[lbo-talk] What is the working class?

[shag carpet bomb]

At 02:17 PM 12/1/2009, brad bauerly wrote:
>  I am very sick right now so I am not going to spend much time responding.
>However, based on your last two emails I don't actually think there is much
>space between are positions.  If you really do think that agents and
>structures operate together, rather than the notion that class should be
>viewed as an identity issue (which is what you have sometimes wrote, the
>post on the North Carolina school program as an example), then I think we
>actually agree.  I was trying to get you to be more specific as I was
>reading through you seemed to be contradicting yourself. Also,  I believe
>that I said that class is not merely identity or subjectivity but involved
>structures.  I really don't think there is an actual opposition between
>identities and structures (I don't think Marx did either).  This would also
>appear to be the position as you elucidated in your last two emails, and
>perhaps before that.  By the way, I have never in my 15 plus years of being
>involved in left movements heard the term 'manly man politics' and I am
>still a bit confused by the term.  If it means dogmatic reductionist
>marxism, as you seem to claim below, then why not say that?  Anyway, I am
>probably not making much sense and need to rest more.

one other thing. i have a hard time understanding your position because 
this all seems like a lot of vague generalities and abstractions.

to steal a line from jenny brown, it would help if you could run the 
abstractions through an example or two.

what is an example of a class ideneity or subjectivity? what is an example 
of class as a structure. why is the latter more compelling to someone than 
the former? perhaps this is the same complaint carrol had. i have no doubt 
you have plenty of experience in the messy work of organizing, but it would 
help if these ideas could be worked out in my concrete examples.

i think we disagree a great deal and i think these concrete examples would 
make manifest just how we disagree.

shag

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