Kautsky parle

james withrow withrow21 at webtv.net
Fri Sep 4 20:00:55 PDT 1998


On Thu, 3 Sep 1998, Michael Eisenscher wrote: "Workers can understand Marxist concepts, but not if they are presented as you do here. I have never heard "rentier classes," "bourgeois society," "value theory," "proletariat," "fetishistic expression," "surplus labor time," or "necessary labor time" roll off the tongues of workers with whom I have dealt over the course of more than 30 years of union work." Dennis commented:"Well, translated into 1990s terms, you could reel off the afore-mentioned Marxian categories as "Wall Street greedheads", "corporations", "critical thinking", "ordinary working people", "false problems", "Nike's greed" and "whatever your job is, you deserve fair compensation". There remains the small problem of "the revolution". How about "Massive, Sudden Global Grooviness"? To the Linux-barricades, comrades!"

Alec protested:"That's pretty "Extreme", don't you think, Dennis?"

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No, Alec, it's not extreme. In fact, I'd get rid of that "critical thinking" part, too. Once again, let me say that the Far Left may have some important points to make. It's a shame that most of us will never know because we can't understand the jargon.

What makes this more remarkable is that the left (or slightly left of center) has some role models for discourse. As someone wisely pointed out recently, the gay rights movement has been helped tremendously by Phil Donahue and Oprah Winfrey. It's a shame that Oprah has such a pro-capitalism economic view. If we had someone like her to explain class struggle-- or someone like her to ask leading questions of ordinary people and then nod respectfully as they answered-- we'd be closer to class consciousness than we are now.

James



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