[lbo-talk] what is the working class

brad bauerly bbauerly at gmail.com
Wed Dec 2 18:21:31 PST 2009



>
> 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
>
>
>

O.K. some examples...in the migrant workers rights group I work with there are alot of different identities and subjectivities, not sure if they are what one would call working class, more of historical/cultural but amplified and changed due to societal pressures and as a means to deal with what are clearly class barriers (don't get me started on all of the left liberals who constantly tell the migrants that they should be more proud of and expressive of their cultural heritage. As if they moved half way across the world to express a culture that is not really as 'untouched' as these 'activists' think. As if their main concern is not just to feed their families and if they wanted to express their culture instead, like they would have migrated at all). Most are responding to class oppression by trying to make sense of it though their cultural differences. Pretty much the same scene at the workers center too. Over the top masculinity and anti-intellectualism as a response to class barriers and as a means to make sense of the world around them. Then there is the strike I was involved: in which us radicals thought we could build a workers culture around a marxist/communist identity by calling everyone comrade and discussing everything in marxist terms. This both succeeded and failed as we effectively formed a tight group of radicals and alienated ourselves from the rest of the union. My days in the anti-globalization movements were similar. There was a culture to this group but I would not call in working class, more like privileged and self-referential. Ditto the radical environmental groups I kicked around with in the mid-90's. So, none of these reveals a real working class identity or subjectivity, which is kind of my point, and those that tried to insert one tended to either make matters worse or simply divide and split. These identities were also mostly not chosen but put on them. This is also the reason why I have brought up the critique of the enlightenment critique of religion by Marx and how I thought it applies to subjectivity in general. Of course this then influences the workers and later workers chances to move out of this position, so it is not a unidirectional process but a fluid relationship. And it is here in he relationship between identities and the lack of structural change that is the key variable.

Now as far as how we differ, I guess I expected you would say that and my response would be to ask you to specify how are positions still differ?

BRAD



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