>I wasn't referring to your grad school, Doug. I was commenting on those here
>who, behind academy gates, plan the next step in workers' control of
>production -- preferably without consulting the workers themselves. Call me
>a boxhead, but some of the jargon on this list is beyond comprehension. Just
>who do these "radicals" think they're reaching?
I don't think workers are as dumb as people make them out to be. Nor did I think either Yoshie or Trotsky were planning the next step in the control of production. The point of the Trotsky quote, which seems 100% right to me, is that the U.S. working class has neither the institutions nor the analysis to fit their own situation into a larger picture. Americans tend to blame themselves for their plight, or a very specific situation. So it's "write a better resume" or "keep this plant open!" rather than analyzing the big picture of a capitalist economy.
I don't have any doubt that one could make such a radical analysis comprehensible and even moving to a working class audience. There's a certain kind of left thinking that holds that to be authentically working class you have to be kind of crude and stupid; that seems to be the Michael Moore line. Yeah, the ruling class thinks of the w.c. that way - and does its best to make the w.c. conform to the dumb, passive ideal - but I don't see why we should play along.
Doug