Re: [A-List] Re: Return to an old standard

[Waistline2@xxxxxxx]

>I wrote Gary Santos offlist asking him to respect the spirit of the list more, and to post with more factual and theoretical substantiation of his views. I did not get a response other than another provocative and pointless posting so I have unsubbed him.

Mark<


I respect your call on these matters. 

Mr. Santos thinking represents - in my opinion, the feelings and outlook of the majority of people in America today, but this majority is in flux. When 9/11 occurred I was still working for DaimlerChrysler and held the union position of Committeeman of the Machining Division at Local 51 Mound Road Engine in Detroit. Committee-person is the highest elected union official in a facility within the Chrysler Group system. 

I entered the debate about why "we" were being attacked and coined the slogan "Abdul Ain't Looking for me," to the horror of the majority of those who voted for me. Several younger workers threatened to wait for me in the parking lot and kick my ass. The workers who are military reservist - many with training in the Marines, explained in no uncertain terms that if conflict broke out their first duty would be to cut my fucking throat and kill my family. I held my ground.

The debate went through various phases and shifts. "Them fucking Arabs are attacking civilian targets," screamed the reaction. I looked reaction in the eye and said, "Disneyland and Las Vegas are civilian targets. The World Trade Centers are financial centers of imperial power. The SEC has offices there. You don't know who the Security Exchange Commission was investigating and why these centers were destroyed." 

"Fuck you," shot back the reaction, "you are just an anti-American mutherfucker." 

I live in an area of America - Detroit, with the historically largest concentration of immigrants from the Middle East, outside the Middle East. Over the course of the next 6 months I was able to detach a section of these "reactionary" workers from their initial stance and make them think about the world of money, oil, war and politics. Little by little individuals would give me a small grin and say, "U right. Abul ain't looking for me. This Bush oil crap is deep." 

Today, I no longer work for the Chrysler Group having retired after 30 years October 2001. I found employment at one of the Casino's in Detroit, which happens to have some on the only unionized Black Jack dealers on earth. I believe the other unionized Casino workers are in Austria. The Casino workers lack an "industrial consciousness" that is a certain sense of collectivity and social interactivity. Yet their consciousness is vastly different from the time frame following the events of 9/11. These workers, as is the peoples of America, suspicious of the Bush Jr. administration and beginning to evolve a political consciousness. Nevertheless, political consciousness in America is inexplicably fused with our reality as the most imperial country on earth and certain logic that is the empiricist frame of thinking of the most imperial workers on earth. 

The internal logic of capital creates the next generation of revolutionaries who have no choice but to confront the logic of economic privation and social deprivation. A communist class is in formation and consolidation for the first time in history. Not ideological Marxist but a communist class that must drift along a trajectory where they demand that items of consumption be distributed based on need and not just money possession. 

My job is to convert a section of these revolutionaries to a political class point of view. Many are going to drift in and out of the A-List and their feeling and questions must be answered. They are going to enter the A-List  with enormous imperialist baggage but looking for a revolutionary way out of the crisis. America is perhaps the most revolutionary country on earth given our history of continuous transitions in the material power of production and the collapse and reconstitution of classes. We are in a period of history where society becomes aware of the revolutionary proposition that say, "there are no more reforms" left in the value producing system. That is, society can no longer be reformulation on a basis that strengthens the unity of the productive forces with its social relations of production. This proposition has in the past been called "socialism or barbarism," but this characterization is shallow and does not define why the industrial system evolves into another system of production that compels society to leap to another political structure. 

My art of political conversion and class politics assumes that everyone is honest and Mr. Santos fell into this category and was engaged. Most of the workers in America - and at least 90% of the peoples in our country are workers, lack elementary facts concerning the reality of behavior of the state of the United States of North America. Their "theoretical substantiation" is based wholly on having been continually feed by the imperial master and the evolution of the political shell of various industrial societies. There were no historically evolved feudal economic or social relations in America. None, Nada, zero, Nathan or nothing! 

The people of America are in the beginning of a rude awakening and must not be surrendered to the fascist and fascist ideology. We have entered an era of imperialist war and proletarian revolution during a historically distinct time frame that demands that all of society complete the leap from industrial society to post-industrial production. There will be more Gary Santos. The hired pens of reaction who enter the A-List will of course be defeated with the most ruthless logic of economic reality and this reality is horribly simple. Why are we poorer today than yesterday? 

Melvin P.