> Being a spot welder in the south apparently did not give
> Louis the glasses
> (nor the theoretical ground) he needed to see what was happening in Flint
> where, on the one hand, the UAW was busy helping with the layoff of its
> members, but on the other hand, public sector workers united with
> industrial workers to fight the cutbacks that were taking place in welfare
> and unemployment benefits. . . .
I have no idea what M. Moore was doing at the time, but it isn't quite right I think to describe the 1970 working class as completely quiescent. It is certainly true that there was little impulse for mass action, but there were quite a lot of militant caucuses around that time. My personal reference point here is auto workers in New Jersey.
I don't know what's happened to them since, but if those people had managed to settle down and prepare for a long haul, rather than expect imminent mobilization (which wasn't in the cards, as Louis says), we would be looking at a different situation now. More of the Teamster-type activity, and much sooner in evidence I think. Going into the workplaces wasn't at all crazy, though it did require a whole lot of patience, among other things.
Unlike Carrol, I wouldn't put the lack of action on race/gender chauvinism. Fact is that workers were not ready to support themselves, let along the 'other.' Given a determination to mobilize as workers, the other barriers have always tended to melt away before the sheer impracticality of chauvnism in a class context. The rising action, so to speak, features the alleviation of intra-class conflict. When things start to run aground for one reason or another, then the in-fighting, what I'd call a form of displaced recrminations, picks up.
MBS