Re: AUT: strategy/ies

["rc-am" <rcollins@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

i can't seem to find the various posts in this thread, but i recall some of
the discussion (people can/should correct me if i'm wrong)...

harry i think queried whether what andrew was referring to (see below) was
racism or not.  i'm not sure that it's possible to say that it isn't.  so,
maybe i can urge harry to restate his argument.  i happen to think this is
racism -- but then, i think nationalism is racism.

but on the issue of whether or not sexism and racism are integral to
capitalism or not; i find many of the premises of the whole discussion a
little strange.  i don't find the assumption that class operates in any
concrete sense without or outside of racism and sexism at all convincing --
it just looks like a bad version of weber's ideal types to me, where the
only way one could 'solve' such a problem politically is by way of
pluralism (the trinity of race, class and gender) -- the kind of 'solution'
that stems from bad premises, and in the terms of representation, can only
amount to a kind of corporatism.

my question would always be: show me one instance of class composition
where racism and sexism is concretely distinguishable from those processes
of class formation?   the distinctions that can be made are analytical; but
that suggests to me that the analysis is faulty.

moreover, i find arguments about whether racism and sexism pre-dated
capitalism to be as interesting as debates about whether or not they will
post-date capitalism.   ie., not very.   they seem to me to suppose a
rather ahistorical sense of racism and sexism.    the question of whether
the abolition of class presupposes the abolition of gender and racism is
not the same as the question of whether the abolition of capitalism signals
the end of domination.   perhaps it does or doesn't; but not being a
soothsayer, i wouldn't know, and nor would i run around proclaiming such or
bothering much about it.   but let's suppose that the end of capitalism is
not the end of domination.  does anyone seriously think that this will mean
that what we might call sexism and racism sans capitalism would operate in
the same ways as it does now?    does anyone seriously think that
capitalism is not a mode of production but rather a cartoon version of
hegel's master-slave dialectic consisting of two figures locked in battle?

Angela
_________

andrew wrote:

> Whether or not racism and sexism "originate" in capitalism, don't you
agree
> that the capitalist class has consistently sought to divide ethnic groups
from
> one another - witness the recent Australian govt crackdown on illegal
aliens:
> persons claiming to be refugees are seent to a "detention centre" in the
South
> Australian desert to await processing. Media hype suggests an aramada of
boats
> overflowing with yellow and black hordes ready to swamp the "lucky
country".
> Some of my family, first and second generation italian immigrants
themselves,
> justify this with the rhetoric of protecting "our" standard of living.
>
> Does the bourgeois party in power seek to hermetically seal Australia
only out
> of anachronistic attitudes? No - capital finds it convenient to have
discrete
> labour forces confined to nation states, able to be played off against
one
> another, working in the "national interest". Capitalist governments
prefer to
> regulate and monitor immigration because this is in their interest.





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