Joanna wrote:
>
> Brad writes:
>
> "Everything you say below is all real good. However, it seems to assume that
> there is no sharp class distinctions or struggles that we could plug into.
That is correct. Thjere are no _concrete_ situations where the class conflict is visible, and Brad'sfailure to notice this is what led me to suspect his perspective was merely academic, concerned only with the language one used in discussing politics, not with the problems raised in actual practice.
I
> mean come on. The last 30 years have witnessed a huge ruling class
> offensive.
True. But yuou still talk about it as tough armies in distinct uniforms were lined up facing each other. This is to have yuou head in the clouds.
So I have no idea why we would need to go clandestinely into the
> struggles you mention in order to bring the class issue to the surface. It
> is fucking everywhere on the surface."
Who in thehell is "we" here? And it is incredibly naive to think that the "class issue" is ever easy to bring to the surface. Even industrial workers (who make up only a small part of the working class) see it as betweeen them and their employer, not a class conflict. If it is so clear to you, go out and organize it. You can be the American Lenin.
Joanna:
> I'm not so sure about that. The notion that there are systemic forces at play is fairly foreign to the American psyche. And there is deep, deep shame at being working class. In this country, it's synonymous with "loser."
This I do not believe is true. At a very abstract level of historical analysis it is true that in contrast to peasants or women in a hierrchical social order, individuals under capitalism tend to see their position as their own "responsibility." But that doesn't go far in assessing the actual consciousness of 10s of millions of particular individuals.
> Tillie Olsen recounted how her father, a socialist and union organizer/official, would take the kids sightseeing, pointing out the bridges, structures, etc. that "we had built," instilling in her a life-long pride about being a worker. This is the one thing she was the most grateful to her parents for.
Here you make the mistake of seeing class as an identity. It isn't. But it was seen/felt in that way throughout the history of the labor movement of the 195h-c and most of the 20th. That is why people still spontaneously think "worker" = "Blue-collar" worker. And that is profoundly false. You would do better as a start in Tillie OlsenTillie Olsen thingking about class today to think of yourself as thetypical of the workign class. That image would clash with the traditional image, and that clash would lead to a more complex notion of what class is in today.
>
> The whole point about the working class in this country is to escape it. There is no notion about the possibility of taking over, of re-shaping the relations of production into something beyond mortification and humiliation.... and as industrial jobs leave, there are fewer and fewer things to point to and claim "we built it."
I'm afraid by focusing on Tillie Olsen you arrive at as romantic a notion of class as Brad reflects. "We built it" wasn't even quite true then, and Olson's father was not teaching her class consciousness but "blue-collar consciousness," which is along way from social revolution. Those bridge builders built with stteel produced elsewhere out of iron ore produced elsewhere, and that movement involved a hell of a lot of paper work (and would even in a socialist world). And even then, that bridge _as wealth_ (rather than as value) was as much do to science & technology as to the labor of the people who worked on the actual bridge.
>
> And none of the more articulate liberation and environmental movements (whatever their virtues) provide the vocabulary needed to articulate and work through the problem of class.
Yes. This is correct. And can be affirmed and developed without an implicit conception of "working class" as identity. That conception of class was useful for almost two centuries in fueling the class struggle (i.e., the struggle for abhstract bourgeois equality). For the most part that abstract equality (as abstract citizens) has been achieved. But the struggle for freedom has hardly begun. (See Tamas.) And that struggle cannot be grounded in He-Man Working-Class consciousness.
Carrol
>
> Joanna
>
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