-----Original Message----- From: Carrol Cox [mailto:cbcox at ilstu.edu] Sent: Sunday, July 29, 2001 7:08 PM To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com Subject: Re: carrol on distorted communicative action (was Re: Ethicalfoundationsof the left)
Kelley wrote:
>
> while it may seem self-evident
> to you, it is obviously not self evident to everyone here because i'm
> guessing 80% of this list disagrees that it takes places or thinks
that
> while racism may be an issue, sexism/ableism, is not an issue that the
left
> need be concerned about.
>
I've got a lousy cold or I'd look up the specific texts to ground < :-)
> this, but I'll sloppily paraphrase them from memory. In his preface to
the german ed. of Poverty of Philosophy Engels noted that basing an
economic argument on a concept of justice was bad economics but that the
fact that the particular conception of justice used had come into
existence showed the economic relations it objected to had become
outmoded. (Justin won't like the implication I draw next.> For another
example, the reason slavery is wrong is that large numbers of people
have come to believe, passionately, that it is wrong, a belief which in
turn emerges from people in struggle seeing that certain ideas (e.g.,
hatred of slavery) are useful in explaining the material conditions
(social relations) in which they find themselves.
Lenin in WITBD says that the working class must not only be concerned with its own immediate interests but must be concerned with all instances of oppression.
Marx in Wages, Price & Profit says that if workers don't fight to improve conditions they will sink into one wretched mob incapable of exerting themselves in any higher cause. Now there is no way of "grounding" or giving an ethical foundation to the rights of women or the disabled. But a working class that won't interest itself in those rights is a wretched bunch who won't be fit for even decently defending their own interests.
I'll illustrate the point with a negative example. Over a decade or two ago Mitsubishi built a large assembly plant in Bloomington/Normal. It was originally a joint venture of Chrysler & Mitsubishi, and because of Chrysler's involvement had a UAW local from the beginning. Now it seems that at least for the time being a large number, possibly a large majority, of the white male workers in the local are (from my point of view) a bunch of fucking scabs, as shown by a successful lawsuit by some women and huge fine imposed by the EOC on sexual harassment grounds. (A suit on racial harassment is pending.) The scabbing comes in from the fact that while the EOC case was still up in the air a huge number of workers (male & female) accepted a company invitation to go to Chicago and demonstrate (paid company time) at the EOC office there. Cowardly motherfuckers. That's a simple description, not a value judgment. Anyhow, the Union local is pretty fucking weak, and its going to continue to be weak until more members engage in smashing racism and sexism. There is no particular ethical basis for any member, as an individual, to do so -- and attempts to find such an ethical basis tend to lead away from a focus on class power, or at least that's been the case ever since Plato sandbagged Thrasymachus. (An intensely racist uncle of mine temprorarily became much less racist back in the late '60s, not because anyone persuaded him by argument but because the riots made him open to seeing blacks as fellow screwed-over humans. And it was the riots, not Martin Luther King or the civil-rights movement, because he probably never read enough about them to affect him. The riots made the headlines.)
Carrol
Incidentally, if Habermas would agree with any of this, then the question becomes why the hell do we need him if we can reach this without knowing anything about him.