strategic or tactical questions in the works of Marx or even Engels. They faced rather a task of basic analysis of the capitalist system. But one of the most suggestive passages in Marx is the following, from the final chapter of *Wages, Price and Profit*, particularly if his specific topic, the fight for wage increases is generalized to include the whole complex
struggle of self-defense of the working class under capitalism.
"These few hints will suffice to show that the very development of of modern industry must progressively turn the scale in favour of the capitalist against the working man, and that consequently the general tendency of capitalistic production is not to raise but to sink the average standard of wages, or to push the *value of labour* more or less to its *minimum limit*. Such being the tendency of *things* in this system, is this saying that the working class ought to renounce their resistance against the encroachments of capital, and abandon their attempts at making the best of the occasional chances for their temporary improvement? If they did, they would be [my emphasis] *degraded to one level mass of broken wretches past salvation*. . . .By cowardly giving way in their everyday conflict with capital, they would [my emphasis] certainly disqualify themselves from the initiating of any larger movement."
What I wish to extract from these brief remarks is the general point that the fitness of the working class to bring about revolutionary struggle is not a given from its simple class position but must be developed in struggle to defend the conditions of life of *the class as a whole*. A working class, or at least the leading edges of the class, permeated with sexism, racism, homophobia, and other forms of contempt for itself has indeed by its cowardly conduct disqualified themselves from initiating any higher movement -- or indeed (as current conditions of the U.S. working class tend to illustrate) from conducting the simplest self-defense of wages and working conditions. Marx himself was partly aware of this in respect to racism in the U.S., though there was no way for him to realize (as few non-Americans do) the depth of the "color line" in U.S. history, when he noted that labor could never be free in a white skin while it was enslaved in a black skin. But that is only a beginning. And I doubt that in the United States that even any substantial number of white males will find unity *even among themselves* for any advanced struggle if they do not realize the all importance of making the struggle against racism the cutting edge of class conflict in the United States.
Now there does exist two marxist traditions on race and gender that Kelley could legitimately have attacked, though even there she should have emphasized "marxist traditions," not "marxism as such." One, the more outrageous (and defended in the past on lbo more by non-marxists than by marxists), and characterized on the "left" today by such non- marxists as Todd Gitlin and Eric Alterman, holds that the focus on the battle against racism detracts from the "class struggle." In several battles on lbo in the past it has been the marxists (though not only the
marxists) on the list who have most sharply attacked this position. Class, in this position, becomes a hollow abstraction, utterly detached from the actual lives of actual workers in the United States. It also assumes, stupidly I think, that anything like substantial class unity can be achieved by the appeal to economic motives in the simplest sense of more pay. As many times as this has been refuted, it is a belief that still is strongly attractive to many self-described leftists. For present purposes it is only necessary to note, however, that it is no longer a prevailing position among many marxists.
(Note: this position is most frequently combined with a definition of "the left" as equaling "The Democratic Party," and with successful appeal to workers as "Getting them to the voting booth." A friend of mine in the '60s remarked that opportunism is seldom opportune.)
A second tradition among leftists and marxists is more honorable but, I think, almost equally futile. It holds that sexism, racism, homophobia should be fought because they "divide the class" in the sense of driving
away those class members that belong to one or more of those groupings. It was this theory, roughly, that informed the CPUSA's fight against racism in the 1930s and earned for that party, whatever its other many faults, great glory in our history. (The best one can say for it on the question of gender is probably that it was not as bad as any other left grouping. But even that is something.)
Gary MacLennan, sometime in the past year (on either LBO or Marxism) specifically rejected this view as a satisfactory response to homophobia, and I believe his rejection is correct in respect to racism and sexism as well.
The general point about dividing the class remains, however, though not merely in the sense of dividing black from white and men from women (and 'straights' from gays), but in a deeper sense. It creates a division that runs throughout the class, in effect dividing everyone from everyone, demoralizing the class, and, as my subject line quotation from Marx suggests, reducing them to one level mass of broken wretches.
The failure of the mass of male workers (and all too many, perhaps a majority, of other women workers) at the Mitsubishi plant here in Normal Illinois to support the women who brought sexual harassment charges against the company, and the wretched record of the UAW local in responding to that (as well as serious and almost certainly accurate charges of racial harassment which have since been filed), is perhaps an illustration of my point. Even the white male workers and their white-male dominated UAW local have not had a very illustrious record in defending their own interests there. They have been more content to beg the management for favors. "Broken wretches"? "Cowardly giving way"? I don't think the labels are too strong.
(Incidentally, I clearly speak only in broad strategic terms. This and other forums exist primarily because it is as yet so difficult to speak in more narrowly focused strategic terms or at all in tactical terms with clarity or any certainty. Phil Ochs sings of Guthrie, "And he always stood his ground when the smaller men would run." Who would anyone prefer to have at his or her side: the Mitsubishi workers who accepted company money to go to Chicago and demonstrate against the EEOC or any men or women with the courage to stand with the women fighting for freedom from sexual harassment.)
To prepare itself for any struggles in the future, the working class must take up as its foremost present task the struggle for social justice. Any other position splinters it not merely into isolated fragments but destroys it as a moral and cohesive force in struggle for *anything*.
Returning to Kelley's odd paragraph, two points are worth making.
Peter has said most of what needs to be said, but one major point about class. In one respect, and in one respect marxism holds that class is not only pre-eminent but the only factor, but then everyone from Plato on who thought on the subject has said the same. It is tautological that those great transformations in human history which brought about a more or less total reorganization of daily life, the explanation must be searched for in a realignment of class forces. That's what we *mean* when we speak of the shift from feudalism to capitalism or earlier shifts of similar magnitude. In studying the details of such a transformation which covers centuries we need to study an almost endless list of particulars, including gender, but we study them for an understanding of the tranformation in class relations. Only the religious dogmatist who believed that quantum mechanics should tell us how to cook our breakfast or it is deficient (needs "supplementing") would confuse this historical focus on class relations with a belief about the organization of daily life and the details of struggle within a given system of social relations. The highest levels of explanatory theory simply do not translate that directly into strategy and tactics of struggle.
Secondly, her odd declaration that "Marxism" (not "some marxists) hold that women are oppressed because "it's functional for capitalism." It is
of course true that particular employers will take advantage of the division (as Mitsubishi did and is doing.) But no marxist has ever doubted that male supremacy is millenia older than capitalism. Capitalists seem to have gladly accepted whatever dividends in social stability or working class division it brings about, but if anything at a more basic level, it was capitalism and abstract labour (the basis for the various doctrines of equality) that encouraged the revolt against male supremacy. *Paradise Lost* is a viciously male supremacist document, but it is also easy to see why some have seen it as almost a feminist document, because only egalitarianism is *actually* consistent with its premises.
Many things are "functionalist" for this or that without that being their primary explanation. In the 18th century some writers praised divine providence because it had provided the nose as a support for spectacles.
This also enters into the current debate over U.S. motives in the Yugoslav war. I think they should be classified under the general motive of the defense of imperialism, not (as in Makara's document) or some other explanations as answering to specific "economic" motives (war industry, oil pipeline, etc). Similarly, an explanation of the persistence of male supremacy in capitalism will have to provide a far more persuasive set of reasons than its mere functionality.
I think it *arguable* that it is intrinsic to *class * society and in many ways inconsistent with capitalism but that the more generic explanation holds. That is pure speculation. The important thing, again, is not to pretend that there is any one "marxist" explanation for it.
Carrol
P.S. Kelley, in my response to your most recent post on lbo I assumed that this post was already sent and only a bit later found that I had not sent it. I won't change anything at this point, so understand that it does not respond to that later post.