In addition.
No one on the list it seems was interested in the passage from Barbara Jeanne Fields I posted. If you take her point, then to speak of the "relation" of race to class is misleading: that relation is an _internal_ relation, not a relationship between two different entities. See especially her brief remarks on David Roediger:
"Someone might as well undertake to decide in the abstract whether the numerator or the denominator is more important to understanding a fraction, instead of settling down to the more sensible task of trying to define and specify each one, recognizing their difference as well as their relationship and their joint indispensability to the result. A recent example is David Roediger, "'Labor in White Skin": Race and Working-class History,"
. Roediger apparently believes that distinguishing analytically between _race_ and _class_ necessarily implies "privileging" one over the other (to use his slang). And, in defending the identification of racism as a "tragic flaw" that helps to explain American history, rather than as a part of the history that needs explaining, he confuses a rhetorical device with a historical explanation."
And a final suggestion. Except at the moment of insurrection, "class struggle" is almost always struggle _within_ the class, not struggle "against the capitalists." It is out of such internal struggles that the 'spark' which ignites a praire file is most apt to occur. Anything which distracts from that internal class struggle around such issues as race or around the relation between 'line workers' and lower level 'management'* are far more important than the (always ongoing) struggle over hours and wages. I think I posted some years ago an account of the struggle at Mitsubishi in Normal, Ill. against sexual harassment on the job - with many of the workers scabbing for management in various ways. _That_ exemplifies the major form which actual class struggle takes in the U.S. at the present time. And if, as shag writes, Michaels opposes faculty unionizing, then he he supports Capital in such class sturggle as actually exists or can exist in the U.S. at the present time.
(*For example the attempt of foremen in the auto industry to organnize, a strike which was broken by the UAW, the victor being Capital)
Carrol