At 06:31 PM 2/15/2003 -0500, you wrote:
>At 5:39 PM -0500 2/15/03, Steven McGraw wrote:
>> >What is the use of pitting the one against the other?
>>
>>I am not pitting anyone against anyone else. The professional and
>>the laboring class are already in competition.
>
>Not so, as the national labor market is segmented. If Martin Jay,
>for instance, had become a longshoreman, rather than a professor of
>history at US Berkeley, he would have been competing with other
>longshoremen, though in this trade competition would have been
>limited on the West Coast by one of the most powerful and left-wing
>unions in the United States. Longshoremen and professors of history
>do not directly
Not directly, as you put it.
In a world of limited resources everyone is in competition with everyone else. The maintenance staff at VT is in competeition with the faculty, the faculty is in competition with Richmond and corporate donors, unionized workers are in competition with nonunion workers in other industries, etc ec. This seems self-evident.
>compete with one another in the same segment of the
>national labor market. For the welfare of longshoremen and all other
>workers whose job requirements do not specify a PH.D. in history, it
>was a good thing that Jay and other professors of history did not
>choose to go into their trades.
>
I am confused. How would PHD-weilding job applicants drive longshoremen out of work? What bearing does a PHD have on hauling heavy shit around?
>What competition exists between workers of different strata and
>segments takes place indirectly through the budget allocations of the
>federal, state, and local governments, often in times of recessions
>and cutbacks (like now).
Both in the market and through the public sector. I'm sorry but I can't entirely buy your theory of segregated labor markets. A 500k CEO salary does not come from the expropriated labor of other, less successful CEOs.
>The power elite love to pit public sector
>workers (including college professors) against "taxpayers,"
It's a dirty trick, I know. But as I hope you'll recognize, this false right-wing "populism" cynically exploits grievances that are not entirely imaginary.
<little snip here, little snip there>
>Etc. Falling for faux-populist demagogues only hurts us
>all, however.
Right. We also hurt ourselves by assuming that rightwing populism depends on nothing more thannothing more than imaginary grievances, racism and hatred of intellectuals.