To: Jim Heartfield
I inadvertently deleted your response to a post of mine. You started the above thread with it, I believe.
I thought to add to my mention of the problem for class unity that racism
is that the racism of white workers is, from our perspective, irrational. It is against their class self-interest. Irrationality is rife, I know. But what I am getting at is an example of why I propose we consider Engels wellknown philosophical aphorism
"Being determines consciousness" as modified. Being determines consciousness discontinuously. I'm sure if it is a valid refinement, Engels was aware of it.But the idea is that direct appeal to the working class self-interests (not just to not be racist, but on a whole range of issues) of workers, (a classic party rationale and test for propaganda and for feeling on solid materialist grounds), is in a discontinuous phase. There is a time lag a consciousness warp. Rational, economic material self-interest, practical reason are temporarily out of order for some workers.
Perhaps there is a hidden rationality.
I cannot answer this problem. But I wonder, in all of the philosophy on your website of
"kinship" links among "fancy" Marxists and fellow travellers, is there a method for breaking through the irrationality, since
the fancies are always insisting being does not onesidedly and vulgarly determine consciousness. This is the best role I can think of for the post-modernists structuralists, Frankfurterists, semioticians etc.
Charles