class consciousness

Charles Brown charlesb at CNCL.ci.detroit.mi.us
Sun May 10 12:15:01 PDT 1998


Thanks for this comment.

I understand your point that there are goals which racism does serve for white workers, and so in that sense racism is a rational means to those goals or ends.

What I am getting at is that in the Marxist conception, the most important goal of class unity and victory against the bourgeoisie is thwarted by racism. Therefore the most important end is not obtained , blocked by racism. Thus, racism is irrational.

The highest class self-interest is thwarted by racism.

C.B.


>>> Mathew Forstater <forstate at levy.org> 05/10 1:44 PM >>>
This is far from an agreed upon point among marxist and marx-inspired labor economists and historians. There is a strong argument, rooted in the analysis of intra-class competition, that white workers have an objective material interest in racism. The Michael Reich argument that white workers are hurt by racism defined "hurt" as declining income shares relative to capitalists. But if white workers have other goals--e.g., preserving privileged position within the working class, staying out of the reserve army, relatively better jobs, etc.--than it is not at all clear that white workers are "hurt." This is not to say that bargaining power would not be increased by solidarity, etc. See the work of Herbert Hill in labor history; Darity, Rhonda Williams, Botwinick, Patrick Mason in labor econ.

Mat Forstater

On Sat, 9 May 1998, Charles Brown wrote:


> 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



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