Re: AUT: strategy/ies

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

bill wrote:

> I wouldn't go that far, though the two probably have a lot in common.
> Racism is based on race, nationalism is based on nationality.

books worth reading, if you haven't already, would be Benedict Anderson's
_Imagined Communities_; Etienne Balibar and Immanuel Wallerstein, _Race,
Nation, Class: Ambiguous Identities_; and Agamben's _Homo Sacer_.   not
always what i might conclude, but they're an indispensible place to begin
some of this discussion.

here's a passage from Balibar's essay in the latter volume called "Class
Racism":

"Several historians of racism ... have laid emphasis on the fact that the
modern notion of race, in so far as it invested a discourse of contempt and
discrimination and serves to split humanity up into a 'super-humanity' and
a 'sub-humanity', did not initially have a national (or ethnic), but a
class signification or rather (since the point is to represent the
inequality of social classes as inequalities of nature) a caste
signification.   From this point of view, it has a twofold origin: first,
in the aristocratic representation of the hereditary nobility as a superior
'race' (that is, in fact, the mythic narrative by which an aristocracy,
whose domination is already under threat, assures itself of the legitimacy
of its political priveliges and idealises the dubious continuity of its
genealogy); and second, in the slave owners' representations of those
populations subject to the slave trade as inferior 'races', ever
predestined for servitude and incapable of producing an autonomous
civilisation.  Hence the discourse of blood, skin colour and
cross-breeding.  It is only retrospectively that the notion of race was
'ethnicised', so that it could be integrated into the nationalist complex,
the jumping-off point for its successive subsequent metamorphoses.

... Aristocratic racism ... is already indirectly related to the primitive
accumulation of capital, of only by its function in the colonising nations.
The industrial revolution, at the same time as it creates specificaly
capitalist relations of production, gives rise to the new racism of the
bourgeois era (historically speaking, the first 'neoracism'): the one which
has as its target the proletariat in its dual status as exploited
population ... and politically threatening population.

...It is at this point, with regard to the 'race of labourers' that the
notion of race becomes detached from its historico-theological connotations
to enter the field of equivalences between sociology, psychology, imaginary
biology and the pathology of the 'social body'.  ...From the first time
those aspects typical of every procedure of racialisation of a social group
right down to our own day are condensed in a single discourse: material and
spiritual poverty, criminality, congenital vice (alcoholism, drugs),
physical and moral defects...  Through these themes, there forms the
phantasmatic equation of 'labouring classes' with 'dangerous classes'...

class racism is connected with a political problem that is crucial for the
constitution of the nation-state.  The 'bourgeois revolution' -- and in
particular the French Revolution, by its radical juridical
egalitarianism -- had raised the question of the political rights of the
masses in an irreversible manner.  ...The idea of a difference in nature
between individuals had become juridically and morally contradictory, if
not inconceivable.  It was, however, politically indispensible, so long as
the 'dangerous classes' ... had to be excluded by force and by legal means
from political 'competence' and confined to the margins of the polity -- as
long, that is, as it was important to deny them citizenship by showing and
by being oneself persuaded, that they constitutionally 'lacked' the
qualities of fully fledged or normal humanity."

> I wouldn't know "weber's ideal types" from a bar of soap.

the reason i mentioned vayba in this context is because instead of thinking
of racism and sexism as social relationships, we are left with sets of
discrete units of identity (women *have* gender, blacks *have* race, etc),
and being *discrete units*, it remains to think of any relationship between
them in terms of a pluralism, an additive politics: add race, gender and
class and you apparently get an exhaustive political vision.

> However, that isn't what I was arguing at all. I wasn't saying that
ending
> capitalism would magically end racism and sexism, at least that isn't
what
> I intended. Rather, I believe that racism and sexism will have to be
> largely defeated before it is possible to achieve the level of collective
> purpose that is necessary to ever defeat capitalism in the first place.

i'm not averse to the argument that sexism and racism are used to divide
the working class in the sense of its practical consequences on political
action; but there are a few problems with it, not least at the level of
political action.   it depends of course, but too often i see this position
get reduced to a stoush over leadership claims, authenticity claims and the
levelling of guilt at relative privelige.  that could be a problem with
leftist practice generally, but i have a sense that it stems from the
original question as to whether racism and sexism are functional or
dysfunctional to class relationships.   i really can't pick any moment in
class relationships where it's possible to extract the dimensions of racism
and sexism as if they are externalities imposed from elsewhere.  it seems
to me that capital is contradictory, that it is moreover, not simply an
economic category, hence each moment in its formation it manifests the
contradictory elements of equality and inequality or, in other words, the
equalisation of labours and the domination of the law of value.

> Shutting millions of potentially highly productive workers out of the
> labour market may benefit a few capitalists, but most will squeal like
> stuck pigs at the resulting higher labour costs. You can already see this
> in Australia, with employers bleating about the damage being done to them
> by the restrictive immigration policies.

i haven't seen any employers squealing in australia, though if you know of
any i'd appreciate the references.   but the presumption that a labour
shortage is ensured by border controls is shaky on so many grounds, not
least because the very illegality of some migrants provides a significant
reserve for hyper-exploitation, not to mention the two-year waiting period
for welfare for newly-arrived migrants which has been a real boon for
employers.    there have been no significant increases in labour costs in
australia (if you factor out exec salaries) in the same period that
migration has been subject to increasing controls.  it just doesn't work
like that, contrary to the ALP's refound committment to the white australia
policy.

Angela
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