What Workers Think & Objectivity (was Re: Cops Etc)

[Yoshie Furuhashi]

>i have not, yoshie, ever justified, let alone claimed objectivity,
>regarding  what i type by appealing to what workers think.
<snip>
>again, no one claims objectivity in any of this.  i certainly haven't and i
>don't believe wojtek ever has.
<snip>
>what matters, as you know,  is the theoretical framework through which one
>asks questions about social life and makes methodological choices, as well
>as the political decisions one makes in analyses of and re-presentations
>and analyses of what one finds.
>
>kelley

You missed my point.  I'm saying you guys _should_ justify your claim
through an appeal to the real & objective interest of the working class in
general (not this or that segment of working-class individuals), not
through an empiricist appeal to what some workers -- even the majority of
workers -- happen to be thinking at this moment.

Is it in the objective interest of the working class to include organized
prison guards among the ranks of organized labor?  I think not.  The
sectoral interest of prison guards' union is to continue the war on crime
(so their jobs will be secure), which is not in the interest of the working
class.  (See my excerpt from Mike Davis's _Ecology of Fear: Los Angeles and
the Imagination of Disaster_, NY: Metropolitan Books, 1998).

Yoshie