From owner-marxism Thu Sep 14 05:27:51 1995

Date: Thu, 14 Sep 1995 01:27:51 -0400 (EDT)

From: Maoist Internationalist Movement

Subject: Re: MIM

On Tue, 12 Sep 1995, Doug Henwood wrote:

> Several years ago I sat stunned with amazement as Juliet Schor told a class

> at the Center for Popular Economics' annual summer institute that the US

> standard of living was just too high. An autoworker (African-American, a

> detail not irrelevant to the discussion of vulgar Third Worldism) in the

> class exploded with rage at this notion. It was quite a sight to watch a

> Harvard prof lecturing the autoworker that he was living too well.

>

> Doug

>

MIM replies: I don't think any movement has gained lots of enlightened labor aristocracy workers' activism. Anger is one thing, but these stereotyped stories about workers are another.

Intellectual leaders (writers) continuously portray

workers as thin-skinned and unable to bear the slightest

criticism of their class. This enables intellectual leaders

to justify their own failure in forthright leadership.

We could tell anecdotes of long-time auto-workers

who worked with us and funded us. Advanced workers in the

imperialist countries also want an explanation for why

the masses' mood is reactionary compared with in the Third World.

The anecdotes being left out entirely of course are the

ones from militant prisoners and unemployed who write to us.

Then there is Vincent Chin's mother who had to witness

a white Cincinnati jury be more reactionary than the government

that prosecuted Chin's white autoworker killers.

Occasionally the imperialists allow a selective prosecution of

hate crimes through, but they can count on the Euro-Amerikan

juries to let off the killers of Vincent Chin and the like.

When the masses rise up in urban rebellion, even the imperialists

and labor aristocracy can try to undo the damage of a suburban

jury that couldn't understand a videotape (Rodney King).

Alternatively, when the Black bourgeoisie blows it's wad,

we can learn about Mark Fuhrerman (in the O.J. Simpson case).

Those are about the only circumstances where the imperialist-

labor aristocracy alliance's veil over the (in)justice system

is lifted.

Pat for MIM

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From owner-marxism Fri Sep 15 11:47:42 1995

From: "Tom Condit"

Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 11:47:42 +0000

Subject: The working class

I think that Rakesh has (as usual) cut to some of the real issues

involved in the MIM positions. The basic problem is that MIM

uses a methodology on the question of class which is totally

inadequate.

Rakesh has pointed out that classes are defined by their relation

to the mode of production, which is to say, their relation to

other classes. One commands the process of production, another

obeys. Still others may have a peripheral relationship to the

major class antagonisms.

In his preface to _The Making of the English Working Class_, E.

P. Thompson says:

"By class I understand a historical phenomenon, unifying a number

of disparate and seeming unconnected events, both in the raw

material of experience and in consciousness. I emphasise that is

an *historical* phenomenon. I do not see class as a 'structure',

nor even as a 'category', but as something which in fact happens

(and can be shown to have happened) in human relationships.

"More than this, the notion of class entails the notion of

historical relationship. Like any other relationship, it is a

fluency which evades analysis if we attempt to stop it dead at

any given moment and anatomize its structure. The finest-meshed

sociological net cannot give us a pure specimen of class, any

more than it can give us one of deference or of love. The

relationship must always be embodied in real people and in a real

context. Moreover, we cannot have two distinct classes, each with

an independent being, and bring them *into* relationship with

each other. We cannot have love without lovers, nor deference

without squires and labourers. And class happens when some men,

as a result of common experiences (inherited or shared), feel,

and articulate the identity of their interests as between

themselves, and as against other men whose interests are

different from (and usually opposed to) theirs. The class

experience is largely determined by the productive relations into

which men are born--or enter involuntarily. Class-consciousness

is the way in which these experiences are handled in cultural

terms: embodied in the traditions, value-systems, ideas and

institutional forms. If the experience appears as determined,

class-consciousness does not. We can see a *logic* in the

responses of similar occupational groups undergoing similar

experiences, but we cannot predicate any *law*. Consciousness of

classes arises in the same way in different times and places, but

never in *just* the same way.

