oh! you are right. I completely forgot about that. I wanted to say: I can see how you'd have interpreted my post that way. Lemme look up what i said .... fuck! it was hard to find.
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finally. i had to read all your posts to find the one i wrote. sheesh. OK, this is what I wrote and I can see why you got that impression:
""And this is why it's important to advance a system in which, yes, we do have equal representation of races and genders and so forth. Because under such conditions it's going to be a lot easier for people to finally see that there's more going on. Once people realize that anyone can become rich (to use eWBM's lingo) can "become rich" and that people from all kinds of backgrounds do become "rich", and yet things are STILL fucked up, then they will start getting a clue about the _real_ causes of inequality." (corporate rationality thread. I'm way to lazy to do what DM does and find the link. sorry)"
I was referring to an earlier argument I'd made about the struggles and wishes of the age. It is my contention that we must work where people are. If people are in an uproar about an issue, then we work with them. Thus, for me, instead of applying slogans and banners about how the most expedient way to bring up international socialist movement against imperialism, is to join any and all anti-war struggles to agitate in that venue, that it's better to look around you and find out where people are already struggling. i posted a version at the list, cleaned it up and directed folks to this post at the blog: http://cleandraws.com/2009/10/03/struggles-and-wishes-of-the-age/
this does not mean that I think that you must work on race and gender first, then class. it means that I think we should take peoples' current struggles seriously now, and then contribute to a process of self-clarifying those struggles.
i'm a lazy ass but I've mentioned my work in a deindustrializing community -- a project on citizenship. when a plant closed, what we did was work with people from all walks of life to set up forums for civic dialogue. long story short: what i witnessed and later wrote about was this fascinating process where peole, angered by a plant shutdown and, earlier, angered by an attempted siting of a nuclear waste dump, managed to get beyond NIMBY politics and make alliances with people in Mexico. Those people were getting the jobs that they were losing. But through this self-clarification process, they eventually came see Mexican workers, not as stealing their jobs, but as being subjected to the same capitalist exploitation as they were.
Meanwhile, one night were were televising the forum -- because that was part of the deal, the local ABC affiliate was doing its public programming on our project - - some wankers, I think they were -- I can't think of the marxist sect now, but they fancy themselves as a group which goes to any and all seemingly liberal, prog, radical events and disrupting it by blathering on about whatever they think is more radical than what the group is about. Anyone know the sect I'm talking about?
Anyway, to me, they are the kind of activists who don't work with people where they are. They shower banners and slogans on everyone and expect people to kneel before them.
So, it is my contention, that if you work with some identity movement or some protest against the state's siting of a radioactive waste dump, that you are working with people on the struggles and wishes that define their age. and that you work to advance their understanding -- and your own. where theory isn't imposed on them, but where theory is informed by political practice.
in that sense, at the SAME TIME you are working on gender and race struggles that animate people on the ground -- you ARE ALSO working on class struggle.
it's not a linear process, one before the other. because people don't experience life where, in one place they are exploited by class and in another place they are oppressed by gender or race or whathaveyou.
furthermore, i think it's very important to work on gender, race, etc. _now_ AS WELL AS CLASS because, the standard line is "we'll worry about it later" or, that will all go away when the revolution comes.
but we already know that, while the revolution hasn't come, the most advanced examples of socialist struggle continue to be plagued by social structural oppression. and as carrol keeps pointing out, if you are working on these struggles completely clueless as to how social structural oppression is, indeed, perpetuated in organizing and activist groups, then you are instantiating, perpetuating and legitimizing oppression by upholding institutional norms within the organization. you are simply perpetuating the very thing you (not brad you, general you) say you understand: that race, gender, etc are used to divide the working class.
so, where you see me as struggling for gender, race, queers first, I definitely do not. They are bound up together and you have to attack them all if you are going to have an effective struggle against capitalism.
shag
http://cleandraws.com Wear Clean Draws ('coz there's 5 million ways to kill a CEO)