BK on Identity

Lisa & Ian Murray seamus at accessone.com
Mon Mar 5 08:49:20 PST 2001


Brad Meyer,

Ask NATO to bomb Whitey, naturally...that's what usually happens when the

rhetoric reaches the level of denouncing "madness" ;-)

But relax, there's been more than a few hours spent discussing the issue

here. I believe Yoshie has given a pretty good explanation that argues

precisely for the irrationality of racism for the working class, in whole or

in part, by arguing that whatever relative advantages accrue to white

workers are more than negated by an absolute loss in wages and social

benefits in both short and long term.

*******

Well to the extent the argument is academic--implicating social science methodologies of incommensurability, then we have aporias, not closure, precisely because we may not be able to say definitively that the relative gains are offset by real losses because the very methods to arrive at those kinds of claims are perpetually contestable. If that's the case where do we want to stand normatively?


>>

But for this very reason, racism is quite rational for the capitalist class,

even if not a single individual capitalist esposed a racist ideology.

*******

And the capitalists are going to say you can't fight the law of unintended consequences. So what's our answer to that given the working class isn't about to let go of capitalism yet?

Ian



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