----- Original Message ----- From: "Ted Winslow" <egwinslow at rogers.com> To: <lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org> Sent: Wednesday, May 28, 2008 8:39 PM Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] "Theory's Empire," an anti-"Theory" anthology
Ted wrote: -- -- [my answer at the end -- J. D.]
: Carrol wrote:
:
: > But I'm even _more_ interested in developing revolutionary thinking
: > and
: > practice, and that does involve getting a grip on several useful
: > senses
: > of the word "theory," one of which senses is the strong sense that in
: > different ways both Jerry and I are chasing.
:
: If the meaning of Marx's claim that the working class is the
: "universal" class is accurately elaborated in the interpretive
: argument I just repeated, then the claim seems to have been mistaken,
: doesn't it?
:
: What evidence is there that the capitalist labour process has worked
: to develop in those subjected to it the powers and will Marx claimed
: it would?
:
: My understanding is that your own idea of the working class as the
: potentially revolutionary class differs from the idea I'm attributing
: to Marx. What is the superior kind of "revolutionary thinking and
: practice" to which it leads?
:
: Ted
J. D. -- -- the Part of *my* answer to these questions would be to point to the third thesis on Feuerbach, where I think Marx posed the problem in terms of "the coincidence of the changing of minds and the changing of circumstances" and said that the answer was revolutionising practice by the working-class. At the same time he recognized that the transitional society would be stamped with the birthmarks of the old class system, the muck of ages. The working class's developing of its potential as the universal class would not be an easy process for a class enmired in the horrible relations of the old class society. It would involve conflict with the oppressor class, which would have to resist that development and smash the institutions and structures the working-class attempts to create, as we see nowadays happening all around us. It will also have to exploit every division, of "race", nationality, gender etc. To my mind these divisions however are material, and the oppressed cannot avoid the fight for their liberation, even if workers not oppressed in the same way see such struggles as divisive, and share the oppressor's imperialist and chauvinist consciousness, because part of their real, material relations are oppressive. However, more importantly perhaps, doesn't Ted's question ignore the massive humanising changes brought about by the revolutionary and even reformist (against odds) struggles of the working class and other anti-capitalists and anti-imperialists? (The *real* "late" Marx was freeing himself of over-concentration on the working class as the universal class, and seeing the potential in the peasant commune). That answer is even more relevant in view of the massive successes and gains which capitalism and imperialism have recently secured against their victims in the working class and the "third world". J. D.