Tahir: The first of the above points seems so obvious that one wonders why it has to be said. "Movements" are not caused by ideas in themselves but by experiences. And movements always become sites of contestation of ideas. I seem to recall a quotation that said: "Marxism finds its weapon in the proletariat and the proletariat finds its weapon in marxism." Does anyone recall where it comes from? I think that if this means that the masses are to be instrumentalised by a group of people called "marxists" then this is a very bad notion. Otherwise brilliant thinkers, like Bordiga, have fallen into this trap. But I guess it could mean something else too.
useful_ class analysis has to be something other than a concern with the "messy reality" around us, because that messy reality will change greatly before our thought ever achieves anything. Carrol
Tahir: Can anyone tell me what exactly "class analysis" is? Is this the same as talking about the composition of the class? Anyway the "messy reality" is important in this sense: that unless one understands something of the composition of the class one will not understand that workers, and virtually everyone else, is resisting capital all the time in a thousand different ways. To ignore this reality and look only for the 'big movement' is as I have said a form of contempt for the people and the actuality of their lives. It means inter alia, that in the absence of this grand movement, one will look for substitutes like the Democratic party in the US or the Labour party in the UK to support INSTEAD of the real movement. Of all substitutions this is surely the most sad and treacherous. I wonder why, for example, there are so many around who will debate endlessly about the relative merits of the Greens and the Dems, but who couldn't give a toss about issues such as the condition!
o! f housewives or prostitutes and their forms of autonomous action.