Re: ruling class subjectivity, was: Re: AUT: a rejuvenated communist

["Chris Wright" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Thank you for the thoughtful reply.  I did not mean to cut off the
discussion, except that I try to avoid discussions on lists which become
arguments between two people.  When no one else contributes, it often means
that the discussion has run its course.  I enjoyed the back and forth, but I
do not want people to just skip our mail when they see our e-mail addresses!
:)  I felt you and I had more or less hit that point, so I was bowing out.
Discretion is the better part of... e-mail lists.

As for the 'base/superstructure' argument, the idea comes from Marx's
Preface to a Contribution to a Critique of Political Economy (1859.)  You
can find it on any Marxism web site, and it is brief.  It contains the
contested ideas that, in my opinion, have led to some very wrong notions
about the core of Marx's ideas, especially dissociating structures from
struggle.

Just to clarify, I am not defending a Keynsian notion of crisis or a 'wage
squeeze' notion either.  I am not certain I made that terrible clear
however.  I should learn to treat e-mail like any other form of writing and
NOT write off the cuff.  I get a bit excited, however (and a little
overzealous, sorry for the magic thing.)  I enjoy conversations like this
because they let me really try to work out my ideas in a longer, more
critical way.  I appreciate your responses because they make me work harder
(and keep me honest ;)

On the middle class question, I think it is a different thing to manage and
enforce, as one's job, the affairs and power of capital.  That's the
difference between the smallest boss and a worker: their job is to enforce
labor discipline, ideological conformity, 'the law', etc.  Professors are
enforcers paid to disseminate ideology that protects capital.  That puts
them in a different role from a worker.  If some of them rebel against that
(this lists own Harry Cleaver, for example, or my best friend, also a
communist in academia), and they are very few, it does not change the
character of the character of the institution they work for, just as an
individual cop may not be a racist, but in working for the police, one
objectively defends a racist legal system and a racist social system.  It
also tends to turn all but a few into political reactionaries.  Professors
therefore do something that workers don't.  Again, I am not claiming that
this definition, like any definition, is sufficient.  I am not trying to
eternally categorize the world.  Many professors today in city colleges and
community colleges have an increasingly 'proletarianized' existence, even if
they promote bourgeois ideology.  Primary and secondary education teachers
have an even more complicated relationship that professors.  But to note the
relationship as contradictory does not remove its fundamentally policing
role (ideologically.)  You worried at one point that I was eliminating the
capitalist class as a class, but I worry that many libertarian marxists
eliminate the petty bourgeoisie (the middle class) as a class.  And yet,
fascism (as pointed out by Trotsky and Bologna from very different
traditions) arose from this middle class of professionals and small business
people, so I feel that we cannot lose sight of the existence of the middle
class, even if that category is a slippery one.

Thanks for the comments, comrade!
Chris Wright
----- Original Message -----
From: "Bill Bartlett" <billbartlett@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>
To: <aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>
Sent: Friday, November 24, 2000 2:01 PM
Subject: Re: ruling class subjectivity, was: Re: AUT: a rejuvenated
communist


> Chris Wright wrote:
>
> >I do think that this does obscure the class relation though.  At least in
> >the way you put it here.  Class is not an identity one wears with this or
> >that task.  It is a relation to production and struggle simultaneously.
A
> >professor who fixes cars on the side is not a worker.  He/she is a middle
> >class person
>
>
> Please define "middle class".
>
>
> >  who fixes cars on the side, communist, anarchist or Republican.
> >Their relation to production and their place in the management of class
> >power is central.
>
> The relation of a professor to the means of production is essentially
> the same as that of the factory worker. The professor does not own it
> and must work for the owner to gain a livelihood. Manager is an
> occupational category, just as gardener is. Whatever each person's
> occupational category, or lack of it, we are servants of the owner.
>
> So in defining these professors as "middle class", I need to know how
> you believe their relationship to the means of production differs
> from anyone else in the working class? I gather you believe that the
> particular work one is hired to perform is somehow relevant to class
> definition, but I challenge you to justify that.
>
> Bill Bartlett
> Bracknell Tas
>
>
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