Re: AUT: America Implodes

[chris wright <cwright@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some notes from Baltimore?



The comments made by Nate and others about the declining conditions in
many ?red states? is certainly true, especially in those areas that
mostly turned out for Bush.  It is important to not where the strongest
pro-Bush sentiment existed.  It was NOT in the cities.  It was in the
suburbs and the rural areas, and that alone indicates several opposing
movements.



For example, the mass flight from the cities after WWII and again after
the 1960?s reflected two set of prospects.



In light of post-WWII US world domination economically, for a large
layer of the working class could attain a middle class lifestyle outside
of work.  This represented a dramatic shift and came at the same time as
the European migration to the US pretty much turned into a trickle,
while migration to the cities changed to a) Southern rural Black workers
and b) increasing Latino (esp. Mexican with the Bracero program of the
US government, but also Afro-Caribbean), Arabic (see the massive
Lebanese population in Detroit for example, in the auto factories), and
Asian (esp. after Vietnam, with many Vietnamese, Cambodians, but also
Chinese and Koreans after 1949-52 and Philipinos.)  In other words, the
cities, especially places like Detroit, Baltimore, Chicago, Cleveland,
New York, St. Louis, etc?  This had partially begun after WWI, but
post-WWII was a real explosion.



Simultaneous with these two movements was, in the aftermath of the
1930?s and the 1943-46 strike waves, a desire to decentralize the
working class population led to the massification of transportation via
cars and trucking, the massive expansion of roadways, the growing
suburbanization became possible.  Much (never most, btw) of white labor
fled into the now-possible suburbs and attained a way of life hitherto
difficult to imagine for US workers.  To one degree or another this has
continued, esp after the 1960?s urban rebellions, until the 1980?s, when
a reverse flow of middle class elements took place.  White labor
continued to move out, but so did many Blacks, attracted to growing
industry and themselves seeking to flee de-industrializing urban areas,
a process accelerated also by the urban rebellions and by the massive
strike activity from 1965-73 which helped break with the
union-management deal of the post-WWII era that, again, mostly benefited
white labor.



At the same time as de-industrialization hit the cities, an
industrialization of the South and the rural areas, areas without
unions, suffering from ?rural idiocy? (e.g. religion, more on which in a
moment), brought on by economic, social, and political isolation.  The
Republicans, post-goldwater in 1964, drew on the massive influx of
Dixiecrats they had received in 1938, 1948, and 1964-5 and decided to
become the new Jacksonian Democrats, but with a twist.  Instead of Irish
immigrant labor in the North aligning with Slavocracy in the South, it
was Capitalists of all sorts aligning with suburban and rural labor
which did not see unionism as a means of procuring a better standard of
living, but laborers who had primarily attained security via racial
privileges, local paternalism instead of Federal paternalism, in areas
where the 20th century was largely absent culturally, both in terms of
education (Reconstruction introduced mass education to the south and
after Reconstruction, it disappeared again for many years) and
cosmopolitanism.  The Southern states did not merely see themselves as
isolated re: the world at large, but in relation to the Modernist
North.  The South only left its predominantly rural status in the last
40 years.



The mountain states had been a combination of strong family farming and
industry.  Unlike Southern Red states, Kansas was a hotbed of radicalism
going back to the 1850?s, including anti-slavery, anti-racist
radicalism.  It was a stronghold of the IWW, socialist Party, the CP,
and unionism.  It was NOT Indiana, which was the center of the Klan
revival in the 1920?s and has never recovered.



This means that a tremendous transformation took place between WWII and
now, one in which as Nate correctly points out has largely annihilated
the social basis of labor radicalism in places like Kansas, Ohio,
Michigan, Wisconsin, etc.  At the same time, industry has shifted South
and West, but into very isolated areas where a few factories will
dominate an area, and as a result those companies will dominate an
area.  The difference between the areas is highlighted by the struggles
at Staley and Caterpillar in Decatur, Illinois versus the relative
absence of struggles in Southern areas.  Both are more or less rural,
but Illinois still has a series of links to unionism, esp the militant
miners traditions in southern Illinois and the connection, however
tenuous, with Chicago.

