<< That is the heart of the entire debate. Who decides what 'objective
interests' of the working class are? Kelley and myself argued against a
view that pundits have a better and more rational view on that issue than
the working class itself. Or to follow Justin's ill conceived analogy to
Nazis and Jews - against the position espoused by Heinrich Himmler "it's I
who decide who's a Jew."
Mayor Karl Leuger of Vienna, a much earlier (1900+/-) and less lethal generation of anti-Seminite. Wer ein Jude ist, ich bestimme, he said when someone contrasted his populist rabble-rousing anti-Seminitic rhetortic with his patronige of rich Jews.
But why was the analogy ill-conceived? It does make the point that disagreement does not mean that all views are entitled to equal respect. I was not talking it to myself to dispute the "objective interests of the working class" on behalf of my own superior knowlege, but remarking that if some workers have views that are contemptuous of due process or bigoted towards persons of different race, they are wrong. Their views do not deserve more consideration because they are working class.
Perhaps you diasgree: Nazi views of justice, you might think, deserve no particular consideration, but working class views do. Maybe you area Lukacsian who believes in the Standpoint of the Proletariat (somewhing I have defended as not whokky implausible in various places, so I'm not making fun if you do.) Or perhaps all you mean is that it will not buy us political capital to call workers, whom we hope to organize, racist bigots, even if some of them are. Now the last point I will agree with; we certainly will not make progress in a discussion with workers who are racist or nuts on law 'n order to call them names. But that is not the question here, which is whether we can say theyt are wrong.
As to whethe those views are in accord with The Objective Interests of the Working Class, well, i think they are not. But that is just because I think that in the long run it helps to have true views, so true views are generally in the Objective Interests of the Working Class.
> I do not claim any special links to the working class consciousness, as
Justin charges, other than talking to my neighbors and listening to what
they say. I do not even claim that I like what I hear from them. But at
least I do not call them names because they do not know what I do.
Right, but that is quite different from think their views are right, true, justified, legitimatr, and appropriate merely because they make their living they way they do. However, we sem to be in agreement here, for once.
--jks