Class struggle on the l'st

["Chris, London" <100423.2040@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

In a message dated 96-04-01 I, Chris, wrote:


> This l'st has become in this respect for some, a symbolic
>enactment of the class struggle, instead of an opportunity
>to comment on the class struggle going on out there.


Gina commented:
--------------

[From: Rubyg580@xxxxxxx
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 1996 07:07:00 -0500
Subject: Re: CHRIS: Re: Peru]

>>>>
A very revealing comment.  Those who want the class struggle
to be only "out there" and not "here" are certain to be disappointed
again and again.  The debate between bourgeois and proletarian
ideology is not a "symbolic enactment" of class struggle, it is
a form of class struggle.
<<<<


Chris B now replies:
--------------------

I would like to draw lines of demarcation with you more clearly here.

I do not believe that the class struggle can be "only" out there and not
here. I am among those on this l'st who have explicitly referred to class
differences even when it is to my disadvantage since I am a member of the
professional intelligentsia.

There has been some disuccion of this on the l'st but people usually shy
away from it perhaps in embarrasment, or when it comes out it comes out
in an abusive form in remarks about professors.

The two main groups on this l'st, who of course intermingle, seem to me
to be those work mainly with ideas and those who work with things.
I am deliberately putting it this way, because there has been a good
debate previously on the l'st in which it was pointed out that Marx
(and indeed reality!) shows that in doing manual tasks any worker
very much uses his/her brain and imagination. Therefore I am deliberately
avoiding the old simplistic formula about workers by hand and brain.
Although the intelligentsia share many of the features of the
petty bourgeoisie, IMO there are more correctly seen as
a stratum within the working class defined very broadly to include
90% of the population who have nothing to sell but their labour
power, apart from a some personal or family savings.

There is also the question of relationship to the ruling class. The
Germans have an expression "Bildungsbuergertum" meaning the educated classes,
and "Geistesadel" meaning the intellectual aristocracy, and in these words is
incapsulated automatically an understanding that they are likely to side with
the establishment.

This explains for me how hot the struggle is at times on this l'st about
"professors". The professors who do subscr'be are probably among the
very best politically (! no comments please) of the range of
ideas within their academic departments. When they put down the joys of
scrapping on this l'st they have to attend to maintaining their
credibility in an academic world usually funded directly or indirectly by
the capitalist class.

One of the ironies that Louis Godena does not know, is that before
he subscr'bed to this l'st, "Professor" Louis Proyect was the bluntest
of those leading
an attack on the "professors". This contributed to Jerry Levy's first
resignation. The thrust of the complaint against the professors is
of course that they try to discuss marxism in an abstract way, divorcing it
>from actual class struggle and certainly from revolutionary practice.

The thrust of the countercriticism is quieter but IMHO more powerful;
those left wing academics who carve out the time to struggle against
pro-capitalist ideas in their sphere of work have not got time
to take part in a l'st that seems to them at best a mishmash of ideas
and at worse just a forum of abuse. It may seem very intellectually
arrogant of them, but they are just not going to bother. Their disdain
speaks far louder than a hard disk full of expletives in capitals.

We have lost as subscribers some of the IMHO bravest and most inventive
marxist political economists currently writing. Perhaps "lost" is too
strong a word, they are only an internet connection away should they wish
to respond. Perhaps a completely open l'st like this is not the forum
to develop a critique of anti-marxist criticisms of Das Kapital. But at its
quietist one of them said he found it impossible to develop an argument when
too many subscribers could be so unserious as to divert the question
within a couple of posts, completely away from the point in hand.

Now these are my views about some of the main features of the class
struggle as it actually takes place on this l'st, and there is quite
a difference from yours, Gina.

You find my remark "very revealing" I fear because you are in favour of a
simplified "two line struggle" ideological struggle in the superstructure
between bourgeois and proletarian ideas, between marxist and revisionist ideas.

You have recently recommended reading Mao Zedong's "On Practice" 1937.
I agree with his remark there that "In class society, everyone
lives as a member of a particular class, and every kind of thinking without
exception, is stamped with the brand of a class." Where I differ is that
I believe types of thinking are also substantially influenced by other
factors, immediate circumstances, peer group, cultural influences, family
influences, in short multiply determined. True, he commoner error is to
ignore or to try to deny the class factors influencing ideas, but it would be
reductionist to imply that ideas reflect *only* class influences.

I fear you and your comrades approach this l'st with the aim of
mainly waging ideological struggle against bourgeois and revisionist
ideas (the same thing here) in the superstructure.

I am sure our differences
remain substantial after this post. But if I make it clear I accept that
the class struggle does not occur "only" outside this l'st, and if you
accept that this l'st does not consist "only" of class struggle, but
that there is room for arguing about how closely ideas fit actual
reality and actual practice, then there may still be a possibility
for careful exchanges.


Chris B, London.





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