Jim replies:
>
>The other route would be to see the working class divided on race lines
>with whites enjoying a differential advantage over blacks in employment
>and income. In such a case, they are better off relative to blacks, but
>only in the context of their own exploitation. In such a case, do they
>gain by black disadvantage? No. The exploitation of black people is not
>the source of white wages. White workers are not living from the surplus
>labour of blacks. Their wages represent a proportion of their own
>product.
>
>This is more than a schema, it seems to me. What are wrongly seen as
>privileges for whites, turn out to be a massive disadvantage. Doubtless
>American and British elites tried to persuade white people that they
>were better off as a result. But such ideological appeals were nut
>substantially justified.
>
I only quote the part that is closest to the view that I was trying to state. Surely white workers as such don't exploit blacks in the way that capitalists exploit workers, forcibly and unjustly extracting their surplus labor and its product. However, that is not the only way that one group can oppress or even, in a broad sense of the word, exploit another. (Men as group exploit women without doing this the way capitalists exploit workers.) And there are nonmaterial interests that can be considerable.
Jim sets aside all but the issue of wages, and argues that it cannot be in the interests of white workers to participate in whitre supremacy because if the workers were united, they could get higher wages, unionize better, etc. This is true as far as it goes, but that does not obviate the fact that there are costs to such a strategy and its chances are uncertain, whereas there are immediate and free advantages to the wage differential and job discrimination that white workers now enjoy.
So it is in the interests of white workers to support white supremacy. Whether it is in the ultimate or long term interests, taken as a whole, is a tricky question. Note that Jim's way of talking means that if the chances of a "unite and fight" victory are very slim, then it is rational for white workers to be racist. The question of whether they ought, morally, to pursue those interests doesn't figure in it for him. Is that an advantage of his approach?
--jks _____________________________________________________________________________________ Get more from the Web. FREE MSN Explorer download : http://explorer.msn.com