The tradition of ultra-conservative religious revivalism has a long
history in the US, btw.  The US ruling class, at its foundation, had
sophisticated intellectuals, but the fact of being a colonial settler
state that burned and pillaged its way across the country had its
impact.  In the face of isolation and ?savages? ie the people in the way
of one of the world?s largest land grabs, meant that one needed
justification.  Reason will not present an adequate justification for
genocide, no matter what the jackass anti-Enlightenment heroes of
Nietzsche et al tell you.  No, for that you need religion, and it is no
accident that the Great Revival of the 1920?s-30?s corresponded with
Jacksonian Populism, which was also highly racist, pro-slavery,
anti-East Coast establishment aka anti-liberal, which also created
modern US journalism of the Fox news sort (and which in fact dominates
most local news: murder, crime, violence, scandals, affairs, sports,
fashion, all really glorified Entertainment Tonight news.)



This revivalism in the US has a correspondence with reactionary times,
and it seems to breed a peculiar brand of Protestantism that is
hyper-individualistic, anti-state, localist (sometimes state-rights, and
so NOT anti-government, and often for the use of the state violence to
suppress sources of fear: tribes, Black people, foreigners, etc.),
anti-intellectual.  However, it needs to be clear that this tendency
usually precedes dramatic high points of social struggle:



1)      the revivalist movement preceded the rise of free soilers and
the Kansas radicals, and John Brown in the 1850?s, as well as
abolitionism, all of which had deeply protestant religious convictions.
This preceded, one might even say precipitated, the Civil War.

2)      The revivalist movement of the 1890?s-1900?s actually coincided
with Populism (William Jennings Bryant was most famously a serious Bible
banger and would lead the case against Scopes in the Scopes Monkey Trial
in the 1920?s.)  It is important to note that the revival actually
gained the most steam after the collapse of Populism (which was

3)      The wave of revivalism in the 1920?s coincided with the greatest
upsurge of the Klan since 1880, again especially in Indiana.  This was
eclipsed by the radical upsurge of the 1930?s.



But if I may digress, it is already clear that with the revivalist
upsurges between 1890 and 1930 that these upsurges were primarily in
rural areas, were strongest among white farmers, and were not so much
anti-capitalist as anti-big business and anti-labor, a typically middle
class movement.  Populism did have a larger base in labor, but it was
stronger among rural-connected labor like in logging, as I remember.



The switch that happens with the current rightward swing, which really
begins in the late 1960?s, is that it has a primarily traditionally
working class base (I use the term in its crude sociological sense
here.)  That connection with post-Goldwater Republicanism embracing the
anti-Civil rights, anti-Black Power, anti-Women?s Rights gains real
ground as traditional Fordist jobs are wiped out (usually with the
assistance of the unions, who by the 1970?s are quite frightened by any
labor radicalism as it has been as much directed against them as the
corporations since the late 1940?s, and is often connected with Black
radical politics and sometimes, though much less frequently, with
feminism) develops in areas which have few Blacks and Latinos, for
example, but may have relatively large Native American populations (the
mountain states, for example, and Wisconsin and Minnesota.)



But it is not merely an irrational response to rational social programs
or other people?s rights.  Rather, it comes in the form of a tax revolt
and a revolt against federal government, which is seen as taking their
money and using it for people with whom they have no connection.  In a
sense, they are very anti-particularist and are real universalists (but
the universal abstracted from all particularity, what Hegel would call
being trapped at the level of the Understanding.)  The federal
government should attend to what is for all Americans, and of course
American universality is defined as white, patriarchal (not merely male,
but following a male-centric course), heterosexual.  IMO, this partially
explains why the so-called anti-government types are not anarchists at
all, but are often very militaristic.  They believe that the needs of
particular people are the responsibility of those groups, at their
level, hence affirmation of states rights, of localism, and of
boot-strappism.



This is comfortably ignorant of the interconnections and in fact cannot
survive if it allows itself to see the interconnections and the
interaction between freedom and determination (the old ?people make
history, but not always as they intended to??)  In fact, faced with
?facts?, i.e. particulars in the concrete, they retreat into seemingly
highly irrational abstractions and universals.  This is similar to how
racism and sexism function, working with pure abstract universals.  To
such eyes, the demands of particular sections of society can be nothing
but special interests, abusing, esp in times of crisis, the universal.



How is it that whiteness, patriarchy (again the specific sense of
male-centric), and heterosexuality gain the status of Universal?  That
is a different question, but it is certainly related to the specifics of
social formation in the US and are not concepts which easily translate
into other places if we understand them as concrete universals, as
universals by dint of their being particular (white, male-centric,
hetero), but also as they relate to the fact that class does not present
itself overtly.



