[Fwd: American Workers (Was: Heroes, causes and Marx)]

[Katha Pollitt <kpollitt@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

>
> Margaret Trawick wrote:
> >
> > America's working class takes pride in the very fact of being the working
> > class.  America's working class has guns in every home.  America's working
> > class loves the freedom of the open road.  America's working class keeps family
> > close and supports family values.  America's working class waves the American
> > flag.  America's working class joins and supports the American military
> > establishment.  America's working class would rather be exploited than go
> > hungry.  America's working class is happy to see Mexicans starve and struggle
> > in vain for what the American working class has by accident of birth: American
> > citizenship.

I'd like to add to Adam shapira's comments on this view of the US
working class. It's a bit of a caricature, no? would  I don't think guns
are quite so universal (nor is their possession limited to workers) --
and rates of out of wedlock births,cohabitation,  divorce, paternal
abandonment, drug and alcohol addiction and other non-family-values
activities are rather high compared with other classes-- divorce is
highest, interestingly in the South and southwest, bastions of
fundamentalism and political conservativism. It's true that working
class kids go into the army -- but the army is their trade school, their
college, their way to get out of the neighborhood and move up in the
world. Joining up isn't necessarily  about patriotism or even about war.
It was widely noted, for instance, how shocked and annoyed US rank and
file soldiers were at the gulf War -- the army markets itself so
skilfully as an educational institution it hadn't occured to these young
people that they might actually have to fight! also, recruitment is way
down-- partly it's that baby-boomer parents don't want their kids in the
military, but also when the economy is doing okay, people don't
volunteer.
  As for preferring exploitation to hunger -- who doesn't?

  The US working class is disproportionately black, brown, female  and
new immigrant.  it will be really interesting to see how working-class
politics develops to fit the demographic changes.

Katha