[A-List] Romantizing working classes

["Charles Brown" <cbrown@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

*	From: Waistline2

CB: I thought you said you are not a Marxist, or you are not putting forth
a Marxist argument.

MP: I never stated such and wish you would present the quote but I most
certainly not the kind of Marxist of the CPUSA or various Trotskyites
trends.

^^^^
CB; No need to go back to what you said before, because we can just clarify
it here.

^^^^^^

WL: I  would call myself a communist and generally reject almost everything
in what some call Western Marxism. You of course understand that I have
basically  disagreed with 90% of all your political projects you insists are
Marxists and  this is all right because we can always work together on
anything if given the
opportunity.

^^^^
CB; I'll save a copy of this so we can be clear.

To be specific, it would seem we can only work together 10% of the time if
you disagree with 90% of my projects.

What all this discussion between us comes down to seems to me are mainly:

1) I  believe you claim that the current technological changes in production
do to computerization have given rise to a communist class; and

2) These technological changes in production , you predict, will cause a
Marxist revolution .

3) These technological changes are causing the industrial working class to
decay.

My attention to your use of class is with respect to these three focal
issues of our many discussions.

^^^^^^^


CB; What do you mean by "combat" ? Not armed struggle, do you ?

Reply

I trust that my meaning of class was sufficent clear to understand how I
deploy it.

^^^^
CB: I have a copy of what you wrote. We can refer to it in future
discussions. I'm going to print it out and refer to it in the future.

As I say, my focus is how your usage of class impacts the above two main
questions.

^^^^^^


I hope your question as to the meaning of a quantitative boundary in
the development of the industrial system was answered enough for an
understanding of its deployment.


^^^^^
CB: Not quite. Would you please elaborate ? How do you decide when there is
a boundary ? What is the boundary between ?

^^^^^^


Henry C.K.'s article outlining the industry  advance,
starting in the 1700s and pinpointing specific inventions, like the  steam
engine and electricity their impact on men and forms of classes was
extremely enlightening.  One could easily speak of Mr. Daimler's gasoline
powered engine in the late 1880s as revolutionizing moving vehicles, which
were  first produced in France in the 1700s as war machines.

^^^^^
CB: Do I understand you to mean that this revolution was not the same type
or not as fundamental as the current revolution in technology ?

^^^^^^

The hardest  thing for communists and most individual to do is to pinpoint
their moment in  history. I have been struggling with this for about 20
years in a conscious way,  while trying to grasp the totality of the
technological advance on the basis of  partial application of this
revolutionary technology.

One turning  point in my life experience was the 1997 Strike against
Chrysler Corporation by  the Mound Road Engine plant.

^^^^^
CB; As a side note, I had a friend who worked there then , and I walked the
picket line with her.

^^^^^

This strike was the longest to hit Chrysler since  the 1950s and was waged
by Local 51. Simply because I worked there for 30 years,  knew virtually all
of the 1865 workers personally, knew
all the union  representatives and the entire union structure up to the
President of the  Chrysler section of the union (we shared poker buddies in
common and Jack  appointed my brother to the International staff of the
UAW); understood the  issues at stake and addressed a large group of our
member during the
vote to  accept or reject the company's offer, does not mean I "really"
understood  anything taking place or necessarily understood the behavior of
these workers,  the union and management.

I believed then as now that I had a  reasonable grasp of the situation and
the probable behavior of our members, who  were about 50% women. The reason
this thread is called romanticizing the working  class and I responded to
it, is because many of my friends and comrades have a  romantic notion of
the industrial workers in large scale industry and workers  like the auto
workers.

^^^^
CB; Maybe I can be excused a little on this error, since I literally had a
romantic relationship with one of the workers at Mound Engine.
(smile)

^^^^^^^

Our strike was over job loss. Specifically  the company wanted to move the
drive shaft division out of our plant and out of  the corporation and turn
this work over to Dana and TRW and American Gear and  Axle (located where
the old Lynch Road Assemble plant was located and close to  Eldon Gear and
Axle.

^^^^^

CB; Eastside !

^^^^^

The
company stated clearly that it was getting out of the  drive shaft business.
We had ended up making drive shafts when Detroit Universal  Division (DUD)
in Dearborn closed in the wake of Chrysler failing to meet its  obligations
in the bond market in 1979. A group of workers from DUD - where my  brother
was Chief Steward, were relocated to our plant along with prop (drive)
shaft
production.

Before and during the strike we were militant  and through the strike
remained militant. Local 51 had a militant tradition due  in large part to
some CPUSA old timers and a large Trotskyite contingent.  Further, an old
section of union leaders were aligned with International  Financial
Secretary Emile Mazy who
had an old time Trotskyite orientation. By  1997 most of the Trotskyists
were no longer in our Local Union due to layoff and  plant closing, but I
always enjoyed working with them on real issues. Actually,  I enjoyed
drinking with them and playing cards and hanging out because most were
really great people.

