Re: AUT: is truth enough (was): antiwar movement

["FoofighterPilot" <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

I like the Caffentzis article, but I picked up on something a bit different.
To me, he attends to the idea that the main FEARS US workers have right now
are intimately connected to the perceived and real (not in the same
proportions as the media would say, but hey) exporting of jobs, internal
competition from immigrant workers, and dependency on cheap imports (which
depends on US power and a strong US dollar).  In other words, the perception
is that the external world is the location of our problems and the
irrational blindness to almost any and all factual rebuttal of US
interventionism and militarism is strongly located in this fear.  I think it
is a good point because it is not for a lack, all other depressing things
aside, of 'work sucks' type stuff in people's cubicles.  But fear of having
no work ie no money, bankruptcy, repossession, etc. looms much larger right
now.

Werner Bonefeld made the argument some years ago that the massive expansion
of debt and credit acted as a whip on the working class, and I think he is
dead on.  Given that the US has a severely indebted population (around a 1:1
ration with income or 100%) with tightening personal bankruptcy laws,
extortionist credit card rates (over 20% after a few missed payments on many
cards), a weak job market with unemployment dropping due to people leaving
the job market rather than new job creation, and maybe the beginning of a
realization on how shaky the stock market really is, there is a lot of
pressure to shore up 'American jobs' against the perceived enemy of 'foreign
labor' and 'foreign competition' and 'enemies abroad'.

That this would also impact the population differently is not wrong.  White
workers, having a far higher proportion of the mortgages (because it is
still far harder to get credit when you are non-white, esp Black), a larger
proportion of the credit card debts, more of the cars, esp the SUVs (in
Baltimore and Chicago at least, public transportation is disproportionately
used by non-whites), in other words, more property to lose, it would not be
indecent to argue that racially polarizized pro-Bush, pro-death penalty,
anti-affirmative action sentiments should rise.  In times like these, the
fact that a large section of white labor views Black and Latino workers as
'job threats' (and Latinos and Black workers treat each other the same way),
is not a shock.  Whites at all levels have more to lose, materially and
psychologically.

That said, maybe what attaches a large layer of the population to a
conservative agenda is ultimately based on shaky ground.  If the
conservative agenda does not make good, what will the results be?  Their
position is, by definition, desperate.  As such, the global struggles from
Chiapas forward to pre-9/11 aside, the position of Bush et al depends on
"don't rick the boat, don't rock the boat baby, don't tip the boat over"
politics, involving foreign intervention and internal repression.  It
depends on a degree of participation by a section of labor (mostly but far
from completely white, esp if one reviews the growth of Latino conservatism
and the fact that Latinos are now the #2 population in the US.)  Any strong
shift the other way, any significant resumption of social conflict, puts the
whole venture at some risk.

Cheers,
Chris



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