You're right to call this a festishization from a microsect.
As a non-othrodox Trotskyist (i.e. one who doesn't take everything Trotsky said as gospel), I'd say that this indvidual was talking out of his ass. This sort of analysis is more the polemic of someone who has never met a real coal miner. The UMW deplores what that the mining companies have done to the environment in the mining areas, as the workers actually live there, unlike the owners.
I'm sure that in a post-revolution society, work could be found for the residents of these areas that didn't kill them or destroy their lands. Maybe they could work by performing environmental clean-ups of these areas and restoring them as best as possible to their previous natural beauty. Not being in the interest of profit, we'd never see that in any great undertaking today, but one would hope that if we ever do win REAL change, that it would come to pass.
Marx, Lenin and Trotsky frequently talked about improving production in ways that weren't so detrimental to everyone who lived near the factories. This person seems to want to focus on maintaining the status quo as opposed to actually improving workers' lives.
--Josh K.
Message: 6 Date: Tue, 6 Oct 2009 21:37:01 -0400 From: Doug Henwood <dhenwood at panix.com> Subject: Re: [lbo-talk] Trotskyite fetishization of the workplace To: lbo-talk at lbo-talk.org Message-ID: <BEE5F199-D895-41E0-9FA0-73D8675A307C at panix.com> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=US-ASCII; format=flowed; delsp=yes
On Oct 6, 2009, at 7:30 PM, Joseph Catron wrote:
> What is it with these types, anyway? I'm weak on Trotsky, but did he
> ever say anything so silly as that all decisions concerning a
> particular industry should be made exclusively by workers within that
> industry? Or was this merely one Trotskyite's vulgar rendition?
I am certainly no expert on Trotsky - and, by the way, "Trotsyite" is usually considered the pejorative version of "Trotskyist" - but my reading of some of their press suggest that they put great weight on struggles "at the point of production" rather than at some more aggregate level. This could be their own boneheadedness rather than Leon's.
Doug
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