>If memory serves, this point about intellectualist lefties not
>getting outside their own social set has come up on this list
>before, but it bears repeating.
>
>Somewhere, somehow, in the history of the U.S. Left, we just ceased
>to be able to communicate with the "historical subject" we were
>supposed to be vanguarding, the working class.
Sociologically speaking, the divide between "intellectual lefties" and "the working class" is the most insignificant in the USA today than at any other time in history and any other place in the world. Higher education is more mass-produced, and "intellectuals" are more proletarianized, in the USA today -- the premier nation of vanguard capitalism -- than ever before.
***** The first question about education -- "Can you read and write?" -- was asked in the 1840 census. At that time, more than 1 in every 5 persons were illiterate. The general illiteracy rate decreased steadily over the years. Questions on illiteracy were dropped in the 1940 census. . . .
Not only are more of us going to school, but we are also starting earlier and staying longer. In 1990, about 75 percent of the adult population had received at least a high school diploma compared with about 25 percent in 1940.
In the 1990 census, we measured the completion of specific college degrees (for example, bachelor's, master's and doctoral degrees) for the first time. These data show that over 20 million Americans held a bachelor's degree as their highest level of schooling, and another 11 million a professional or graduate degree. . . .
In 1990, there were nearly 65 million of us enrolled in school.
. . . More importantly, the proportion of Americans between the ages of 5 and 24 going to school has grown from 58 percent in 1940 to 70 percent in 1990.
"We the Americans: Our Education," September 1993, <http://www.census.gov/apsd/wepeople/we-11.pdf> *****
See <http://nces.ed.gov/surveys/international/IntlIndicators/index.asp?SectionNumber=4&IndicatorNumber=6> for international comparison.
Antonio Negri, for instance, speaks of "mass intellectuality" (an ungainly term, alas) as a defining characteristic of the so-called "post-Fordist" work force ("America's vast services sector . . . employs fully 80 percent of the nation's private work force," Stephen S. Roach, "The Productivity Paradox," _New York Times_, November 30, 2003). It is more important than ever _not_ to imagine "the working class" as an army of male industrial workers; in re-imagining the working class, one may also learn from Gramsci's thought on organic intellectuals and Lenin's criticism of economism.
Mass production of educated workers and increasing proletarianization of "intellectuals," however, doesn't necessarily mean that the more literate working class cotton to "intellectual _lefties_" more easily than before. The picture is complex:
(A) The less formally educated (especially blacks) tend to be more left-wing than the more formally educated, when it comes to support for the left-wing economic and international agenda (e.g., support for social programs that benefit the working class, opposition to US foreign interventions), in so far as educational attainment tends to shadow income and wealth accumulation (which has been racialized in the USA).
(B) The most formally educated (i.e., those who go to graduate school for doctoral programs in arts and sciences) and the least formally educated (i.e., high school degree or less, especially blacks), however, have more politically in common than either does with those in the educational middle.
(C) The less formally educated tend to defy the mythical norms of gender and sexuality more often in practice than the more formally educated (e.g., they marry less often, poorer men depend more economically on wage labor of poorer women than richer men do on their partners), even though publicly expressed opinions surveyed in polls tend to show more liberal attitudes toward women and homosexuals among the more formally educated. -- Yoshie
* Bring Them Home Now! <http://www.bringthemhomenow.org/> * Calendars of Events in Columbus: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/calendar.html>, <http://www.freepress.org/calendar.php>, & <http://www.cpanews.org/> * Student International Forum: <http://www.osu.edu/students/sif/> * Committee for Justice in Palestine: <http://www.osudivest.org/> * Al-Awda-Ohio: <http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Al-Awda-Ohio> * Solidarity: <http://www.solidarity-us.org/>