Re: [Marxism] re: Bush's approval rating at all-time low

[Josh Saxe <joshsaxe@xxxxxxxxx>]

Junaid wrote:
"Americans are no better than Israelis in their
public mindset now (how appropo); security before everything and
anything is the slogan. And, also like the Israelis, by "security" we
mean, security for our ability to impose insecurity on our weaker darker
subjects, without reaping the consequences."

Junaid I think you are under the pressures of an upper middle class
intellectual environment.  My conjecture is that you are projecting
your experience of privileged, racist white kids at an elite
university onto the entire population.  I remember being at UCLA and
feeling similarly.  Now that I am out in the world what you are
writing seems totally ridiculous.  What evidence are you citing in
your descriptions of what the mood is the United States?  What
conversations with workers are you referencing?  You might be able to
reference a few polls, but what do they really tell us about the
subtleties of what workers are thinking out there?

If we are going to have discussions about what American working class
communities are thinking on this list I propose we take the bold step
of referencing actual discussions we are having in our own political
work, referencing concrete experience, not election and poll results. 
Because if polling agencies would have been around in 1910 I'll bet
most Great Russians would have said they thought the Tsar had the
divine right of kings, the empire's subjects deserved their
subjugation, a woman's place was in the home, etc.  There are worlds
inside of those statements that a poll can never uncover. Polls tell
revolutionaries very little about what people are actually willing to
do, how they really feel, the subtle mechanisms by which they
determine their attitude towards the world.  For example, sometimes
people will say one thing to one person, and another to another, or
their views will change day to day depending on how they are doing -
workers will say they are going to quit their job every day and yet
stay on for decades, workers will be jingoistic racists and then turn
around and unite with their co-workers. Learning to understand what
oppressed people are really thinking is one of the major skills a
Marxist activist must acquire.

As a start it might be useful to recognize that what people say they
agree with is highly structured by what they think is possible.  You
can go to most working people and ask them if they would want a
society where good education, healthcare, food and shelter are rights,
not privileges, and workers have a say over how their workplaces and
communities are managed, and they will say, that sounds great.  But it
is outside the realm of possibility.  When there are struggles,
people's horizons begin to broaden, and that's when people begin to
think about the possibility of larger and larger changes.  It's not
different here than in Mexico or Nigeria.

Material circumstances are reflected in people's consciousness, and a
30 year retreat in the class struggle not just in the U.S. but around
the world is reflected in working people's disinterest in socialism -
in a way, they are right not to be interested - why talk about
building socialism when you can't get your asshole supervisor
disciplined?  Until socialists can lead people in doing that we are
not going to get a hearing from American workers.
You spend many of your posts on this bashing American workers, but in
fact there is an erosion of traditions of struggle in working class
communities in many countries and amongst many races.  It is a
reflection of three decades of defeats, the disorientation and
destruction of working class communities as a result of large scale
changes in the global economy, the spinelessness of the bureaucracies
of the organizations oppressed people have built.  Similarly the
processes that will generate a radicalization amongst U.S. workers are
similar to those that will produce the next world radicalization.
Josh

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