[lbo-talk] What is the working class? was Re: lbo-talk Digest, Vol 1056, Issue 2

brad bauerly bbauerly at gmail.com
Sat Nov 28 13:45:11 PST 2009



> >
> > 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."
> >
> > Joanna
>

Maybe I am starting to see the issue here. The working class as I define it is not merely the 'working class' of popular discourse but the sum of all who don't own the means of production, or better yet, everyone who has surplus extracted from them because of specific property relationships. I am usually the guy at the party arguing that we need to figure out how to organize the investment bank traders and middle management types, not the person claiming that auto workers are the key to any prols movement. Maybe that is why I simply did not get this label of 'manly-man politics'. That being said, I still don't think of class as an identity or subject position. It is a structurally defined relationship of exploitation that cannot be whisked away by the mere removal of an ideology but requires material transformation and social reorganization accordingly. Is this the manly-man politics that you and others disparage?

Brad



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