Eric Beck Wrote
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> This is all pretty banal history, I know, but I'm reminded of it when
> I hear things like "the revival of the working class." Just as unions
> weren't supposed to unify a working class that was toiling in
> segmented occupations and industries, class now is supposed to act as
> the unification of all oppressions and stratifications. I'm skeptical,
> for reasons I've bored with before, but also because in takes like
> Gindin's, "class" reads like an institution that exists a priori to
> actual struggle. I would think the idea would be to create forms
> during struggle, without the compulsion to unification.
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> By the way, this is one of the reasons I can't get behind the naming
> of the revolutionary vanguard. Doug's working class, Zizek's
> slum-dwellers, and Hardt and Negri's immaterial workers all assume a
> political subject before the actual politics has happened.
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Isn't the opposite, of denying politics and political subjects prior
to...to...what?...politics?....class? just as bad, if not worse. When was
this pre-struggle and/or pre-political moment? Likewise, when was this
pre-class moment? Isn't part of the struggle to articulate a politics that
can unite and constitute an actual political force with in already existing
politics and struggles? I know, unity in diversity. But this is different
from completely atomized individual political subjects. How is there even
supposed to be this eruption of a spontaneous movement when there is no
common there there to move against?
I think the way you pose the question is too binary anyway. It is neither completely spontaneous nor predetermined revolutionary subject (which Gindin is not saying, he says specifically that part of the Union movements problem has been its too narrow and predetermined understanding of class).
Brad