Dennis Perrin wrote:
>
>
> I worked blue-collar jobs instead of going to college. Served in the
> military. Spent the past five years working at the lowest levels of manual
> labor, so I think I have some idea what "workers" are about.
I count about 85% of the population as working class. Marx predicted that capitalist society tended to divide into two sharply separated classes, and the prediction has come through. Petty producers make up too small a part of the population to be all that significant.
> I'm not saying
> this to be "workerist," but to give the proper context for my remarks. Yeah,
> there are some nice Americans.
This is not relevant to my perspective. I am not interested in what the u.s. populace is _now_; I am interested in what some sizeable proportion (even a sizable minority) can potentially _become_. I said in an earlier post that all the obese people I knew were on ADs, but now I remember that two of the people who went to Chicago March 19 from the BNCPJ were quite obese. It was their first demonstration, and the police presence 'blew their minds' as it were, and they are still several weeks later excited about the experience. Now it would really help their radicalization or potential radicalization if I fwd to them all the LBO posts ranting and raving about "fat americans."
[Note: in the past it was the less well fed americans who were overweight; I suspect they still do make up a goodly proportion of the overweight population, so figures on u.s. hogging of the world's food supply (which in any case is plentiful) is not to the point.]
> Progressive Americans. Etc. And sometimes, as
> in the Schiavo carnival, the majority appear aware of who's fucking them and
> why. Still, there are masses of blue-collar Americans who take pride in
> their political and social ignorance and arrogance.
Again, in my vocabulary "proletarian" and "blue collar" are not synonymous, the latter being only a sub-division of the former. And I do not claim to know which sectors of the proletariat will be the most radical sectors five or ten years from now.
> I'd like to see Carrol
> attend a NASCAR event, or perhaps a Lee Greenwood or Charlie Daniels
> concert, then get his take.
Irrelevant to my take: I want leftists and left organizations to forswear predicting the future on the basis of empirical descriptions of the present. I don't give a damn what those NASCAR crowds are _now_, and I won't try to predict what they will be in 2020.
> When I went to the Indy 500 last year, I was
> amazed by the slavish pro-war whooping I witnessed when some minister
> offered a "prayer" supporting our "efforts" in Iraq. And by the amount of
> pro-war t-shirts worn by spectators. There was an Ugly Spirit present, and
> that it came from my fellow workers didn't make it any less disgusting.
I think you obsess too much with the present, and in effect claim that you can predict the future on the basis of that present. In the present the only ones I am _immediately_ interested in are those whose attitudes and knowledge make they potential recruits to the anti-war movement. It is among those that we can build the momentum which will impact wider sectors of the working class next year or next decade. It is politically sterile to focus on the ones who, for the present, are not with us, and it is politically obtuse to insult them even now, which would tend to preclude reaching them in the future.
Carrol
P.S. The Indy is NASCAR. :-)
>
> DP
>
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