"There is today an ever-present temptation to suppose that class

is a thing. This was not Marx's meaning, in his own historical

writing, yet the error vitiates much latter-day 'Marxist'

writing. 'It', the working class, is assumed to have a real

existence, which can be defined almost mathematically--so many

men who stand in a certain relationship to the means of

production. Once this is assumed it becomes possible to deduce

the class-consciousness which 'it' ought to have (but seldom does

have) if 'it' was properly aware of its own position and real

interests. There is a cultural superstructure, through which

this recognition dawns in inefficient ways. These cultural

'lags' and distortions are a nuisance, so that it is easy pass

from this to some theory of substitution: the party, sect, or

theorist, who disclose class-consciousness, not as it is, but as

it ought to be."

(There follows a paragraph on bourgeois attempts to deny the

existence of class or to conclude that class exists, but the

problem is how to condition "'it' to accept its social role, and

how its grievances may best be 'handled and channelled'.")

"If we remember that class is a relationship, and not a thing, we

can not think in this way. 'It' does not exist, either to have

an ideal interest or consciousness, or to lie as a patient on the

Adjustor's table. ...

"... If we stop history at a given point, then there are no

classes but simply a multitude of individuals with a multitude of

experiences. But if we watch these men over an adequate period of

social change, we observe patterns in their relationships, their

ideas, and their institutions. Class is defined by men as they

live their own history, and, in the end, this is its only

definition."

Now there are some problems with this definition (its archaic use

of "men" to denote all humans, for instance), but I think it's

an excellent starting point. We can, and must attempt to "stop

history at a given point" to see what the state of the working

class is at that point, and the notion that we can't see any

objectively-existing "it" at that point is a little idealist.

Nevertheless, the whole notion of class as some sort of little

box into which you can shove people, or some giant mythological

figure, is fundamentally in error, and we have to realize that

just as a physicist can't tell us exactly where a particle is,

any class in modern society is constantly in motion.

Here's an example: Snapshots of the textile industry at five,

ten or twenty-year intervals over the past three centuries show

"the textile workers" of every land as an ever-changing body of

men and women, in both geography and "national" composition. The

United Electrical Workers just negotiated a new contract with a

firm in New Hampshire which has been making textile machinery in

the same building since 1827, but it's not the same textile

machinery, it's not being shipped to the same places from that

plant, and those who make it aren't necessarily linear

descendants of the workers of 1827 in a genealogical sense. They

are, however, part of the same historic class and its traditions

are part of the strength which let them win the contract.

MIM say that they deny "the existence of a Euro-Amerikan

proletariat." They are, of course, entirely right. There is no

"Euro-Amerikan proletariat." There is, however, a U.S. working

class. Its members are Euro-Americans, Afro-Americans, Asian

Americans, Native Americans and people who are blends of two or

more of those categories. Most of them speak English as their

primary language, but a very large number speak Spanish and

smaller groups speak French, Lakota, Dine', Chinese, Punjabi,

Arabic, Armenian, Korean, .... If you look back one, two, three,

four, five generations, you'll see the same phenomenon, with the

details changing and the secondary languages being Polish, Serbo-

Croat, Greek, Jewish, Russian, Finnish, Japanese, ... .

Now this transformation of the working class is both externally

and internally driven. The capitalists continually revamp,

change, transform, (pick your own word), the society they

control. People around the world respond to this never-ending

wave of change by migration, changing jobs, learning new skills

and new languages. Each time we build a center of strength, they

move to destroy it or to transform it for their own use, and we

must transform ourselves in response. "There is a continual

movement of growth in productive forces, of destruction in social

relations, of formation in ideas; the only immutable thing is the

abstraction of movement--*mors immortalis*. (Karl Marx, _The

Poverty of Philosophy.) (The Latin quote is from Lucretius:

"immortal death has taken away immortal life".)

