Re: Characteristics of slums - urban poor?

[djones@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx (rakesh bhandari)]

First, I would like to say that I share Carrol's enthusiasm about Zeynep's
posts.

Here is a note on the US debate, just to help the discussion along:

There is a voluminous literature on the American underclass and now a
growing literature on  the worsening situation of 'unskilled' US labor as a
whole (for which  many  explanations have been offered--from the impact of
trade [Adrian Wood] to technological change [Paul Krugman] to mean-spirited
manager-engineered upward redistribution [David Gordon] to the liquidation
of progressive government intervention by the Republican politicians put in
power by white male defections in the electorate [Martin Carnoy]).

 Not too many scholars argue that this regression can only be understood in
terms of the crisis of global capitalism as a whole.

Immigration scholar George Borjas is now attempting to demonstrate the
unassimilability of 'unskilled' immigrant labor, legal and illegal.  US
immigration policy is now undergoing some of its greatest changes ever, and
Borjas seems situated to play a major role.

Aside from the violently technocratic discourse about the lack of human
capital, there is all too much discussion about parts of the working class
in terms of other attributes:  teenage mothers, welfare recepient, criminal
record.

 Almost no one studies the differentiation within the working class in
Marxian categories (though racial categories are used as much by social
darwinists as by progressive-minded scholars, both intent to point to a
great 'racial gap'), and there is very little real discussion of the
difficulties in the way of class unity as deepening economic crisis has
complex effects on differentiation within the working class.

There is an important essay by Max Adler from 1933 which could be consulted
for an example of how one has analyzed and recognized a)the objective
differentiation within the working class; b)the respective dispositions of
these different strata, c)the problems all this poses for united class
action and d) the contradictory effects of protracted economic crisis on
efforts at unity.

Max Adler's essay "Metamorphosis of the Working Class" was translated and
reprinted in *Austro- Marxism*, ed. Tom Bottomore and Patrick Goode. Oxford
University Press, 1978


Rakesh


>Our position up till now is;
>In Turkey, there is no "urban poor" as a distint entity from the working
>class. (There may be different experiences otherplaces, I'm interested). The
>slum population consists of regular working class, and unemployed, and
>irregularly employed. The urban poor is not a Marxist category, even a
>sociological category in this country.
>Also, the anger of the youth serves as a means of discharge, not charge for
>further action. The proletariat, with all its strata, should make the leap
>from reacting against oppression to the organised social class struggle.
>



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