>
>If you accept that existing society is a class society, then you ought to
>understand what that means. It means, as the preamble to the constitution
>of the IWW puts it, "There can be no peace so long as hunger and want are
>found among millions of the working people and the few, who make up the
>employing class, have all the good things of life. Between these two
>classes a struggle must go on..."
Bill--
Mind if I butt in here (beats reading Curriculum Committee paperwork... ugh)? Much as I like slogans (and IWW ones in particular) I think they,well, lack subtlety. The above is so much about stacking up heroes and villains and getting them all on the march that the rhetoric tramples the very people it wants to help (it does rhetorical violence to the oppressor's as well, but who gives a shit about them). In the fantasy land of the IWW there is a present that is coded "no peace, plenty of want." The entire world, epoch, society, whatever the hell they are referring to can be coded a 0=no peace and therefore "bad." In contrast we have a future coded 1=peace and prosperity and therefore "good." And, of course, all we have to do is turn the crank called "revolution," or "class struggle," or whatever and we will move, either smoothly or with a few bumps, and with or without our help, depending on the algorithm of social change, from one binary state to the next.
But we hardly have to ring up Derrida to help us imagine, just for a minute, that maybe somewhere somehow, just for a moment, there are people in the working class who found a few minutes of "peace," who managed to fill their tummies, and who felt they had managed to get one or two of the "good things in life," to burst these binary bubbles. And might it not also be possible that a few of those in the "employing class" occasionally felt ill at ease, or "hungry?" Maybe at times one or two even envied those down on the shop floor? A few have even been known to be unhappy.
The point may well be to change the world, but understanding it might be a prerequisite. And achieving such an understanding might be more difficult than slapping a slogan on the next generation of workers. Those workers might have another story to tell, and those who are interested in having a meaningful conversation with them might want to listen. Don't you think it is important to somehow leaven our theory with life?
Because I am currently doing some work on the "problem of exploitation," and because you ground your politics so profoundly in class, I would be interested in hearing how you theorize class, class antagonism, etc. Do you subscribe to some version of Marx's view of exploitation- defined as the expropriation of surplus value? I do, but I have only just begun trying to figure out how that all plays out down at the local Denny's.
Best wishes,
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