Re: [Marxism] Forwarded from Anthony in Colombia

[DLVinvest@xxxxxx]

In a message dated 6/10/04 7:11:04 AM Mountain Daylight Time, lnp3@xxxxxxxxx
writes: [quoting Anthony]
> Detroit, as awful as it may be, is a bastion of imperialist privelege and
> illusion. Automobile workers in China make less than $5.00/day. In Mexico they
> make
> less than $10.00/day.
>
> That - and the consciousness it creates - is the problem with the US worknig
> class. Everything else is secondary, tertiary, or wrose.

This issue of "privilege"-- sometimes rendered as "white-skin privilege" or
more broadly "male privilege" -- is real but needs to be unravelled from
moralistic wrapper in which it's usually presented. The schema outlined above --
workers are exploited more in one place than another -- results from the 
dynamics
of capital accumulation. This creates consciousness or false consciousness
but the moralistic condemnation of the variation in rates of exploitation as
"privilege" amounts to a denunciation of, for example, black auto workers as
"bought off" in Detroit, or brown workers in Mexico (where VW finally closed its
last "bug" plant in San Martin outside Puebla) compared to the Chinese who
replaced them, or Chinese workers are "bribed" compared to their unemployed or
peasant compatriots, without recognition that the wage-rate is also the result 
of
class-conscious struggle by workers, not merely the redistribution of
imperial "super-profits" through unequal exchange.

Douglas L. Vaughan, Jr.
Investigations
for Print, Film & Electronic Media
3140 W. 32nd Ave.
Denver CO 80211
303-455-9429
_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism