Messages in this set:
* Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working class? (and other responses)
* Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working class? (and other responses)
* Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working class? (and other responses)
* Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working class?
* Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working class?
* Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working class?
=== Message 1: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working cla ========================
At around 18/10/05 2:46 pm, ravi wrote:
>
> This could post could benefit from Wojtek's eloquence, since I think we
> are wondering/talking about the same sort of thing. Too bad that IMHO he
> chooses to expend his skills at venting ;-).
>
Looks like Woj did follow up with a response (to Joanna, Bartlett and Victor) that brings out the issues quite well.
=== Message 2: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working cla ========================
At around 19/10/05 12:24 am, Gar Lipow wrote:
> At 10:21 AM -0400 17/10/05, ravi wrote:
>
>>I know this comes up every now and then, but I still am not satisifed
>>with any attempted answers. So, I ask: What is the working class? Does
>>it include white collar workers? How about $150,000/month senior
>>engineers? Is wealth an issue? A recent immigrant software engineer
>>might make $80,000/year but (s)he may be building his/her life in the US
>>from nothing, while a $40,000/year worker might have a family home and
>>future inheritance (of parental savings) that could amount to say half a
>>million or more.
>
> <...>
>
> So ,while precise perfect categories with no gray areas would be nice
> if you could get them, that degree of precision is not essential.
I am not looking for precision at all. Just something that I can use in practical matters.
> You are looking for any light you can get in the fog so you can figure
> out who the hell is shooting at you or the people you are in sympathy
> with.
I think I have a fair idea of who the hell is shooting, but what I am confused about is the sympathies of the people being shot at and the observers i.e., exploited low income white worker, middle class racially profiled black person or immigrant, low paid non-union lesbian black single mother, middle and upper class liberals, ....
=== Message 3: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working cla ========================
At around 18/10/05 5:08 pm, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> Ravi:
>
>>Michael Albert defended, many years ago in Z Mag, the idea that no
>>particular left issue or movement (class, gender, race, etc) trumps the
>>other in foundational value. Would listmembers agree? Does class
>>analysis subsume/define/reinterpret effectively other injustices?
>
>
> This is precisely the language I would avoid altogether while talking about
> inequalities and other "messy" social issues. This is lefty "speaking in
> tongues" - gobbledygook that only the inititiated can understand (or so they
> say), but nobody else can make any sense out of it.
>
> Conceptual clarity and precision is the necessary starting point of any
> serious analysis - an battle cries from the street are anything but that.
> One man's injustice is another man's belly laugh. What is injustice anyway?
> Claims can be multiplied ad infinitum and ad absurdum - all you need is a
> loudmouth. But that does not mean that demagoguery can be the basis of a
> serious social analysis, even though it may sound like music to our ears.
> Mucho freebies to sociologists of Eastern European descent? Sure, keep
> sending them in.
>
I'll be honest, I don't understand the above text at all. The stuff from Albert seems clear: It is unsubstantiated to insist that class analysis trumps gender/race/other analysis. They stand on equal ground. Leftists can achieve solidarity only if they provide a platform that includes all of them or one that they can be reduced to.
OTOH, I have no clue what "Mucho freebies to sociologists of Eastern European descent" means!!
My background is primarily in Mathematics, Logic and Computer Science. Conceptual clarity and precision is literally the only method in use in least one (logic) and a half (mathematics) of these fields. At least in these fields, one of the starting point is to nail down the primitive terms.
As I have mentioned in the past, it would be silly of me to request that LBO talk provide me a formal education on leftist socio-political thought (just as it would be silly to ask that an advanced physics mailing list justify to each newbie the validity of Newton's Laws).
If common sense notions (what I possess, as an amateur, and what I can successfully use to understand Albert's article) run counter to accepted higher-order findings, the latter being the accepted vernacular of this list, then my questions and posts are perhaps a distraction. But I suspect that unlike me, Albert (and others) are not amateurs, but are aware of existing theory and consensus.
OTOH, if your response is a revolutionary (in the Kuhnian sense) questioning of the shaky underpinnings of expert opinion and/or consensus, then foundational questions seem all the more relevant!
> <giant snip happens since it seems to essentially substantiate my questions!>
>
> So that the ownership of the means of production and relations of production
> itself are not only far more complex, thanks to industrialization, but they
> do not as easily lend themselves to to normative claims for justice. Not
> long ago, I cited an article by Sasha Abriamsky in the Nation suggesting
> public fuel subsidies to working class families and asked why is such
> subsidy warranted? Just because they need? So does everyone else. Unlike
> the British peasants turned working class, nobody locked these folks in the
> life styles that they cannot afford to continue anymore. So why should the
> public subsidize them?
>
> Nobody on this list cared, or perhaps was able, to address that question.
>
Wait, wasn't it Marx that said "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs"? I am not sure whom you are referring to on the list, but I have not disguised my belief that there is a moral/religious element (in terms of the inability to bridge the fact/value divide) in my argument in favour of equality, tolerance, etc. However, that does not mean more logical arguments cannot and have not been made.
Such arguments could come in two parts:
1) If Marx was able to "demonstrate" that the peasants were indeed "locked in", [underprivileged] people today are "locked in" (to what you refer to as "lifestyle") can be shown to be locked in, in a similar manner. Much of the best left writing I have read in the West has indeed been attempts to demonstrate how gender, race, and other membership denies access to equality. (And of course if you are to ask "Why justice?", then it makes sense to also ask "Why equality?" or at least Sen's question "Equality of what?").