I'm using U.S. examples, because that's what I know most about,

but similar things can be said about any "modern" nation (and not

a few "unmodern" ones). MIM3 says, "it never ceases to amaze me

that people say 'Italian working class,' 'German working class,'

etc., but when it comes to saying 'Black working class' or

'Latino working class,' the multiracial integrationist/reformist

'Marxists' cry 'MIMerista revisionism'." That is because when we

say "Italian working class" or "German working class," we don't

join the national chauvinists of those countries in denying that

the Greek, Yugoslav, Turkish, Portuguese or African workers in

those countries are also members of those working classes. Does

MIM argue that there is a separate "Turkish working class" in

Germany? What is its relation to the means of production as

distinct from, say, the "Vietnamese working class" in Germany? Do

we exclude its Irish members from the "English working class"?

Where is the process of division to end?

The MIM are hopelessly confusing "class" with "caste". It is

quite true that stratification within the working class is in

many countries (and most notably in the U.S.) along the lines of

ethnicity, skin color, recentness of immigration, "previous

condition of servitude" and any number of historical anachronisms

or artifacts of modern capitalism. This stratification and its

ideological justifications like racism and xenophobia have been

and continue to be one of the major problems facing working class

organizations of all types and viewpoints. From the merely

technical (when the United Mine Workers struck the southern

Colorado coal fields circa 1914, they had to put out leaflet in

over a dozen languages--finding people to write the Korean one

was a particular problem) to the disastrous (lynchings, mass use

of scabs of one group against another, etc.).

So long as we fight purely defensive battles, there is a tendency

or pressure for each segment of the working class to cling to

"its" jobs, a la craft unionism. This isn't just confined to

"native" national-chauvinists. For a long time, you had to be

Italian or Jewish to work as a union house painter or a garment

cutter in New York or New Jersey, and Yiddish lasted long past

its time as a language of resistance to Anglo capitalists and at

the same time a language of exclusion against, for instance,

Puerto Ricans (who at the same time were criticized by some for

their poor English).

In the early 1960s, a British Conservative member of parliament

named Enoch Powell organized an anti-immigrant march in London

which included in its ranks many dockworkers, who has been long

noted as the most militant of London workers. Mick Jagger (yes,

of the Rolling Stones) made a very perceptive comment about this

phenomenon. The dock communities, he pointed out, had been

forged in struggle against outside forces--the employers and the

state--and this struggle had spanned generations. That total

community resistance to "outsiders" had been their greatest

strength, but it could also be turned against "outsiders" from

other countries. (Powell later tired of playing the race card in

England, and moved to Northern Ireland to play the religion card

instead.)

All of these problems are intensified in the late 20th century.

As capitalism becomes more and more global in all its aspects, we

see our enemy become increasingly unified as a single world class

which speaks only one language: profit. Workers of every nation

are bound together in an increasingly unified process of

production. So long as we remain within our borders of nation,

language, religion, skin color, etc., in organizing our movements

of resistance, that binding together will take the form of one

great global chain gang. We are all "outsiders" in the new post-

human society, unless we band together to create our own

"inside".

Tom Condit

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From owner-marxism Fri Sep 15 21:41:45 1995

Date: Fri, 15 Sep 1995 17:41:45 -0400 (EDT)

From: Maoist Internationalist Movement

Subject: Re: MIM

On Wed, 13 Sep 1995, jones/bhandari wrote:

> From Pat for MIM:

>

> >Last I checked, the difference in average home equity of white

> >and Black people exceeded $44,000. Those figures are published

> >in the Statistical Abstract of the United States. Home equity

> >is another word for property--a kind of property that still

> >identifies Euro-Amerikans as settlers. Home ownership remains

> >a key avenue of parasitism that Blacks have yet to catch up in.

>

> 1. Yes, but what percentage of the peckerwoods, honkies and settlers

> actually own homes?

