> Travis writes:
>
>> What this article points to is the fact that organization and education
>> of
>> the working class is a long term project where any intellectual who wants
>> to be involved must throw their lot in with the working class. And this
>> kind of work cannot be done from Ph.D. cubicle, a tenured office, or by
>> contributing to or creating a left wing web page or list serve.
>
> *Some* kinds of work can't be done from the university. Some can. You
> could organize a faculty union, network with K-12 teachers, teach the kids
> their history and media culture, fight for public education, etc.
>
> Marx spent 25 years perusing the library of the British national museum,
> tracking down Capital in its lair.
>
> -- DRR
Agreed, but as I said and you snipped out, they are not the same activities. Doing a Ph.D. may equip one to do a better job at working class organization and education but it is not the same as doing it. I have no problem with the academy or with any other location in the social division of radical labour, but they are just that--different locations and different activities.
Most people from rural small towns, like myself, gravitate towards the more secure better paying locations within this division of radical labours. Partly this is how the working class gets screwed. Its own members with skills and inclinations towards organization and education tend to leave their communities. This on the one hand, deprives their class of a real resource and on the other deprives themselves of a direct connection to their class. And this is among those who have any class consciousness.
Others simply take their brains, get loans and hit the corporate streets. This is one of the strengths of liberal democracies: there is enough vertical mobility for some of those with the right inclinations, skills, and Fortuna, to move out of their immediate circumstances.
Where the author of the article errors I think is by not recognizing that many of those he labels as urban liberals are in fact children of working class parents.
Travis