The lack of overt class relations in many cases, especially among the
Southern and Mountain states native white working class, has a great
deal to do with a history of slavery and a colonial settler-state
process (settlers were often individualistic, as were the pre-Civil War
yeomanry, disinclined to want a boss, but in need of a protector and
organized violence, themselves disposed to becoming little bosses.)  But
that in itself does not hold far into the 20th century.  In fact, as is
fairly well documented, IMO, white labor has always been able to secure
a lower level of exploitation for itself, greater social privileges,
etc. by accepting its designation as white and by at best ignoring the
situation of non-white labor (enslavement, hyper-exploitation,
segregation) or non-white non-labor (genocide, prison camps aka
reservations.)  Male labor has benefited from free female labor.



But how well does this hold in the post 1964, post-Goldwater,
post-Keynesian era?  IMO, the white, patriarchal, heterosexual base of
Bush and the neo-cons (and in some very different ways the Latino and to
a much lesser degree, Black revivalist protestants) are trying to
restore the Universalist nature of the US, and of course not merely
nationally but internationally.  If we are the Universal, then we are
the moral and ethical center too.  And not merely of the US, but of the
world.



As crazy as it seems to us, the working class neo-con base believes
itself to be upholding freedom in the world, but are these universal
human values?  NO, not at all.  This is no humanism.  Rather, holding up
universal Christian values.  This is a universalism that does not assume
that everyone belongs, but that the Good are part of it and the Evil are
an aberration to be converted or killed.  This is a long way back from
Humanism and the humanism of liberalism seems to it to accept Evil as
part of Good.  I put this intentionally in these quasi-religious terms
because I think it is often the terms in which such people think, at
least from conversations at work.  There is another layer, which of
course is not religious, but which certainly poses the matter in
quasi-religious terms, but also interestingly in the straightforward
terms of: this is how capitalism works, capitalism is about people
working to get what they want, and everyone wanting to get rich.



There is certainly the idea in this country that TINA, rather than AWIP,
rules (There Is No Alternative versus Another World Is Possible.)  In
that respect, the critique of the anti-capitalist-globalization movement
that it exists in part because of the absence of a radical workers?
movement is not unfair, or at least deserves to be taken seriously,
regardless of the source being the Spiked folks (ex-RCP wingnuts that
they are.)



Now, to add complications to this mix, while a small layer of the Black
population mostly military and /or middle class or bourgeois have taken
on this Universalist outlook, the simple fact is that the Federal
government is often viewed as the main protection against an otherwise
somewhat insane and dangerous white population, a view vindicated over
several centuries and even though not as rabid today, it is certainly no
mistake that some of that still exists.  Bush is living proof, with his
600 plus executed men (and women?) in Texas in one term as governor,
most of them Black and Latino.  Enough things in this society still
point to it as structurally racialized, and scared white folks still
resort to defending their positions first and foremost by trying to
re-entrench their white privilege, in the name of universalism.  It is
one of those quirks that Black particularity should in fact hold within
itself more of a universal humanism, as opposed to the abstract
universalism of white particularity.



Even so, neither the position of Black particularity nor neo-con
universalism is as progressive or as reactionary as they seem.  The
upside of neo-con universalism at the base is a deeply felt
individualism, with a healthy distrust of government and politicians,
with a certain energy and self-activity.  Black particularity can in
fact find itself as dependent on the state, as placing more trust in the
federal government than in other people.  These are only examples of the
complicated interplay.



Latinos find themselves in complicated positions because they not only
articulate an identity positioned between Black and white, but also
complicated by intra-Latino relations (the relations between Mexican and
Puerto Rican, for example, are often mediated by slurs based on
perceptions of complicated relations to Blacks and whites.  My friend
Nick Degenova has written some very fascinating anthropological work on
this that I consider absolutely essential reading for anyone who takes
racial formation and Latinidad seriously.)



Is this insanity the storm before the storm?  There is no pattern we can
make of this IMO, tempting as it may be.  Rather, one of the fundamental
problems in imagining a new radicalism that actually has a mass base and
not just a thin layer of activists, is that the old world does not apply
in many respects.  The Fordist struggles of the past have gone to South
Korea, Brazil, Argentina, Mexico and the other places where rapid
industrialization has shifted millions of people from rural to urban,
agricultural or cottage to industrial labor.  And even that will not
simply mirror the old patters, but I think we must admit amazing
similarities at times, based on similar organizations of labor an labor
processes, which tend to the same weak points and such.



