>But looking more closely, aren't you twisting the logic with your
>intepretation? There are a confusing number of negations in the key
>sentence, but do you think Boris would deny that economic status
>isn't correlated to race? Of course it is, also in Russia. But the
>claim about the "reproduction" of one's racial status is a rather
>more limited claim. And I don't think Boris is rearguing class v
>identity, but rather saying that identity is mediated by class.
>What's wrong with that position?
I take a dim view of anyone who quotes Todd Gitlin approvingly. Besides, even without that, Boris Kagarlitsky is hardly an answer to the overwhelming _catastrophe_ faced by the Russian masses. It goes without saying, however, that Hardt & Negri have _nothing_ to offer them (or anyone else, for that matter) either (except it provides an entertaining diversion for Doug, when he gets bored with staid social democratic politics of the Labor Party, etc. -- in this sense, Hardt & Negri, for Doug, is a little like the Spartacists & their _Workers Vanguard_, with an added frission of celebrity chasing :-)).
The problem that both Kagarlitsky (& the like) and Hardt & Negri (& the like) share is economism -- the absence of all-sided political education -- that Lenin criticized.
I recommend, instead, a mix of Marx & Engels, Lenin, Gramsci, Althusser, Jim O'Connor, Robert Brenner, Ellen Wood, & Martha Gimenez from the Marxist tradition in order to produce a coherent theory of how contradiction between capital & labor intersects with contradictions within the working class (along axes of race, gender, sexuality, disability, etc.), combined with insights taken from theory & activism developed by intellectuals & organizers in feminist, queer, black nationalist, disability-rights, & other movements.
>this problem of nationalism/internationalism we've been mulling over on LBO
As things stand now, we have neither revolutionary nationalism nor revolutionary internationalism. I don't think of Seattle, etc. as internationalism, much less revolutionary. Our problem is mainly the absence of militant mass movements of any variety.
In terms of the capacity to mobilize the masses, perhaps Islam is the only remaining militant movement that has something to do with both nationalism & internationalism. :-(
We have _a long way_ to go!
Yoshie