At 02:52 PM 10/11/2009, Doug Henwood wrote:
On Oct 11, 2009, at 2:44 PM, Carrol Cox wrote: Focus on individuals fucks up political discussion, almost always.
I gotta agree with you on this. Michaels' original point - that big capital has entirely assimilated the diversity agenda, a point to which the entire Obama phenomenon is related, and how a lot of the received wisdom about how capitalism "needs" racism is badly in need of updating - has been lost in all this effort to prove him an asshole, or to search his book for incriminating passages.Doug
shag] did you actually have something to say about the substance of my argument?
capitalism doesn't need racism, but it does need _racialization_. Michaels book is an absolutee impediment to that understanding. In fact, it is hostile to it since he is utterly either indifferent to or ignorant of _oppression_. to recuperating michaels' book by imputing to it the sophistication of actually participating in some discussion about whether or not capitalism needs racism cracks me up. shag
Cox:
The fact that "big capital has entirely assimilated the diversity agenda" does not, I believe, have any political significance!
Two reasons:
I believe various posts touched on the first reason. Diversity as such was never the aim of the civil-rights or Black Liberation agendas, nor was it, I believe (though I may be wrong here) part or a significant part of the Women's Liberation Movement. ERA, abortion, right of women to fight back (lethally if necessary) against spousal abuse, evem eqial pay for equal work were not and are not usefully conceived as a struggle for "diversity." I have not read his book, so I don't know whether or not he incorporates this, _or_ the fact that the slogan of "diversity" (like the retreat to identity politics) occurred in a specific political context, the context of the exhaustion of the political energy of the '60s and of a major counter-ofensive by capital. Many of us new (and said in discussion*) at the time that diversity was a fraud. And one could experience it in one's classes even as the black students became less curious, less politicized, more intent on building a (?pseudo?) black culture on campus. "Diversity" was simply part of the implicit peace treaty signed in the mid-70s between the forces of the '60s and the 'establishment" (whatever that covers). That ushered in the present period of general depoliticization, and it is quite false to equate that depoliticization errors internal to "the left." But I've been pushing that point for 10 or more years and won't try to expand on it here.
The second reason is that "big capital" (or capitalism as a system) always absorbs _everything_. That is why it is silly, even offensive, to condemn any reform on the basis that capital has coopeted it. Of course capital has. Men died and were hanged in the Chartist movement for demanding the vote for all (men). But capitalism absorbed universal suffrage. So should we condemng the Chartist Movement for being coopted. Men and women fought and died to esbablish the CIO, and the AFL-CIO were important institutions for the disciplining of labor from 1940 to the 1980s, when they merely became insignificant. Should we point fingers of scorn at them for "helping capitalism." ALL gains for the working class are even greater gains for Capitalism. The whole fuss about cooptation of civil rights or any other gain is simply silly. For that matter, it takes a generation or two to determine whether or not a successful socialist insurrection has aided or harmed ccapital. It has turned out that the Revolution of 1917 aided world capitalism. Is that a basis for pointing fingers at the Bolsheviks?
U.S. Capitalism, then, has indeed been greatly strengthened by the partial breaking of the glass ceiling in corporations, by the rise of women to powerful positions in the universities, to to the breaking of segation in the military, greatly increasing the pool of potential leaders (up to and inlcuding Chief of Staff) Those trends will undoubtedly continue, with more women and non-whites in positions of great power or in highly-skilled and highly paid professions. And that will not do a fucking thing to effect the structural racism in the United States or improve the lot of the greatmajority of women. It may even increase spousal abuse.
But that is also politically irrelevant. It just means that in the next surge of resistance in the U.S., when ever it occurs, we will have to develop tactics appropriate to fighting a racist system in which many of the leaders of that system are black themselves. So be it.
Perhaps Michaels deals with these points. I am merely responding to parts of the lbo-talk debate. If so, fine. We could go on to other topics. But if not, then we have barely begun, as long and often repetitions as the discussion was, to discuss the issues he raises.