> Irony, or total nonsense? I have no idea what in Jenny's
> posts could have triggered this rant.
I don't know, but I wonder if he can spare a couble of doobs of what he's smoking...
>
> 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
> >
> >
>
-- no Onan