, and whites therefore have a  lower chance of being
> >unemployed, then some whites are doing absolutely better than they would
> >be in the absence of discrimination.  of course, according to the way
> >Drewk has framed the issue, everyone would be better off if there were
> >full employment for all.  true enough.  so in that sense we  can never
> >say that someone or group is fairing absolutely better--even if millions
> >of white workers are employed instead of unemployed, have higher instead
> >of lower wages, have better instead of worse jobs and working
> >conditions, have more instead of less job security, all due to
> >discrimination-- unless there is no "better" imaginable.  isn't there a
> >problem here with the way we are using "absolute" and "relative"?
>
> The way I see it, it is wrong to say that white workers gain by
> discrimination against blacks. To take sucha  view is to see things only
> in terms of the distribution of a presumed finite number of jobs and/or
> other social resources. Indeed that is to share the presuppositions of
> so many racialised arguments that 'there is not enough to go round'.
> Starting from the premise of scarcity leads pretty inexorably to
> rationing, and from there to one or other species of sectionalism,
> whether based on nationality, race, gender or generational cohort.
>
> Methodolgically it strikes me as an error to take distribution on the
> market (including the labour market) as the starting point. Before there
> is a distribution on the market there is production, and it is in the
> realm of production that the basis for inequality is created.
>
> You can easily enumerate the inequality between black and white workers
> in distributional terms. But that only tends to mask the substantial
> inequality between employers and the rest. So Mat states out with the
> assumption that white workers are better off because they are in a job.
> But what does that mean? That they are wage slaves who dedicate just a
> third of their working lives to creating their own means of subsistence,
> and the rest making a surplus for the class of employers. For this we
> should be grateful?
>
> It might be marginally better to be exploited than unemployed, in the
> same way that it would be better to be taken slave than slaughtered by a
> conquering army. In distributional terms white workers are better of
> than blacks. But in the prior relation of social production the
> underlying inequality is the one where one class works to provide the
> luxury consumption of another. White workers 'gain' only in the minimal
> sense of having the advantage of a life of wage slavery.
> --
> Jim heartfield