On 2010-11-03, at 11:11 AM, Alan Rudy wrote:
> Marv, I think your point is spot on but misses Carrol's concern.
> Carrol is arguing that the middle and upper middle income students were
> working class kids and that, waged or salaried, folks who work for a living
> are in and of the working class.
There are two contradictory thoughts being expressed here: one, that wage- and salary-earners are by definition working class, a point on which I agree; and two, students, who are not "waged or salaried" are working class kids. They're not, even when they come from working class families.
> Like you, I think the material conditions and social institutions within
> which students reside can generate a certain transience to their commitment
> and sustained effectiveness, though I think it is also selling a good number
> of folks active between 1960 and 1980 during college under the bus to
> suggest that they did not - after college - generate and/or look for
> post-graduate political organizations to be part of independent of whether
> they were directly related to their places of work.
Yes, those with post-secondary education have arguably been the most politically conscious stratum of the working class since the 60's. Many have been active in government, teachers', and other public sector unions. But this is beside the point. My argument was that students, "regardless of their future employment" as workers, are not workers while in school and, at best, can only act in solidarity with struggles which unfold outside the campus.
> On Wed, Nov 3, 2010 at 10:50 AM, Marv Gandall <marvgand at gmail.com> wrote:
>
>>
>> On 2010-11-03, at 10:05 AM, Carrol Cox wrote:
>>
>>> One of the sillier and misleading comments on the '60s movement is that
>> it
>>> did not involve or did not "reach" "the working class." This exibits, to
>>> begin with, a profound misunderstanding of the mdern working class, a
>>> misconception which, unfortunately, too many members of the '60s movement
>>> shared.
>>>
>>> It _was_ a Movemnt of the Working Class, and like _all_ such movements
>> (past
>>> and future) it involved particular _sectors_ of the class: Blacks, Women,
>>> Young White Workers. (The students were working class, and ANY serious
>>> working-class movement in an urban society will be made up _mostly_ of
>>> students, i.e., young workers, because that is where young workers are to
>> be
>>> found. Near the end it was beginning to expand to other sectins of the
>>> working classd: older people (Gray Panthrs), welfare -ricipients and
>>> social workers, members of the already shrinking industrial working class
>>> (Lordstown), and so forth.
>>
>> It's true that many male and female students on the campuses, where the
>> 60's protests were disproproportionately concentrated, came from working
>> class families.
>>
>> What you're overlooking, however, is these students a) were not themselves
>> workers, strategically located in factories, offices, mines, and ports with
>> the potential power to shut down parts or all of the economy and b) were
>> transient, lacking any material incentive to organize enduring institutions
>> in their self-interest on campus, defining their self-interest instead as
>> securing well-paid employment on graduation.
>>
>> This is why students, regardless of family background and future employment
>> as salary earners, have typically been seen on the left as "peripheral" or
>> "allied" to the working class, rather than, as you suggest, an integral part
>> of it.
>>
>> Often what you sniffily dismiss as "silly" and "not worth discussing" turns
>> out to be otherwise on closer examination.
>>
>>
>>
>>
>> ___________________________________
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>>
>
>
>
> --
> *********************************************************
> Alan P. Rudy
> Dept. Sociology, Anthropology and Social Work
> Central Michigan University
> 124 Anspach Hall
> Mt Pleasant, MI 48858
> 517-881-6319
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