Liza
> From: Dddddd0814 at aol.com
> Reply-To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Date: Wed, 13 Nov 2002 15:25:23 EST
> To: lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> Subject: Re: David Corn: troubling origins of the anti-war movement
>
> It just occurred to me what Jenny is trying to do in these posts. She is
> trying to get wage workers to do her dirty-work for her, to do the practical,
> analytical, and theoretical work necessary to justify the oppression of wage
> workers in the eyes of the bourgeoisie. Historically, it has been the
> oppressed who have taken up the cudgels to dutifully ease their oppressor's
> consciousness, whether in the form of the minstrelsy of black slaves in the
> South, the factory songs of the first industrial workers in the North,
> working women forced to pretend they enjoy the additional unpaid menial labor
> while legally getting raped by their spouses, the alienated white
> bourgeoisie's children putting their aspirations onto black workers in the
> '60s migrating into cities. Now Jenny seems to want workers who are
> struggling even for the right to legally organize to do her shit-work of
> convincing her neighbors and her bosses. Well, you know what, Jenny? Fuck it.
> Workers, women, and people of color don't owe you any explanation for their
> oppression, let alone your alienation. Get your own hands dirty and figure
> your own personal shit out for yourself.
>
> 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
>
>