On Thu, 28 May 1998, Andrew Kliman wrote:
> I've been following this thread with interest. A few comments:
>
> (1) It seems to me that the relevant dichotomy is between absolute and
> relative gains (from discrimination), not between short- and long-run gains.
> Indeed, the meaning of the short/long distinction isn't at all clear to me,
> and I suspect that, without some implicit equilibrium model undergirding it,
> it may not mean anything.
>
> (2) That white working people gain relatively to Blacks from discrimination
> is tautologically true.
>
> (3) It may seem paradoxical that absolute losses to white working people go
> together with relative gains. Yet these are two sides of the same coin.
> "Divide and conquer" is precisely about privileging some workers relative to
> others in order to pit them against one another and thereby make them all
> lose in absolute terms.
>
> (4) I haven't read all of the literature that Mat Forstater cites, but the
> most obvious facts seem strongly to indicate that Black and working people
> have common (though not "identical," whatever that may mean) interests. For
> one thing, over the past 20-something years, the deterioration of Black
> working people's standard of living has coincided with that of whites'.
> Moreover, the movements of Black and white employment rates, unemployment
> rates, income levels, and poverty rates are all very strongly correlated
> (the simple correlation coefficient from the mid-1970s to the mid-1990s
> being 0.8 or greater for all of these measures).
>
> (5) I think it is also important to distinguish between actual and
> perceived interests. The persistence of racism among white working people
> is undoubtedly due largely to a perception that their interests are opposed
> to the interests of Blacks. (And this in turn is related to a focus on
> relative gains, which are readily apparent from anecdotal evidence, and on
> the micro level.) But white working people can be wrong about their actual
> interests.
>
> (6) Rakesh raised an interesting point concerning "people hav[ing] an
> interest in their relative standing, independently of the absolute level of
> their wages, or ... a reduction of the latter [being]compensated for by an
> improvement in the former...." I think, however, that this depends on the
> exclusion of alternatives. A tradeoff between A and B is meaningful only if
> there's no alternative C that is better than both of them. Thus, IF there
> is no alternative to capitalism, THEN we've got to take whatever they dish
> out. There's a fixed pie at any moment, so all we can do is fight each
> other for the biggest piece. "Winning" the "game" is then not a matter of
> achieving absolute improvements -- which are beyond one's control -- but of
> beating the other "player."
>
> (7) This is an entrenched and recurrent thesis of bourgeois ideology.
> E.g., the notion that wages increases must lower employment rests on the
> assumption of a fixed total wage bill. E.g., the notion that immigrants,
> women, etc., "take jobs away from" native or male workers rests on the
> assumption of a fixed level of employment.
>
> (8) From (5)-(7), it follows that (a) the struggle to end racism requires
> that this ideology be combatted, and (b) that combatting this ideology
> requires the development, concretization, and articulation of a VISION of a
> new, human, society (not class-conscious politics alone). This is a task
> that the Left should be engaged in, but it has all but abandoned the effort.
> Thus, it bears its share of the blame for the persistence of racism.
>
>
> 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.
>
>
>