Malcolm X and building a Black Tammany Hall

Doug Henwood dhenwood at panix.com
Thu Jan 7 13:41:13 PST 1999


Charles Brown wrote:
>Maybe use of "people" ,
>or "oppressed national or
>racial group" instead of
>"community" will clarify this for
>you. But these are "technical"
>terms, like "exploitation" , so
>it is good to have popular
>terms in that we want to
>speak to millions. "Community"
>is a popular term for these.
>
>What are the specifics of your
>Marxist analysis of this contra
>above ? What are the specifics
>of your claim that these phrases
>obscure more than reveal , etc. ?
>I am not familiar with the
>critique of the concept of
>"community".

I suspect that this whole linguistic fashion of naming a ____ community came from the American habit of euphemism - people who found monosyllables like "blacks" and "Jews" too harsh thought that "the black community" and "the Jewish community" was more euphonious and less potentially offensive.

The reason I object to the formulation is that, as I said the first time around, "community" is a word that creates an artificial unity, something more organicist than conflictual. I'd have thought that it's a word that Amatai Etzioni would throw around, not a Marxist like yourself, who'd be inclined to see stratification and conflict where others might see a whole. And, as the man said, the whole is the false.

Doug



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