[Marxism] SWP post-election analysis

[Louis Proyect <lnp3@xxxxxxxxx>]

(I don't want to open up big discussion about this extremely marginal 
ultraleft sect in the USA that many Marxmailers, including me, used to 
belong to, but this article linking ABB'ers to Murray and Herrnstein's 
"The Bell Curve" is one of the oddest things I've ever read. Not only is 
the connection utterly preposterous; it also fails to characterize the 
*racist* character of the book. That's what the controversy was about, 
not rationalizing middle-class privileges.)

The Militant
Vol. 68/No. 43  November 23, 2004

Middle-class contempt for workers
fuels liberal panic over U.S. elections

BY ARGIRIS MALAPANIS

(clip)

Most professionals, Hollywood entertainers and producers, newspaper 
columnists, novelists and other writers, television newscasters, and 
university professors in the United States today are liberals. These are 
among the social layers that Kerry appealed to. They include former 
radicals who three or four decades ago were Maoists, or belonged to the 
Weather Underground or other groups on the “left.” Many of these people 
today live in apartment buildings or housing complexes with security 
guards. As capitalism’s economic crisis marches on, they become more 
fearful of losing their privileges and their contempt for workers 
increases. This “Bell Curve” bias of aging radicals and middle-class 
liberals is resented more and more by working people.

The Bell Curve is a book by Charles Murray and Richard Hernstein [sic] 
that was released in 1994. Its publication caused a scandal in the 
bourgeoisie. The reason for the scandal? In the debate around the book, 
both supporters and critics, liberals and conservatives alike, were 
forced to acknowledge that capitalist society necessitates maintaining a 
class hierarchy—which is a product of social relations, not a biological 
fact—that permanently denies equality to the majority of human beings, 
those who work for living.

The book’s purpose was to provide a rationalization for better-off 
layers of professionals and the middle class—those the authors call “the 
cognitive elite”—as to why they deserve to be richer and more 
comfortable than the great majority of humanity; it’s because they are 
supposedly smarter. It was aimed at middle-class liberals, in 
particular. “Quit denying it!” was the message of the authors. “You 
deserve to be better off. It’s necessary, especially in this 
computerized and hi-tech world we’re living in.”

--

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