What are the conditions of new struggles, of a new kind of class
movement?  Whatever they may be, I see no reason to be completely
disheartened, although I consider the Bush victory and the rising tide
of reaction disgusting.  I certainly see no reason to engage in petty
bourgeois rants about the ?slavish masses? in a ?Nietzsche told you so?
vein, which has such a blockheaded vanity and self-adoration to it that
one can only gawk.  Angela is also truly correct to raise the
expectation that we take those workers seriously and address their
concerns as serious.



IMO, doing so however means taking up something that the Democrats
cannot: the class question.  The Democrats, in signing on to the same
neo-liberal economic path as the Republicans, albeit with a different
set of policies (some more reactionary, as Clinton evinced), we are not
obliged to demand that the working class share the misery out equally
between Black and white and Latino.  This is, in effect, what
affirmative action becomes to many whites: the expectation that they, as
working class people, take an economic disadvantage on the principle of
liberal humanism.  And this is exactly liberal humanism, that abstract
humanism (unlike Black particularity, IMO, which does not trust liberal
humanism terribly either, but prefers it for practical reasons to white
Universalism), has to offer: the rich take no bite in the ass and the
Volvo-latte liberals tell white working people to take the hit too, to
be victims too (because liberals and most Leftists see Blacks as
victims), to see their families collapse, to see their communities rot,
to watch the decay present in Black communities (incorrectly identified
as an indication of Black racial or cultural deficiency, rather than to
capital) ruin their communities.  And in Baltimore you can really se the
impact of that kind of decay on white working class communities.  Of
course they are opposed to it and to anyone who wants to tell them that
that is a price they must pay.



The problems with that are numerous, of course.  Not the least of which
is that they blame the Black community tout court, when their range of
choices are not so good either.  They also identify with wage-labor as
the only way to maintain moral integrity.  The employed and law-abiding
are eo ipso facto also morally superior.  They really have imbibed Adam
smith, without likely ever reading a word of him.  Of course, this is
paid for with more and more debt, more and more work, and many of these
people are not stupid.  They do not trust the company.  They do not
trust the politicians.  They do not like being worked to death, being
treated like trash after being deeply loyal to the company or the
party.  They resist all of their life becoming work too, but it is
totally isolated and overrun by other matters.  Work is not even a
question, not working is not an option.  In the face of massive debt,
which many people face, or the loss of purchasing power or the reliance
on a fixed income, work just IS.  Work is the one thing which cannot be
questioned and anyone who questions it must either be lazy and immoral
or rich and immoral (Black or Liberal, it seems.)  Work is
simultaneously the source of insecurity and misery, but also security
and the purchasing power needed for happiness.



The free (or relatively free) source of community, of joy, of moral
fibre, etc. is the churches.  This is as much true of the Black
community as among whites.  In fact, the most deeply reactionary mass of
people outside of the white Christian Southerners and Mountain Staters
are the Black female Bible bangers (and yes, specifically female; that
is its own set of issues.)  But what else exists in urban Black
communities or in rural white communities?  What else exists in the
suburbs?  The commodification of public space has eliminated all other
types of non-work social spaces.



I apologize for not addressing a range of issues related to what is IMO
the very important fact of the commodification of social life.  For all
of their problems, the SI hit a very important point there.  The result
is that people buy commodities which allow them to access ?leisure
activity?, like TVs and radios and play-stations and such.  But it is
all very, very isolating too.  Everyone must own one because even the
public spaces for these are prohibitive (bars are no place for kids and
are still overwhelmingly male-centered in neighborhoods, at least, but
those are the public TVs.)  We have more and more a virtual social life
which is mediated through TV, computer, game console, etc.  This
combines with the exhaustion brought on by employment and unemployment
(for the work required to be unemployed, see ?The American Dream?, a new
book out that is very, very interesting about women on welfare over
three generations.)



Anyway, this is a bit rambling and I appreciate in particular the
comments of Harald, Tahir, Angela, Nate, Peter (the church comments are
very interesting, but out of my scope) and of course Thiago for starting
this whole thing!


cheers,
Chris



     --- from list aut-op-sy@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx ---