JBrown72073 at cs.com wrote:
>
>
>
> In particular, one of the things anti-war people keep doing around here (in
> Gainesville, I mean) is blaming the folks who drive gas guzzlers for the war.
> Or blame people for wanting cheap oil, cheap plastic, conveniences, and so
> on, really buying the line that people want war for economic reasons.
There was a thread on LBO in the past year or so in which everyone was ganging up on SUVs; I forget my exact arguments, but in general I thought it was pretty silly to blame people for their consumption habits -- or to blame people individually for anything for that matter.
> There's not a whole lot of people who think, yeah, go kill so I can save
> money. Not working people anyway, frat boys might say that.
Agreed. I also have argued for over three decades that fear of the draft didn't have much to do with the Anti-War movement of the '60s.
>
> This line that we're privileged and stupid in America (a short-hand version
> of the line that the real contradictions are between the global north and the
> global south, and there is no working class in the U.S. except perhaps
> immigrants) is snobby and obnoxious, and buys into Bush's propaganda that
> this war really is to help most U.S. people and that we have a lot of common
> interests with the elites.
This is fundamental. But here I can use "The Left" in a very extended sense -- extended back in fact to its very beginnings in the early 19th century (and including even Marx & Engels in some of their writings) -- and blame that Left for contributing to this problem (which can be defined in part as moralizing): everyone who uses the term "Middle Class" contributes to fundamental capitalist ideology. Marx & Engels _usually_ but not always used Middle Class only in contrast to the Nobility -- that it it meant the big capitalists. They did also use it in the sloppy sense it is used by both marxists and non-marxists today.
One can understand this usage: after all, up until after WW2 (a) a huge proportion of the population _were_ petty producers (farmers, small merchants, independent artisans, professionals, owners of small cleaning-services, etc etc etc) and (b) the only workers in motion for the most part were industrial workers. But now about 80 to 90% of the population are working class, and yet people keep splitting the class even in theory by babbling about an invisible and indefinable "middle class," identified mostly by "life style" or "consciousness" or "income level." It belongs to the basic jargon of sectarian individualism. (And the same people who use this mindless jargon will complain about the jargon of the WWP.) Even in earlier working-class history the concept caused trouble. The telephone operators in Petrograd thought of themselves (and were thought of by the Bolsheviks) as "middle class," and they stopped work in terror after the October Revolution. It royally fucked things up for awhile.
We do not know what sectors of the working class will first (or ever) move politically. It is utterly destructive to decide in advance by classifying half the class as "middle class."
(That said, I tend to agree with you that the leadership is apt to be mostly female. I would be interested to hear your reasons. The New Communist group that lasted the longest, the LRS, had mostly women in its top leadership -- and those women were mostly non-white.)
Carrol
>
> >The global capitalist economy is STILL
> >based on wage-labor and commodity production.
>
> But the opposed argument is that this is now no longer significant (or
> significant enough) within the U.S. So how come you think there's an
> organizable working class in this country, when so much of the left doesn't?
> I mean, I agree. (With the twist that I think of this as largely women, led
> by women, for various reasons I won't go into here.) What I I'm curious
> about is, what data or analysis or experience are you working from that you
> think others are not?
>
> >Jenny:
> >I'm not too convinced by the all-or-nothing rhetoric,
> >
> >David:
> >All or nothing rhetoric?! That is exactly what Yoshie seems to be
> >supporting-- casting one's lot without criticism or alternative into a
> >popular front with Stalinists and "progressive" pro-war-anti-Bush Democrats,
> >i.e., capitalists, in order to determine whether or not Bush shoots Saddam
> >Hussein point blank or merely bombs Iraqi civilians!
>
> Nah, by 'all or nothing' I meant when you say things like we'll have endless
> war unless we get our shit together as a class--I mean I think we could
> actually stop or slow this down or ameliorate it with our shit only half
> together, or less than that--given the splits in the ruling class, and other
> conditions. In other words, we shouldn't feel like we can't stop it unless
> some impossibly high preconditions are met, that leads to unwarranted
> hopelessness, if you look at history there is NO WAY some of the stuff we've
> won seemed like it could be won--the movement was so hopelessly unorganized,
> repressed, poorly funded, etc.
>
> >David:
> >Yes, like I said, I think we do agree on the causes of war. As for my
> program, I've spelled
> >it out several times on the list. In a word:
> >to build the Labor Party into a genuine workers' party in the United States,
> >a party that challenges the political power of Democrats and their
> >strangle-hold on workers' rights. You are involved in the Labor Party,
> >too, are you not?
>
> Yeah, I'm co-chair of a local organizing committee in Alachua County,
> Florida. There's a quote from me on the back of the current Labor Party
> Press about our work here if you're curious.
>
> >What are your objectives within it?
>
> At this point getting some working class politics out there into the debate,
> raising expectations around the everyday issues that are biting us in the
> butt, winning some relief, building the movement.
>
> Jenny