[mbs] Strange as it may seem, minority workers, gays, and women care about pay, fringes, hours, and universal social insurance. So any notion that this is somehow foreign to them implies a pretty odd notion of women, gays, and minorities. Like they are some kind of weird, proto-revolutionary being with blinder- like focus on parochial concerns. So the rest of your post is what doesn't follow.
As for issues of race/gender/etc., I do not think they are unimportant. I do think they are doomed unless linked to broader matters. I'd say you were putting the cart before the horse, but I think this gives you too much credit. You don't have a horse. You have moral exhortation disguised as "strategy."
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He sniffs at internationalism then because he quite correctly sees
that a strategy grounded purely in "class" (and which leaves out
the centrality of race to class questions in the u.s.) dare not
offend white males. What is your conception of the route to class
unity in the united states?
Carrol
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If Robert Frost had a union card, he might have said good trade policies make for good international solidarity between workers of different nations.
As for the road to class unity, it does not go through concepts of non-white non-males that render them less than full partners in class-based movements. It does not start only with narrow demands and move to broader ones. I could see a nationalist movement morphing into a class movement, but I'm not the one who is going to lead minority workers down that path. And I'm certainly not going to waste my time telling non-minorities about it. I'm going to relate individuals' concerns to the broad issues, as best I can. This is old ground for us. Why profess mystification and practice lame distortion?
mbs