>>> kelley <oudies at flash.net> 07/22/99 06:22AM >>>
i really think this book would be an interesting read for the list. not
only is it simply a classic, but it also speaks to something i've long
thought about: given that people have more access to higher education and
are, increasingly, working in the kinds of jobs that signify 'clean'
'mental' labor, then what might sennett and cobb's work have to tell us
today. they'd captured the socially mobile ethnic [white] working class as
some of them became 'upwardly mobile' but this was largely structural
mobility.
(((((((((((
Charles: From Kelley's summary of the book, it sounds like it gets into important concerns for anyone trying to understand and inspire the working class to move left.
I would suggest though, that the complex consciousness of today's U.S. working class includes the hurt of injury but contradictorily the pragmatism, awareness and calculation that taking the individualist is a risk but much less of a risk than radicalism. The U.S. ruling class has succeeded in structuring the choices and chances of most workers such that the risk of moderate individual success by self-focussed struggle is much less than the risk of joining a movement.
((((((((
>>> Eric Beck <rayrena at accesshub.net> 07/22/99 11:07AM >>
I agree that Sennet and Cobb's book would be an excellent read for the list
(I would read it again).
(((((((((
Charles: I certainly think the contradictions of this issue are worth dwelling on , and that book sounds like it focusses on the subject.
(((((((((((((
The hidden injuries, meaning they are hidden from both the injured and the injurors(?).
-clip-
*For someone who was born in 1969, BE's history of how the wc became "right" and the middle class (she calls it the "professional middle class") became "left" is astounding. In my life the popular image has always run thusly. Thirty years, even a hundred years, before the late 60s, it was the Great Unwashed who joined labor unions and communist parties and did all those other lefty things. Now its the wc who opposes affirmative action and free immigration and such. She says that this shift has less to do with reality than with the ideological needs of government, media, society, and the pmc's feelings of fear, guilt, and inadequacy. She convinced me.
(((((((((((
Charles: I'm not sure whether the idea that the injuries are hidden from the injurors/victimizers means what I am about to cricitize, but I would suggest considering that the U.S. ruling class has been very conscious in working to bring about the transformation of the U.S. working class that you describe. I would suggest that U.S. Big Brother has taken Marxism very seriously since around 1917; and it developed its fight against Marxism by using Marxist categories but in reverse. In other words, since Marxism focusses on the working class as the gravediggers of the bourgeoisie, the U.S. bourgeoisie focussed on giving the working class a self-conception as "professional middle class". I would even suggest that the bourgeois ideologists and policy makers were well aware of the injuries of class and how they could be manipulated in this overall scheme. I would even say it has used left sociology and psychology in reverse over the years (including the current book possibly) in "ind! ustrial psychology".
Charles Brown