2) Models can (have?) been built that demonstrate that concern for the welfare of all increases the welfare of the majority.
> The only response I received was that we should pay them because they will
> riot. That shows the utter povery of left thinking nowadays - all they are
> capable is speaking in tongues about "injustices" that are evident only to
> the initiated.
Albert is talking about gender, race, other inequalities. The injustice of women getting lesser pay, or a black guy getting beaten up by police, requires some form of initiation to understand? As opposed to the exploitation of workers?
>
> So to summarize, the concept of class has no intrinsic value in itself. Its
> usefulness comes mainly from the fact that at certain time in history it
> formed the basis of an empirically adequate analysis of social problems, and
> a rational basis of normative claims based on that analysis. But it does
> not anymore - and mindless repetition of that old discourse only testified
> to the extent of intellectual poverty. So far, the left is not able to
> offer a rational alternative to the normative claim offered by neo-liberals
> re. self-regulating markets.
I see half your point (and hence my questions that set off this debate).
Even the cohesive identity of class, it seems, during Marx's time, was not sufficient to bring about his prescriptive remedy! To the contrary, activism (seemingly the type you abhor) arguably produced a less unequal society within the neo-liberal [I guess at the time of the early 20th century, the liberal] framework of laissez faire, etc.
> The market mantra is attractive because it offers a rational basis -
> equality of opportunity, meritocracy, and efficiency - to normative claim
> for social inequality. We may question the empirical specifics, but the
> claim itself is no less rational than that of communism bringing justice and
> happiness to all. But what alternative does the left have to offer? The
> "injustice" gobbledygook and demands for welfare handouts without even being
> able to justify them in clear and generally understandable way. No wonder
> that nobody takes the left seriously anymore and prefers the neo-liberal
> mantra.
>
> My suggestion is to stop parroting the battle cries from the previous eras,
> regurgitating old shibboleths that nobody but a handful of the initiated
> cares about anymore, and instead come up with a brand new progressive and
> rational world view that speaks to the mainstream (not just the marginalized
> dropouts and exotic experience seeking upper class radicals), justifies
> social organization that is based on principles of social solidarity,
> equality and meritocracy, and offers are compelling alternative to the
> neo-liberal market mantra.
>
Your suggestion is fine but I think it is inevitable that ours is a tougher task always. The liberals of the 1900s probably faced a similar struggle to establish the rationality and use of the market mantra. Today it is "commonsense" (clear and generally understandable). Similarly for ideas of race bias. Evolution is still fighting the battle against creationism. We can [only] make further progress through a plurality of methods: unions, gender/race activism, Jon Stewart, whatever. I read your text above as no different from Albert's, and related to my question, and in opposition to arguments for the supremacy of a particular theoretical form of (potentially wrong and outdated) analysis. For them to take hold, normative claims / prescriptions need be grounded not in facts about the world (and it is an old argument that they cannot be) but in arguments based on human instinct and desire. (Or as E.O.Wilson has argued, religion, one of the most resilient expressions of morality, is so due to its evolutionary fitness).
=== Message 4: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working cla ========================
At around 19/10/05 10:51 am, Dick Grippon wrote:
> you think working class people are more racist and war mongering than
> yuppies. you've said it here, claiming you'd prefer to be around yuppies
> than the others because they are all republican, war-mongering,
> aggressive creeps who mock you at Walmart because you're not a native
> 'merikkkan.
>
Please indulge/educate me for a minute here: Why is it that my own experiences agree with a milder form of Wojtek's opinion (or at least what you report as his opinion) above? Is it because I have lived only in the Northeast of the USA? And even there only among the "right" (i.e., left) sort of yuppies?
=== Message 5: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working cla ========================
At around 19/10/05 11:58 am, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
>
> I met a lot of other people whose views and life styles I found disagreeable
> for various reasons - but I generally managed to have mutually respectful
> relationships with them.
>
Perhaps because both of you could afford to? The redneck who yells at me to "Go back home and ride camels" (??!?) expresses the same disagreement more violently because he feels the pain? It would be interesting to see how the displaced IT workers (the backbone of the new yuppie class?) react over the next few years, as their jobs are moved to India, and its no longer a matter of theoretical debates.
=== Message 6: Re: [lbo-talk] Re: working cla ========================
At around 19/10/05 10:36 am, Wojtek Sokolowski wrote:
> I do, however, have little respect for
> people who are arrogant, aggressive, inconsiderate of their surroundings and
> harmful to others - regardless of what their occupational or social status
> is.
>
> And then there are cultural tropes calling for pity for those "less
> fortunate" "disadvantaged" those who "just ain't making it." I have very
> little patience for this literary genre - which is what gets me in trouble
> on this list.
>
What is troublesome, to me, about your behaviour/writings on this list is that you are arrogant and aggressive about your unsubstantiated (IMHO) references to "lifestyle choices" (or the significance of their contribution) and your flippant dismissal of arguments opposed to yours ("cultural tropes", etc).
In choosing not to tow the party line, as you see it, of the left with regards to the "disadvantaged", you do not offer friendly (i.e., non-aggressive) and considerate corrections ("Hey fellows, we need to differentiate between the truly oppressed and the unfortunate fact that there are indeed those who exploit public measures or refuse to act on their own"), but instead, you tow the right party line: "free-riders", "lifestyle choices", etc.
--ravi
-- If you wish to contact me, you will get my attention faster by substituting "r" for "listmail" in my email address. Thank you!