shag carpet bomb wrote:
>
I didn't think the book was horrible. I just thought it was a weird book
> directed at leftists who have been making the same criticisms for years
> now. Who was the audience? He kept writing as if there was some wide swath
> of leftists who don't get this.
>
> I think he was talking to non-leftists in the universities, who he is
> admonishing to understand that class is not merely an "identity" -- its
> mode of oppression doesn't at all operate the way race, gender, disability,
> etc. do -- But these people never have and never will care about class from
> a leftist perspective.
>
> They will care about it as a "cultural identity". Michaels uses an example
> of how the result of thinking of class like a racial identity is that you
> have consciousness-raising workshops where people learn to respect the
> cultural differences of class. *rolls eyes*
>
A year or so ago I think I posted to the list saying that past "working-class" struggles had ben esentially identity politcs. (REPEAT: That is not to say they wre not absolutely essntial. All praise and glory to them all.) The distinction Tomas makes between Rousseau and Marx is crucial here. These past struggles (some of which remain to complete) are struggles for equality (equality in unfreedom one might say). They were driven by moral passion. But that won't do for the struggle against capitalism.
Postone makes clear where the oppression of the worker as worker, as abstract labor, lies: The meaning of his/her work is determined not by its product but by the relation of that labor to the labor of every other laborer, globally. It is a system of social relations that constitutes our unfreedom. And that can't be opposed by mere moral passion. In fact moral passiondrags us back into the struggles of the past.
Carrol