Best, David
------------------------
>David wrote:
>>From what I've read, the largest section of wage-workers
>>consists of service workers, mostly immigrants and people of color. Sorry
>>I do not have any sources to cite off-hand, but rest assured they are
>>out there.
>
>Jenny:
>Ok, I'm going to try again. What in your experience as a person living
>in (I assume) the U.S.--as opposed to your reading--is getting you to the
program
>you suggest. The reason I ask is that direct experience is how I check
>and understand things, without that it's just a lot of rhetoric--which I may
>think I agree with or not--but so what. Abstractions are abstracted from
>something, right?
>
>David:
>Okay, I didn't see why you were asking before, but now I see you are
>interested in my own personal experience.
Not just your personal experience, but how you're analyzing it. And not just
your individual direct experience but your collective direct experience.
>Unfortunately, I can't agree
>with your premise that social and economic realities are simply "rhetoric"
unless
>one can endorse them with their own personal, subjective, experience. Do
>I need to tell you I've personally run an electrical current through water
>for you to "check and understand" that two atoms of hydrogen and one of
oxygen
>make H2O?
That's not a social example, so it's not that helpful in this case. But yes,
we do check scientific theories by direct experience, we experiment. We also
teach science through demonstration experiments, it sure gets the kids'
attention more than a formula in a textbook.
>Do folks need to starve themselves to the point of loss of
>consciousness to verify the fact that 32,000 people in the world starve
>to death every day due to global economic policies, and that otherwise, all
>this talk is just an "abstraction"?
I'm not asking you to artificially take on someone else's skin, I'm asking
you to be in your own skin just long enough to tell me what you see. (If you
don't want to here, that's fine, just say so.) Why, for example, do you hold
the views you do, and your three closest neighbors (probably) don't? How did
you (subjectively as hell, cause that's how humans are) come to the
conclusions you have come to? How did you change? After there's some data,
we can ignore it, take it for gospel, or analyze it collectively, but we're
still ahead of where we were when we were just bludgeoning each other with
conclusions.
>No, I'm sorry, I don't agree with your
>premise. But, rest assured, I am a wage laborer and union member, if that
>eases your mind any. Not that it matters at all, because it is a subjective
>individual experience, apart from the a more collective, rational
>understanding.
A part OF the more collective, rational understanding. Or do you really mean
that the subjective has nothing to offer?
>Besides, I think that even in the most developed countries
>people of all classes experience the alienation of commodity production
>in one way or another.
>Jenny:
>There are lot of surprises if you look at even just the last 20 years.
>Sure, that's what Bush says, they want endless war and they're by god gonna
get
>it. But a lot of very fucking drastic changes have occurred without that the
>current modes of production,
>distribution, and exchange are completely uprooted." Not to mention that
>there's been a lot of replanting going on in various places where these
>were fairly well uprooted.
>
>David:
>Again, I don't see where there's supposed to be a disagreement.
I'm not sure it's so much disagreement as irritation with the sweeping
generalizations and desire to know the particulars. Anyone can say, and a
lot of people do, things like "we need a real labor party." But very few
will give the concrete reasons, lessons, experiences that lead them to
believe that. How will you communicate the idea to others?
>Given these
>conditions, it is no wonder that a variety of reform movements of various
>sorts are popping up all over the place-- all without, as we are saying,
>fundamentally altering the current modes of p,d, and e. I've participated
>and continue to participate in many local reform and protest movements. But
>these in and of themselves are not revolutionary and will not, in the final
>analysis, end the exploitation and death of working people in the name
>of capitalism.
Well, the fact a six year old can't drive a car (and doesn't see why she
would want to) doesn't mean she won't ever drive a car (and will very much
want to). Wherever the movement goes, it's going to develop from what
exists.
>By the way, could you give some examples of the "fucking drastic changes"
>of the last 20 years you are talking about, just so we're on the same page?
I said surprises in the past 20 years (few of them pleasant.) Very fucking
drastic changes in the last 100 in the U.S.: legislative limitation on the
hours of work; women voting; the abolition of jim crow i.e. democratic rev.
in the south; the institution of the income tax; universal public schooling;
universal public pensions; wide availability of birth control & abortion;
rapid information processing; antibiotics.
>David:
>>These splits in the
>>ruling class you mention are also among the causes of war, globally, and
>>tremendous opportunities for the working class to organize.
>
>Jenny:
>Again, an example would be helpful.
>
>David:
>Uh... WWI.... WWII... But I suppose these aren't good examples because
>they weren't part of "my experience as a person living"?
No, I was hoping for a current US example of either a split or a tremendous
opportunity (or both!). I think you must've been thinking of some current
ones to say that. By the way, you can 'win' this exchange, if that's what
you really want, by arguing with a cartoon version of what I'm trying to get
at rather than helping me get at it. But that's sort of a waste of pixelage,
init.
Jenny Brown