I had written: "It is really plausible that, given the choice between (a) making $30,000 while Blacks also make $30,000, or (b) making $20,000 while Blacks make $10,000, the latter is in the interests (real and/or perceived) of white workers?"
Mat: "But what if that is not the choice, but rather the choice is between (a) whites making 10k while Blacks also make 10k, or (b) whites make 12k while blacks make 8k? (or something like that?)"
Well, IF it is a zero-sum game, then one group benefits absolutely at the expense of the other. But that's the big if. In subsequent posts, you clarify that you don't believe in the zero-sum game (wages fund, fixed pie, or whatever) doctrine, but it seems to me that your two choices here presuppose it.
Is the underlying issue here that you don't think it is politically feasible for both white and Black working people to improve their conditions of life and labor, so that instead you advocate redistributive policies?
Mat: "Also, relative wages do matter--absolutely--if you get what i mean. it's about power relations and hierarchy, it involves capitalist control over workers but also power relations within the working class."
Well, no, I don't really get what you mean. But of course relative wages matter, as do racism and discrimination. To question the claim that white workers benefit from racial discrimination in absolute terms is not make racism and discrimination any less repugnant.
Mat: "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."
My point does not reduce to the notion that white workers don't gain absolutely because something better is possible. Rather, the issue is whether racism and disrimination HINDER, not only the realization of a new human society, but also the fight for improvements in people's lives, in the meantime, within the present system. If so, then both white working people and Blacks lose due to racism and discrimination, though not to the same extent.
Mat: "for example, if Blacks sufffer higher unemployment rates due to discrimination, and whites therefore have a lower chance of being unemployed ...."
I do not think the "therefore" follows. You're thinking in static (or zero-sum) terms. What about the possibility that discrimination and racism hinder the coalescence of white working people with Blacks, that they get fewer concessions from the ruling class (if not the shit kicked out of them, as has been happening for 2 decades) such as job creation, and that whites therefore have a higher chance of being unemployed, not relative to Blacks, but relative to what would be the case were there less discrimination and racism?
Mat: "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."
I'm glad we agree, but it is not I who has framed the issue in this way. This is the way the issue has been framed for decades.
Mat: "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"?"
No, my position is not that if something better is imaginable, then it is impossible that whites gain absolutely. This is a perfectly plausible hypothesis, and I'm happy to entertain it. There are lots of things that I would consider to be evidence that supports it; for instance, inverse relationships between the movements in the two groups' wages, unemployment rates, poverty rates, and so forth. But I haven't seen such evidence (I couldn't find any evidence, nor even any claim that whites gain absolutely, in _Persistent Inequalities_).
There *is* overwhelming evidence of *discrimination* and labor market *segmentation*, but by itself such evidence proves only that Blacks suffer, not that whites benefit. A zero-sum postulate is needed to move from evidence of discrimination to the conclusion that white workers gain absolutely.
Andrew ("Drewk") Kliman Home: Dept. of Social Sciences 60 W. 76th St., #4E Pace University New York, NY 10023 Pleasantville, NY 10570 (914) 773-3951 Andrew_Kliman at msn.com
"... the *practice* of philosophy is itself *theoretical.* It is the *critique* that measures the individual existence by the essence, the particular reality by the Idea." -- K.M.