MIM replies:

1980 1990

White 67.8% 68.2%

Black 44.4% 43.4%

Native 53.4% 53.8%

Asian 52.5% 52.2%

Hispanic 43.4% 42.4%

Other 36.9% 36.1%

Table No. 1216, Statistical Abstract of the United States, 1994

The figures are the percentage of households in which the household

occupies a unit that the household owns. It doesn't mean everyone

is done paying off the mortgage, just at least on the way.

Even if two workers have the same job, and own a house,

if one is no where on the mortgage yet, and the other has

$100,000 in equity, there is a big difference.

The second worker can expect dividends or interest from investments

using the equity as collateral. That is of importance to class.

>

> 2. why even keep the statistics in terms of race in the first place? why

> not determine home ownership in terms of some other criterion, e.g.,

> college education, income, job category? We might surely find that lack of

> home ownership is correlated with low educational levels, low income and

> oppressive work conditions.

MIM replies: There is more difference between Blacks and Euro-Amerikans than say Euro-descended Canadians and English. We all want to read about the conditions of the English, Canadian, German etc. working classes individually don't we?

>

> Are you saying that 'race' explains why people don't own homes? Indeed

MIM replies: Actually we think national oppression is more important than racism and much national oppression gets mistaken for racism.

Whatever causes the difference, there is a lower percentage of labor aristocracy in the internal colonies. The percentage is even lower in the Third World.

> 3. Moreover, where is the argument that any worker who does own a home, no

> matter its value and no matter her perhaps declining capacity to maintain

> the mortgage payments, cannot be revolutionary? I may well be predisposed

> to accept this argument if made, but I note its absence in the post.

MIM replies: We have already pointed out that settlers--workers with

real estate, especially that recently seized--are more reactionary.

No class argument ever applies to every individual in the way

you suggest. That's why

enlightened labor aristocracy and petty-bourgeoisie individuals work

with MIM and Engels was a son of a capitalist and Mao was a peasant.

For many this justifies an idealist abandonment of class analysis.

>

> 4. Also: your use of the Census shows a very anti-Marxian understanding of

> class. Class for Marx is determined by the relation to the means of

> production. Income differences are possible among those in the same

MIM replies: Did we mention income differences? However, such

differences are relevant when they are large enough to distinguish

exploited from non-exploited workers.

Opportunists have defined proletariat as anyone who draws a salary.

However Lee Iacocca drew a salary, at first it was $1 and then

more. If your salary is large enough to allow you to buy the means of

production and live off their return, you are bourgeois.

Anyway, home equity is property, not income. It is one of the

easiest means by which settlers tap into social capital and the

appropriation of Third World labor.

> objective position vis-a-vis the capitalist class. This same objective

> powerlessness among seemingly differentiated workers is what cyclical

> crises tend to bring out for the vast majority of workers--especially now,

> as Mattick predicted, Keynesian management is coming to its limits. But it

> does not seem that a great crisis will drum dialectics into the head of

> MIM. MIM indeed poses a danger to the development of a class conscious

> movement against American capitalism, for which ill-defined nationalist

> movements among minorities will be no substitute. Anti-racism,as well as

MIM replies: The Black Panthers, Young Lords, organized First Nations etc. were not ill-defined just because they excluded whites. Huey Newton said his goals were multinational communism in the Maoist stage of his party before it was smashed.

He only didn't want to get too far ahead of the masses by including whites in the party. And he NEVER opposed organizational alliances with whites out of absolute principle and in fact had several.

> feminism, remain central to the development of a class-conscious movement.

>

>

> 5. what are the trends for home ownership in this country? Are young adults

> as a whole all moving into homes, the equity of which will have to serve as

> a compensation for a social security system heading towards collapse?

MIM replies: Yes this is the talk now. You can't take a house with you

when you die, so it's not a front-burner concern while some are starving.

If you look into this more closely, you will further prove our point,

because worker pension-funds own substantial assets in

imperialist countries.

Pat for MIM

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