[Marxism] Re Abandoning the working class or context

[Ilyenkova@xxxxxxx]

M. Junaid writes:
>Obviously the social pact honeymoon is over. The economic comeuppance of
China and India in crucial economic sectors, and the Islamist backlash to 
Zionism
and imperialism, show once again that quite apart from the boogeyman of
Communism, new demons are at Capital's doorstep. There will be an intense 
struggle
to marshal American workers behind their rulers , quite possibly more ugly,
intense, and brutal than at any other time since World War II, because the basis
of US political and economic privilges and hegemony is being seriously
undermined....The question for Marxists here is as always: what is to be 
done?...
All that is necessary is an honest, sober, and serious engagement and
understanding of what the really-existing circumstances, openings, and 
potentialities
are, and the confidence and conviction in socialist ideals required to make good
use of them. Anyone committed to this task, in whatever field or capacity
open to him, taking on whatever aspect or angle available, is doing all that can
be asked and should be encouraged.<

I have only followed this thread in a cursory way so I hope I can be forgiven
a brief note. The above quote is Junaid's most lucid and seems a good
rapprochment position (esp. '...the social pact is over '). I don't see what 
there is
in the above excerpt to quarrel over. My sense is that a theme running
through previous posts sounded like the ultra-Third Worldism of Western Maoism 
in
the '60s and '70s. This theme was shared by New Left theorists like Marcuse. The
common notion was that the proletariat of the advanced sector owed its
privileges to imperialist looting of the 3rd World. This fetishized 3rd Worldism
found its most extreme form in the New Left Weatherman sect's claim that all 1st
world people enjoyed "white skin privilege" regardless of class, gender,
sexual orientation and other forms of oppression and made them complicit in the
crimes of imperialism. We're well rid of such moralistic nonsense and I don't
think Junaid would endorse this stuff. On the other side, list members picked up
on this to the exclusion of everything else he wrote (i.e.) the social pact
between the AFL-CIO and Capital in the US. Perhaps it would have been more
useful to have moved to a discussion of Lenin's 'aristocracy of labor' concept 
and
whether and how it applies today. At any rate the above excerpt is very well
put!
Ilyenkova






_______________________________________________
Marxism mailing list
Marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
http://lists.econ.utah.edu/mailman/listinfo/marxism