>united in these fundamental ways. It seems likely that disunities of
>the working class in these ways are necessary conditions for
>preventing the working class from overthrowing capitalism. In this
>sense, capitalism "needs" racism (White Supremacy ) and nationalism.
The workers are not united in a number of ways. The lack of working class unity flows from the alienation that occurs through a commodity society (social relations mediated by things), which creates a competitivism between workers which manifests many forms of ideological attempts to understand the social world. This will not be overcome until the source of the alienation and competition is removed (this is why I posted the Marx quote where he attacks the enlightenment critique of religion). Attempts to address the effects of this alienation _without_ reference to the source are, therefore, utopian projects that will fail. We will not have a united working class until the source of the division is illuminated through the process of overcoming the class alienation that gives rise to the disunity.
>Carrol: And it is not primarily an ideology of the capitalists but of the
>working class: perhaps the most powerful of working-class ideologies.
>Capitalists sometimes consciously use this ideology, and sometimes
>consciously fight against at least some of its implicatoins.
>Let me repeat that: RACISM IS A WORKING-CLASS IDEOLOGY. It is workers
>(whether their pay be high or low) after all who most desperately need
>for their own sense of existing to have some explanation of the world
>about them. National chauvinism, sexism, heterosexism, etc etc etc
>should all be seen as working-class ideologies, generated among workers.
>Capitalists (not capital or capitalism but specific capitalists) often
>do take conscious advantage of this working-class ideology, but it is
>irrelevant whether or not capitalists themselves believe the shit.
I am unclear as to how an ideology could be demarcated as being either working class or capitalist. Clearly, any distinction is purely an abstraction and concretely in society, there is no separation. Now where there is separation (to some degree but of course they are related) is in the individual agents and their own understanding and use of the ideology of racism (or sexism, religion, nationalism, heteronormativism ect.). Some interpret national distinction as a means to denigrate the other in an effort to make sense of inequality. However, some argue against nationalism as a form of utopian liberal ideology that serves to gloss over the source of inequality and focus on its effects.
>Carol: class struggle takes place primarily INSIDE the working
>class. The focus of class struggle is the liquidation of this working
>class ideology and its replacement by a sense of class.
This is a rather eccentric understanding of class struggle, no? Again, I am unsure how one can separate this intra-working class struggle and the broader inter-class struggle. Clearly, they must be in a relationship. In addition, why wouldn’t we understand racialization or any other means to deal with alienation as a form of class struggle against the ruling class, or better yet, as arising out of this class struggle? I for one see class struggle all around, not in some distant, if ever reachable, future. It is a failure of the left to articulate an understanding of the current state of this class struggle that has resulted in the failure to focus our energies upward instead of in an intra-working class manner.
>Carrol: class struggle consists not primarily of struggle of worker against
>capitalist but of struggle _inside_ the working class to dissolve this
>oppressive ideology and way of thinking. And that struggle, again,
>consists in fighting against the social conditions (e.g. housing
>segregation) which continually regenerate the ideology of racism.
I don’t understand why we would want to understand our attempts to focus our energy upward as class struggle inside the working class. The quote I posted where Marx attacks the enlightenment critique of religion seems to be applicable here. To scold workers for their use of an “oppressive ideology” and to see this as the necessary ‘class struggle’ is to chide workers for their searching for understanding in an alienated society (search for a heart in a heatless world). Not only does it do nothing to overcome the source of their bad ideology, but it focuses us on an alternative oppressive ideological project of liberal equity (which is unsolvable and a utopian ideology without overcoming the source).
The whole understanding of ratialization as a process of workers creating division to maximize their individual chances (white privilege) is completely within a bourgeois, individual ideology. It also fails to grasp the many ways that racism can serve as the source of ideology because it sees the relationship between capitalism and ratialization as static rather than in a flow.
Brad