I guess what I am trying to say is that 1997  was a turning point in not
just the Chrysler system but the character of  industrial strikes in our
country - although I will not be able to authenticate  this conclusion, on
the basis of strike action, until the next wave of  strikes hit the
industry. Los Angels 1992 was enough to clarify an important  political
juncture in our history for me, as was Watts 1965 and Detroit 1967.
(Speaking of quantitative boundaries,
a boundary in the development of the  spontaneous uprising which the
classical Marxist never write about and totally  misunderstand was
Birmingham 1963, which I write about two to three times a  year. Here the
steel workers were
compelled into combat with the state and  leaped outside the relationship
that is the unity and strife of the social power  called capital. Liberty
City in the
1980s expressed a certain quantitative  boundary in relationship to Los
Angels 1992 and then Battle Creek 2001 - in your  home state of Michigan was
basically misunderstood by the classical Marxist as  was Cincinnati 2000.
Much of this misunderstanding is simply white chauvinism  that assigns the
white workers
"important" and "history making" change).

^^^^^

CB; Again, your saying these are quantitative boundaries of some type,
but.... What is the "quantity" that you are referring to ? There has to be a
"quantity" of something to make sense of "quantitative boundry. What
relationship does Liberty City have to Los Angeles ?

I think you mean Benton Harbor in 2001, don't you ?

What are you saying changed as we hit these quantitative boundaries ?

^^^^^^^^

Anyway  . . . we were pretty isolated in 1997, meaning that we had not  won
over through the Chrysler Council the support of the other union reps and
their workers in various individual plants. For various reasons the union
structure itself worked against us and this was bound up with what we call
"business unionism."

^^^^^
CB; Yea, classical Marxist call it Reutherism.

^^^^^

There was no possibility of this strike  action exceeding the boundary of
the connection and mediation that takes place  between labor and capital.
The struggle between the two basic classes of a  social system is always at
all times a struggle to reform the system in one or  the others favor and
hence the
meaning of reform. Reform is not a bad word by  any means because it is the
actual environment of a section of the working  class.

^^^^^
CB; You sound like a classical Marxist.

^^^^^

Reform cannot be transformed into revolution or the reform movement  cannot
be transformed into a revolutionary movement on the basis of  consciousness.
It is simply not possible and
violates the law of quality. It is  not possible to transform a distinct
quality - (in this case labor and capital  which is born in unity and
strife), into another quality - (revolution) on the  basis of class
consciousness or any other form of consciousness.

^^^^^^
CB: Why not ?

^^^^^^^

This proposition is at the base of my disagreement with political
syndicalism which is not trade unionism pure and simple.

^^^^
CB: What is syndicalism ?

^^^^^

 The communists who  assign the "the workers with their hands on production"
- (meaning in reality  the economically most stable section of the working
class connected and in  "heavy
industry" also organized into trade unions),

^^^^
CB: Why not any industry ?

^^^^^

 do so based on ideology and  not an examination of American history or
world history for that matter. This of  course does not mean anyone ignore
any section of the working class or other  classes for that matter.

^^^^^^

Now the workers in heavy industry most  certainly play a role in the
unfolding revolution. The issue is not what they  "might do" or even their
militancy but rather, what are the conditions under  which these workers
become fully subject to communist propaganda and an  effective revolutionary
force?

^^^^
CB: Wouldn't the key thing about propaganda be that it changes their
consciousness ?
&&&&&&&


Political
syndicalism presupposes that these  workers in heavy industry are a
revolutionary force by virtue of their  connection to the bourgeoisie
through their employment and this is not true at  all.


^^^^^
CB: Well, then I am not a syndicalist as you define it here. I'll keep this
for future reference.

^^^^^^


 Marx describes this process when speaking
about the fight for the eight  hour day.

These workers in heavy industry, (who I have spent a  life time with and as
- and was actually elected by a group to be the highest  representative in
the plant; which might indicate their poor choice and severe  need of
enlightenment), become realy effective when they exceed the boundary of  the
struggle between labor and capital and are compelled into combat with the
state.

^^^^^
CB: When and where have they become "really effective" ? In the U.S. ? What
do you mean by "really effective" ? How are they "compelled" ?

^^^^^

When Marx speak of the fight for the eight hour day he is  describing a
fight - political and sometimes military combat with the state as  the
legislative organ in society. In other words the struggle between labor and
capital can only pass to antagonism - (more accurately the contradiction
between  labor and capital is replaced by antagonism,) when the workers leap
ouside of  their engagment with their employer and directly confront the
state.

