the problem isn't with the failure to get back to basics, sitcking with the working class. the problem is with thinking there's a subject of history at all.
identity politics was inevitable given this insistence on a perspective theory of truth, one where only the oppressed can know the truth of history. that's what people were bitching at lbo8250 for saying. for him, only the working class with their arms up the asses of goats can possibly know the truth of political struggle. the rest of us, in our cities, are far too alienated and aligned with the perspective of power, we don't have clue.
it's the same reasoning that underpins ID politics. you're white, so you can't know shit. they're black and, therefore, they know the truth. (weathermen)
wait, only black women can really know.
no no, it's black lesbians.
no, it's black poor lesbians.
no. it's black poor disabled lesbians.
no. it's blcack poor disabled lesbians in rhodesia.
no. she must also have HIV.
she should also be s transgendered lesbian
and have anorexia nervosa AND social anxiety disorder.
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "shag carpet bomb" <shag at cleandraws.com>
>
> It creates a hiearchy of who is more oppressed because, underlying
> most
> western marxist and western marxish politics, there's the endless
> search
> for the subject of history - the "most oppressed" class which is
> supposed
> to truly understand how to struggle against capitalism and with whom
> we
> must align ourselves.
> ------------
> I thought this was a creation of the seventies. Because before that,
> the agreed subject of history was the working class.
>
> For some reason, in the seventies, people started saying that there
> was no more working class in the U.S., meaning that manufacturing was
> disappearing. Stephen Grenblatt, resident Marxist English Prof at U.C.
> Berkely, told me this point blank, while I stared back
> incomprehendingly.
>
> I think someone posted a nice essay by Tamas on this topic a while
> ago.
>
> Joanna
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>
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