^^^^^

CB: This seems a good formulation to me. This is going beyond purely
economic or trade union struggle. It is non-Economism in Lenin's sense,
although you haven't said thes workers are confronting the state on
non-economic,i.e. political issues.

^^^^^^

This is the simplest explanation why it is imperative that modern  communist
understand why we have to win the workers over to the cause of  communism or
the communist section of the working class, because its demands for
socially necessary living requirements is a demand directed against the
state  and not a single or given set of employers.

^^^^
CB; At this level, there needs to be a vision of going beyond
"confrontation" to taking state power , no ?

^^^^^

Political  syndicalism disguised as Marxism or classical Marxism rejects
this line of march  because its ideological base is the romantic notion of
the industrial workers  connected to - with its hands, on the basis
instruments of production.

^^^^^
CB; Ok I see what you are saying now. I think basically you are challenging
what the CPUSA termed "industrial concentration", which holds that the whole
working class is important , but that its industrial sector is particularly
important and strategic. Strategic for what is the question that must be
asked of the industrial concentration policy ?

I don't think it is romantic, but pragmatic to consider that the bourgeois
state serves the bourgeoisie especially by keeping especially the industrial
workers producing, stopping strikes,defending scabs, stopping plant
takeovers. The state enforces bourgeois ownership , i.e. property. If the
state wasn't there, the workers could basically take ownership of private
property away from the bourgeoisie.

There is a notion that industrial workers are in a most strategic location
in the , well, industrial economy. That industry and heavy industry are
strategic in the modern bourgeois economy. I wouldn't call this notion
romantic, though it does demand some elaboration of why industry is
"strategic". I mean to play devil's advocate, if no cars were produced for a
year, people would still be able to get along. Food production is more
strategic in terms of peoples' immediate needs.

I'll try to develop this more. I think you raise a good question to demand
an explanation of industrial concentration ( even in the period when
industry is not "in decay" as you say, why is industry strategic ?)

However, industrial concentration doesn't propose ignoriing the relative
surplus population. There has to be whole class unity, for the relative
surplus population is a source of scabs who can break a strike. Their
support of a strike is critical

^^^^^^^


 Our eyes  should forever and always be focused on that section of
the working class in  combat with the state and whose social logic compels
it to spontaneously engage  the state as state. Here is the definition of
combat you asked for, although any  decent dictionary will give you a good
definition of the word combat.

^^^^
CB: This is unfair by you. I know what combat means. I asked if you meant
armed struggle in this case ?

Of course we always pay attention to a section of the working class engaged
in struggle with the state, but I don't think it means we take our eyes off
of sections that are not immediate combat with the state. It may be more
important to concentrate on other sectors, as it is the inactive sectors
that will hold back the struggle from goinog to a higher level. Whole class
unity , solidarity is pragmatically (non-romantically) necessary to victory
in class struggles.

^^^^^^^^^



Capital contains its own self mediation between labor and capital  because
capital is a social relations erected on the unify and strife we call
worker
and capitalist. In other words, every single partial gain of the workers  in
their unending combat with the employers is predicated upon them returning
to  work to implement the gains won. Trade Unions simply institutionalize
this  relationship and make it more simply for representatives of one side
or the  other to negotiate. Here is the definition of trade unionism pure
and simple and
why it is different from political syndicalism.

Perhaps this will clarify my particular vision and why I reject  classical
American Marxism and basically 99% of Western Marxism.

^^^^^
CB; Just to be clear, I subscribe to classical proletarian
_internationalism_, not "American" or "Western" Marxism. Please note this
for future reference.  I subscribe to "Soviet" Marxism just as much as any
"American" Marxism

Again these insights are mind and I do not claim that represent any sizable
section of American Marxism. I am actually aware of the vision of American
Marxism or what you at times call THE MARXIST POSITION OR MARXIST
PROPOSITION.

^^^^^
CB: No, I don't call anything "American Marxism". I don't use such a
category. Please note for future discussion.

Sometimes I refer to the "position" of Marx , Engels or Lenin, and usually
quote them.


^^^^^^^

No thanks, I'll have none of it.


Melvin P.

^^^^^
CB: You seem to have some of Marx, Engels and Lenin.  As to your arguments
with some CPUSA propositions, I know you have written out your disagreements
extensively, as on the "Negro Problem". I can't say that I am persuaded by
your arguments. I have an open mind on much of it, and don't "fightingly"
subscribe to just any thesis the CPUSA has had, but I haven't seen yet you
substantiate some of your counter-theses.  I'm willing to go over your
thesis if we don't get into prevarication and going all around robin hoods
barn

As to the history of the African-American people, I have other sources of
information than the CPUSA, alone.